Yet more changes.

I've now changed the background as well, which you can probably tell. So, what do you reck, any good? If you lot think it's rubbish I shall change it back forthwith.

Cheers for the input :)

Keep gaming

Ha!

Got this back in response.

"Thank you for your feed back but as explained to you earlier by myself on the phone this is NOT door to door sales and is for a managers job within our company.

Thank you for your response and for letting us know that you will not be attending the interview tomorrow."

Regards and good luck in the future.

Angela Rose
Office Manager
Dylan James Management Ltd"

What she fails to mention is that I would have been responsible for dispatching the proffesional Granny bulliers known as field representatives, as she highlighted during my call to them earlier. Don't let yourselves be fooled by these people, they're a bunch of cretinous scumholes, who'll do anything to scam you and the public out of money. Watch out for the Cobra group as well, it's all the same shit, designed to trick gullible people into signing their lives away.

Anyway, normal service shall return shortly.

Dear despicable corporate slugs

Sent this letter to a company that I was meant to be being interviewed with tomorrow afternoon, when I found out they practise in door-to-door sales.

"Sorry, but I can't shift the idea that I'm being conned. I am principled against companies participating in door-to-door sales anyway. The whole practise is entirely cynical, forcing FR's to achieve sales in order to make a living and forcing consumers to make on the spot ill-considered decisions. It doesn't help anyone involved and in my mind it is tantamount to bullying. It may well be that you can account for this morally within your own minds, but I can't.

Good luck finding people prepared to sell their souls in pursuit of money; I shouldn't think you'll have too much trouble.

Yours begrudgingly,

Alex Lacey"

I did consider adding "Fuck you, you slimy, spineless, arse weasels! Hope you enjoy bullying poor people in the future, you feckless algae eating, scum suckers, you myopic, arse-licking, poor emulations of human beings". However I felt it might be a little unsubtle.

Quick question.

Hello peeps. As you may have noticed I've massively changed the aesthetic of my blog recently and I was wondering what you all think. I was also considering changing the background, but obviously if you like it as it is I shall leave it as it is. I'd really appreciate your feedback on this one... cheers.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene Review (iphone/ipod touch)

Background

Chances are that unless you’ve been living on a different planet for the last thirty years, you probably have a pretty comprehensive idea of what Space Invaders is. For those of you who are new to Earth or are just intrigued to know what I learnt from reading Wikipedia, here’s a brief history.

Space Invaders was first unleashed onto the unsuspecting Japanese arcades back in 1978, quickly becoming the most popular game on the market. The game was so popular in fact, that it was actually reported to be responsible for a temporary shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan at that time. With this kind of success, it wasn’t long before Space Invaders saw fit to invade western arcades to a similarly warm reception.

The original king of the arcades

The game consisted of a block of equally spaced aliens, slowly inching towards the player by moving horizontally across the screen, jumping down one space when it reaches the edge and moving back in the other direction. Players were required to eliminate the invaders before they reached their base at the bottom. As the player progressed through the levels the rate at which the invaders moved, steadily increased until it became nearly impossible to progress any further. Arguably the main hook of the title was the fight for high score dominance that it inspired in highly competitive gamers.

Following its arcade success, Space Invaders has appeared on a number of different consoles in varying forms. One of the more recent reboots was a title named Space invaders Extreme, a game which aimed to maintain the same feel, whilst heavily modernizing the game play. I personally haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but Tobin and Yuzo gave it a shining review on Noobtoob episode 142 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNREACFBSo. This leads us nicely to the subject of this review ‘Space Invaders Infinity Gene’

Review

The game starts off very similar to the original

Concept

Space Invaders Infinity Gene (SIIG) has a very similar ideology to Space Invaders Extreme when it comes to re-imagining the franchise. However this time round Taito have taken the actual game play in a significantly different direction. As some of you may have inferred from the title, SIIG puts a heavy emphasis on evolution. This involves evolving game play mechanics, an evolving ship and I’m sure Taito would argue an evolved franchise.

Game Play

SIIG begins with you playing the original arcade version of Space Invaders for roughly fifteen seconds, but then things start to change considerably. As you watch your ships Pokémon style evolution you are treated to a quote from Charles Darwin, which states that “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”. It’s not long before you realize just how appropriate this quote is. When you are reintroduced into the game, you’ll find that your ships cannons have been improved and that the enemy attack patterns have changed. The more you play, the more level design, enemies and your ship all change. You control the ship with a touch and drag interface, with the ship automatically firing unless you elect to control it yourself. Within a few levels you’ll find yourself gaining full movement along both axis and having to get used to a vertically scrolling environment. In essence Space Invaders evolves into a shmup.

This a whole different kettle of metaphor than what you’re used to

I’m almost certain that this revelation has resulted in a number of groans out there, but fear not, SIIG is rather good at what it does. One major advantage that this title has on other titles is that it never forces to learn via rote. It’s very rare for you to be restricted to a space of a few pixels and when you are, it’s normally because you haven’t dealt with enough of the enemies. Success in SIIG results from you being dynamic in your approach, not from having a good memory. That said the action does get rather insane at times, forcing you to react really quickly. This brings me to one of the games minor annoyances. Often when you’re hovering in the middle of the screen, enemies will fly in from the side so fast that even Chuck Norris would have his ass handed to him. What this essentially means is that you are for all intents and purposes, limited to the bottom of the screen the majority of the time.

Things can get a bit hectic at times

There are seven different ships made available to you throughout the game, all of which have their own unique attack style. These include: rapid shot, search laser, wave, lock-on, gravity, round and classic. Each of these unique weapons can be improved upon by collecting chromosomes scattered around the play area, increasing shot speed, radius and number of shots.

The campaign spans across 18 levels, the majority of which have some form of ending boss attached. One interesting aspect of the campaign menu is that the menu takes the form of a tree, whereby as you unlock upgrades and extras they sprout out of the level on which they were attained. It’s a very clever way of presenting the menu and leads to the pleasant consequence, that the majority of players are going to have different menus, dependent on how they’ve played. You’re not restricted to just the campaign mode though, in fact in some senses you’re not really restricted at all. Courtesy of the 3.0 firmware, it is now possible to play along to the tracks on your device, which essentially means there are an infinite number of different scenarios that you can play through. This is quite exciting as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t think it’s reached its full potential yet. The arenas produced by your music are all varied and very cool, but what I really want from this game is to be able to compete with other player scores like in Audiosurf.

Presenation

Everything in this title reeks of quality. The retro style vector graphics look absolutely stunning throughout and the animation is consistently sleek and simple. The soundtrack is similarly pleasing… that is as long as you’re not adverse to a smattering of techno. The majority of sound effects are ripped right from the original and nicely supplement the retro theme. All in all, the presentation is just lovely.

Conclusion

So… is it worth your money, that’s the important question. Well, for a miniscule cost of £2.99 I’d say so. Space Invaders Infinity Gene is a highly charming return to a franchise that’s older than life itself (note: not factually accurate), so go and give it a chance to suck you into the world of high scores and vector graphics once again… it’s well worth your time (not unlike a more exciting version of your grandparents).

Scores

Graphics- 4.5/5
Control-4/5
Gameplay-4/5
Sound-5/5
Value for money-4.7/5
Overall-4.5/5

Two thumbs up, go and get it if you’re looking for a nice brief distraction from the gaming drought.

Calling all gaming enthusiasts!

I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but there's currently a computer games exhibition on in Manchester. The event is currently taking place in the Urbis building near next to Victoria station if any of you want to check it out. I went along yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find what was essentially an arcade filled with games both old and new.

There was a good selection of different consoles available to play, but unsurprisingly Microsoft and Sony had payed for a lot of the space. I did notice a couple of absenties including the vectrex, the sega saturn, the Atari 2000, 2600 and 3200. To make up for that though there was a Jaguar on show, although true to form it wasn't actually working. One of the highlights of the exhibition for me was seeing some of the original artwork for the broken sword series on display, reminded me how long it had been since I'd played through the first two.

The show was thoroughly enjoyable with a decent set of games there for you to play, a set of interesting if somewhat shallow descriptions of gaming culture and a couple of sections where visitors could leave their own input. If you live in or around the Manchester area I strongly suggest that you check it out because it is for the most part, pretty kick ass. What I would say is that it's probably not worth travelling along distance to see it unless you were already headed to Manchester anyway. It costs £3 to get in and it's on the second floor of the Urbis building through till September... be sure to check it out if you can!

That is all.

The SCUMMy man

Just a quick post today. I downloaded the demo for Monkey Island: SE off of live earlier and wanted to share my thoughts. I'd like to preface this by saying that I love the Monkey Island series, or indeed anything with Tim Schafer's name attached to it. However I must say that this demo is a bit disappointing, not least because it doesn't really contain any game play at all. If I were a newcomer to the franchise, I would be left with very little to deduct whether or not Monkey Island is actually a good game.

The trial version contains two scenes, one of which isn't even interactive. It begins with a scripted conversation between Threepwood and an old man atop a hill, which concerns Threepwood's desire to become a pirate. After this scene finishes you make your way to the Scum bar where you can take part in four different converstaions... then you leave the bar and the demo ends. How was this ever ordained to be a passable sample of the experience? Just one puzzle would have justified the trials existence, but no... nothing. To be honest the demo probably was tacked on as a sort of afterthought, but even so, they really should have done a better job. That being said, the humour in the game is still as funny as ever and the art has been remastered quite nicely. I couldn't help but feel that the animations were a little lackluster, but this is just a minor quibble.

The Secret of Monkey Island is definitely a classic title, so if you haven't tried it previously you should probably give it a shot (especially over the gaming drought known as Summer). If you have played it before and are looking for some nostalgia, again it's probably worth your buck but I'll let you justify the purchase to yourself. Anyway that's it for today. Toodle oo.

Argghhh!

Sorry, it's been a while again. Unfortunately I've been very busy job hunting recently so haven't found time to blog about any new releases. However, what I shall be doing in the near future is blogging about some old releases instead. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be reviewing yet, but I'll think of something.

In the mean time I thought I'd make a quick mention of the 1 vs 100 beta that's currently available for play on xbox live. while I haven't played any of the live shows yet, what I can say is that the extended version is a great deal of fun. If you weren't already aware, 1 vs 100 pits you and your wits against thousands of other contestants (slightly misnamed... 1 vs lots isn't quite as catchy though) through a course of 37 trivia questions. As you progress through each stage the difficulty of the questions ramps up dramatically often leaving you feeling like a trivia weasel, a quiz amoeba or the fabled knowledge slug. Unfortunately the game experience is tarnished somewhat by the considerably large amount of jerks who are clearly using google to find answers to questions (I've never seen more than 40% of players getting an answer wrong... I immediately smelt a rat when I remembered that more than 40% of people are idiots). Maybe I'm taking it too seriously, but I can't help but feel that it really is against the spirit of the game to be indulging in such devious practices. Cheaters aside, this is still a fantastic title that works seamlessly and is presented fantastically throughout. I'm not sure whether it's going to be free or not when it exits beta, but while it still is you really can't complain.

I shall hopefully return with more dubious insights shortly. In the intervening time I would like to announce that I hope you are all enjoying your Summers, and are indulging ventures more fruitful than playing video games and masturbating (I can dream can't I).

Red Faction: Guerrilla review (multi)

There’s nothing like a dash of soviet imagery to set the tone for a game

*Since trying the multiplayer I've decided to put up the overall score slightly.

Background

Back in 2001 the original ‘Red Faction’ was released on the PS2, PC and Mac by Volition Inc. The game pioneered a new and ambitious engine known as the Geo-mod engine which allowed players to actively sculpt the environment by tunnelling through it. The geo-mod engine revolutionised how players thought about the game environment allowing multiple dynamic entrance points to any given scenario. The game took place on Mars in the year 2075 within the mines of galactic megacorp Ultor. Red Faction saw the protagonist Parker thrown into a full scale uprising against the Ultor Corporation when a guard kills a miner in front of him and a full scale riot breaks out. The intro to this game was incredibly well done and did a fantastic job of immediately drawing you into Parker’s universe. Furthermore, the game actually managed to maintain this high quality of storytelling through strong narrative and impressive scripted events. It wasn’t just the single player experience that shone though; the multiplayer was pretty fantastic as well. Although I never personally owned the game (never had a PS2) I have many fond memories of visiting friends houses so I could get another shot from this fantastic game.

It’s like Half-life all over again only this time you don’t have to feel bad about slaughtering Barney

On the back of the success of ‘Red Faction’ it wasn’t long before we saw a sequel. Red Faction 2 was released in October 2002 on both PS2 and PC. Unfortunately the sequel held very little in common with the original in regards to plot or overall quality. Instead of the more free-roaming style of the original, Red Faction 2 favoured a more linear on the rails approach, which needless to say disenfranchised many of the originals fans. The main storyline took place on Earth and followed a group of nanotech infused soldiers in their exploits. The only, rather tenuous link to the original was that the soldiers in the game had the nanotechnology that had been introduced in Red Faction. A more cynical man might suggest that this game wasn’t developed as a sequel, but was labelled as such to increase sales. I can’t personally comment on this one as I never had the displeasure of playing it, but I take it on good word that this was indeed a metric tonne of ass juice.

Don’t look at me… it’s too shameful

Intro
Considering the sort of pathetic whimper of a game that was RF 2, there were many people who were pretty sceptical about Red Faction: Guerrilla (myself included). If anyone out there is still maintaining that level of scepticism it’s my great pleasure to inform you that you need do so no longer. Volition have in fact gone completely the other way with this one. Where RF 2 was an unrelated, plain on the rails FPS; Red-Faction: Guerrilla is a massive, exciting, sandbox style direct sequel to the original. While this is a direct sequel, don’t expect to get what you’ve become accustomed to with previous Red-Faction titles. This is a completely different type of game to its predecessors… it’s also a lot better.

Boom bitches

The Engine
One would argue that perhaps the most important improvement to RF:G is the fantastic Geo-mod 2.0 engine (in combination with the standard Havok physics). The focus this time has been shifted from destructible landscapes to dynamically destructible structures. Now if you’ve played as many games as I have, you’ve doubtless seen lots of destructible structures in other titles. The thing is, you haven’t really, not on this scale. RF: G takes everything you know and expect from destructible scenery, defecates on it, puts it in a rocket, fires said rocket into the Sun… then the Sun explodes and everything you’ve ever known and loved is consumed by the glorious flame. Every material in this game has been modelled to break apart realistically on impact, every building has been designed brilliantly with key structural supports and weaknesses. When you destroy a building in this game, you tear it down piece by piece. Often you’ll find buildings shudder and creak for a few moments before finally becoming unstable and collapsing (Note: this is the closest any game has brought me to climax ). This is most definitely the Angelina Jolie of physics engines.

This game gives me happy times in my pants

Story

Fifty years have passed since the original Ultor riots and Mars has changed a great deal in that time. The whole surface has been terraformed in order to sustain life and to allow full scale planetary mining. Unfortunately, in the fifty years since the fall of Ultor a new equally sinister organisation known as the EDF has seized control of the planet and its workforce, once again forcing the people of Mars to work in unreasonable conditions for unreasonable hours (oh the martianity!). Needless to say, the people of Mars are once again rising up and fighting for their rights (to party). This is where you come in; you take the role of a miner named Alec Mason who is pulled into the conflict almost immediately on his arrival on the planet. As the game starts you meet your brother who straight away tries to recruit you into the Red Faction. At this point you have no intention of fighting the man or fighting for the people, you are just there to mine. However this dream is shattered when the EDF kill your brother in front of you and then attempt to kill you because of your relationship. As a result of all of this, you are unwillingly forced into the Red Faction and into bringing down the EDF. Mars’ surface is divided into six sectors (Parker, Dust, Badlands, Oasis, Free Fire Zone and Eos), each of which need liberating individually; I’ll go into this deeper later on in the review. Aside from the EDF and the colonists there is also a third presence on Mars’ surface known only as the Marauders; you don’t know much about them to begin with but they become a large part of the plot later on. Now, nobody is going to win any awards for the script of this game, but for what it is, it’s pretty good. It’s important not to expect the story to act as anything more than a pretext for this game, after all this is a game about blowing shit up.

Think of the hammer as the physical embodiment of your in game schlong (or boobs, I’m all for equal opportunities)

Game play

In a game where the sole emphasis is on destruction the most important concern should be, is the destruction satisfying. I can gladly say that this game achieves something far beyond satisfying. Every glorious moment of in game action feels close to masturbatory in its sheer odious pleasure (It almost feels sinful). This is largely due to the incredible physics engine that underpins the whole experience, but thankfully there is also a really good game to accompany it. As mentioned above, each of the surfaces six sectors needs liberating from the EDF presence. Achieving this goal is a multi-facetted feat requiring completion of story missions, destruction of key structures and a number of side quests for the Red Faction. My personal favourite task is taking down the EDF structures. In each case it is completely up to you how you go about bringing the enemy down, whether that means placing charges around the structure, driving through it, firing rockets at it or disintegrating it with nano-bots (we’ll talk about that later).

Each sector has two gauges assigned to it, one that shows the level of EDF control in the sector and another that indicates Red Faction moral within the sector. Bringing down the EDF within any given sector requires you to bring their level of control to zero before banishing them within the context of a story mission. The moral gauge has a number of affects on the game environment; these include the amount of salvage you acquire from completing missions, the amount of ammo you receive from ammo crates and how ready guerrilla fighters are to jump to your aid during combat. While these things aren’t necessary for your progression through the story, they do make things a little easier. There are a number of ways of bolstering moral, but generally speaking it involves destroying enemy propaganda and completing Guerrilla missions. It is possible to lose moral by dying or by accidentally killing colonists, but for the most part you won’t need to worry about it. The Guerrilla missions come in a number of different guises, each of which is pretty fun to play. Listed below are all of the types of Guerrilla action:

Defense: In these missions you help groups of Red faction fighters defend valuable locations from EDF assaults. These missions for the most part appear randomly on the map when you are driving around and are only available for a short period of time.

Controlled demolition: These missions require you to destroy buildings as quickly as possible with whatever weapons are prescribed to you. This is all about using your noggin along with a good deal of brute force to get the job done.

Convoy: Often you’ll get hailed on the airwaves as nearby EDF vehicles try to get between locations with valuable information. Not a big fan of these ones but there’s no punishment for not doing them, so I don’t begrudge their existence

Collection: These missions require you to find valuable vehicles scattered around the map and bring them back to the nearest safe house as quickly as possible. Often become more difficult than you’d expect as legions of EDF attempt to stop you from reaching your location.

Collateral damage: In these missions you find yourself at the helm of a rocket launcher mounted on the back of an old junker being driven by a crazed old Martian. The aim here is to cause as much destruction to EDF property as possible along a pre set path. Needless to say, these missions are epically good fun.

Heavy Weapon: These missions require you to distract large numbers of enemy soldiers with a ridiculously powerful weapon as your team mates infiltrate nearby buildings.

It’s like GTA and Jerry Brookheimer had sexy times and gave birth to a beautiful baby game

Any good demolitions expert knows that the key to success is a good arsenal of tools to achieve their goals. Apparently Volition Inc are well aware of this also with one of the most awesome set of weapons in any game ever being on offer in RF:G. To begin with you find yourself equipped with a set of remote charges, an assault rifle and a kick arse hammer. Each of the games weapons can be upgraded on exchange of salvage and more, increasingly destructive weapons become available later on as you complete guerrilla actions and reach certain plot points. To begin with I found myself mostly switching between the assault rifle and the remote charges, trying to balance the killing with the destruction. As I progressed though I actually began to find that the hammer was particularly satisfying to wield as it could competently tackle both structures and guards and look really good doing it. I think the point where I really completely bought into this game though was when the nano forge was introduced. The nano forge is a rifle that fires a swarm of nano robots at any given target and tears it apart into its constituent parts. I still find myself giggling with churlish glee every time I think about taking out one of the games bridges by standing beneath it, disintegrating the supports and wank… watching the ensuing chaos. Other high points include the arc welder (A gun that generates a stream of electricity that can branch out and kill multiple enemies at once) and the thermo-baric rocket launcher (a gun so powerful that it can blast apart entire buildings in one blast). You can only ever carry four weapons at the time (one of which will always be the sledgehammer) meaning that you have to carefully consider which weapons you are most likely going to need for any given mission. Each of the games weapons is great fun to use (in my experience) and make for one helluva gun fight.

Cool guys don’t look at explosions

RF: G also succeeds in providing a fantastic array of interesting and unique vehicles to drive around the landscape. There is a great deal of different types of vehicle classes available for you drive across Mars’ surface, ranging from 4x4’s to sports cars, from taxi’s to heavy mining vehicles. Perhaps the most fun to use vehicles in this game are the giant mechanical walkers. Nothing can stand in the way of these bad boys (not even Chuck Norris); buildings are torn asunder as if they were made of crate paper as you stride forward wailing your massive mechanical arms. As one of my friends correctly put it “it’s like one of those shit mech games only really, really f***ing good”. The Mars landscape feels like it has been designed to fun to drive around with bumps, jumps and falls scattered liberally across the landscape. All of the games vehicles handle relatively realistically and all of them are great fun to drive. In the latter portions of the game you'll find that a jet pack is introduced into the mix. This massively changes how you approach your missions, allowing you to be a bit more haphazard than before. It’s really hard to complain about the driving experience in this game and because of that I’m not going to.

*Edit: A lot of people have been complaining about the sluggish control of the vehicles in this game. Now while I did notice this, I can't say it was a problem for me. It is definitely an issue though and potential buyers do need to be aware of it if they're looking to make a purchase/rental, especially if they think it's the sort of thing that is likely to bother them.

Let the mayhem begin

The controls throughout are pretty good for the most part. The weapon selection system took a little getting used to begin with but over time I actually grew to really like it. To select weapons you have to hold RB (on the 360) and press A, X, Y or B to choose the one you want. It is then possible to quickly switch back to your previous weapon by a quick tap of RB. One thing that really doesn’t work in this game is the cover system, it’s far too fiddly to use and ends up feeling a bit redundant anyway in a world where your cover rarely stays upright for very long. I can’t help but feel that if they’d assigned the cover to the left trigger and gone for the Rainbow Six Vegas style use of cover it might actually have been really good. This aside I never felt myself getting frustrated by unresponsive controls or bad button placement. Everything pretty much flows the way it should.

Graphics

I’m kind of torn on the graphics in this game. The thing is, the resolution is really impressive, the characters well designed and all of the vehicles and structure are really well modelled. However the landscapes are pretty dull for the most part, there’s really not a lot to look at in terms of scenery or colour. I don’t know what else you could expect on a terraformed Mars though so I’m not sure that this complaint actually holds any water; either way it’s not a major quibble. One thing this game does suffer quite badly with though is pop up. Most of the time you don’t really notice the pop up because of the bumpy nature of the landscape hiding it, but when you do notice it, it is pretty ugly. I can’t help but think that if they’re going to render such plain landscapes, they should really make a more concerted effort to get rid of pop up. To make up for this they have made the explosions really jaw-droppingly beautiful though. The beauty of the destruction brought a single tear to my eye on more than one occasion.

Sooo beautiful!!!

Sound

The sound is this game is also worthy of note. Each of the games sound effects has been created with a great deal of love, especially the falling buildings. Each building has a different set of sounds based on what materials it has been constructed out of. The last few moments of a buildings existence are always a treat for the ears with each shudder beautifully reverberating through every part of its remaining support and echoing around the decrepit walls. What I would say though is that this game is not going to win any awards for voice acting. It’s not badly acted or anything; it’s just all a bit generic. I’m almost certain that it won’t bother all but the most picky among you.

Multiplayer


Red Faction: Guerrilla offers some of the best multiplayer I have ever played. Volition have gone to a great deal of effort here to produce a valuable and interesting multiplayer experience which to be honest, could have stood up as a stand alone title. there are a number of different game modes on offer here with the standard set of death match variants and a capture the flag mode. Also included in the mix are modes where the emphasis is shifted to destruction (as you would expect really). One particularly interesting mode has each team assigned with base buildings to protect from the enemy. Upon building destruction these buildings can be rebuilt with the use of a special gun, (not unlike how the link gun is used in unreal tournament 2004) allowing for fiercely tactical matches where you have to be clever about choosing when to attack or defend. As I mentioned above, in the single player mode you get to unlock a jet pack later on in the game. Now in the multiplayer they've massively extended the list of backpacks that you can use. There are cloaking packs, healing packs, damage increase packs, speed packs, impulse packs (similar to the jet pack, but they send you up to a great height in one press), rhino packs (that allow you to ram through buildings), vision packs (that highlight all of the foes on the map) and concussion packs (which send out a small area wave that blast nearby foes off of their feet). I think that's all of them but there's so many of the bloody things it would be easy to miss one out. The backpacks really make this game stand apart from other online experiences as they do massively change the state of play in regards to tactics without making the game unbalanced or cheap. the game also includes an offline wrecking crew mode where you take it in turns to reap as much destruction as possible on the landscape within a minute. The wrecking crew mode also contains a number of interesting variants, which are a good deal of fun to work through with your friends (presuming you have any). I have a sneaking suspicion that RF: G may well end up being the next online multiplayer phenomenon; it certainly deserves to be.

Summary

In my personal opinion this game offers pretty much everything you could ever reasonably ask for from a sandbox shooter. The environment is vast, the missions are fun, the interface is easy to use and there’s a lot of depth of experience (but it’s never force fed to like another game that I shan’t name). This game isn’t preachy and it’s not going to change the way you see the world (or Mars for that matter); what it will do is give you hours and hours of unmitigated fun in both a vast single player campaign and it's thrilling multiplayer component. I just hope that we see a lot more from the geo-mod 2.0 engine as it really is superb. It’s been a long while since I’ve wanted to sit people down while I’ve been playing a game and say “look at this… man did you just see that!?”. I really can’t wait to see what Volition pull out of their hats next. Anyway you’ll have to excuse, I’m off to play some more Red Faction.

Scores

Story: 4/5 (it’s not exactly inspired or anything, but it does the job)
Game play: 4.9/5 (Every moment is truly glorious, it’s just a shame that the cover system wasn’t better)
Sound: 4.8/5 (The dialogue isn’t exactly amazing but the sounds of shuddering buildings as they slowly crumble more than make up for that)
Multiplayer: 5/5 (I think I might actually prefer the multiplayer on this to Halo 3)
Overall: 4.7/5 (There’s an awful lot of bang for your buck with this title… there’s also a good deal of boom, kerplow, pchhooorrr and smash)

Thumbs up purchase… seriously, go and buy this game right away. Go and give them money so they can make more!

Are video games losing the plot?

There's a trend that has appeared recently in the mainstream video game market that is causing me and doubtless many others a great deal of distress. I'm talking about a trend more insidious than happy slapping, more shocking than school shootings and more pungent than a gaming convention. I am, of course talking about the trend that is cliffhanger endings.

Now, I'm not fundamentally against cliffhanger endings in all forms of media. As an example, the JJ. Abrahams TV epic 'lost' contains a cliffhanger nearly every week. The point is though, that it is weekly. If your favourite game ends with a cliffhanger, you're most likely looking at 2-3 years at least before the narrative is completed, by which time you've probably forgotten what exactly was happening or you just won't care anymore.

Ok, so computer games for the most part aren't particularly well known for strong narratives to begin with. Stories within games for the most part seem to act as pretexts for the action within the game, not unlike a bad Hollywood movie. A lot of the time this is sort of acceptable because the quality and depth of the experience on offer distracts you from the storyline. I do think this is pretty sad though, a good narrative can really give a game an extra kick making it shine just a little bit more than it's competitors. Would you kindly take your minds back to 2007, back to the release of Bioshock. I'm sure those of you who enjoyed the game did so largely because of a well structured narrative and a well defined mythos. Furthermore they didn't kick you in the teeth by leaving the story unresolved when you reached its conclusion, although the ending was a bit lackluster.

Now in contrast think back to Halo 2, again this game had a fairly strong story throughout with a consistent mythology and a strong narrative train. However, I think what most of us take away from that game is the horrendous ending. Certainly, when I think back on it I don't think about how much I enjoyed the story, but instead on how I was removed from the experience just as it looked to be getting a lot more exciting. Halo 2 isn't the worst offender though. the one that really springs to mind in recent gaming history is Prince of Persia. I'm going to put the ending in spoiler markers so as not to ruin it for you.

Spoiler: The narrative ends with you literally undoing everything you've done within the game and releasing the main bad guy from his prison, with the words "to be continued" written on the screen. I find it hard to put into words how angry this made me, probably about as angry as I was when I found out that My Name is Earl had been cancelled

I think the most offensive part of the broken story in this game is that after its release, they announced that they would be releasing DLC to fix the story at a later date, meaning that if you'd rented (as I had) you'd have to pay to get the game again and then pay for material that you'd most probably only want to play once. The idea of paying to get a good story is just ridiculous anyway though. Can you imagine if your favourite book had an original version, but then the author decided that it wasn't up to scratch and then released a redux version where they fixed the story but charged a greater price for it? I suspect that for most of you, it would cease to be your favourite story because you would feel tricked and betrayed.

So I guess what I'm essentially driving at, is that good games deserve good stories. Most gamers are pretty discerning when it comes to deciding what kind of experience that they want from a game and for a lot of them that includes a good storyline. Apart from anything, if you get a good story out of it, it feels a lot less like you've been wasting your time. I hope that this problem starts to dissolve in the near future, because as far as I'm concerned the gaming market is slowly growing up and should probably stop reading 'Harry Potter' and should move on to some John Steinbeck instead.