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Live out your wettest interactive dreams in the digital world of game reviews, Dominic Diamond is locked in our cellar.
Gaming Review: Dante's Inferno PS3

BioShock 2 Arriving almost hand-in-hand together in 2007, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted, BioShock marked the real start of the latest generation of gaming. Although all four games received great critical and commercial success, it was BioShock that emerged as the most compelling. Beautifully crafted and intelligently paced, BioShock was utterly engrossing; a true masterpiece. So it comes as no surprise that, with the other three returning for sequels within the last couple of months, that we’d get another chance to return to Rapture for another episode of BioShock. During a long and surprisingly slow start, during which the game struggles to make itself clear, the player is handed control of Subject Delta – the original Big Daddy. Delta is on a mission to rescue Eleanor, the now not-so-little Little Sister to whom he was originally bonded to. Eleanor is being held hostage somewhere within Rapture by a psychiatrist named Sofia Lamb. BioShock 2 is set in 1968, 8 years after the original, and Rapture is now under Lamb’s control. Unlike her predecessor – the city’s founder, philosophical idealist Andrew Ryan – Lamb believes that human progression will only come about as a result of the collective power of the community. However, despite undoing a great ideological shift, Rapture feels the same as it did in 2007’s original. The glorious Art Deco environments are more detailed and more beautiful than before, and there is more space to explore, but by making the environment immediately familiar to fans of the original, 2K’s developers ensure the levels quickly become repetitive. Playing as a Big Daddy, too, adds less to the game than may have been expected. Although it’s now possible to dual-wield a plasmid and a regular weapon, it doesn’t really go far enough to create a distinction between Delta and Jack from the original game. Some of the new weapons create short-lived excitement – especially the brutal spear gun – but that exhilaration quickly dies out. Especially since, as we find out in the first game, that Jack is actually more powerful than any Big Daddy. The role of the Little Sister has, however, been seriously expanded. Besides saving or harvesting each Little Sister, the player now has the option to adopt the girl and have her drain a few corpses of their precious ADAM. However, doing so will cause waves of splicers to attack until the draining is complete. The extra choice works well; forcing the player to weigh up whether gaining the extra ADAM is worth trading for the amount of life and ammo it will cost protecting the Little Sister while she undertakes her murky task. Many of the Little Sisters, however, have grown into adolescence under Lamb’s rule. Big Sisters are Rapture’s most fearsome creatures; faster and more agile than Big Daddies, Big Sisters at least warn the player of their incoming by emitting an ear piercing scream. Unlike the original, BioShock 2 throws in the option of online multiplayer. Multiplayer offers the standard capture the flag (with Little Sisters substituting for actual flags), death match, team death match and domination modes. Online games are fun, furious and chaotic, but ultimately lacking in complexity meaning that it’s unlikely to ever be anything more than a quick diversion for most players. With multiplayer so underwhelming it’s a shame that the single player mode can’t quite carry the weight. It may have been the pick of the bunch in 2007 but BioShock 2 can’t match the sophistication of the latest versions of Mass Effect, Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed. James Bassett
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GAMING REVIEW: Bioshock 2 (Xbox 360)
Chinatown Wars is the first game that you can play on your iPhone next to kids with their DSs and PSPs and feel like an equal. Maybe not something that will matter to some people, but it mattered to me, and to Apple, it will mean more developers taking note. For those new to Chinatown Wars, this iteration of Grand Theft Auto returns to the classic bird’s eye view of the original GTAs, with a top down view of 3D graphics. Liberty City returns in all its glory, casting you as the son of a murdered Triad boss. On your journey to Liberty City to deliver a family heirloom you are ambushed and robbed, then driven into a river and left for dead. And so your descent from spoilt child into the criminal underworld begins. Soon you are recruiting thugs, selling drugs, killing and robbing and as with every GTA before, it’s all incredibly addictive. The polish of the title is inadmissible, with graphics somewhere between the DS and PSP versions, the entirety of Liberty City is present and shining in all its glory. The DS version’s touch screen minigames like hotwiring and lock picking have all made it back after a hiatus with the PSP port and the bar the multiplayer, there is little missing from either version. The music selection is limited but you can listen to your own music ingame and the game is MASSIVE. For £5.99 you will get at least 10hrs for one playthrough and lots of side missions beyond that. The same problems that exist with other iphone games have not disappeared. The onscreen joystick can feel inaccurate and loose, the arrows for steering cumbersome, the pedals small. Why they didn’t produce a touch targeting system I will never know, but despite all this the game still screams to be played. Downside…trips to the toilets have never taken so long in my life. -- Joseph Chappell
Review: GTA Chinatown Wars
Notion loves Capcom. I’d like to etch it into a tree with a heart in the middle but I can’t because we love trees too, but you get the point. Capcom has waited since the days of SNES to return to Nintendo with a 5-star fighter and it has been worth the wait. Tatsunoko Vs Capcom is the natural successor to Marvel VS Capcom 2. It returns with the same tag team play, 2 fighters per team, and the same outlandish and over the top styling. The graphics are a la SFIV, 3D, cel shaded models and backgrounds with a comic feel and similarly they are beautiful, some of the best you’ll see on the Wii. The game itself is a delight to play for newcomers and experts alike. The familiar SF controls have been streamlined to 3 buttons for attack, light, medium and strong, and one for changing characters. This makes the games playable on all types of Wii controller, though the classic pad, or even an arcade joystick (if you can be bothered to fork out) will improve your play dramatically. Control schemes cater for all experience levels and will allow even the newest brawlers to enjoy a fight, but spend a bit of time with the game and the depth of the game will soon become apparent. With hyper combos, air raids, juggles and baroques galore Tatsucap, as we lovingly know it now, allows for those with a bit of know how to really show off with massive combos, which go upwards of 100 hits if you know what you’re doing. When you get this good, the game becomes like an epileptic fit at a firework show...ah…and Notion sheds another tear in memory of MvsC2. Capcom has even added 5 new characters and a new minigame as payback for making us wait 13 months for a game released in Japan in 2008. So, even though you won’t know half the cast and you can perform a raging demon, for all the Wii owners who felt shortchanged when SFIV blasted onto the 360 & PS3, you now have something to gloat about. Tatsu vs Capcom is one of the best fighters available on any platform. -- Leroy P'Bitek
Review: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
If you’ve played any of the Devil May Cry series, then you at least have some idea of what to expect of Bayonetta : a 3D fighting game in which you move from area to area encountering a menagerie of mean looking monsters and proceed to beat them to a pulp. Putting the game in to such mundane terms seems a disservice though, and the game quickly surpasses any notion of conventionality. In short, Bayonetta is completely batshit mental. The sheer explosion of imagination is simply staggering, with the game’s incredibly varied and liberating combat system barely pausing for breath to punctuate a rapid fire rhythm with alternative dimensions and screwball perspective changes like they’re going out of style. You barely get a chance to register the sheer lunacy of what’s happening before it’s over and you’re on to the next encounter. The creativity extends to the titular heroine too, who is an impossibly proportioned witch in designer glasses and a catsuit made out of her own hair (which also turns in to a dragon on occasion) who spends most of the game gyrating, sucking on lollipops and dispatching her angelic adversaries with S&M super attacks. The whole thing is so ridiculous that it’s genuinely hard to take it all in and impossible to take seriously. Equally hard to take seriously is the idea that someone ever thought that the storyline was worth the hours and hours of anime fanwanking in the cutscenes. For a game so adoring of videogame history, it’s surprising the game isn’t just an arcade score attack. There is a skip button though (the absence of which would be an argument for assisted suicide) that allows you to get back to enjoying the hands down best action game of the generation. -- Dan Phillips
Review: Bayonetta
Gaming Review: Avatar
Gaming Review: Avatar
21/12/2009
Avatar is quickly becoming the biggest film of all time in the cinemas and there was no surprises when the tie-in game was announced and even when it was released before the film itself came out, but the lacklustre feel of the game and the lack of any real cohesion between the disparate elements left us feeling that it would have done the franchise better to spend some time making a complete game and benefit from the storm the film is creating. The game casts you as a Ryder, a resources Development Administration soldier, who finds yourself on Pandora, an alien world inhabited by the Na’vi, an alien race of 10foot blue humanoids, fighting the Na’vi for access to a mineral, unobtanium. The humans have created avatars, Na’vi, bodies that can be controlled by humans in a Matrix style plug-in, but there is little explained about the alien world, the aliens, or the plot before you are thrown into the mix. Soon into the game you are given a choice to side with the Na’vi or the humans and this branch splits the game into two personalities, one as a human wielding guns and the other as a Na’vi using more melee attacks and athletic abilities. The two games play very differently and which one you use will depend on your own preference, though I found that the feeling of melee weapons and hand to hand combat felt far more satisfying than the gun use. The world of Pandora is quite lush and though we never got a chance to see it, the 3D effects are meant to create an even deeper experience, but an incomplete game engine and some disappointing textures still left me feeling that more could have been done to make the graphics better, especially given how warm and rich the effects were in the film. The gameplay is not all that bad, the two different races allow for quite a bit of variety and the mix of weapons and melee attacks can be fun. Both races also have skills that are pretty much unexplained, invisibility, healing ability and a time slowing ability are mixed in with others. They are all useful in their own right, though the game is fairly easy meaning they aren’t essential and the lack of background for how humans can camouflage themselves and slow time just adds to the disparate feel of the game’s elements. The game consists of much running from place to place to find a problem, shoot an alien/human, run back to place, find another problem, talk to man about it, shoot some more people and so on and so on. There are vehicles and creatures that you can ride and battle with but their use feels clumsy and unsatisfying and the control system, which leaves a lot to be desired, is fixed. There is a multiplayer that casts you in deathmatch, king of the hill, capture the flag type games, which is actually quite fun, but is let down only by the looseness of the combat system. When you shoot guns whether or not you hit enemies seems to be determined by luck too much of the time, with a rather annoying locking system and less than intelligent enemies. The AI leaves much to be desired in fact, with enemies often going crazy and attacking other characters and ignoring you completely. With inconsistencies in the game engine and AI, and a less than satisfying combat system, this game should be dire. However, the longevity of it is admirable, with almost two separate games, and there is even a strategy minigame within that you can buy units for by earning points in the main game and which also rewards you with Xp in the maingame when you achieve targets/capture territories. This is really quite fun though the rewards are poor and the ease of the game means they are often unnecessary. After seeing the film it is really disappointing that the game doesn’t deliver the same rich experience or even a similar engrossing story and strong characters. The lack of weight to the story and engine and inconsistencies with the package in whole leave me rather underwhelmed. -- Leroy P'Bitek
Gaming Review: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
Gaming Review: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
11/12/2009
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is the sequel to Umbrella Chronicles….. and follows in the same vein as a Virtua Cop/Time Crisis style on the rails shooter. For fans of the series new to this style of RE, they may feel rather cheated for as a series that began as an action RPG this is a bit of a dumbing down. But every dog has its day and I have great memories of pockets full of change for Virtua Cop 2 & House of the Dead arcade machines and the Wii has certainly promoted a resurgence in their popularity, so I came to this with an open mind. The Darkside Chronicles has more than12 hours of gameplay within, so those used to hour long Virtua Cops will be happily impressed, with plenty of replay value. For those with Resident Evil experience the plotline allows for some nostalgia, with the events of the game taking you through parts of RE2 and Code Veronica as Leon describes Umbrella’s and his own disturbing pasts, those new to RE will be lost but the game can be enjoyed with no prior knowledge. This game really has some impressive graphics for the Wii, with some great models and movement, even if there is a bit of slow down at frantic times and the multiplayer, where shooters like this really show their worth, doesn’t disappoint. The good old fashioned fun factor is also here in droves and standing there dribbling, shooting uncontrollably at the screen brings back great memories. But I can’t help but feel that a few silly mistakes were made, the second player can’t join at any time and they share your ammunition. This is more in keeping to Resident Evil’s canon but when your gunning HoTD style canon seems pretty irrelevant. Also, the camerawork is pretty questionable Those used to on the rails shooters will know about camera movement at certain times, but Darkside goes one step further. Every time you step, you look, you turn, you breath, the camera breaths with you, which can be frustrating when you are about to take a head shot and shoot the wall instead. It does add atmosphere at tense times but it’s disappointing when you can’t hit anything because the camera is having an absolute eppy. This game won’t convert any non believers, but with replay value in a genre normally bereft of longevity, some great presentation and good old fashioned fun value you will really enjoy Darkside Chronicles. As long as you don’t mind a cheesy plotline, some awful translation and you’ve got a bit of a stomach on you. If you’re considering a Resident Evil game then I imagine you don’t.
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Review: Fifa 10 (Xbox 360 version tested)
Review: Fifa 10 (Xbox 360 version tested)
10/12/2009
Pro Evo destroyed my resolve as a gamer for a long time. The very same people who had belittled me for being a gamer just a few years before, who had laughed in the face of Xevious, Sonic, Mario Kart and even Sega Rally, finally had a reason to sit down with a pad in their hands…and little else would quench their gaming thirst from then onwards. I actually liked Pro evo and when Fifa turned up on my doorstep last year I liked that, actually, I really liked it, I felt like a sell out when I challenged my mates to games on it. But I felt like history was repeating itself when people said it wasn’t Pro evo, it didn’t feel the same, it wasn’t as easy to dribble, the buttons had changed. ‘The buttons had changed??!!’ I exchanged it for another game, good riddance to football, back to FPSs. This year I was ready to give it a chance and Fifa 2010 cannot be ignored. It’s the best football game that has ever been made, or at least that I’ve played. Better than Sensible soccer, better than Fifa 95, better than ISS64, better than Pro Evo 1-10. The game moves with a fluidity that I haven’t experienced before and allows you as little or as much skill as you would prefer to play with. It has all the teams, all the leagues, al the players and everything that any football fan might want. For a single player most of your time should be spent in the Manager and Virtual Pro modes, where you build a player, yourself or anyone you can dream up, and play the various game types unlocking abilities in the game. These modes are extensive and from what I have seen they will keep any loners well occupied. But multiplayer is where football games really flower and the gameplay and options available to groups and online players is what will keep you coming back for more. Most significantly Fifa 10 allows for full 360 degree motion, something not available in previous incarnations. It gives the games a sense of freedom and fluidity that is only accentuated by the incredible modelling. The size and weight of players is really felt when a fast but smaller winger is muscled of the ball by a jockeying centre back, and for those willing to take a bit of time, the range of techniques available will hold their concentration. First touches, taps and skill moves separate the best from the rest and leave you thinking that the Messis of the gaming world will really leave you for dust. So to everyone I would recommend this game, for after pub gamers, otakus, and everyone in between. It takes a lot to get me away from CoD at the moment, it normally takes alot to get me away from racers and FPSs full stop, but a bit of Fifa gets the adrenaline going like nothing else and there's nothing better to see your mate cry over...nothing. Who said football games were just for casual gamers?
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Review: Forza Motorsport 3 Xbox 360
Review: Forza Motorsport 3 Xbox 360
10/12/2009
Forza Motorsport 3 screams polish from the moment you put the disc in the tray. Your guide introduces the game to you in a perfect orator’s voice and the options available to you after your first demo race are innumerable. There are 400 cars on offer, all available from the start, with tracks from all over the world, including Suzuka, Circuit de Catalunya & Silverstone but you begin your career in one of a selection of modest cars to ease you in. The career mode takes you through a series of seasons, each progressively longer. The seasons are 3-6 races long and the events available to you at any point are dependent on the car you’re in and what you have done before. Each race gives you experience points and credits with which to level up and buy new cars and upgrades for your cars. Against gaming norms, every car is available to you from the offset and you’re also rewarded with a new car for each level up so you‘re always encouraged to try new vehicles, with every one being different. Forza is made for everyone, with full assists on your car has traction control, anti-lock brakes, there is a best line on the track and it will even brake for you. But with more credits available for every assist removed you will soon be racing with a more realistic car and for simulation lovers, this game has everything; every car is perfectly modelled with an incredible physics engine and in-game damage, you can even give your car a custom paint job which can then be traded or sold online! The game looks and sounds incredible, the lighting can feel slightly unnatural but each car has its own true engine sounds and the game models are true to real life whilst the engine runs at an impressive 60 frames per second. The multiplayer also gives you a myriad of options, allowing you to FULLY customise races. There are different game types from single race or point-to-point races to cat and mouse and elimination. Each type has scoring types (time based, drift based or even distance travelled) and even delayed starts. This is the biggest multiplayer racing experience ever. Forza is unashamedly the best racing game around at present; it offers something to everyone, if you have 10 minutes to race, or 10 years. The loading times can be epic but they are only annoying because the game experience is incredible, with the quality of modelling letting you feel every bump in the road. There are glimmers of a Turismo to beat this in the future, but for now this really is an invitation you shouldn’t refuse. Leroy P'Bitek
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Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (DS)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (DS)
29/10/2009
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is another foray into the world of button bashing, stylus sweeping and mini event conquering and also the sequel to the massively successful Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games. The DS game consists of more than 25 different sports events, some real and some fantasy event s crossing Sonic and Mario paraphernalia with typical winter sports events (e.g Rocket Ski jumping). The events themselves are the core of the game, ranging from speed and figure skating events to ski jumping, bobsledding and snowboarding. They combine a range of control methods, with speed skating an L and R button bashing homage to the good old days of Athlete Kings, whilst events like figure skating involve using the stylus to make patterns on the screen to perform special moves. Skiing events are generally stylus based and tend not to work as well as the d-pad/button based games like cross country and luge, but the mix of control methods keeps things fresh in a genre where most will be quite familiar with the game types….hit buttons fast, at the right time, jump at right angle, adjust in air and land. The single player mode is led by an Adventure Tours mode, which has you teaming Mario with Sonic to rescue the Winter Olympics from being hijacked by Eggman and Bowser. The plotline is typically ridiculous but does allow for some enjoyable and interesting interactions between characters whose animosity has long been forgotten. Seeing Sonic, Yoshi, Tails and Mario in cahoots against Robotnik and Bowser does bring a tear of nostalgia to the eye and make you think what years of unity could have done for the 2D platforming legacy. An open world RPG it isn’t, but it does add a layer of depth to the single player that is missing in the Wii game. The game looks attractive, with solid and colourful character models though the backgrounds can be rather generic and dull. The audio is nothing to shout home about but the overall feel is very polished and screams Christmas number 1. The controls can be fiddly at times and the adventure mode sometimes lacks pace and frustrate when you are left wandering around for too long. But the events are addictive, four players can link up on just one cartridge and if you join the party knowing what you’re in for, you will leave with a big, family-sized cheesy smile on your face.
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REVIEW: Wet
REVIEW: Wet
12/10/2009
Wet is either a very stupid game, or a very clever one. It’s often hard to decide which it might be, but unfortunately more often than not, players will likely decide it’s the former. Taking cues from the Max Payne games and Stranglehold, Wet is a third person shooter in which you take control of a sassy, hard drinking mercenary by the name of Rubi and set about shooting, slicing and generally ruining the days of various hired goons. The twist on the formula (other than playing as a woman voiced by nerdcore wankbank superstar Eliza Dushku) is that the game allows, and rewards, acrobatic shenanigans during gunplay and melee combat. The idea is that you can wallrun, flip from flagpoles, dive and slide around the room without interruption, shooting at anything anywhere and at any time during each move. It’s a reasonably canny idea, and it does work. The only problem is that most players will quickly realise that the best way to win a fight is often the simplest and that to and fro dives and slides will get you through the game without the need to use the fancier tricks. Carried out in arbitrary slow motion, the fights quickly become surreal scenes of monotony. Not to say that the game isn’t occasionally home to some solid game design: a car hopping firefight on a motorway and a shootout/skydive through falling plane wreckage are two notable highlights, whilst elsewhere a platform section sends you looping in and out of a huge castle. The narrative as ridiculous as the gameplay, too. The whole game borrows the grindhouse aesthetic from Tarantino and Rodriguez’s double bill pastiche- complete with film grain effect, fake drive-in movie adverts and so on. The problem is that it borrows far too heavily and it just comes off as unoriginal, offering nothing new on the idea. It’s worth mentioning though that the intentional absurdity of the plot does lend itself to a game. Being sent round the world several times over in a couple of hours suddenly makes a lot of sense. Though really, this just says more about the piss poor state of narrative in gaming when a parody of the worst genre of cinema ever is considered effective story telling compared to most games. But overall, compared to most games, Wet just feels a bit damp. -- Dan Phillips
REVIEW: Colin McCrae Dirt 2
REVIEW: Colin McCrae Dirt 2
12/10/2009
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 is a polished example of what years of a gaming legacy can create. 2 years after McRae’s untimely death the series has taken a change of direction from a simulation to an arcade style racer: fortunately Dirt 2 maintains the high standards of the McRae name. The front end of the game puts you in character, with the menus all done in character, in your tour trailer. There are a variety of race types including rally cross, traditional rally and survival modes, there are also different car types, from traditional rally cars to trucks As you progress through the tour you gain XP points and make money, which gives you access to more races, tournaments, cars and a variety of accessories, which this game has in droves. The graphics and the sound are incredible, with slick car models and a polished feel. The emo soundtrack will divide the audiences, though well done, there isn’t a great deal of variety, but the range of choice in the rest of the game easily makes up for it. The handling of the cars is spot on, with every bump in the road being felt in the handling of the car. The damage modelling also adds to the realism and before long you will feel like an expert in drifting, changing surfaces and high speed duelling. The Multiplayer is only available online, which is a bit disappointing, but the online experience is fast and intense. You might feel a little aggrieved with the overzealous exploits of your competition, especially after such gentlemanly races in the single player. But find a good group of competitors and you will find yourself hooked. Though it seems a bit of a loss that the attrition style of long rally courses is not so important, the added draw of different race types, such a the polished finish and handling that is far more forgiving but no less fun more than makes up for it. In a very different gaming landscape to the one the first Colin McRae game faced, one which has gamers spoilt for choice, McRae Dirt 2 does so many things so well that you can’t help but enjoy it. Well worth a look and one that will keep both arcade racers and wannabe McRae’s happy. --- Leroy p'Bitek
REVIEW: King of Fighters XII - PS3
REVIEW: King of Fighters XII - PS3
07/10/2009
The long running 2D fighting franchise returns in what SNK Playmore calls a ‘rebirth’. The first thing that strikes you about the game are the visuals, the developers, SNK Playmore, have completely redrawn their sprites all in full HD. The backgrounds (of which there are 5) are equally as detailed and vibrant, making the game one of the most impressive look 2D games out there. The sound is a mixed bag though with meaty sound effects supported by a suspect sound track. KOF XII’s characters are drawn from previous games in the series, although fans of the series will question some of the omissions from the list and the overall number of characters. The home version boasts 22 characters, two of which are console exclusives. This is pretty small by KOF standards and some of the characters have had their move lists reduced. XII removes XI’s ability to freely switch characters during combat in favour of the classic 3v3 team battle. The game plays at a breakneck pace but the controls are excellent, allowing for smooth movements despite this. The game also introduces new systems to differentiate itself from previous instalments, Deadlocks, Guard Attacks and Critical Counters all allow you to turn the tables on your opponent, especially the latter which allows you to launch a devastating combo on a helpless opponent. These manoeuvres are simple to input but require expert timing to pull off. Worry not though, because newcomers are eased in to the game with a Simple mode allowing them to pull off special moves with ease. Disappointingly there are no further game modes aside from the standard Arcade, Versus and Practice modes. In fact the Arcade mode only contains 5 stages, no Boss to fight, no ending and no option for 1v1 matches. A gallery mode lets you view unlocked art and there is the option to record your matches. An online mode is present which you can have rooms with multiple players and create clans but lag was evident in a few matches, making for an occasionally jerky experience. An in game link to the Playstation Store gives hope for some future downloadable content, which hopefully will take the form of more characters/backgrounds. King of Fighters XII looks amazing and has the playability to match, however as a £40+ package a lot more should have been included. As a result the game falls into the “try before you buy category” for both fans and newcomers alike. -- James Hutchfull
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