Like any good dessert, a second helping is always welcome. The original HAWX proved to be a bit of a hit and has its own, albeit relatively small, fan base. It’s a game that took the traditional air combat style of titles such as the Air Combat series and added its own personality and pizazz. Can the sequel build on what is already a strong formula and go Top Gun, or has it been “Goosed” and gone tits up?
Final Fantasy IX has bizarrely been a little forgotten by many. It makes no sense considering its ridiculously high review scores at launch and its great commercial success. However, in the mindset of many Final Fantasy fans it’s ignored in favour of 6, 7, 8 and 10. Coming so near to the end of the Playstation One’s lifespan couldn’t have helped either. I was as bad. While I had many fond memories of 7 and 8, I skipped over Final Fantasy 9 to a certain extent – finding myself at 10 on the PS2 instead. Terrible really when you realise that Final Fantasy 9 is absolutely brilliant.
The 4th chapter of the Devil’s Playhouse brings us to the conclusion that the guys at Telltale Games are absolutely barking mad (and I’m not talking about dog noises because one of the main characters is a dog). Not only are we dealing with a toy box that has demonic toys with special powers in it, cleverly utilised and controlled by a psycho rabbit whilst befriending 6 feet cockroaches with jobs, but just when you think it can’t get any stranger it just goes and creates a whole load of Sam clones and fills the city with more dogs than Crufts.
Your task in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is to find out who is creating all of those doppelgangers and bring them to justice, by fair means or foul. Thankfully there are no deviants on how to do things this time, like the dodgy interrogation style in the last one. Instead this relies on what good stuff has already been implemented in the previous trilogy of titles and tries to further that by looking towards its tour de force, the scriptwriting.
