Bargain of the Month: Red Faction II

Found in: Zavvi

Price: £1

Format: PC

Pop into Zavvi and you'll see racks of CDs, shelves packed with DVDs, and a small army of bearded metalheads operating the tills. Squeezed into a tiny section in the smaller of the Aberdeen branches lies a smattering of videogames, mainly Wii shovelware and about sixty copies of Grand Theft Auto IV. There is, however, a whole shelf dedicated to PC games at precisely one pound apiece.

There are other decent games in the selection, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Moto GP 2 among them, however Red Faction II will give you the most instant gratification of the lot. You install it in five minutes, you blow shit up. Its fantastic policy of giving you some explosive weapons rather speedily is a nice change from slogging through three hours of a game with no more than a wrench and rusty handgun with about three bullets to defend yourself with (we're looking at you BioShock). In RFII you run up to some supposedly bad dudes, blast them with a grenade launching splatter machine, and run on to the next section.

Though it's not a game best suited to the PC (it's far more console oriented than the first, which was the opposite), it's still an absolute blast. Of course it is a bit old and doesn't have much longevity, but you can't argue with the fact that it's superb throwaway fun for about the same price as a bottle of Coke, picking this one up is a no brainer.

Review: FIFA Street 3

By WolvesPat

FIFA Street: it brought a whole new dimension to the FIFA series on its first installment's release. This was a revolutionary street football game in which skills played a major part. The sequel swiftly arrived with a few new features, however mainly, beneath the surface it was very much the same game.

With FIFA Street 3 came a complete revamp of the series. The first thing you'll notice when you kick off is the new art style - cartoony, if you like. Players have exaggerated features, such as Peter Crouch being extremely (extreme meaning anorexic) skinny, and Wayne Rooney having a respectably life-like potato shaped nut. Obviously, to the die-hard original FIFA Street fans, change was not met with open arms. The demo was considerably criticised by many, citing the new fangled changes as game breaking (excuse the pun). I was one of those many. I swiftly deleted the demo and vowed never to buy it. Don't worry, I'm not guessing during this review. I do own it. Honest.

Contrary to the above opinions, it does, unsurprisingly, live up to previous FIFA Streets in most aspects. For one, it has a huge wealth of gamerscore. And it isn't reluctant to let it go. For me, this is one of the main attractions of a game. If an average game has terrible achievements, I don't go there. But if a below-average game has lots of achievements, then I like it. This, you presume, is probably why I like FIFA Street 3.

But it's not just that. The aforementioned art style does infact bring a lot to the game. It allows the environments to be a little less perfect and realistic. EA have managed to brighten up the bland browns and oranges of the FIFA Street series with some nice greens and this is reflected in the environments, in which bright colours are aplenty. While we're on the subject of environments, a nice addition is that of the moving boundaries. Fences, doors, windows, etc will all move or bens under pressure from a player. It's quite thrilling when a monster like Gattuso (whom, owing to the cartoony style, is absolutely huge in this game) manages to run up the side of a stack of barrels without them toppling.

Gamebreakers have had a few tweaks. Upon earning filling the score-trick-thing-total bar, you must then attempt a shot to make these points permanent. Should you lose possession before getting the chance to do so, these points will slowly degenerate, taking you back to your previous total. Unfortunately, there is an easy exploit for this. The Y (or Triangle) button has been turned into a 'juggle' button. This means you can constantly spam it, earning points for every keepy-up, and then just fire a wild shot at the end to save the earned points and secure the Gamebreaker. This somewhat ruins the online portion of the game, which turns into who-can-juggle-the-longest-without-being-tackled game. Despite this, a new mode has managed to rescue this a little. Player Picks is a playground-esque game type, in which one squad is selected to be shared between two players. Each takes it in turn to select a player from their squad to be on their team for that match. It is, I'll admit, quite gimmicky, but it's a nice touch.

There is one mode I feel is missing though. This mode being the 'career' mode, in which, in previous FIFA Street titles, you could create a player and build a team around him, making signings throughout to build your team up until it was eventually unbeatable and you got bored and traded it in. In 3, though, this has been replaced by a challenge mode, and despite it's namesake with challenges in the main FIFA titles, it is infact completely different. Challenge mode consists of different short tournaments, in which you can control any team that you have unlocked. Match types range from timed to headers and volleys. Most tournaments have either 3, 4 or 5 rounds. Unfortunately, there are only 9 and therefore could be blitzed in a couple of hours.

This is one of the main factors with which FIFA Street 3 loses its replayability. The online modes, aforementioned, quickly become tiresome and the challenges can be completed in super quick time. So, unless you have two of you there to play against each other after you're bored of the other modes, FIFA Street won't keep you occupied for long. But it's good while it lasts. And it's even better when its price tag was approximately £0.

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Fifteen Second Review: Klonoa: Empire of Dreams

Funsized outing for Playstation's hidden gem. Puzzle platforming at its very finest, with superb music and extremely cute visuals. The controls are responsive and it's unique in the way you can play at your own pace. The boarding levels are just the icing on this rather delicious and almost completely overlooked cake. If you want perfectly bite sized portable brilliance, you can't go far wrong.

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Demo Impressions: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Lucasarts' latest effort shows its face on Marketplace

Previewed on Xbox 360

Pleasing people can sometimes be difficult; hundreds of thousands of budding comics, authors, musicians and directors will tell you that without hesitation. Sometimes it can be very easy, by, for instance, slapping "Star Wars" on the front of pretty much anything, from lunchboxes and drinks to shoddy sequels and games. If the logo's there, the happy faces will appear alongside the cash.

That's not to say that The Force Unleashed is your typical lazy, Lucas-branded cash-cow. Far from it, the game impresses on many levels, even in the short segment of time the demo allows. Stylistically, it seems to capture the Star Wars universe to a tee, while in purely graphical terms it cranks out an expansive array of lighting effects, anti-aliasing and explosions. The touted Euphoria AI is every bit as astounding as it was hyped to be, and although there wasn't a great opportunity to test it out, the DMM engine for realistically breakable objects looks tantalisingly worthy of the claims as well. Pretty much all the tech going on behind the scenes packs a considerable punch.

Sadly, the same can't be said for character movement. Simply running around and jumping feels nowhere near as meaty as it should be, and watching Starkiller leap about in an almost cartoonish fashion jars with the surprisingly lifelike AI and Physics. The lightsaber combat also falls victim to this. There is no sense of power to be had from your supposedly deadly weapon, and although they feel less like shiny batons than in some games in the franchise, you can't escape the fact that it's little more than a glorified stick.

Force Powers, on the other hand, work fantastically well. Endless fun can be had from picking up Stormtroopers and lobbing them around with Force Grab, Force Push busts open doors with aplomb, while Force Dash neatly serves as a dodge function when locked-on. The only power in the demo that seemed lacking was Force Lightning, with no real consequence from zapping an enemy other than them falling over like a pole. This spoils the illusion somewhat and is evidence that Euphoria is great for some elements of the AI, but not so much for others, as a simple animation would have better suspended one's disbelief on these occasions. When it comes down to it, the whole point of The Force Unleashed is to make the player feel as if they're in a Star Wars film, and when the player doesn't have this sensation for more than a second, the effect is ruined.

Were this an unlicensed game, we'd be chastising it, calling it foul, but, for the most part, it maintains the feeling of "being in" the films pretty well, and for that it must be commended. Though the combat seems a bit on the unimpressive side, the Force Powers are well implemented, the technology running everything on screen is polished and the score is a rousing halfway point between the Trilogies. Some small criticisms include the lock on system, which is a little odd and distracting as the camera adjusts to an unhelpful angle and the game sometimes struggles to find what you want to be facing. Similarly, the awkward character movement is often the only thing on the screen that appears stilted and out of place, causing it to stand out even more than it should. Sadly, given the nigh-on complete code of the demo level, none of this is likely to be altered before release. Overall though, The Force Unleashed looks set to be a boon for dedicated fans, who will be so amazed by how legitimately Star Wars an experience it is they'll need to pick their eyes up off the floor when they see it in action. It doesn't come close to justifying how much hype it's had, but when it hits shelves it will doubtless be an enjoyable romp through some familiar territory, although one wishes that little extra spit and polish had been applied that would have made all the difference.

One liner sum up: "The Force is average with this one"

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