Unfinished

People of my generation probably cannot appreciate the simplicity of Pacman. They're all too busy with their explosions and their guns and questioning the sexuality of 12 year old boys who sound like girls to care for the elegance of how you dodged that ghost to grab the fruit or earning number 9 spot on your local arcade machine back in your heyday. Right grandpa? Pacman Super Crazy Ultra Deluxe Edition v2.0 Turbo retains it's core gameplay from way back when but builds upon it in a way that makes the game so much more than simply dodging ghosts and wracking up points. The DX edition now adds sleeping ghosts, which appear handily along your course right next to, or not too far from the pills you pick up. As you stroll (eat?) past them, they will wake up and follow you like you're the pied piper of ghost town. Build up enough behind you and pick up a power up and you suddenly have a huge chain of points behind you. This implements an incredible risk-reward mechanic to Pacman that instantly heightens the tension of your quest for pills. Do you let the line get long enough so that you can build a high combo, but can easily squash you should you make one minuscule fault? Or do you play the short game, playing it safe with a few ghosts here and there alongside your pills and fruit? Obtaining these ghosts allow you to build up the speed of Pacman, giving you more opportunity to either get the points faster or to run into trouble, dependent on your reaction time and pre-planning. After nomming the line of ghosts behind you, you can often lose the rhythm you build up from simply going for the pills and fruit, especially at the higher speeds. Thankfully, Pacman has taken a leaf out of Neo's book and gains a super slo-mo effect before hitting a ghost that may have simply ended your game there. A prompt will also offer you the chance to use one of your bombs, knocking all of the ghosts following you or roaming around back into the centre square; incredibly useful to keep the game flowing and less stop-start, but they will reduce your speed and should you not get yourself on the right track in time, you may find yourself giving the bomb button a good too many pushes than you'd like. There are 3 main modes to Pacman: Score Attack is, unsurprisingly, the mode which sees you trying to earn a high score within a specified time limit, Time trial consists of the player meeting a certain criteria, mostly eating X amount of fruit before the time runs out and finally Ghost Combo demands you stay continually powered up and eat as many ghosts as possible. I found myself having the most fun in the score attack modes. Time trial mode's goal is simply to eat the fruit, meaning the newly introduced sleeping ghosts can be simply ignored and are largely pointless in most cases. Ghost Combo's goal is to do the opposite. You have infinite lives and the only point of the mode is to build the highest possible combo, meaning the fruit and pills are largely worthless aside from getting you more ghosts. The combination of both modes in score attack means your brain needs to be constantly switching from one mode to the other, focusing on building that chain of ghosts while trying to maintain the constant supply of points is arguably more tense and exciting. Graphically, the game is as intense as the gameplay it offers. The game offers you 8 different visual styles, each with a host of colours to choose from. There are also 6 different versions of Pacman from down the years, each with their accompanying style of Ghost for you to choose from, should you have a favourite. The in-game visuals are also extremely vibrant. To the point that you may question if you're in Charlie Sheen's bathroom (Yes, we're jumping on the Charlie Sheen bandwagon too!). The flashing points indicators, although small, can be blinding at times and at the higher speeds can often cause you to completely track of your pill-gobbling chum leading to an untimely death at the hand of a sleeping ghost you didn't even know you were headed for. In closing, Pacman brings to the table the whole host of gameplay you loved from when the world was black and white, but adds a little something new for the current generation that won't lose any of your beloved nostalgia.

Destiny: Year One in Review

Bungie's foray into the genre-bending FPSMMORPG has polarised the gaming community for the past year. With The Taken King almost around the corner, we're going to take a trip back to look at the game that's gone through numerous reiterations in it's relatively short time span.

Destiny began in a physical form in June as the game's alpha was released to a select few, giving players a taste of the Cosmodrome; a glimpse of Russia after the catastrophic event setting the game's events in motion: The Collapse. Starting in a small conglomeration of rusted cars, a small robot would wake you from what seemed like an eternal slumber and instruct you to run for your life. We all had a lot of questions as to what was going on but had high hopes for Bungie's renowned universe-building reputation to kick into the main game. The Alpha allowed players to get to grips with the gunplay that is so beloved of the main game now as well as the powers that would be unique to Destiny over other FPS games.

Warlocks, wielders of Space Magic, able to expel force from their hands and launch purple explosive magic projectiles at your foes. Titans, the backbone and the main fighting-force of the resistance with the ability to strike their foes with their fists and blinding grenades. Finally, we come to the Hunters. Bearing long glorious capes, throwing knives and a Golden Gun, bathing in solar light to unleash destructive bullets.

Oh how I miss thee @destinythegame @bungie #PS4share pic.twitter.com/TbUXvIkP5o

— C_Stewie (@C_Stewie) June 28, 2014

This was my Alpha character. Warlock glorious master class. 

"We got another glimpse into how far our civilisation had gone..."

July rolled around and along came the Beta. Not much had really changed from the Alpha except the introduction of the Moon to the game's playable areas. We got another glimpse into how far our civilisation had gone from our days of taking pictures of small planets and complaining about our bad our phone signal was. This small leap was in part due to the Traveller, Destiny's iconic sphere that may have saved us from probable extinction. It's motives lay unknown to us, but again, we had continued hope that the radio silence on the mysterious object would only further the narrative in the main game. We learned that our characters we had invested so much time in would be deleted post-Beta, much to the dismay of most. Little did we know that our attachment to such things would be just the beginning of a trend that would plague the relationship between Bungie and it's community for the months to come. 

Before we knew it, Destiny was upon us. 

So I got my first Legendary item... for the wrong class! :( #PS4share pic.twitter.com/IRjfHMwJ8T

— C_Stewie (@C_Stewie) September 15, 2014

Champions. @Timothydclark #PS4share pic.twitter.com/RH4zLTPnfd

— C_Stewie (@C_Stewie) October 21, 2014

#PS4share pic.twitter.com/YeqYgmsdYu

— C_Stewie (@C_Stewie) November 9, 2014

Review: Halo: Reach (Unifnished)

Providing you've been over our First Impressions of Halo Reach, you should know that the intial impressions I got from the game were nothing but spectacular. Even only after finishing the first three missions of the campaign, everything about Bungie's latest had proved to live up to it's expectations.It is somewhat scary then that those three missions pale in comparison to the sheer genius that is displayed in the missions after. Bungie have developed a reputation for telling great stories and Halo: Reach is no different. From the first mission to the last, the game does an excellent job of bringing you into the famous Spartan armour of Noble 6. Reach depicts the events directly leading up to Halo: Combat Evolved. The Covenant have landed on the Planet Reach and it is imperative that the human race holds on to this stronghold to maintain any hope of winning the war. Unless you're entirely new to Halo, you should know what happens on Reach, but it is the twists and turns on the way that make Reach great. The crescendo moments, heart-wrenching musical score and excellent story-telling we've come to expect from Bungie's Halo games are on show throughout. On top of this, the game also helps you understand some of the people behind the armour. Your character, although not terribly chatty, still speaks and shows brief sparks of personality. The rest of the Team Noble are heavily humanised, they all have names that are seen above their in-game character and are often seen without their helmets, giving the player a sense of camaraderie between them and their fellow Spartans. Reach introduces "Armour abilities". Little perks you can pick out throughout the levels that unleash the full force of your Spartan armour. At the start of each mission you start out with the rather vanilla, sprint function. You can trade this for other ones dependent on your play style or as the mission allows them. It's unfortunate that you can't choose your ability before the mission starts, as some of the more obscure ones (Like Active Camoflague or the Jetpack) are tough to find or not used often throughout the campaign. Despite the glowing praise, Reach's campaign is not without faults. Aside from the spectacular space flight combat mission, displayed at E3, the game rarely deviates from what you'd expect from a Halo game. There is the occasional vehicle mission, as well as a few short parts within the missions where the player shoots a grenade launcher or a turret out the side of an A.I. controlled vehicle however these moments are often short-lived though and are mere means of getting you back to more shooting. Not to say that the shooting is bad, just that it had been nice to get some variety into the campaign. The multiplayer though, leaves you with more variety than you will even know what to do with. There are a huge variety of game modes available to you from the standard free for alls and team deathmatches to the more crazy fun from Infection (One player is a zombie and must infect the other players until nobody is left) and the new Headhunter. To list them all here would make the amount of modes and their variants bigger than the actual review, so I'll leave it to you to see the variety available. There are a small number of maps, only eight, if you discount Forge World and it's variants (Not sure on this bit) but the sheer number of modes make each of them fresh. One cubby hole might be your doom in Infection, but might be a great spot to sneak in a few sword kills in Slayer. Forge returns, giving you a massive map known as Forge World full ofvarieties of terrain from your flat, closed indoor area to large expanses of land for you to build your own maps upon. The sheer number of options and pieces you can place will have those with creative minds drooling at the mouth, but for those of you who are less-so, you can easily find the best and newest maps from the File Share system to find that remake of Shipment from CoD4 you've been dying to try or the latest version of Grifball. For those of you who do delve in after trying Forge from Halo 3, the improvements made will be instantly noticeable to you. The introduction of physics to certain pieces mean that should you wish to have an object floating in the air, you needn't build it on top of some pieces below and delete the pieces below it; instead, you sift through the item's options and make sure it is set to the "fixed" option. The bottomless pit of options extends itself to the popular Firefight mode too, returning from Halo 3:ODST. The return of Firefight, one of the highlights of ODST, brings forth a few changes. Playing some of the more wacky modes, such as Rocketfight (Everyone has infinite rockets) and Gruntpocalypse (all of the enemies are grunts) with friends is as much fun as the matchmaking or playing the campaign co-operatively. Taking up defensive positions with the odds highly stacked against you can cause some tense moments and some cries of triumph as one man finishes off a fleet of Covenant with no lives left and their team mates down. From the beginning, you know the end. The game's tagline. I can assure you that the game, Reach, won't be falling anytime soon. Graphically very impressive. Scale is incredible, especially seeing Reach fall later in the game. (Kat's death scene, body being carried through a tunnel) Multiplayer: Teamwork is essential Weapons feel just the same as their single player counterparts A team mate quitting is completely catastrophic to your team's chances of winning. As is the influx of n00bs (Will balance out as more people settle into their skill set) Tonnes of fun. Map design is reasonably good, some poor spawn points and points on the map that are great positions, but are held too easily. Firefight, Forge, File Share: File sharing and movie saving are a lot faster and quicker than in 3 Firefight is tonnes of fun, tonnes of new options and customisations mean you can cater to all tastes. Generator defense and other new co-op modes (name them, look it up faggot) Forge's improvements are plenty. Forge World is huge, plenty of varieties of terrain

Medal of Honor Beta Impressions

Once the announcement of the revitalisation of the Medal of Honor series hit, First Person Shooter fans waited with baited breath to see how the veteran would hold up against the young pretenders of the modern shooter genre. Here, we get a sneak peak at what the team at DICE are offering to compliment the highly-hyped single player campaign of the tier one operators. The beta has you picking which mode you want to play, you can stick with the more traditional team deathmatch, now known here as Team Assault, or the objective-based mode known as Mission. Team Assault is played on the brilliantly designed map Kabul City Ruins, offering a variety of gameplay styles for any player style. Windows to hide in if you're a sniper, lots of flank routes and shortcuts for the run and gunners and plenty of cover for the more defensive style of player. The Mission mode offers a more objective orientated mode. Much like Bad Company 2's Rush mode, an attacking team has to destroy or capture a number of objectives while the defending team has to defend them. Playing on the attacking side feels like you're a part of a massive tidal wave, flooding over any defences that may stand in your way. This is due to how the spawning works. On the attacking side you can spawn on any one of your team mates providing they're alive, whereas on defence you have to make do with a spawn delay, as well as spawning a fair distance from your main objective. While fun on the offensive side, the defence side was difficult to play; feeling like you're constantly dying and running backwards is not a fun way to play an FPS and I certainly hope this gets addressed later in the beta/full game. While doing all this respawning, you're going to get the option to choose from one of three classes: your Assault class, which gives you an M16 or an Ak-47 (dependent on your faction) with a pistol and an underbarrelled grenade launcher; the Spec Ops class, giving you an M4 or an AK-74u with a pistol and a rocket launcher; and finally the Sniper class, giving you a M21 or a Dragunov with a pistol and C4. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, however, from my play time a large majority of players stuck with the Spec Ops or Assault classes. I can see why though, as someone who greatly enjoys sniping at all ranges in FPSs, the sniper rifles are hard to use with such a small dot sight attached to them. While it may help in closer situations, trying to aim at range is extremely difficult, especially when you're getting shot at or the target is moving. With successful use of this red dot sight though, you will unlock better sights to use. This is true of all of the classes, allowing you to pick scopes and sights to customise your gun to your leisure. So now we have set out what you play and what you play it with, how do you play it? Well, the movement feels great. Slow enough to make running around like a headless chicken suicide, but fast enough to quickly aquire targets whether aiming down your sights or not. The controls, too, are basically copied straight out of the CoD playbook, meaning players of both CoD and the similarly-controlled Bad Company 2 will be able to convert their skills straight into this game once they've adjusted to the slowdown/speed up of their movement and aiming. Shooting is often a series of spray and pray events or hiding and being defensive to ensure you build up a healthy KDR (Kill Death Ratio, n00b). Now, as this is a beta, it would not be complete without a series of bugs and glitches. There are two major ones that I experienced though; the first being when you get shot, your game instantly freezes meaning any attempts to adjust your aim to counter-fire, or any attempt to avoid the fire is thwarted because you're frozen in place. It's highly frustrating to have such concise controls and then for them to instantly freeze up on you. The second glitch is the highly common PS3 insta-freeze while in-game. I was lucky enough to only have two during my time playing up until now, but one of them was during a six kill streak so heaven knows what other people have had freeze on them during their playtime. To finish on an upside while we're on the subject of killstreaks; rather than unleashing a barrage of death from above like in MW2, Medal of Honor gives you the choice to use an offensive reward, like a mortar strike, or a a more team based award, such as a UAV. These aren't merely limited to obtaining kills though, as assists, headshots, objective completion/defence will help raise your meter until you can choose what you want to do with the power. Do you go greedy and unleash all artillery-based hell on your enemy or play as a team and supply your allies with the ability to find their enemy, ultimately leading to a victory shared amongst your compatriots? The choice is a masterful one combining lone-wolves and team players into one system where they can fully choose their options. That's another example of how you can choose between a gung-ho, lone-wolf style or a team-based squadmate style. Much like Call of Duty and Battlefield, right? Ultimately, if you squint real hard, Medal of Honor shows the potential to bridge the gap between the two warring mainstream FPS franchises, finding a happy medium. It removes the niggles of Call of Duty but retains enough of the lightness to the controls to keep the action quick and fast paced, alongside including the team work and tactical play of Battlefield which ultimately deepens the gameplay. Whatever allegiance you fight for on the internet, you should be excited about Medal of Honor. That is, if they iron a few niggles left in there.

Review: Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter

Developer: Beatshapers Publisher: Beatshapers If you've seen Jurassic Park, you know the thrill that hunting (or being hunted by) dinosaurs can bring. The velociraptor hunting-be-hunted scene was particularly nerve-wracking and was one of the many personal highlights of that movie. So when Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter came around onto the PlayStation minis service, I was hopeful that it may bring back a few nostalgic moments of my insides squirming with fear. You play as a multi-billionaire in the distant future who has paid the "Dinohunt" corporation for the privilege to hunt on a planet untouched by man and full to the brink of dinosaurs. And that's it. Despite the simple premise, C:DH hides a lot of depth. You start with a basic pistol, a basic landscape and a small choice of dinosaurs to hunt. Your choices cost points and cost more the more complex or difficult your landscape/weapon/prey is. Earning points will unlock better guns, better terrains and more dangerous dinosaurs to make extinct. Again. You earn points by killing these dinosaurs and the more you kill on each haul, the more points you'll end up with to unlock more things to then kill more things on each haul. These dinosaurs have 3 varying stats: hearing, scent and sight. These are countered by applying certain "boosters", if you will. Scent is countered by applying "Cover Scent", sight is covered by "Camouflage" and hearing is countered by good old fashioned walking slowly. While the former two are useful, they will cost you a percentage of the points you gain from that haul. Additional boosters come in the shape of a radar which will show all the dinosaurs as green specs on your vast map, and being able to put tranquiliser rounds into your gun, gaining 25% more of your earnings. However, any dinosaurs you do hunt with the tranquiliser will not go into your trophy room. While the statistical side of things is very deep and compelling, the actual gameplay isn't. You use the face buttons of your PSP to control your character and the analog stick to control your aim. Aiming in particular is a problem as you cannot adjust your sensitivity. Instead, you're stuck with a sluggish aim speed that even a three-legged Stegosaurus could outrun. This causes problems should you accidentally run into one of the lightning-quick, one-hit-kill predators, as you can't turn around quick enough as you hear their rumbling footsteps behind you. The actual hunting of dinosaurs without the radar is horrible too. You can deploy a dinosaur call to hear if there any dinosaurs nearby. However, unless you're wearing a surround sound headset, you won't know where the sound came from. You'll then pretty much run around like a headless chicken, mashing the "Dinosaur Call" button over and over until you eventually get to it. Or just give up. This can potentially be very rewarding, providing you have the patience, but if you are expecting short, sharp doses of intensity from a minis title, that's something a radar-less C:DH doesn't deliver on. Graphically, the game doesn't deliver much either, with low-resolution textures in places and blocky scenery. Providing you can stick with the game past the "I'm fighting dinosaurs with a measly pistol" phase and build up some points, the depth and fun in C:DH will make itself clear. Despite this, the game doesn't particularly provide much in the way of fun, but more a calm, paced form of gameplay fun that will cater to those who like to not have enemies blasting them with bullets every second like most other first person shooters. Pros: Huge areas to explore. Game gets more interesting after ranged weapons unlock. Cons: Graphics are poor. Hard to locate your prey. Poor controls. [nggallery id=12]

Review: Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

Developer: Blue Castle Games Publisher: Capcom Mindlessly killing mindless zombies is always fun. Whether it was in CoD: World at War's Zombie mode, Resident Evil's scare-fest or in the original Dead Rising, zombie entrails flying up the walls was always entertaining. So in the build up to the latter's highly anticipated sequel, Dead Rising 2, Capcom have released a prelude to Chuck Greene's grand trip into Las Vegas as a standalone download on XBLA. In Case Zero, you play as Chuck, three years before the events of Dead Rising 2. You and your daughter, Katy, stop in a small town on their way out of Las Vegas, where you will be murdering zombies, finding Zombrex (the drug that stalls the zombification process) and completing tasks before the inevitable countdown that made the first game so unique. The initial concerns from the Las Vegas trailer of Dead Rising 2 were that Chuck didn't look like a good character. Despite the character having never spoken in the trailer, people were quick to call him out as a tough biker dude with no heart or soul. While this may have intrigued some and dissuaded others, I can certainly say thanks to Case Zero that this is not the case. The relationship between Chuck and his daughter is a heart-wrenching one. The lines delivered by both are heart-felt and cause you to care greatly for your character as well as what happens to his cute daughter. The game plays pretty similarly to its former entry into the series: you find silly weapons and batter zombies with them. On the way, you collect survivors, of which, the A.I. has been much improved from the DR1's survivors, who often chose to make sure they ran straight into that pile of zombies lurching for their sweet craniums. Now, the NPCs are quick to shrug off the threat to their minds and chase after you to sanctuary. You'll also complete tasks to build a means of escape, which leads to a thrilling finale, as well as using the new combine mechanic at various workbenches scattered around the small town. Now you can stick together (using duct tape, no less) the wacky weaponry you find to make even wackier weaponry. For example, you can attach chainsaws onto the two ends of a kayak paddle, giving you two ranged chainsaws that slice through zombies with the most satisfying revving noise while the zombie meat is ground. This new system doesn't just make you outlandish weaponry, though, as combining beer with a hard hat (for example) leaves you with a funky beer hat that gives you double the amount of beer to heal yourself with. You can also find food and blend it to make better food to heal yourself with, try on some new clothes, play on the slot machines in the casino, buy a moose head, put it on and run down the street barging zombies out of the way with your antlers, the list goes on. For such a small game, there is a bewildering amount to do. It would take you multiple playthroughs to find all there is to see in Case Zero. Other issues from the predecessor have been addressed too. There is now a three-slot save system, replacing the, you-love-it-or-you-hate-it single-slot from DR. Your character's speed vastly improves throughout the five levels you're given in Case Zero, whereas Frank only really got going when you got him to about level twenty. Although the load times have been improved, they're still way too long and often break up the gameplay or cutscenes a little too much in most cases. There has also been a graphical upgrade but the game suffers from frame rate issues and pop-in from time to time, especially when there is an explosion or two and a lot of zombies in the same spot. Case Zero is without a doubt one of the best games on the Arcade right now. Its sales figures are through the roof and with good reason. For a very small four hundred points, you're getting a retail quality game. The notable improvements over Dead Rising, a great game in it's own right, are reason enough to experience the thrill of shredding the undead with outlandish weaponry. Fans of the original should be extremely excited for the game's full release in a few days, I know I am. If you had any doubts on whether to get Dead Rising 2, I highly suggest you try this and watch the smile broaden across your face and your fingers find the preorder button on your choice of gaming retailer. Pros: Killing zombies is fun. Combining crazy weapons to make crazier weapons. Great, compelling storyline for such a short game. Cons: Very short, story wise. Load times can be tedious, especially in a cluster of cutscenes.

First Impressions: Halo: Reach

Unless you've been living under a soundproof boulder, you should know that Halo: Reach, Bungie's final foray into the Halo universe, is released tomorrow. Luckily for me, I've got my hands on a (legitimate, we despise piracy) copy and have played through the first three missions on normal difficulty. Needless to say, I am coloured impressed. Starting off as new Noble team member "Noble 6", you are quickly introduced to the rest of the team, each with their own unique traits and stereotypical accents. Your squad leader informs you that the "gung ho" stuff you did back in your training is over and that you now work as a team. These words are unbelievably true, as running off alone is akin to signing your death certificate. Your squad's A.I. is incredibly adept, as each will use their own skill set to their advantage when under the right circumstances. While under heavy fire from an enemy ship, my comrade deployed the Armour Lock ability to distract the ship while the heavy gun man laid down suppressing fire for the rest of the squad to pick off the ground Covenant forces. It was an awesome moment and one that made sure I was never too far from anyone on my team. Unfortunately I've only had the opportunity to play with the Sprint ability and the Armour Lock so far, but both work well when used properly. I often chose to use Sprint to get away from fire once my shields were down, while I activated Armor Lock to distract enemies and generally absorb heavy attacks. They're also great fun to use, and help break up the gameplay from the usual fire, melee, grenade, grenade, reload routine that is common in previous Halos. In a rather poor way of describing it, the weapons of Halo: Reach feel different but have a sense of familiarity to them. The DMR feels exactly like a combination of the Magnum and the Battle Rifle from Halo 3. The Magnum in itself now has an ability to scope in, making it a much more viable weapon and a handy secondary to have. Despite the minor changes, the weapons are still balanced and work well. Grenades explode with a satisfying bang and cause a disorientating ringing in your ears should you get too close.The sticky grenades still make that satisfying noise as they land on their target, just as they scream at their inevitable doom. The enemy A.I. is fully aware of these new improvements and is vastly more intelligent to counter it. I don't think I've managed to land a grenade close to one of the Elites just because they're so damn agile. Not only that, but they're tough too and quick to be a pain in the butt by hiding in cover at the first sense of danger. This really gives you a welcome challenge because you need to aim and be precise with your shots. They will use this agility offensively too. If you see one with an energy sword, you best hope you've weakened it a little before it gets to you. The Grunts are their usual cowardly selves, running at the first chance to get away from danger, but are just as satisfying to headshot as previous Halo games. The final element I haven't touched on is the credit and Armory system. From the start you're asked to make your own Spartan and the level of customisation is immense. You're given a basic amount of credits to start him (or her) off with a new helmet, knee pad or whatever you like. There's the usual plethora of colour and emblem choices to choose from and you can even customise their aura or voice. However, if you want a few of the more spectacular ones you best start saving those credits from the start. Halo: Reach has me hooked so far. The world you're playing in is distinctly gritty and guns have a real kick to them, with the squad mechanics and abilities adding extra depth unseen in previous Halo games. These combine into a solid start that I hope will continue and improve throughout the remainder of the campaign and my time in the other modes.