Halo 3: What If It Wasn’t Halo?

I finished Halo 3 today. It’s taken me… a year. Yea. Round about a year. I hate Halo, I think it’s boring. The problem is I’m the only person in the world who seems to hold this view apart from people who hate it for the sake of being different (but secretly love it anyway).

So I’ve decided to write a review for Halo, but in a different way. I’ve decided to write a review for Halo in a universe where Halo 1 + 2 were never made. Instead, Halo 3 was a standalone Xbox 360 game that was released to an audience that had never played any of the previous instalments in the series. Obviously I won’t mention the story elements because that would be silly, of course the narrative wouldn’t make sense. Instead, I’m focusing purely on game play. Enjoy, and please, no hate mail.

Original Dungeon Keeper Reviews: “PURPLE SCI-FI SHOOTER”

I finished PSS today. It’s taken me… a year. Yea. Round about a year.

I picked up PSS when I first got my Xbox because a mate of mine said the online was OK. Not as good as Gears of War or Modern Warfare but OK. It was cheap, so I decided to give it a go.

Upon booting up the main campaign It was instantly clear that this wasn’t going to be the greatest gaming experience of my life. It’s main character “Conventional Protagonist 1” handled like any other FPS character from Playstation era. He even jumps really high, something I thought they’d gotten rid of along with “Bullet Time”. This may seem like a minor complaint, but perhaps I’ve just been spoiled with the realistic movements of Soap Mc.Tavish, swaying left and right as he runs and bending his knees as he jumps. In comparison, CP1 may as well be a cardboard cut out with a camera attached to him.

After running through a jungle area I encountered by first enemies. Tiny, dwarf things that ran around shouting comments that even a five year old would cringe at. Still, all is fair in love and war so I pulled out my gun and pulled the trigger. My gun, what initially appeared to be a machine gun, may as well have been a super soaker full of piss. Flimsy little thing, it spat out bullets and laid waste to the creature in front of me in a way that was as exciting as an episode of the antiques road show. Again, this may seem like a minor complaint but the gun looked so conventional that the mere fact that it gave no satisfaction to fire whatsoever meant that it basically added insult to injury in doing so. In a desperate attempt to gain some enjoyment out of what I presumed was going to be my major pastime throughout the course of the game, I scrounged the corpses for some alien weaponry. Instead of some kind of devastating corpse creator, I picked up something clearly made my Tomy. It was purple, with bits of green taped on. Upon pulling the trigger it fired… green laser… balls. I put my head into my hands and sighed. Did they seriously think this work? Did they shred the big book of videogame clichés and mash it up into a game disc? Still. Like the brave little trooper I am, I carried on.

What followed was ten levels of shooting, terrible level design, unoriginal enemies (Shoot this one in the back, this ones slightly tougher than that one, this ones a token undead enemy, etc.) and really uninspired driving sections. Even the locations were dull and failed to make me take any interest in their importance whatsoever. PSS was a boring, sloppy and uneventful game that has failed to impress me one little bit. As an FPS it’s boring. As a Game, it’s completely dull.

Oh, and that Multiplayer my friend was talking about? It consists of super soakering your enemies until they get close enough to you, then you melee them so they die. That’s how you play it. Seriously.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Review

So a lot of you are going to see that this is my review and hopefully read it out of... I dunno, habit I guess. A lot of you however, aren't going to bother because you're so sick of hearing about this by now you actually want to physically stop playing Videogames. So to start, I'm going to tell you what's bad about Modern Warfare 2.

The campaign mode within MW2 is shockingly average. The story goes nowhere, and it feels like Infinity Ward have just recycled pages that were torn out of classic war films like Black Hawk Down and Red Dawn (You read the latter right. For a reason that makes practically no sense, the Russians invade America in a scene that isn't even a homage to Red Dawn, it just is Red Dawn. In fact, the level is even called "Wolverines") It's a mess basically. Whereas the first game didn't have much of a strength to it's narrative, MW2 doesn't even have a narrative. In it's place stands a long selection of twenty minute set pieces. Despite all this however, the campaign is enjoyable. Some scenes are shocking, some upsetting, some... downright tasteless but I won't go into that. Modern Warfare 2 may not be worth buying for the campaign alone but I would call you a fool if you didn't complete it. The campaign is, I must admit, my only niggle. For all it's joy and excitement, it is at the end of the day "Scripted, all the way down to the last bullet" as a friend so rightly put it.


But then, the campaign certainly isn't why people flocked in their millions to purchase MW2 and it's certainly not the reason why this blog has deteriorated since Tuesday. Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer is once again just as deliciously addictive as before. It hasn't changed dramatically, but how is that a bad thing? All additions to the experience make it just that little bit sweeter (Customised Kill streaks, additional XP from headshots, deathstreaks, more perks, more ranks and a fudge load of new weapons) and everything that's been removed (Mainly glitches and a few minor animations etc.) has been done so in order to make this the definitive arcade-Esq modern warfare multiplayer to date™.

The new game modes are good fun, the maps are all lovely and overall it's an amazing game. I'm having a whole lot of fun with this game and I have a feeling I will be for quite a long time. To me, this was worth the £45 price tag alone. If you liked COD4 and COD5, I have every confidence that you will adore what COD6 has to offer. If you were never a fan, then I doubt you'll like this at all.

On top of the multiplayer is the new Spec-Ops mode, which is basically the Challenge mode from Timesplitters Future Perfect with online play. Spec-Ops is a collection of segments from the main campaign, edited for two players with a time limit slapped on. It's great fun, and it ranges from fighting off waves of enemies, to fighting your way up a burning bridge to racing your mate in a snowmobile. It may not be as impressive as the multiplayer, but it's certainly fantastic fun to mess around with for a few hours.

All in all, Modern Warfare 2 (I'm getting sick of typing that) is a fantastic game worthy of it's global acknowledgement as a landmark within this years release schedule. All though it's not game of the year in my eyes, (Uncharted 2 beats it by a long shot) it's still a very important game.

Modern Warfare 2 represents the lad's mag of videogaming. Whereas games like Uncharted 2 are the experiences you cherish forever, like classic cinema or novels, Call of Duty is the game that you and a few mates always smile back on fondly. It's the game that requires, nay, demands you crack out a beer, get a few bags of crisps and lie back on your chair. It's the game that you'll want to get 1000 gamerscore on. It's the game you enjoy, regardless of what you're labelled as.

(When I say Lad's mag, I mean it metaphorically. There seems to be a lot more girls playing this than most online games on the Xbox.)

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Review

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, was excellent. In fact, as I said when I first finished it, on this very Blog, it was a "Brilliant game, 10/10 brilliance. Buy it. Now. "

I still stick to that view. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is an incredibly cinematic experience and one of the best games of all time. Uncharted 2 however, is the best game of all time. Let me explain.

I don't know when it happened, but there was a point probably about twenty minutes into the game, where I had to pause it and just stop for a second. I realised I wasn't playing just any old game... I was playing a monumental landmark in videogaming history. I was playing the equivalent of the original Metal Gear Solid, or Half-Life 2, a game so ambitious that it burrows itself within the minds of all those who play it, a game which is looked upon fondly by all... I was playing the sequel to my all time favourite game... And you know what I did? I turned it off. Not because of any inner realisation that I'm wasting my life, I'd just already had plans to go out that night.

When I finally returned to Uncharted 2 the next day I had ditched all of the emotional crap and got straight to it. Ten hours later, here I am to tell you that this game is as good as I expected it to be and my God, my expectations were high.

It's not often that a developer takes a game (and in this instance, a very good game) and improves on EVERY aspect of the original, and I mean that. Uncharted 2 boasts *inhales* improved AI, improved graphics, improved characterisation, improved character models, improved hand to hand combat, improved weapons, improved shooting, improved animations, improved trophies and a whole brand spanking NEW multiplayer mode which actually works. Not enough to convince you to go out and buy it? OK then. What if I told you that it's storyline of love, loss and betrayal which takes the main protagonist Nathan Drake to locations such as Nepal, Turkey and Borneo? What if I told you about the fantastic puzzle elements, firefights and exploration elements? What if I told you that this game is Tomb Raider reinvented by God, and then some?

The main campaign sees good old cocky, egocentric, all rounded good guy George of the Ju.... Nathan Drake on a quest to find Marco Polo's lost fleet. the Cintamani Stone from Shambhala and basically stick his middle finger up at historians everywhere for making it look so damn easy. In short, it's more of the same, but in no way is that a bad thing. Naughty Dog are by far the masters at taking lost things from history and mashing them all up together to make an intriguing, exhilarating and quite frankly remarkable plot and Uncharted 2 confirms this tenfold. Personally, I found myself getting so lost within the narrative that I was literally playing not just to find out what the conclusion to this exciting new dilemma I had just discovered was, but to actually, myself, gain the personal satisfaction for completing such a task and this was primarily due to the superb characterisation Uncharted 2 boasts.


The original cast (or the ones who didn't die anyway) return in this installment, so once again we're reunited with Elana Fisher (the worst dressed female in Videogaming) and Victor Sullivan (the man who I would give my left arm for in order for him to be my Grandad), along with new characters such as Chloe Frazer (the spunky, sexy, British alternative to Drake who ISN'T LAURA CROFT AT ALL. NOT ALL. DON'T EVEN THINK THAT SHE IS), Harry Flynn (Another Englishman who, would you believe it, is evil!) and Zoran Lazarevic (the evil villain guy, who ,would you believe it, is Russian). What's great, is that all these characters slot into the series nice and snugly, are fantastically well rounded and have voice actors that once again blow you, as the player, away. There is something that Naughty Dog are just doing so right with their characterisation, whether it's the pure emotion shown within the facial expressions of all characters (Sounds silly, but trust me it's incredible) or the voice acting. Either way, you'll fall in love with all of them, whether it's Drake's witty banter or the amount of times Chloe talks about how nice her arse is.

The gameplay then. Well, as I said It's certainly been improved and at the same time retains it's original charm. For half the game you're clambering around pretty much everything you see, staring in awe at the fluidity of the new climbing animations and for the other half your diving behind cover, blind firing at waves of enemy mercenaries with a variety of well rounded and well balanced weaponry. One of the complaints I had towards Drakes Fortune was how the amount of gunfighting seriously outweighed all other aspects of the game, but in Uncharted 2 it's been beautifully weighed out allowing a fluidity not really witnessed within a videogame before. Uncharted 2 flows like a dream, and you'll be damn appreciative of it too, especially when one minute you'll be stealthily raiding an artifact from a museum and the next you're clambering up the side of a derailed train carriage... that's hanging over the edge of a mountain.


There's so much I haven't spoke about. The multiplayer, the treasures, the weapons... but what's the point? All in all, you need to experience this to understand just where I'm coming from and when you do there's no denying it. This is a monumental achievement on Naughty Dog's behalf. It's often said, a good game does not a good console make but hell... in this instance I'd be willing to argue that. Best game ever made? I always say that, but this time I certainly believe I mean it. Game of the year? No doubt about it.

So, as I said, there'll be a point where you yourself will stop and just think "...Yea. This is it", and that's because it is. Uncharted 2, in my opinion, marks the point in which Videogames finally break through as a medium of art, as a true form of Media. It boasts a far more intelligent plotline than most Hollywood blockbusters, and a far more likeable cast and a fair few more explosions. There's a brilliant bit near the beginning where Sully turns to Drake and just says something like "I can't be doin' with this no more. I'm getting to old for this, Nate" and to me, this was almost as if a character within the very game itself was realising what was happening around him. This guy had been through some pretty hard times in the first game, but from where he was standing in the sequel... he couldn't cope. He literally had to drop out, because of the sheer scale of what was going on around him. Uncharted 2 has rocked the industry to it's core so hard, that even the characters within the very game itself are feeling the vibrations.

If you own a PS3, hell even if you don't own a PS3, please go and buy this game because seriously, you will not regret it.