Could we be nearing the end of the GAME?

It has emerged, today, that one of the leading game retailers in the UK, GAME, has had it’s credit insurance with a number of agencies withdrawn.

This follows a series of store closures in recent years and well document instability in high-street game sales generally.

The immediate impact of this is that when the next round of games / hardware release from publishers & manufacturers in a few weeks time, GAME may find it hard to find a seller they can buy from in bulk.

With rumours circulating concerning Mass Effect 3 pre-orders being rejected and certain products being removed from their website fuelling further concern for the daddy of game UK retail these are worrying times.

Without credit insurance GAME will be forced to buy all their games, up front, in cash, like the rest of us. This would be a huge problem for their cash flow and likely mean they will have to order less of fewer games as they seek to steady the ship and regain their insurances…

All in all concerning times for a retailer, which for many, including yours truly, holds not only dear memories but also provides a Saturday shopping excursion haven…

- Richard “Rax” Burley
@Raxous

To get a whopping 40% off all purchases (excluding preorders) simply enter the following code at the checkout: ACB18MARCH

 Games on offer include Call of Juarez, Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, RUSE, and Prince of Persia! This promotion is only open to UK residents and will only last until midnight on 28th February, so get in there to quick!

Game:

Not since the first Guitar Hero has there been a game that so effectively replicated the experience of being something that you are not. Where Guitar Hero made you feel like a stadium filling rock god, Kinect Sports can, at the best of times, make you feel like an Olympic level athlete, and at the worst of times make you feel like you’ve come last place at the Special Olympics.

From the start of the game your avatar finds themselves standing in the centre of a stadium filled to the brim with spectators. Raising your hands above your head can instigate an impromptu Mexican Wave, as well as fill the arena with the cheers of your fans. Waving your hands along the sky line can set of fireworks and rile the crowd up even more, making you feel like a mega star.

Upon confirming your avatar selection, which includes all of the avatars that are on your console as well as a number of generic guest avatars, you are then able to start playing. Before each game starts Kinect Sports asks each player to raise their hands in to the air to confirm that they are the players that need to be tracked by the camera. It is a simple system that cuts out a lot of needless profile switching and character selections that so many other games suffer from.

Once you are all set up there are several sports to choose from:
As an Englishman the first sport that I decided to check out was football (soccer to Americans). In real life I do not care for the beautiful game in the slightest, and haven’t played a Fifa game since Fifa 95 on the Mega Drive, yet I found Kinect Sport’s representation of football utterly compelling. Rather than having to run on the sport to dribble the ball, Kinect Sport’s football focuses more on passing the ball, and shooting for the goal. When you gain possession of the ball arrows will appear on screen directing you where members of your team are that are not being covered by members of the opposite team.

Football is my favourite sport in the game, despite detesting the real life sport

With a simple kick you can pass the ball up field to your team mate until one player gets close enough to the goal to take a shot at it. Should the opposing team take possession of the ball the game requires you to shift left and right with the aim of blocking their shots and regaining control of the ball. On the default difficulty the opponents are beyond inept, but this goes a long way towards creating the feeling that you are awesome at football. Choosing the higher difficulties may bring you crashing down to reality, as even on the second highest difficulty the opposite team develop cat like reflexes.

When the opposite team gets close enough to the goal you take control of the goalie – a small target will appear on screen indicating where their shot is heading, and you are given a small space of time to block the shot, or concede a goal. Football can be played in two player, with both players working together, or against each other. At times it can be possible to lose track of what is going on, but overall it is a rewarding experience.

The second sport I decided to try out was the track and field events. In track and field you start with a 100m sprint, followed by Javelin throw, long jump, discus, and finally hurdles. Of all of the games this is easily the most exhausting, as it requires you to sprint on the spot. Rather than tracking your actual speed Kinect Sports determines your speed by how high you lift your knees when running, as well as the speed.

The track events focus on the height of your knees more than the speed at which you move

It is all incredibly easy to play. For instance, when throwing the javelin, or performing the long jump, you are required to run on the spot. When the time is right for you to either throw your javelin, perform the long jump, or leap over hurdles, you simply perform the action associated with it when the ground beneath you turns green. Much like in the real sports should you jump or throw too late it counts as a foul and no score is recorded for you in that round. Each event – apart from the races – is made up of three rounds, with only your highest score being taken in to account, meaning you have plenty of opportunities to get to grips with it.

Beach Ball, Table Tennis, and Bowling play exactly as you would expect them to; mimicking the real life sports as closely as possible. In table tennis you can control the angle and the spin of the ball by tilting your hand. Likewise with bowling you can step left and right to line up shots, and control the angle of the ball by tilting your hand when you throw the ball. It will probably take a few attempts to get used to – what with having no physical item in your hand – but once you do it becomes quite easy to knock out strike after strike.

Beach Ball plays exactly as you would expect it – you knock the ball back and forth over the net, and occasionally you will need to jump in to the air and then hit the ball back. It works perfectly well, and can be quite fun, but of all the games Beach Ball left the least impression on me.

Boxing, however, irritates me. Despite Rare’s best efforts Boxing too easily descends in to the realm of random flailing and can be frustrating as hell in two player. Although the game wants you to take your time planning your shots and meticulously block, it is just too easy to spin your hands wildly to pick up a win. If you successfully block an attack then your next punch will do added damage, however if an opponent is flinging their arms about it is almost impossible to get a hit in.

Boxing is a bit of a let down

This is really disappointing because Boxing was one of the games that I was looking forward to the most. To be fair this is not entirely Rare’s fault, it is more a damning testament to the character of the people that use this cheap tactic… such as my wife!

Upon completing each game you are asked to pose for the cameras. At this point you realise that Kinect has been filming you the whole time you have been playing and has put together a highlight reel of your game. Watching these short videos back is incredibly amusing, and should you choose to do so, you can upload them to www.kinectshare.com to share with your friends. Likewise if you do not want to broadcast how stupid you look you can disable this feature in the options, and any video that is not uploaded will be deleted almost instantly.

One area that is a little disappointing is that when performing your poses you are actually quite limited in what you can do. This is because the game has very set parameters for where you can be standing and what parts of your body you can use. For instance, while you can jump up and down, flex your muscles, kick, or bow, you cannot do anything too extravagant – such as break dancing – simply because the game will not allow it.

Rather than this being a limitation with Kinect, I suspect that this has been a specific choice from the developers, because the game tends to map your movements fairly loosely outside of the game. Evidence for this theory comes in the way that you navigate your menus; unlike other games like Your Shape or Kinectimals, the area that you point to on the menus does not map 100% to the angle at which you are pointing. With Kinect Sports’ menus I constantly had the feeling that the pointer was actually a few inches lower than I was actually pointing.

No amount of calibrating seems to have changed this, and other Kinect enabled games, as well as the Kinect Hub, map my movements more accurately. This is not a major issue by any means, as it is easy to compensate for, but seems to be a strange choice by Rare.

As well as being able to play exhibition matches of each of the sports, there are at least two mini games per sport that revolve around scoring points. For instance the two mini games for Football are a goalie game in which you must stop as many balls from hitting the net in a row, and a striker game in which you need to hit specific targets inside of the goal, which is defended by a capable goal keeper.

The final mode is Party Mode, which allows you to group together in to teams and take turns at each of the sports, sort of like a tournament mode. In Party Mode each player gets to wear some outlandish mascot outfits, which are quite amusing.

As well as being a ton of fun to play, Kinect Sports features some really lavish production values. The game features a huge number of licensed tracks, such as We Are the Champions by Queen, that play during the replays of your particularly good attempts. There is something so heart warmingly ridiculous about seeing your avatar charging down the 100m track to the Chariots of Fire theme tune, and that goes a long way towards making this game so likeable. It is little things like this that really helps make Kinect Sports stand out from their competitors, Sports Champions on PS3 and Wii Sports Resort on Wii.

Kinect Sports can track 2 players at a time, although more people can play the turn based Party Mode

One of the best things about Kinect Sports is that it is one of those rare games (no pun intended) that is actually as much fun to watch people playing as it is to actually play yourself, which makes it ideal for a party setting. One of the most amusing moments for me came when watching my brother and his wife playing the long jump, with my sister in law mistiming her jump completely and barrelling through the sand pit waving her arms in disappointment.

While bowling can be played in 4 player, as can the turn based party mode games, Kinect Sports can only track two players at a time. This is not a major hindrance, and actually seems to be a wise move, as having four players standing side by side flailing their arms and legs about would likely lead to some sort of injury or damage to property.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 4/5 There is a wonderful bright clean look to the game that is typical of a Rare game. The use of your own Xbox Avatar goes a long way towards personalising the experience for you.

Sound: 5/5 Everything about the sound in the game, from the commentators, the crowds, the sounds of the events, and the music that plays during the replays creates a wonderful atmosphere.

Gameplay: 4/5 Exhilarating and exhausting fun, especially at parties. This game manages what few other games can, and really puts you in the place of these athletes in the way that no other game possibly could.

Longevity: 3/5 The inclusion of online mutliplayer goes a long way towards prolonging the life of this game, and it will likely become a party favourite for millions as word of mouth spreads. Having said that when playing solo it may become less appealing after you have played each of the sports through a few times.

Overall: 4 out of 5

This may be a controversial statement but I am going to make it anyway: The existence of Kinect is entirely justified by the creation of this game alone. Much like any good first party launch software this game not only highlights what this device can do, it also acts as inspiration for future games from other developers, showing them exactly how to make a great Kinect game.

- Luke Mears

Erm… as the final medal table, to the right, reveals… No.

As has now become tradition, South Korea swept away all before them, dominating the competition totally with a crushing 3 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze medals. The rest of the world, led by good old Blighty mind, could only manage a fairly modest 1 gold and 1 silver for second place (The UK was joined by Germany and Brazil on the same medal count). With the US, Australia, Sweden and the Ukraine making up the numbers all with 1 gold medal each.

So despite failing to win by some margin, the UK can be proud to be amongst the “best of the rest” and in truth the 30,000+ spectators and the 10s of millions of Internet viewers who followed every sniper, hair-pin bend, base build and long range free kick were rewarded with more than their fair share of truly exceptional gaming moments.

Us Brits can be particularly proud of David “Daveyskills” Kelly, who put in a brutally clinical performance in securing a well-deserved gold medal for Forza Motorsport on the XBox 360, claiming a much deserved $7,000 on the way!

But ensuring we came second and not third fell to George “Monkey” Boothby who fought hard for, and claimed, his silver for extraordinary fret work in the Guitar Hero part of the competition.

When you add to this the fact that the UK’s best previous attempt netted only 6th place and that the team this time was comprised of a mere 6 brave souls (compared to South Korea’s 26 players!) the achievement is even more laudable!

So we can once again say that Britain is home to some of the very best drivers and guitarists, and the rest of the world must content themselves with Warcraft III, Star-Craft, Fifa 10, Tekken 6 and TrackMania, etc. Well, I for one will happily take cars and guitars and leave all the other nonsense to the rest of the world…

- Raxous

With South Korea dominating as is now the norm, the UK did exceptionally well in beating their previous best placing of 6th, especially considering they had 6 competitors to South Korea’s 26!

Responsible for this upturn in fortunes were David “Daveyskills” Kelly who brought home the all-important gold for Forza on the Xbox 360 and the no less skilful George “Monkey” Boothby who claimed his excellent silver for his top plucking on Guitar Hero.

So can we expect a superb first place finish at the next WCG for the UK?
Unlikely, but anything is possible, so get playing people and let’s bring the 11th trophy home to good old Blighty!

A more detailed report will follow as a main article on the site…

RYU GA GOTOKU: OF THE END (note the lack of a numeral in the title) replaces complex gangland intrigue with something more left-field entirely as zombie armaggeddon comes to the imaginary Tokyo nightspot of Kamurocho. This kind of wild deviation from previous games is not without precedent, of course – the third game in the series and the first on next-gen consoles, 2007′s RYU GA GOTKU: KENZAN re-imagined the series’ characters in the context of early 17th century Kyoto. KENZAN remains unreleased outside of Japan, likely due to the extreme cultural specificity of its setting; the same problem is unlikely to afflict a game about blowing away thirty thousand zombies with a sniper-rifle the size of a giraffe’s neck.

RYU GA GOTOKU: OF THE END promises a significant overhaul of the game’s mechanics, building on the refreshing anthology structure of RYU GA GOTOKU 4 and supplementing the exploration and random battles structure with free-roaming zombie-killing and a new focus on upgradeable firearms. Each of the four characters comes equipped with a special weapon, as well as being able to use guns and grenades found around the game. Also new to the series is the ability to control vehicles, with tanks and jeeps featured in the video. The series’ Heat Action mechanic also receives a new focus on bullet-time shooting and destruction of environmental hazards. New social activities include ping-pong and pachinko to go alongside series stalwarts like golf, fishing and karaoke, and the popular hostess sub-games excised from the western release of YAKUZA 3 also make a return.

Most intriguing is the promise of co-op play, with the ability to co-ordinate special attacks with a partner  to take down tougher enemies. Whether or not this will take the form of online co-op or something else remains to be seen. More details are sure to emerge between now and the game’s release, which is likely to be around March in Japan and perhaps a year later everywhere else if past form is anything to go by.

- Elliot Mears

In our second edition of Speaking With… we begin to develop something of a pattern by continuing to interview the people behind of some of the best looking downloadable titles of the year. Last time we spoke with Jamie Cheng about fabulous looking cartoony brawler Shank, while this time we speak with Rob Hewson, Senior Creative Designer at Dark Energy Digital.

Dark Energy Digital’s latest title, Hydrophobia, is an ambitious title that pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a downloadable title. Hydrophpobia is the first in a series of games that more resemble a full retail released game than your typical downloadable title. Featuring unparalleled water physics, thanks to their own HydroEngine, and a thought provoking storyline revolving around global overpopulation, Hydrophobia won several awards at E3 2010, including best downloadable title from Gametrailers.com.

The story revolves around two opposing real world ideologies, Malthusian and Cornucopian. The Malthusians believe that there is only a set number of people that can possibly live on the planet before we exhaust our resources and damn everyone else; in the game the Malthusians spread their propaganda with the message ‘Save the World, Kill Yourself’. Conversely the Cornucopians believe that science and technological advancement can help get the most out of our resources and sustain any growth in population that we experience. Got it?

Now we hand over to Rob to hear more about this great looking game.

First of all can you tell us a little about Dark Energy Digital and your role in the company?

Dark Energy believes as a company that digital distribution is the future, and is committed to pushing back the boundaries of download gaming. We’re a technology driven company and want to explore new types of gameplay by introducing revolutionary tech like HydroEngine.

My role as Senior Creative Designer involves working with the wider design team on the gameplay mechanics and levels, and specifically working with the narrative team to develop the script and collectables, direct motion capture sessions and push the big picture vision of the project. I also spend a lot of time with the press and consumers promoting the game.

As a developer working in Britain how do you feel about the new Government dropping the proposed tax breaks for the UK Games Industry?

Fortunately I don’t have the burden of the financial side on my shoulders personally, but I do think it’s a shame that Britain is losing so many studios. However there’s no point in complaining about it, you have to adapt and be creative and push on regardless; there’s no better way to prove the value of the industry to the UK Government than by being successful.

On to a slightly more cheerful subject, what games have you been playing recently, and which developers do you admire?

Up until about a week ago we’ve been in serious crunch mode for Hydrophobia, and I’ve been travelling a lot to promote the game. So at the moment I’m into bite sized gaming that I can dip in and out of. I’ve completed Braid and Portal for the second time, I’m doing the Portal: Still Alive challenge maps, a bit of Peggle here and there and working through Super Mario Galaxy 2. Oh and I’ve just recently downloaded Limbo which I’ve almost completed.

Developers I admire… Valve certainly, Nintendo of course, and I’m very enthusiastic about the newer starts-ups and indies like Media Molecule en all. I think development in general is the healthiest it has been in years, if not financially then certainly in creativity terms.

As the title suggests, water plays a big part in Hydrophobia

Your latest title Hydrophobia will soon be available to download on Xbox Live Arcade. Can you provide us with a bit of background on the setting of the game?

We wanted we what call a ‘tangible future’ – a story setting based on the trends and forecasts for near future politics, science and technology. We also wanted to sidestep a lot of clichés and create something original and compelling.

The game is set in the mid 21st century when (according to UN projections) over 9 billion people will inhabit the earth and not enough resources will be available to sustain them. The result is conflict erupting over the most precious resource of all – water, and the existing ideologies of Malthusianism versus Cornucopianism are pushed to the fore.

It takes place onboard the Queen of the World; which is the largest ship ever built and the last refuge of the wealthy elite of the old capitalist world. Onboard the Five Founding Fathers, who are of the Cornucopian persuasion, pursue science and technology as a means to solving the ‘global population flood’. On the eve of the 10th Anniversary celebrations, one of the five – a nanotechnology company called NanoCell, is about to announce a breakthrough in their research into purifying seawater at the molecular level to make the desserts bloom.

At this moment Neo Malthusian terrorists attack and our reluctant heroine is caught on the flooding lower decks of the ship with only one goal – survival.

And in terms of gameplay, how would you describe it?

It’s a full on 3rd person action adventure – something which has never been done on XBLA before, and revolves around the key element of HydroEngine; the worlds first true fluid dynamics engine for games, which models flowing water as a physics simulation which behaves completely realistically.

This results in gameplay unlike anything you have played before where you can manipulate the water itself in what we call ‘flow combat’. It’s entirely dynamic, never the same twice and results in huge amount of emergent gameplay. You can use the environment to take down enemies with floating oil fires, electricity, drowning and even underwater combat if you elect to flood an area entirely.

It has been widely reported that Hydrophobia originally started life as a mutliplatform boxed retail product, what led to the decision to make it a downloadable title, and why is it currently an Xbox exclusive?

Our goal from the outset was to develop a AAA action game with a modest budget and small team. We built our own engine and editor InfiniteWorlds following a unique procedural approach, which allowed us to implement the Immediate-Edit-Play feature and Simultaneous Multi-user Editing. This was crucial for the experimentation and iterative design required to work with real water for the first time – we had lots of ideas but we had to figure out what worked in practice.

This unique approach gave us another benefit – the procedural technology resulted in a vastly reduced file size, and XBLA as a platform had evolved to the point where we realised we could deliver this as an XBLA title and redefine the boundaries for download games. Microsoft were incredibly excited about the prospect and the rest, as they say, is history.

How long has Hydrophobia been in development and in what other ways has it changed along the way?

On and off, it must be almost 5 years. I know this because I still have the original design document from September 2005. It’s changed massively – we had to let it evolve organically because in truth nobody knew what the implication of HydroEngine would be. We had to experiment and tweak and adjust – cut back on things which didn’t work and enhance the things which did. Simultaneously we kept on developing the narrative to create this deep, rich universe which is closely coupled to the gameplay and mechanics.

One good example is the characters reactions to the water. At first we implemented it completely realistically, so the character would respond to every wave and it was a struggle wade through the environments. However we discovered that this was actually very frustrating; all of the players attention was consumed simply by moving around. There was a big debate, and it was actually quite controversial in the team but we decided to tone it down for the sake of the fun factor – which always has to be priority. You can still feel all the forces acting on the character correctly, but it has been considerably dampened to allow the game to be, well, a game.

Hydrophobia is unlike any other downloadable game we've ever seen

How many episodes do you currently plan on releasing?

We don’t like the term episode – it’s doesn’t quite capture the scope of what we are doing. Hydrophobia should be thought of as a trilogy, with plenty of scope to expand deeper into the universe beyond that.

Will each instalment be a complete stand alone experience or is downloading every instalment a necessity?

Every instalment is a complete stand alone game, but you wouldn’t watch The Empire Strikes Back on its own – you need the other instalments to enjoy it to the fullest. You can certainly purchase and enjoy each individually, but there’s a wider context and bigger story arc across the whole trilogy.

What were some of the major influences on the development of Hydrophobia?

Protagonist wise we wanted to avoid the usual gaming cliché of a ‘beautiful but deadly’ female lead and have a flawed, reluctant hero who has to grow and evolve. If Ripley and John McClane had a daughter who suffered a childhood tragedy and had an engineering degree, then she’d be a lot like Kate Wilson.

In terms of games, we were probably most influenced by the atmosphere of Dead Space, the narrative elements of Half Life 2 and Bio Shock, the action of Uncharted 2… but Hydrophobia is really it’s own game. Nothing else plays like it and nothing else feels like it. We worked very hard to create a completely original experience in every sense.

Female lead characters  aren’t all that common in games, barring a few obvious examples such as Lara Croft or Faith from Mirror’s Edge, in what ways does Kate differentiate herself from the standard heroine?

Again it’s this idea of having a flawed, reluctant hero – not a kick ass sex Goddess back flipping her way through wave after wave of enemies. At the start of the game she’s just out to survive and she’s no match for the Malthusians – there’s a real sense of vulnerability about her. However she begins to realise that to survive she has to fight back and to an extent fight her own demons. The Malthusians have blocked every exit; the only routes left open are those they are using for their own objectives – which are obviously heavily guarded. So there’s inevitability about the way Kate is drawn into the fight, the politics and the responsibility of becoming the hero.

The water never behaves in the same way twice

Does the game feature a mutliplayer component? If not what have you done to increase replayability in the game?

We wanted to focus purely on a single player experience but you’re right – it has to be massively replayable. Firstly this comes naturally from HydroEngine because you never get the same battle twice – flowing water means the gameplay space is in constant flux at the whim of Sir Isaac Newton.

There’s also about 200 collectables to find, including nearly 50 medals, plus items, documents, emails and even real quotes from Malthus. There are also characters which you may have failed to save the first time, and saving them unlocks more collectables and medals, and there are areas which you might have tackled in a stealthy manor before which you can go back and flood to see how they play in underwater combat.

On top of all that we give you a challenge room when you complete the game with an entirely new, awe-inspiring mechanic – the ability to directly manipulate the water itself to launch enemies and objects, combining elements to get the most creative kills for a higher score on the leaderboards. Oh, and there are also leaderboards throughout the main campaign too.

It seems every other game these days takes place in a nuclear wasteland, after a natural disaster, or during some sort of zombie outbreak. Why do you think so many games these days are set in dystopian futures? Do you game developers know something the rest of us don’t?

Conflict = drama and destruction = gameplay (most of the time) so those kind of settings lend themselves to a game naturally. However clichés are tiresome, which is one of the reasons we went for this tangible future. We’re not imagining a dystopia; we’re dealing with the real, palpable one which is just around the corner.

If I wasn’t already convinced to buy Hydrophobia how would you persuade me to buy it in one sentence?

Hydrophobia is the beginning of a mammoth new IP, the debut of the world’s first true fluid dynamics engine which results in spectacular gameplay unlike anything you have played before, and is the most ambitious download title to date.

And finally, come clean; which side are you one – Malthusian or Cornucopian?

The reality is that both points of view are credible. Yes we should be optimistic and believe that we can solve the world’s problems through innovation and technology, but we also need to accept the fact population growth needs to be controlled. As with most things in life the rational stance resides somewhere within the blurry intersection of the two opposing viewpoints.

Before signing off do you have any sites/facebook groups/twitter feeds that you want to share with our readers?

Yes indeed! @DarkEnergyD on Twitter and Dark Energy Digital on Facebook. We always try to respond to everybody and believe that the most valuable feedback comes from the gamers themselves, so please get in touch.

Rob, thank you for your time.

Hydrophobia will be available to download on Xbox Live Arcade towards the end of September. Stay tuned to The Newb Review for our review of the game around launch time.

-Luke Mears

In a change to your regular feature, this week Luke Mears takes the reins of the Thoroughly Underrated Games You Should Probably Play to bring you a look at an oft overlooked gem on the Xbox 360.

Anyone that has ever listened to The Newb Review Podcast, or read any of The Newb Review Shop Bargain articles Luke has written, will probably have an idea of what his selection of criminally underrated titles are. Ok, enough stalling; without further ado, let’s take a trip to Piñata Island in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

Never let it be said that there is no heart in modern gaming. Sure, the biggest blockbuster game of all time is all about shooting foreign people in the face, and the Xbox 360’s flagship exclusive titles are all about blowing aliens in to a fine paste.

But if you were to venture into your local games retailer and wade through all the games about burley space marines soaked in lashings of blood, if you’re really lucky then you might just find one of the best family friendly games available on any console.

Made by legendary British developers Rare (makers of Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, and Perfect Dark on the N64) the Viva Piñata series represents a concerted effort on Microsoft’s part to establish a kid-friendly franchise.

The original game was launched alongside an animated TV show, that in all fairness was actually quite good for what it was, but never really managed to capture the imagination of the mass market.

While most of the creatures are based on real life animals, there are a few mythical beasties in the mix too.

The premise of the game is simple; you are a new occupant of a patch of scrubland on Piñata Island. Piñata Island is a very special place where various types of living Piñata roam in the wild. As the caretaker of the land it is up to you to clear out the land and grow crops in order to attract different species of Piñata.

Each species is based on an actual animal (although there are a few fictional animals hidden away in there too) and is made out of colourful strips of paper, and filled with sweets. Because of their sweet nature the creatures have names that are puns based on sweet foods, such as the Profitamole and the Fudgehog.

As well as having amusing names, the Piñatas are exceptionally well designed by the team at Rare. While the Piñata cannot speak, they each have their own distinctive grunt, which makes identifying them at a distance very easy.

While it has a very strong kid friendly aesthetic, you would be wrong to think that Viva Piñata is a game exclusively for kids. The work involved in maintaining and expanding your garden can be quite complicated, especially considering that you can only put a certain amount of stuff in your garden.

As you progress you unlock more and more types of Piñata and much like any ecosystem, each Piñata has a role to play. For instance, the first Piñata you unlock is a Whirlm, a bright orange worm.

In order to unlock the next Piñata, the Sparrowmint (a sparrow), you need to amass a certain number of worms for your Sparrowmints to eat. However, once you have two members of the same species, the only way to increase their numbers is through breeding.

Even Sasgorillas need love

Don’t worry, there’s nothing smutty about the breeding in Viva Piñata. By matching certain criteria, such as giving your Piñata a specific outfit, or growing the right crop, you can make your Piñata get in the mood for romance.

Once a heart shaped icon is above their head, simply lead on Piñata to the other. This will initiate a maze based mini game in which you take control of your Piñata and steer them towards their partner, collecting love hearts along the way.

Once the pair are reunited, they retire to a secluded spot and perform a romance dance. This is not a euphemism by the way. Each species has their own unique dance, such as line dancing and tap dancing.

While the first game was moderately aimless (beyond the whole “catch as many as you can!” angle) the sequel, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, introduced a number of brilliant new features to the game, including an actual purpose behind your Piñata hunting.

You see, Professor Pester, the Big Bad in the series, attempted to steal all of the Piñata information from the Piñata island database, but somehow managed to delete all of the data. So it’s up to you, the newest resident on the island, to capture all of the Piñata and send them to parties all around the world in order to repair the database.

The character designs are exceptionally cute and charismatic

A new challenge mode was added to the game which required specific Piñata, such as a Horstachio wearing a pirate hat. These challenges added an extra sense of structure to the game and really gave the player something to work towards.

Viva Piñata has always had a small but passionate fan base, and a focus on the community was introduced in Trouble in Paradise. Players could take photographs of their Piñata and upload them to the Viva Piñata website for other players to admire and covet.

In a feature that was designed to accommodate the more charitable players in the Viva Piñata community, you can even upload your Piñata to the website for other players to download through a print out card based system.

Here I offer my own Sasgorilla, based on Hercule Poirot, for any reader to use as they please.

The basic premise of this feature is that the Piñata’s basic information is translated into a barcode, which can then be printed out and scanned using the Xbox Live Vision Camera (and presumably the soon to launch Project Natal, or whatever they’re calling it these days).

While this obviously offers an unparalleled possibility for cheating, it is a brilliant feature for those that perhaps do not have the skill and abilities to unlock certain Piñata.

The game features 2 player local co-op (perfect for parents to help their children with tending to their garden, or for couples to find a new reason to argue with each other) and up to 4 player online co-op, so if your child or partner is struggling then there really is no excuse for not diving in and giving them a hand.

The only problem I had with Trouble in Paradise is that it felt very much the same as the original game for the first few hours. It’s not until the new areas of Piñata Island, the Pintarctic and the Dessert Desert, are unlocked along with the dozen or so new Piñata, that this begins to feel like an entirely new game.

However, if you’re entirely new to the series then there really is no better place to start thanks to a ton of new features, tweaked controls, and a new found structure that the original game was sorely missing.

You can dress your Pinata up in a number of amusing outfits.

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is one of those rare sequels (excuse the pun) that takes the original game, one that we all felt was magnificent, and improve on it in every way imaginable. The real sticking point for me is that as much as I loved the original Viva Piñata, I simply cannot play it anymore thanks to the advances that Rare have made in Trouble in Paradise. I don’t think there’s a better compliment that you can give a game than that.

Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise was released on the Xbox 360 in late 2008. It is available to buy from The Newb Review Store for a mere £5.65 as of writing this article. Do yourself a favour and pick up a copy.

–Luke Mears–

UK based developer Rebellion are no strangers to the Aliens Versus Predator (AVP) franchise. One of their first games was AVP for the Atari Jaguar, which is widely considered to be one of the console’s finest games. They returned to the franchise in 1999 to release Aliens Vs. Predator on the PC, another critically lauded title. Yet in 2007 they released Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem for the PSP, which was generally panned by reviewers. However, no-one can argue that they don’t know the source material.

Rebellion’s latest offering to the AVP franchise is something of an uneven experience. With a fairly short single player campaign that is broken up into three modes, the Marine game, the Alien game, and the Predator game. The Marine sections are little more than a painfully generic shooter, while the Alien and Predator sections blend melee combat, stealth, and platforming to create a (mostly) interesting game, even if it is a little short.

In terms of story, the game is a little light. The evil Weyland-Utani corporation has discovered an ancient Predator pyramid, and in their quest to mine it for information, have unleashed an Alien swarm. Hearing their high tech burglar alarm going off, the Predators descend on the planet in order to protect their secrets. Caught in the middle of the Weyland-Utani corporation, the Aliens, and the Predators is a small band of Marines who are stranded on the planet thanks to a surprise attack by the Predators.

Of the three campaigns, the Alien campaign is the most fun, despite being only 5 levels long. As the Alien you have no weapons other than your claws and gigantic tail, so combat is a melee based affair. Pressing the right bumper performs a quick attack, left bumper performs a heavy attack, and holding both bumpers will make your character block, which is only really useful against the Predator whose primary weapons are his wrist blades.

After successfully blocking an attack you can press either of the bumpers to perform a counter attack, which deals massive damage to your foes. If your opponent is attempting to block your attacks then the only way to break their block is to perform a heavy attack. This adds a little depth to the combat, but for the most part the melee combat is a clumsy and imprecise affair.

The Aliens can climb any surface.

The added bonus of playing as the Alien is that you can climb on any surface, Spider-Man style. When facing a wall, or ledge, simply hold the right trigger and you can crawl as much as you like. While the shift in perspective can be a little disorienting at times, overall the climbing works pretty well. Wall climbing and hiding in darkness is key to the Alien campaign, as it is far easier to take out your enemies by sneaking up behind them and performing a quick kill by pressing the X button.

Quick kills are suitably gory, for example the Aliens can impale humans with their tails, or chew through the humans skulls with their mini mouths. If you come across an unarmed human you can tackle them to the ground and prepare them for a face raping at the hands of a lone Face Hugger, which quickly jumps on your victim and deposits the Alien embryo in the victim’s stomach.

The Predator game is a close contender for best campaign, with most of the same controls applying to the Predator, except you are unable to climb surfaces. Instead the Predator can perform a massive jump in order to get in to the perfect position to kill your targets. As with the Alien stealth is your best option. While you do have projectile weapons, in the form of the plasma cannon, the gun has very limited ammo due to the amount of power each shot consumes. The power for your weapons can be refilled by draining human generators of electricity, these generators are few and far between, so more often than not you may find yourself being without your gun for lengthy periods of time. Predators also perform quick kills, and the Predator kills are the most gruesome. You can decapitate humans, or rip their spinal column out. On a visceral level these quick kills are visually impressive and would gross out most people. In a good way of course.

The Marine campaign is by far the most traditional, and it is also the longest. Armed with a pistol and two other guns, either a sniper rifle, machine gun, or shotgun, you traipse your way through one dark corridor after another. For the most part, your primary light source can be compared to the light found in the glove compartment of a mini metro. With the torch light doing little to illuminate your surroundings, it is good news that you can pop off a flare with a simple button press.

While the flares only last a few seconds, they dramatically increase the amount of light available. This lack of light is no omission on the developer’s part; it was clearly intended to increase the tension. There’s no arguing that it can be incredibly tense wandering down a pitch black corridor with only the sound of something scuttling around in the darkness and the recognisable bleep of your motion sensor, but after a while you may find yourself wishing this futuristic colony had an electrician on call.

You sometimes come across another Marine or two to help you out

The Marine campaign is chocked full of cliché characters, with tough talking Latina Marine Tequila (yes, really) being the worst offender of the lot. The other Marines you encounter shout generic military jargon at you when you pass them, and if I ever hear another Mercenary say “I think that’s the last of them!” only to get torn apart moments later, I may well dive head first off the top of a multi-storey car park.

In overall terms the single player is disappointing because the three campaigns altogether only last about 8 or so hours; with each of these campaigns happening at the same time, in the same place. This means that you will find yourself playing the same level two or three times, just from a different perspective. Fortunately the developers give you the choice of which campaign to play, rather than dictating which species you can play as.

The level design, in general, is nothing to write home about. Levels tend to range from dark facilities, to dark jungles, to dark underground temples. Even in the Jungle level, where the sun was clearly visible in the sky, it was exceptionally dark. While the Aliens can see in the dark, and the Predator has three vision modes (regular vision, thermal vision for seeing humans, and Alien spotting vision) the Marine’s reliance on a piddly flash light and short lived flares can make the single player a chore.

Aliens hide in the darkness and spring out at you from nowhere.

So, whilst the single player is a bit meagre, the online multiplayer is quite impressive. Sure, it has the generic deathmatch modes, but there are also some decent game types. Infestation has eight players, with one player randomly cast as the Alien and the other seven as Marines. When the Alien kills a Marine, that Marine becomes an Alien and must work to finish off the rest of the survivors. When there is only one Marine left the Aliens have 30 seconds to kill him, or that surviving Marine wins the game. While each round has a time limit, how long you survive depends on the people you are playing with and how you work together.

Survival mode has four players playing as Marines fighting off wave after wave of Aliens in cramped conditions, surrounded by darkness. Each player’s health bar is displayed on screen, so if one of your team mates wanders off into the darkness, you can see if he is being slaughtered. Couple that with the terrific sound effects, and you have a wonderfully tense game. Most games of Survival that I have played have only lasted a few minutes due to the sheer numbers of Aliens that swarm you all at once, so Survival seems like the perfect game mode for someone that wants a quick game online.

Predators tend to favour their wrist blades in combat over anything else

The other online modes are made up of Deathmatch (all against all), Team Deathmatch (species vs species), Predator Hunt (a team of Marines vs a Predator, with the killer of the Predator earning the right to be the next Predator), and Domination (King of the Hill) are all well put together, but nothing particularly special.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 4/5 While the character models are particularly good, the levels themselves tend to be overly dark. I understand the darkness is an intentional design choice to heighten tension, but towards the latter part of the Marine campaign especially, they are just ridiculously dark.

Sound: 4/5 There are only a few voice actors in the game, only Lance Henricksen offers a particularly memorable performance as Karl Bishop Weyland, evil CEO of the Weyland-Utani Corporation. The sound effects are particularly good, especially the Marine’s motion sensor, machine gun, and the Alien’s screeches.

Gameplay: 3/5 The Alien and Predator have interesting abilities, focusing more on stealth and melee combat than anything else. Although they are the shortest of the Campaigns, they could potentially have worn out their welcome if they had been significantly longer. The Marine campaign is more traditional and becomes more and more tedious as it progresses. Online multiplayer has two brilliant modes, Infestation and Survival, and the other more traditional game modes are competent.

Longevity: 2/5 The three single player campaigns will last about 8 hours, and each campaign has a number of collectables: audio diaries for the Marines, Royal Jelly Canisters for the Aliens and Trophy Belts for the Predators. However, these will likely only appeal to the most obsessive compulsive gamers out there. The online modes will probably keep you coming back, so long as there are enough players still playing.

Overall: 3 Surprise Face Huggings out of 5. A short single player experience that offers little replay value is propped up by a decent online multiplayer mode. While there are no major flaws with the game, there are a number of minor issues that all mount up to decrease the overall quality of the game.

[starreview tpl=16]

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Game: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Format: Wii
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher:Nintendo

It’s been 3 years now since New Super Mario Bros was released on the DS. Finally it has a sequel, but this time it’s returned on the Wii. And it’s returned with vengeance, horrible, horrible vengeance. Mario has never been so damn cruel and Joefeesh will tell you why…

I’m no expert when it comes to first person shooters, I’m not a massive fighting game fan and I couldn’t control a simulation racer to save my life, they just feel like I’m driving a milk float with my Nana looking over my shoulder, scowling (I love you Nan). I do, however, pride myself on being pretty damn good at platformers. Mario platformers especially. I loved the DS New Super Mario Bros and got through that without a problem. It was beautiful on the little DS screen, the controls were precise and it was addictive as hell. I played that thing through multiple times and my son still plays it. The newest installment on Wii seems to lack in most of the areas the DS game excelled in. Which is strange, considering that it’s pretty much a straight copy. It’s not an impressive looking title, to say the least, the controls aren’t as accurate using the suddenly, seemingly, stupidly shaped Wii remote and the difficulty level makes me want to tear my Wii apart to get to the disc so I can jump on it’s head! Don’t get me wrong, I got through the game, but I didn’t enjoy it. OK, maybe I did. My little boy on the other hand hasn’t got a chance in hell of getting through this game unassisted. By what I’ve read about the game elsewhere, opinion is a 90:10 split saying it’s too hard. The 10% are most likely the people who can beat a Mario game in 7 minutes.

Not every level is hard and actually most can be completed a lot easier if you forget collecting anything and simply run blindly, jumping on reaction to every freaky, little, brown mushroom and happy turtle you come across. What is it with those turtles anyway? They freak me out. They look at you with a blankly smiling face as they kill you with the tips of their fingers.

Making it look easy. Too Easy.

Before I get jumped on and bitch-slapped by every Nintendo fanboy, I’ll say that there is a lot to like about the game. Some will like the simple retro look and some will love the return to 2D Mario on the console. Many people including the very casual gaming crowd in general didn’t really ever warm to 3D Mario games. A lot of people will love the classic Mario gameplay of jumping on heads, collecting coins and getting around using the old style Mario overworld with the addition of mini levels every now and then, when you run into an enemy on the map. It is still a 2D Mario game and we all know what that means. There’s no denying there’s a great formula that remains in tact. The classic gameplay is there, although I do feel that the Wii remote d-pad isn’t as nice as the Nintendo DS d-pad. Also shaking the wii remote to do a spin jump seems utterly pointless and ice is a tad too slippy, making Winter levels very challenging. Other than that, Mario is still the king of platforming when it comes to control and fun gameplay. New powers available include a helicopter suit and penguin suit. The helicopter suit allows you to shake the Wii remote to be propelled up into the air and then float slowly down. This makes things a lot easier because when you fall down a gap, shaking the Wii remote propels you back up into the air and if you find yourself flying up into blocks, don’t worry because you’ll smash straight through them and continue upward instead of being rebounded downwards. The flying concept has been done before in Mario games but this feels different and is a good safety net. The penguin suit allows you to shoot ice just like the ice flower but as a penguin you can also slide along the ground to smash blocks and enemies and it’s pretty much a necessity on ice levels as you can walk on ice without slipping.

New item: The helicopter hat

The look of the game is going to play a major factor in game sales. My wife took one look and squealed with excitement. That is the reaction that many more casual gamers and lovers of the old series will have. Kids will see the game and straight away see their favourite game on the Nintendo DS. There’s an attachment people seem to make (including me) to the charming simple design of Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom in which he resides. Nintendo didn’t seem to feel the need to update the design far from the DS game. I would have preferred more detailed characters and backgrounds to test the Wii’s capabilities but I respect that a lot of the audience for this game don’t really care as long as it runs smoothly, carries the Mario style and has some little touches to make them smile. These boxes are all ticked. One of the things I love most is that the flowers and enemies react to the music. At certain points in the song the little turtles stop and do a little dance for two beats and the flowers bop along too. It’s totally insignificant, yet it makes me smile every time I notice. The backgrounds are very simple renders of mushroom kingdom peaks and dreary walls. Not really what I’d expect for a game that’s not doing much graphically in the foreground and after the super rich world of Mario Galaxy this doesn’t excite me one bit.

There’s not many people who wouldn’t recognize the main Mario tunes. New Super Mario Bros Wii goes the old school/new school route with all new mixes of the classic tunes along with new music in the same new age 8-bit style. It works really well for the game. There was no need for the full orchestra of Galaxy. Characters, collecting coins and bouncing off mushrooms heads all make exactly the kinds of noises you’d expect and they are as satisfying as always. The one sound I hate is the shrill ringing of the box that appears at the start of a level you’ve died on too many times.

When you die x number of times (when I tried it was 7), on the same level a green exclamation mark box will appear. Upon hitting it the game will ask if you would like to enter Super Guide Mode, where Luigi will play the level through until you ask to exit the mode. At this point you take over Luigi and carry on the level. This is there for those frustrating times when you just can’t do a level. For me it was a spit in my face when I was doing badly and I shouted abuse at the box before running swiftly away from it and straight into an oncoming missile only to be tormented by the box again. For some this is a great way to be able to progress through a game that gets too hard in certain levels. Some people, especially kids want to be allowed to experience a full game and why shouldn’t they be allowed too. Not everyone is as gifted or have as much time as the gamers who think the press button to win method is stupid. If you don’t like the box, don’t use it, it’s not there for you. The achievement of completing the game without using the box is something only those who don’t do it will experience.

Yoshi kicks ass. I wish you could keep him between levels though

This edition of Mario has a multiplayer mode where up to 4 people can play together cooperatively to try to finish the game or in a competitive mode where they compete to try to get the most coins and mess with each other. This is a great addition in theory and is undoubtedly a lot of fun. Playing alongside others makes the whole thing seem a lot funnier when you die falling down a hole because you were concentrating on shouting at the wife for wanting to pick up every last coin. You might think that cooperative multiplayer would make the game easier. In some situations it does help. For example one person can help the rest of the party get past a difficult part. As long as there is one person left playing, everyone else can press the A button to pop inside a bubble and float around completely safe until they decide to come out or the remaining player touches the bubble. This is great for getting the kids past sections where highly precise acrobatics are necessary. Sadly, though, playing alongside others in the new multiplayer mode, seems to punish for having more than one character on screen as the action becomes more hard to follow and bouncing off each others heads causes more horrible deaths in the depths of the mushroom kingdoms bottomless pits than it does good. I do however like that the option is there and, as I said, it is unmistakebly fun. Also, it’s jump in/jump out play so there’s a lot of flexibility to just sit down and start playing even if someone is in the middle of a level. There is no online multiplayer which is sorely missed as this is a game that so many people will have that it surely would have been used. Nintendo again fail to properly support online play.

I like the fact that Nintendo have brought a 2D Mario back to the home console. I think there is still a place for it, but the place for it could have been WiiWare as with a little scaling down this could have been WiiWare’s crowning piece. Of course it’s just not good business, and I fully accept that it was always going to be a disc based game as WiiWare just isn’t a big enough platform for this title to sell from. In all the game is well worth getting for Mario fans and families but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that Nintendo didn’t try to be innovative or fresh to justify that “New” in the title.

Review Round Up

GRAPHICS – 3/5 Just like the Mario you remember on the DS, up scaled and with new levels. Some nice effects and charming, as Mario always is but I expected much better artwork for the backgrounds.

SOUND – 4/5 No new tunes really grabbed me but the mixes of classic music really sound great and fit the game perfectly. Sound effects are satisfyingly true to the franchise.

GAMEPLAY – 3/5 Nintendo sets the bar for platforming. Sadly they’ve not surpassed their own bar on this one. Difficulty will hurt the kids and suck some of the fun out but the classic structure and gameplay are still there and compared with other Wii titles this is still in the big leagues in gameplay terms.

LONGEVITY – 3/5 It shouldn’t take more than 5-6 hours to get to the end but those missing golden coins on each level will call you back for more and you might want to have a separate playthrough with the kids or friends. There’s replay value there too.

OVERALL – 3/5 I do recommend the game as I have no doubt you will have fun and kids will have to play it under the playground law. I just didn’t find it as fun and balanced as I had hoped and we should expect more on the Wii, post Mario Galaxy.

[starreview tpl=16]