I decided to play through it with my other half in co-op and set my expectations low. Well, I was blown away. For such a simple idea they really manage to pull you into this fantasy world. The audio score is perfect, and wouldn’t of seemed out of place in one of the LotR’s films. Visually, it is also a treat, with a great use of shadows and lighting to add depth and majesty to the world.

The story is fairly by-the-numbers. Mystical land, darkness overshadows it, unlikely troupe of accidental heroes are thrown together to save the day.. you’ve seen it before. The Trine (a mystical artifact) is also a bit of clever deus ex machina that binds the 3 main characters together at the start of the game so that they have to work together to free themselves from it. The characters that make up the main playable cast are a Thief – has a grapple and a bow, a Knight – has a shield and can lift/throw objects and a Wizard – can summon shapes and move some objects with magic.

The dialogue throughout is passable and the narration between levels is competent but the main aspect that will pull you in is the gameplay. The gameplay is where it really gets you. It reminded me of what Little Big Planet could of been if they had given you some of the world builder abilities in the story mode of the game itself.

If played in coop you can have up to 3 players playing simultaneously. Or if played on your own you can control all of the characters by switching between them. Each character has unique abilities that you will need to utilize frequently throughout the levels, and, on more than a few occasions, you may be forced to improvise a different strategy if one of the abilities of the characters is inaccessible due to them being dead (until the next checkpoint) or having run out of magic. Along with this, each character obtains new variations on their abilities as they progress in the game which leads to the gameplay never becoming stale or repetitive.

It took me about 3 evenings to complete the game with my other half. We both immensely enjoyed it from start to finish. The puzzles and obstacles had us laughing at the various solutions we’d each come up with. Some which would fail, others which would work even though we thought they shouldn’t. There were also numerous points throughout that had us gritting our teeth, but we’d eventually pass them with some perseverance.

Anyway, my final verdict is that this is a game that I highly recommend. It’s beautifully designed, and has really solid gameplay, what more do you want.

I think it sits in that grey area between an RPG and an FPS that I’ve been looking for. It’s actually what I imagined WoW was going to be before it was released, an MMO version of the RTS Warcraft where humans control each unit in a battle and the results from those battles allow you to level your character.

The XP and bonus system is also a good way to give people an incentive to follow their leaders and also to play as a squad. At first I didn’t really like the lack of a killcam but on further thought, a killcam encourages a player to go off and play on his own, hunting down individual enemies that shot you, which really isn’t the point, it’s not a deathmatch game. The distance to the spawn point was also a gripe, but, again, if you are playing in a proper squad with medics and leaders you shouldn’t need to respawn as often as you should get resuscitated. The distance to the spawn also is a deterrent to spawn camping.

I’ve a few gripes still though:
1) The inability to throw back grenades is a pain. It makes holding a capture point redundant as a few grenades in the door will kill everyone or force everyone to run out into enemy fire.
2) Group comms need to be enabled outside of the game lobby and in the group menu itself
3) If I can cancel a reload by switching to my pistol I should be able to cancel a reload by using a melee attack also. The amount of times I’ve died in close quarters because my clip emptied and I’ve been forced to run around bunny hopping waiting for my reload animation to finish.

But overall it’s impressive. Definitely a day one buy for me I think.

First let me say, understandably, my expectations were very low for this game. Secondly I’m not a big fan of “gangsta” rappers, either their image or their music. But I’m willing to try anything with an open mind, and refuse to judge a game by it’s cover.

The first reaction of note I felt about this game was the hilariousness of the plot and dialogue. There are so many moments in the game where you are asking yourself “Why?” with utter confusion. But oddly, rather than taking from the game, it actually adds to it. Unknowingly, 50 Cent has made a game that not only seems to a satire on violent gaming but also a parody on gangsta rap itself. Rather than detail the plot myself, here is the summary of it from wiki:

The game is set in an urban warzone in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, where 50 Cent and G-Unit have been hired to play a rap concert. After the concert the promoter refuses to pay them the US $10-million in cash he promised, but relents after being threatened. However, instead of the cash they were promised, he gives them a diamond-and-pearl encrusted human skull as collateral. This is promptly stolen by a team of high-tech mercenaries. 50 Cent (with the help of a selected G-Unit partner) decides to get it back at any cost.

Don’t even try to understand it, and also, later in the game there are a number of twists that make equally as little sense. But like I said earlier, far from making this game bad, it actually makes it pretty fun to play, as you laugh your way through the cut scenes and ridiculously obscene smack talk 50 Cent uses when shooting his way through the levels.

Gameplay wise, the game is also very solid. It’s an unashamed Gears of War clone. With a pretty similar cover system and level progression. If you liked GoW you’ll slot right into playing this game. The format is pretty much a cross up between progressing along a linear line defeating baddies, to entering arena style rooms where you are given numerous options for flanking the baddies or facing them head on.

For weapons, there is the usual fare (i.e. pistols, MGs, shotguns and rocket launchers) and they handle pretty well. As you progress you earn money which allows you to buy bigger and better weapons and they don’t disappoint.

On top of this, the better you do the more you build up a bar that allows you to enter a bullet time mode. Again nothing new, but always a nice addition. I rarely used it, but on occasion it came in handy when I felt I was being overrun. It allowed me to slow everything down and quickly stand up and take out everyone in quick succession. Also, up close, instead of being able to melee you can enter into a takedown QTE where you can take out a baddie with a series of punches and jabs from 50 Cent. There is enough variety in these take-downs and enough leniency in how quickly you hit the next button to perform the next hit that these never get old for the duration of the game.

Graphically, the game is on par with it’s peers. 50 Cent looks like 50 Cent, and the facial animations are up to standard. At no point did I think to myself “man that looks awful” which has been the case with a few games I’ve played recently. My only gripe is that the environment doesn’t really vary for the entire course of the game. As you are in the middle east somewhere all the buildings are sand coloured and there is sand everywhere outside (thus the name I guess) It does get a bit boring looking at just shades of yellow and brown, one level with greenery (an Oasis perhaps?) would of been nice. For Audio, again, on par with other games in the same genre of this generation. The soundtrack is basically a load of 50 Cent music, which I didn’t mind. In fact it probably helped immersing you into this surreal Gangsta Rap world where a rapper goes on a killing spree because he didn’t get paid after doing a concert.  The weapons and also the environmental sounds are also very good.

In conclusion, I’d recommend this game, but maybe as a rental as it is pretty short (around 7 hours long maybe). I’ve heard it said before that this game is a “guilty pleasure”, and I couldn’t describe it better. It’s a game you don’t want to like, but you will. The gameplay is solid, the plot is so bad it’s good and graphically it hits the nail on the head. It’s nothing new, true, but it’s harvested aspects of other games that made them good and put them all into one package. If you can overlook any bias you have towards rappers then you should play this game.

Score: 7.5/10

What happened was that I fell in love with the game, no joke, I love this game now. I started off hating the fact I had received this game in the post, changed to mild amusement at the sackboy sixaxis movements and costume designs, laughed at the odd design of the levels and then just proceeded to think this was one of the best games I’d played in a long time. Graphically the game is simple, although it does have it’s moments (soft fabrics and materials look especially realistic and tactile) but what sets it apart is the consistent, mildly difficult platforming and puzzles. What makes it even better is the knowledge all throughout the game that it is giving you the tools to make levels equal to the ones you are playing. I literally completed the entire main campaign in one sitting over the course of a day with my better half, and as soon as I was finished started trying out some of the community made levels.

The quality and rating system is such that you can easily tell which levels have been liked by others, and so far I haven’t been dissapointed with them. This gave me the gusto to make my first foray into designing a level myself. I’ve used a few level designers on the PC and they have never been user friendly, but LBP has hit the nail on the head. Within 10 minutes you can have built yourself a rocket car, within another 20 you can of designed a complete race course to drive it along. I must of plowed a good few hours into a level I was building to test out various features and mechanics of the game, but it only felt like I’d been playing for half an hour.

This is the true test of a game in my opinion, if you can play it and become so engrossed in it that you don’t even notice the passage of time. There’s really not much more I can say about it, the gameplay is excellent, the artstyle will appeal to all ages, the soundtrack is perfect and the developers have given you, the gamer, the steering wheel. I like it so much I’ve sent back my rental copy and bought the game. If you haven’t already I’d recommend playing it, and if you are looking for that reason to buy a PS3, this game is it.

Also, being a bit of a PC gamer elitist, I really don’t like playing FPS games on the console with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. However, this game will never come to PC, so like Resistance 2, I swallowed my pride and decided to play it.

Update 1 – 29/04/09: How original! A grimy grey and brown war game!

Ok, sorry for setting off your sarcasm detectors. But seriously, the art style in this game could of done with some tweaking. Everything has this muted post-processing done to it, which makes all the buildings and environments just alternating shades of grey and brown. It reminds me a lot of Resistance: Fall of Man, but thankfully they mixed things up for the sequel and had green environments with blue skies. I really hope the further into this game I get that I will start to see more enviroments that aren’t A) sewers, B) crumbling war-torn concrete buildings or C) Dark corridors.

Other than the style of the game, the gameplay is actually quite enjoyable. It’s irritating aiming with the analogue stick, but thankfully there are some auto-aim features built in to aid the player. In saying that though, I’m a few levels in and my favourite weapon has become the knife. The frequent narrow corridors make it an excellent weapon to use, as it is pretty much one hit kill. I’ll see if this remains the case as I progress and the difficulty increases.

Update 2 – 01/05/09: The drearyness is getting to me

I haven’t played Killzone 2 in the last 2 days. I played a bit more after the last update and its just too… too… samey. The colour palette is worse than Gears of War. I mean at least in Gears of War there was some plants, and then there was the golden glow of the Imulsion, but Killzone 2, thus far, is all muted greys and browns. It just isn’t appealing. I’ve always held that to keep a game interesting you have to do at least  1 of 2 things. 1: Consistently change the environment or 2: Consistently change the gameplay. Killzone 2 is doing neither, the weapons and level format is staying the same, and the levels are all starting to look the same. I dunno. I’m going to give it another chance this May long weekend, but disappointed is an understatement.

Update 3 – 05/05/09: Good, but not worth going out and buying a PS3 for

**Spoiler Alert** Finished this game over the weekend. Was meaning to try out the MP aspect of the game, but after finishing it I just couldn’t be bothered (for some reason FPS VS on the console has never appealed to me, I’m a KB/M addict I guess). It was a good game, ramping up to a excellent crescendo with the last level and the attack on Visari’s palace. If you’ve played it you’ll have recognized that the format of the push into the palace was very similar to how Call of Duty sets its battles, in that the enemy will keep respawning unless you move forward. It’s a very good mechanism as it means you are constantly under fire, and can’t merely take up a nice protected camping spot and pick off all the enemies before sauntering across the battle field. The final boss battle against Radec was a bit of a let down, and needed really no strategy. He basically just lunged at you with his knife, then tries to shoot at you from cover and repeats this until you’ve finished him. After this I was really expecting a really good battle against the main opponent Visari. Something along the lines of the ending of Wolfenstein perhaps (i.e. Visari jumping into a huge mech that I need to take down.) Instead you have a little chat with Visari then your buddy, a la Se7en, gets prodded into shooting him out of anger, you then realise that everything you accomplished in the game was pointless as Visari had a hidden super fleet ready to attack you all along. Overall I found the game too short and aside from the good AI and body physics the environment was drab and the combat somewhat repetitive. I found the AI did not react well when I rushed them with my knife out (something I started to use frequently once I realized how overpowered it had been made) and would turn around confused as if wondering why I wasn’t ducking for cover. I have a feeling, much like CoD4, that the SP campaign was merely meant as a taster to the MP. But where CoD4 succeeded in wrapping a very good narrative into a relatively short time frame, Killzone 2 failed. By all means give it a go, but I’d recommend renting it as the extremely short SP campaign will leave you dissapointed if you don’t intend on playing the versus (or obsessively unlocking trophies)

Anyway, I recently went out and bought the game finally, which is odd for me as I will usually rent it first. But there was something that told me I was I going to like this game even though I’d only ever seen videos and screenshots of it. I will usually critically play a game to see advancements in gameplay or graphics, but for this one I was genuinely excited to open the packaging and flick through the manual in work, watching the clock and counting down until I could get home and load it up. Maybe it was a throwback to a simpler time when toys and games where the best things in the world to me, or maybe it was a genuine want to play a game that was actually good after recently wading my way through a bunch of overhyped and mediocre titles.

I have to say, it did not dissapoint. The game is a classic example of one that is easy to play yet hard to master. You’ll be pulling off Ryus fireballs, hurricane kicks and dragon punches in no time. If you think you’ve mastered it though by being able to pull off all of your favourite characters moves, you will be sorely mistaken. The more I play, and play online, the more I see just how detailed and nuanced you have to be to know when and how to use each move. Sometimes a light punch is better than a more more powerful hard hurricane kick.

Those looking for a variety of modes in their fighters will find this lacking. There is an arcade mode, a training mode and then some extra timed and survival modes, your basic fair really, and they are really just the same as the normal arcade mode. They are really just included to give you a variety of different ways to practice, and practice you must if you hope to even begin to enter any of the online ranked matches.This game is built around competition. There are backstories for each character in Arcade mode, but they are largely irrelevant. You will spend the majority of your time practising against the computer in the wide variety of difficulty modes, building up the muscle memory for combos in the training section then pitting your skills against players in either the unranked or ranked online modes. The unranked being a good area for beginners to cut their teeth, and ranked being only for those with a good amount of practice and skill with their chosen character(s).

If you don’t like online play, or even local versus, then you really aren’t going to get a whole lot out of this game. Once you’ve completed the Arcade mode and unlocked every character there really isn’t much more to the game if you don’t intend on playing online. But then if someone bought Street Fighter IV expecting a great single player experience they clearly didn’t know anything about it.

In regards to graphics and presentation, the menu system is functional but lacks any flare or creativity. The character models are excellent and the styling is really good (they’ve gone for a sort of painted look, rather than completely realistic). My only gripe would be with the apparent lack in stages to fight on. Aside from that though the audio (although I’d of preferred an option to enable a retro arcade soundtrack) and visuals are very good. It might not scrape at the surface of the likes of Crysis in regards to the number of polygons it’s pushing, but for a true-to-form 2D fighter adaptation it has done very well.

Overall, I’d recommend this game for fighter fans or people who like some tough online competition. For people who are more casual and like to play through the singleplayer sections only then it is probably only worth a rent, if that.

For me though, I’m pleasantly surprised with it and can see myself pulling off more than a few HADOKEN’s every evening after work for the next good while. Watch the video below for a good taster: