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Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 – Xbox 360

johnsonr — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:52:02 +0000

After a long three year wait, it’s finally arrived, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 was released on the 25th September and promised to be a brand new game with an in depth storyline and new characters for us to control; Unfortunately I cannot say that this is entirely true. However, the game does have some fantastic qualities and a storyline that makes it both addictive and enjoyable to a wide audience, not to mention the avid Marvel fans out there. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 combines two recent storylines that some will know well, namely the Civil War and Secret War.

The game opens on a mission in Latveria where you control the four characters with a main role – Captain America, Spiderman, Wolverine and of course Iron Man, all of which have been ‘hired’ by SHIELD Colonel Nick Fury to investigate President Lucia Von Bardas who has been supplying Villains with high-tech deadly technology. What Fury does not tell the heroes is that the Government knows nothing about the mission, so when Latveria retaliates at New York people start talking about Hero Registration. This is where the storyline branches in two ways and you get to choose your side, either stick with the likes of Iron Man and go underground as a rogue deciding not to register with the government or you can choose to side with Captain America and register, becoming a government lackey. As you progress through your side of the game you unlock more superheroes, such as ‘Thing’, ’Penance’ and Deadpool’.

As in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 1 you get to control a team of four heroes which you can freely swap out depending on your preference or need and with over 20 heroes you can make a lot of fun combinations. Each Hero starts with two special powers as well as the basic hand-to-hand combat manoeuvres and as you start earning experience points by slaughtering the baddies you level up and earn more powers and abilities. Each hero ends up with a total of four special powers and around five abilities which can lead to a lot of hectic, villain destroying fun whether it’s with SongBirds Sonic Clap or Gambits 52-card pickup. The real fun starts when you earn a Fusion Power Token by, you guessed it, fighting the bad guys. These give you the option to join two heroes together to create one massive attack and annihilate everything in the room (a favourite of mine is the combination of Storm and the Green Goblin, resulting in a controllable bomb fuelled tornado). Every environment is completely destroyable meaning you will find yourself spending about ten minutes perfecting your super attacks on wooden boxes before going anywhere near a villain. This, with the luscious and detailed backgrounds makes the game play fun and constantly changing.

There are a few things that I feel drag the game down a bit, for example the dialogue is average at best and when your character tries to talk it seems completely out of sync with the image and the picture seems considerably too dark at the beginning of the game, I found it hard to navigate through levels even with brightness on high. The camera angles can be a bit irritating when you are trying to focus on one thing and the birds-eye aerial view makes it quite difficult. Also I personally thought the game was over too quickly and although you have the chance to restart the game on a harder setting with your upgraded characters ready to play, I felt like there should have been more levels.

In closing, I would like to say that this is an enjoyable and addictive game and with the ability of being able to control your favourite superhero and four-way multiplayer for the times you want your friends to help, it is very appealing. A host of new characters and fun superpowers make Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 a good buy but it can sometimes seem too much like the original game. For these reasons I am going to give MUA2 3/5 stars.

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

saunderss — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:37:40 +0000

Scheduled for a 16th October UK release, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition will hit UK shelves in just over a week. For those who haven’t already played Fallout 3 in its original form, this is your cue to trade in that useless pre-war money for some bottle caps.

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition bundles the original Fallout 3 with all five downloadable content add-ons for the game. When you consider that these cost 360 owners 800 Microsoft points a pop (or £6.80 for those of us who still use real money) the deal starts to seem much tastier. Currently priced at £29.99 on Amazon, the ‘saving’ is already staggering before the inevitable price drop. When all five DLC add-ons would usually come to the total of £34, it’s already paid for itself without factoring in the price of the game disc.

Fallout 3’s main story is seen through the eyes of ‘The Lone Wanderer’; a blank slate of a protagonist whose young life has been spent in an underground ‘Vault’, hidden away from the harsh realities of the post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland above ground. Naturally, you end up leaving the Vault to face several game-altering decisions such as whether or not to detonate an active atomic bomb in the middle of a small town for a pile of cash.

Fallout 3 is a massive, open-ended and immersive gaming experience that developers Bethesda know how to do better than anyone else. Anyone who played 2006’s Oblivion will know exactly what I mean. The amount of freedom you get in both these games has actually been known to alienate some players used to a more linear experience. This could be partially down to the fact you can pretty much steal everything and kill everyone, apart from some of the game’s more major characters, who are instead rendered ‘unconscious’. It’s a game that often requires more thought than current titles, being a role-playing game with first person shooter elements and not the reverse.

The additional content brought by each of the downloadable add-ons is also worthwhile, each adding around 6 hours of additional play time to the game. They all follow their own separate story arc that takes place away from the main area of the Wasteland.

Operation: Anchorage, for example, takes place within a military simulation, where you help release Alaska’s largest city from its Chinese invaders. Broken Steel, on the other hand, deals directly with the events following the main storyline, as well as raising the level cap from 20 to 30.

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage

Will C — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:57:18 +0000

Anyone who has played Fallout 3 will know, and I mean know, that it is a BIG game with so many missions and quests to do that you can’t help but wonder “How am I supposed to do all this? I’m only one man!” Just when you thought that you knew the Wastelands, found every damn landmark and saved every no-good Wastelander, Bethesda Studios goes and does something like this: Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage! That’s right, there’s more…lots more.

This is not the Fallout 3 you will know either, oh no, that would have been too simple. You don’t get to fight puny post-apocalyptic Super Mutants, if only. You will be fighting the Red Army, or as you will find out, China’s finest. This word ‘finest,’ I feel needs to be explained in more detail because I’m not just talking about men with guns or Sam Fisher-a-likes. No, when I say ‘finest,’ I’m talking about the kinds of soldiers you don’t even see coming, you just cease to exist and when you think you’ve got one there’s a bigger, uglier one to replace him.

The best bit about this content though is that if (IF) you finish it, you’re left with lots of expensive toys that can be unleashed on the Wasteland. Fun, destructive toys . This titan sized package comes in at 800 Microsoft points, or to us mortals a tenner, but believe me when I say it, this is worth every penny. This content changes Fallout from a ‘Are you ready to die Raider?’ to a ‘Today is a good day to die, bring on the Red Army,’ kind of game.”

Halo pics

Peekay — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:07:27 +0000

“Halo Wars” is a strategy game based on the legendary “Halo” universe. In campaign mode, players will command the armies of the UNSC warship “Spirit of Fire,” consisting of familiar and new UNSC units in its initial encounters against the Covenant, an alien coalition threatening to obliterate mankind. “Halo Wars” will immerse gamers in an early period of the storied “Halo” universe, allowing them to experience events leading up to the first “Halo” title for Xbox.

With the release not until 2009 we have some screenshots for you.

[View with PicLens]