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Review: The Saboteur (PS3)

Words by

Jamie Butcher

Posted on February 3, 2010

EA’s latest release; The Saboteur revolves around the main character Irishman Sean Devlin who goes from mechanic to racing driver to freedom fighter in Paris. You control Sean in a third person environment which is a mixture between The Godfather and Grand Theft Auto (which isn’t a bad thing!).

Essentially, EA have taken the shell of their previous Godfather releases and updated them with a few nifty features, a little more bad language and the possibility of nudity (again – not a bad thing!).

The game starts in a brothel where we see Nazi soldiers ogling a semi naked dancer before our character Sean is approached by a French resistance fighter, cue the expected tutorials introducing you to the controls before beginning the story. One of the nicer touches was actually competing in a race on a proper circuit in a proper racing car!

The characters are all quite easy to get used to which I personally found a bit of a problem in the Godfather series where most mafia characters all looked similar. I’m pleased to say that this is definitely not a problem in the Saboteur; each character is quite individual in their attitude and looks.

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Review: Hyperballoid HD (PS3)

Words by

Billy Withers

Posted on February 1, 2010

There is a certain amount of tweaking you can do to an old formula before it begins to lose some of the identity that made it so great in the first place. In some cases this can be of great improvement, much like Fallout 3 altering the RPG feel of Oblivion by adding an FPS element and creating something that people would rate higher than what had came before (well, I did anyway).

More often than not though, it can lead us down a path we would rather not see. Some classics of the older generation have had their insides fiddled about with, given a new lick of paint and some jazzed up ideas that we’re all meant to receive as it’s second coming. Hyperballoid HD has a difficult line to tread and is taking on a lot expanding and aiming to revamp a classic and make it in its own style.

I was (and still am) a fan of Taito’s Arkanoid. It was a simple case of bat and ball working in perfect harmony, with everything working at a speed which you felt was fast enough without being as slow as a week in jail. It was pure, flawless gaming. Now the only problem I have with this new PSN addition is that the difficulty isn’t really there, as after the initial play a sense of boredom began to settle within the first 20 minutes. The ball itself was just too slow to actually cause ANY problems whatsoever, so I decided to try an experiment, mainly to make sure I wasn’t becoming the pixel equivalent of Tommy, the “Pinball Wizard” that The Who kept singing about, although my retro skills are that of legend, of course (get off your high horse – Ed.).

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Review: Hustle Kings (PS3)

Words by

Billy Withers

Posted on January 18, 2010

The one thing you can guarantee about snooker players is that they’re pretty damned good at pool as well. I mean, look at Steve Davis for example. Sure, he may be getting on a bit compared to some of the “kids in waistcoats” but he has been known to take part in some of the major tournaments of the 8-ball and 9-ball variety. It’s just a good job for the rest of us that we can get some practice in with the help of Sony’s latest downloadable cue game, Hustle Kings.

I may as well get this part out of the way quickly; this looks stunning for a PSN title. Everything is really crisp and stylish in hi-res and really sets your eyes off on a trip of delirium as they see the bright and varied locales, with some of these fancy bars even having water features, most probably stolen from Alan Titchmarch’s back garden, but just don’t tell anyone. Even the balls and tables have a reassuring gloss and sharpness that is pleasing to see, and this gets even more luxurious when you begin to unlock other stuff, like neon lit pool balls. Ok, perhaps Premiership footballers and Peter Stringfellow may have them for real, but it’s a cool thing for us normal people. It is a really impressive title, visually. It may not have the crowd or players of something like the WSC series, but when all you’re there to do is pot hard, small spherical objects into 6 equally shaped pockets, you’re not really all that bothered. I know I’m not.

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Review: Demon’s Souls (PS3)

Words by

Tom Battey

Posted on January 5, 2010

First off, let it be said that I don’t especially like difficult games. I like regenerating health, I like frequent checkpoints, and I like gentle difficulty curves. Demon’s Souls doesn’t have any of these things. If Demon’s Souls knew you were so much as thinking about any of these things, it would come round your house and kick your teeth in. Demon’s Souls is hard. Punishingly hard. And despite this, even partly because of it, it is one of the best games I have played in the last few years.

The key is that while Demon’s Souls is hard, it’s not unfair. I can count on one hand the number of times I felt I genuinely died unfairly, and I died hundreds of times. Whenever you die, you die because it’s your fault. Maybe you were careless, maybe you were unprepared, maybe you chose the wrong weapon, but it is always you who is at fault.

The primary reason this works so well is Demon’s Souls’ superlative combat. Most RPGs have battle menus or flashy combat systems to separate the player somewhat from the action. Demon’s Souls does not. You equip weapons, shields, wands or talismans in either hand, and use the shoulder buttons to either attack or defend with each hand. This simple system opens up into a complex dance of dodges, parries and ripostes, desperate last-second slashes and fatal impalements. It connects you with your character in a way few RPGs have done before.

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Review: NBA Live 10 (PS3)

Words by

Billy Withers

Posted on December 21, 2009

The EA Sports franchise machine has become something of a monster these days. The layout on each game is the same, the special features that are kept inside them are also very similar, and it’s a bit on the hard side to review them all without feeling a real sense of déjà vu.

That’s not to say this is a bad thing, especially this year, as almost every single update that has been rolled out over the past 6 months, from Madden and Tiger to FIFA and the already rated NHL, have been above their class in a way even I never thought possible. NBA Live last year wasn’t really the best it could have been, with some rather choppy frame rate on occasion and a real lack of any encapsulation into the game.

This year we see a whole new ball game (no pun intended), with a nicely slick and more up to scratch effort, which does away with the drab feel of 12 months ago. The NBA franchise is huge, so the software advertising the sport and its wares has to be also. There is such a feeling of glossy American presentation with this, as even on the practice court that welcomes you to actively press the start button to begin you get little snippets of the ESPN Sports Center network, giving you highlights and news about what’s going on in the B-Ball world.

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