The PS3 exclusive and Move selling title Sorcery from The Workshop (this is their first game) and Santa Monica Studios (of God of War fame), finally came out last month after being shown off ages ago at E3 2010. I personally was really looking forward to it. I already had a Playstation camera, and a set of Move controllers. I’d had both of these for a while and only gotten limited use out of them. I’ve played Dead Space: Extraction (oh god, that game), Just Dance 3, as well as trying a play through of Heavy Rain with the Move (though I had bought and played it separate to its Move-ness) – out of those two in a lot of ways I found Heavy Rain to be the better of the two. But anyway…
Silent Hill: Spot the difference!
So, many people the internet over have commented on the ‘ice cold’ as it were opening to the new Silent Hill Downpour. Essentially, with a complete lack of build up the game tells you to kill some person you know nothing about and Murphy…does…not…care. Added to this are many instances through out the game of him commenting on stupid stuff like ‘Lame hint telling you to do something you probably already figured out’ instead of ‘Oh god, there’s a big dead mutilated dog on the bed in this hotel room *throw up*’
So, to honour this with Peter of Peter Reviews writing and my art – We’ve done a Silent Hill Spot the difference!
Calling (Wii) Review
So, Calling is a 2009 title from developer and publisher, Hudson Soft (notable for…well, Bomberman of all things) and is what I could call a horror game – at the end of this piece I’m going to talk a bit about the ‘survival horror’ genre as well, namely how it’s useless as the main horror genre in terms of video games. Calling is a first person, torch holding exploration adventure-y style horror game. It focus’ on game mechanics and story, and is relatively combat light. Despite this being a criticism for many reviewers, in my opinion this is a good thing – not all games need to begin and end at the combat, it’s like people have forgotten there are other types of game play. Anyway…
Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventure – (ridiculously) belated look
I enjoy adventure games quite a lot. They can be interesting, funny and clever. The good ones anyway. Bad ones…obviously, involve rubbing every object against every other object in a belaboured attempt to figure out what the hell you need to do. Mostly this feels like a writer/developer assuming everyone (or mostly everyone) will make the very same leap of logic as them. But anyway, the point…
Assassin’s Creed: (& the complete lack of) Revelations
So (I should really get out of the habit of starting articles with so), I recently rented and finished Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. In a lot of ways it was a bit of a try before buying decision – we’ve played all the Assassin’s Creeds so far. But luckily (or unluckily?) the game turned out to be not worth playing…really, really not worth playing.
Just a small warning: there are going to be some series spoilers. But chances are you either already know because you’ve played the game or couldn’t care less.
Just Dance – Review and Comparison
So, thanks to having a LoveFilm subscription I can enjoy renting games that I don’t really want to buy – either in case they turn out to be a waste of money, or because it’s a game I mostly want to try rather than keep. The ‘Just Dance’ games fall into the latter category. So, here’s a short look at them.
Final Game of the Year post: Mass Effect 2 & Red Dead Redemption
All these posts about the current Game of the Year (L.A. Noire, if you didn’t see) has made me think about last year’s Game of the Year as well. I didn’t write a GotY post last year – my website was still relatively new and I didn’t really post that much on it. But I can talk about it now.
And just a little warning! This whole post will probably seem very angry, unjustified, and ranty. It’s my opinion, and whilst I would only hold it if I thought I was right – that doesn’t mean you need to take me seriously or get offended or anything. You’re allowed to not agree with me and have terrible taste in video games.
Post-Game of the Year…Post.
So, one of the two things I left off from my Tentacle-y Game of the Year post was a lot of detail about why the other contenders didn’t get a mention! I’m going to talk about why each game didn’t make it to the final post, which is basically how each game was disappointing. Just to say – this whole post will probably end up sounding quite down, what with a lot of games having disappointing aspects, but I do want to say…I do like games, I liked a lot of these games, sure, but as I’ve talked about before – I try my best to judge everything I play on its own merits without history, fans, advertising spiel etc. All I try to answer is ‘was it a good game?’
Collaborative Writing!
I’ve done two pieces of collaborative writing with Peter from Peter Reviews!
Faux box art!
So! There’s a new Silent Hill coming out…Silent Hill: Book of Memories. Peter Reviews will be writing something about it soon (I think). But essentially the game is a multiplayer top down shooter…zombie survival horror game esque…game, skinned with Silent Hill. It looks awful and sounds awful. Peter’s suggestion after this was other strange genres of video games with the Silent Hill name tacked on, like Silent Hill Slumber Party. Queue bad faux box art!