ICO (HD)

Details

Developer: Team ICO

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Reviewed Platform: PS3

Game Modes: Single Player

RPVP: $19.99* (Includes Shadow of the Colossus) Release Date (PS2): September 24, 2001 (North America)

Release Date (PS3): September 30, 2011 (Europe)

Overview

ICO starts with a horned young boy being imprisoned inside a castle.

The game itself is basically his attempt at escaping from the castle, where the player has to solve puzzles and fight mysterious beings to protect a young lady that is also imprisoned in the castle. She ,in turn, has the power to open special doors.

Plot

The Queen

There's not much to say here, the boy finds the girl at the beginning of the game and finds out that she can open special doors. So then, they try to escape the castle. Since she can't jump, climb, and fall as well as the boy, the player will have to change the environment so that she can progress as well.

She will be constantly under attack by "shadow creatures", so you have to stay on your toes.

Halfway through the game the "queen" appears, and she looks like a combination of the girl with the shadow creatures. Obviously she doesn't want the girl to escape, but you won't know why until you reach the end of the game.

Gameplay and Difficulty

Boy and girl on a saving bench

In the game you can jump, grab things such as wood sticks, swords, bombs, etc, pull and push boxes, activate switches, grab the girl to take her with you and also call her to go near you.

You will have to use this to create paths for the girl to progress across sections of the game, and  you might need to help her jump across gaps by grabbing her or push her from a higher spot.

The game isn't very difficult or very long and there's even a trophy to complete the game in less than 2 hours (even though it took me almost 7 hours to complete it on my first playthrough). The save system is also interesting because you can only save while sitting on special stone benches and you need to sit down with the girl to be able to do it.

The attacks on the girls normally happen when they arrive at a new zone or when a puzzle is completed. Also, if the girl is left alone in a room for a long time or the boy gets too far away a spontaneous attack will occur.

There are different types of shadow creatures, some climb walls and become "shadows" for a time, becoming immune to attacks, others are human shaped and some even fly.

They will try to take the girl to their spawning points and start to dragging her inside. The boy will have to fight the creatures with his horns if he is unarmed, or with a stick/sword. If the creatures manage to take the girl to their spawning points the boy will have to push her out before she disappears and you lose.

Opinion

I think that the best word to describe this game is the word 'different'. The music is very calm and fits into the desolate castle perfectly. The puzzles are good and the whole boy/girl interaction is interesting.

The controls aren't bad, with R1 you grab or call the girl, pretty much like in Shadow of the Colossus, where you use R1 to grab on to your enemies. The graphics aren't bad for a 2001 game and the overall ambience is pretty good.

The end is amazing considering the type of game: the normal turn of events near the end, the well though last boss mechanics and the satisfactory ending make this game something that you should not miss if you're into a different type of game.

Verdict: Recommended!

The Breakdown

Positive Aspects	Negative Aspects	Needs Improvement
Good gameplay. Has a good level interaction with the environment. Seamless transition between rooms. Good puzzles. Nice soundtrack. Amazing and beautiful castle design.	Occasional pathfinding issues on the girl's AI. The speed at which she climbs ladders...	The back story could have been better explored, although it gives the whole game a nice, mysterious aura.

My Playing Statistics

Time Played: 7 Hours

Trophies Unlocked: 9/16 (43%)

Number of Times Played: 1

*RPVP based on GameStop retail price for PS3

by Regateiro (Sabexbem)

Anomaly: Warzone Earth

Developer: 11 Bit Studios

Platform: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Xbox360

Release Date: April 2011

RPVP: 9.99€ (Steam)

Size: ~ 430MB (PC)

Genre: RTS, Reverse-Tower Defense

Overview and Plot

The story starts in the near future when parts of an alien spaceship fall on earth (more specifically in Baghdad and Tokyo) and the so-called “Anomalies” appear around them. Your first mission as the 14th Squad is to investigate the first anomaly in Baghdad, see what’s causing interference with the communication systems and find gather information about why and what is happening inside the anomaly (which is where the first mission ends).

Gameplay

The gameplay is simple: you control a given set of units that must complete objectives, such as destroying target buildings or simply reaching a specific point in the map. Obviously your enemy will do everything to stop you from doing just that. You path will be riddled with various forms of enemy machinery, from small laser towers, energy charged towers, giant cannons and so on. During the first couple of missions you can’t buy any units, but as you progress (the first 2 or 3 missions are like a tutorial where game elements are gradually introduced and explained) you will be able to buy or sell units. Also, along the way, new units will become available for purchase, each one with a set value of armor and power, which dictates how much damage they can do or take. Each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses and to be able to progress in more difficult missions or higher difficulty modes you will have to do some micromanagement, since each unit is better suited to deal with a specific kind of enemy. There is also a shield unit that doesn’t do any damage but instead, protects the 2 units around it, one in front of it and the one in its back. This protection comes in the form of a second health bar that regenerates with time should your units stop taking damage for a while. Each unit can be upgraded three times, each upgrade increasing its armor and damage values by a set amount. Each upgrade costs more than the previous one and to get money you need to gather rare minerals found through the missions. You also get some money just for killing enemies. Upgrades need to be well managed, since you need to decide which unit should be upgraded for each situation, since the money is scarce, at least on Story Mode.
You can modify the path your units take based on available roads in the map, and in most situations you must choose wisely, whether it is to take less time to get to your objective or to minimize the amount of enemies you will have to face. Your character (the captain of the 14th Squad) is the character you control directly, moving him to any spot by clicking on the map. With his combat suit, he needs to be constantly used to help your units in their mission. The combat su8it has several abilities that are introduced one at a time over the first couple of missions, except the first one with is the Repair ability, which you already begin the game with. Each ability can only be used a very limited number of times and recharges aren’t abundant so you have to manage them well.

At the end of each mission you may be awarded medals for your performance. The three medals are for Directionability (usually attained by going through the fastest path), Ruthlessness (killing lots of enemies) and Efficiency (usually ending a mission with a certain number of ability charges left). Moreover, each medal has 3 different ranks (bronze, silver and gold obviously). There are a couple of different game modes besides the story mode like the Baghdad Mayhem or Tokyo Raid where you have to go through a large level without your captain (meaning you can’t use any abilities) or beating a set number of enemy waves in a regular map (each wave spawns after you kill the previous one and its harder to beat). These modes have some extra cash for you to be able to further upgrade your units.

Opinion

First off I’ll say that the way game mechanics are introduced is pretty good, not too fast, not to slow. Everything is pretty intuitive except certain effects that specific weapons have on your machines, for example, when energy-charged machined fire at your tanks, the shoot twice as fast, and how this must be used in  order to take advantage of certain situations. Casual difficulty is pretty balanced but Harcore revealed itself completely impossible for me from mission 11 onwards. The plot is very very simplistic, wich is good on one hand, theres not much information for players to absorb on that side. The extra modes are fun to play but pretty difficult and the Story mode could be longer. Just like almost every game in my account, I picked this one up on a sale and I liked it. If you don’t like strategy or tower defense games you probably should star away from it though, because if you don’t like the style of gameplay itself, other game elements like the story wont help much either. if you like this kind of game, go ahead. There’s achievements of course and a Leaderboard which tracks your total game score.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good	The Bad
Simple, not too much information to absorb; Variety of vehicles and enemies; Interesting extra game modes.	Difficulty ramps up too quickly in story mode;  There’s not much story to it, but then again I didn’t really expect it to.

Conclusion

If you’re not a fan of this genre, I suggest you stay away. Otherwise, well, it’s a simple game that’s pretty fun, at least for a while. I recommend getting it while it’s on sale.

My Final Gameplay Stats

Time Played:	21 Hours
Achievements Unlocked:	20 / 43 (47%)
Difficulty played the most:	Casual / Hardcore

Screenshots taken at 1920x1080. Title image taken from Steam Grid view. I do not own it.

Audiosurf

Developer: Dylan Fitterer Platform: Windows, Zune HD Release Date: February, 2008 RPVP: 9.99€ (Steam) Size: ~ 375MB (PC) Genre: Rhythm, music, puzzle.

Overview

Created by Invisible Handlebar, a company composed created by Dylan Fitterer, Audiosurf is a mix of a rhythm and puzzle experience. After choosing a song offered by the game or imputing one of your own personal collection, the game analyzes it and creates a space track where in an F-Zero –like ship you struggle to collect (or evade) blocks.

Gameplay

Of course, there's a bit more to it. the shape, and orientation of the road depends on the rhythm of the music (on easier tracks the road will be something like a diagonal line pointing upwards. If the music has a faster rhythm, the opposite occurs. The traffic indicator serves as a difficulty indicator for most game modes, giving you an idea how how hard the track is (the highest the traffic, the more blocks you get). Also, the speed at which you navigate the very track depends on the speed of the music. If you use a calm, classic music for example, the speed will remain more or less constant. However if you use a song with lots of drumming, the speed will vary a lot (making it harder on several game modes) and the bumps in the road will be more frequent. There are several game modes, the most common being the Mono mode, where your objective is to simply clear the track getting as many colored blocks as possible while at the same time avoiding all the grey blocks. They will disappear a couple of seconds after each time you match 3 or more together, thus, giving you a little extra time to add a couple more to the combo. The more blocks matched, the more points you get. You also get a set of points for each block collected up to a maximum of 200 per block. however, if you get a grey one the score count will reset to 1, posteriorly increasing to 2 and to every other even number until it reached 200 again or until you get another grey block. you can clear the grey blocks from time to time using your score as your payment and you can get extra bonus points by fulfilling certain requirements, such as matching 11 blocks at once, dodging all grey blocks or finishing the song with your block storage empty. Your score will then determine which medals you will receive, if any (point requirements for each medal are shown before you start).there are other game modes such as the Pointman, the Eraser and even a two-player mode, where one player uses the keyboard and other the mouse to move his ship.

Different game modes include having to to grab match blocks of various different colors at the same time, while being careful not to overfill you block storage space. There are no grey blocks in these modes, but here certain colors are worth more points than others. Consequently, they are also less common. Some of these modes count with special tools to aid with your mission, such as the option to shuffle your blocks or “Paint” found during the track to change the color of all your blocks or even a simple block boost you can get that gives you some blocks of a specific color easily identifiable by looking at the item. There is also a Visualizer mode, in case you need a fancy Ambience for your parties (heh). There are also three categories for the game modes, each being more difficult than the previous one. Some game modes are exclusive to some categories. If you create an account and keep yourself logged in you can compare scores to your friends and receive emails in case they beat yours (some achievements involve doing just that).

Opinion

There’s not much to say here, basically it’s a good game to pass the time, and as long as you have new music, it has an infinite replay value. The only downsides are graphic-related but the game has low system requirements any normal computer nowadays can run it. I think it should include another game mode like the Mono mode but without grey blocks and more colored blocks. Here the challenge would simply be to get as many colored blocks as possible. Oh and by the way: I picked it up while it was on sale….for 1,36€.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
As long as you have music files, it has an infinite replay value; Various game modes; Achievements and e-mail notices.	Needs more visualization options, you cant change the resolution on window mode;  Full-screen imput lag, not good in this kind of game.	The Achievements are all pretty easy to get as long as you “cheat”. A couple more achievements wouldn’t hurt.

My Final Gameplay Stats

Time Played:	13 Hours
Achievements Unlocked:	19 / 19 (100%)
Game mode played the most:	Ninja Mono
Longest Music Played:	~15 mins

Screenshots taken at 1920x1080. Title image taken from Steam grid view. I do not own it etc.

Alice: Madness Returns

Developer: Spicy Horse
Publisher: EA
Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox360
Release Date: 16, June 2011
RPVP: 49.99€ (Steam)
Size: ~ 7.9 GB (PC)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Platform, Hack-n'-Slash

Overview

Alice: Madness Returns continues the story of the PC game American McGee’s Alice out in 2000. Like its predecessor, it was developed by the Chinese studio Spicy Horse. The PS3 and Xbox360 Versions of the game include a code you can use to download a console port of American McGee’s Alice, but even without the code, console players can purchase the game using Microsoft Points on XBL or with regular cash on PSN.

Plot

Madness Returns goes back to Alice Liddell, who lost her sanity after surviving the fire that destroyed her home and killed her whole family. Years later, she is released from Rutledge Asylum and began living in London, where along with Dr.
Bumby, she attempts to forget her traumatic memories of the death of her family in hopes of getting rid of her mad nightmares. Unfortunately, Alice’s subconscious ends up puling her back to Wonderland. Upon arriving, though, Alice soon discovers that this Wonderland is infected with destruction and it’s being ravaged by an infernal gigantic train of origins unknown. Thus, Alice begins her quest to find out about who runs the train and what purpose does it serve, regaining lost memories along the way. Memories of her past and her family and the fire that took place years before, in an attempt to regain her sanity and save Wonderland from destruction. While there, she is always accompanied by the cynical Cheshire Cat, who watches over her, providing advice, often in the form of more or less philosophical sentences.

Gameplay

Like its predecessor, this game consists mainly in progressing trough the ever-changing Wonderland, by platforming, solving puzzles and killing enemies along the way. There is a good variety of enemies, with many being exclusive to each chapter of the game. From dark slime enemies with a doll face to giant slime enemies with several faces, ghosts, samurai, maniac baby dolls, walking piranhas and of course card guards, there sure is a lot of stuff to kill. For this you have the aid of five different weapons, acquired throughout the game. These are: The Vorpal Blade, a runed dagger used to strike repetitively in rapid succession, the Pepper Grinder that can be used as a rifle using pepper for ammunition, the Hobby Horse, a bigger, slower weapon that works pretty much like a two-handed mace and that can be used to break certain walls or breaking through enemy defenses and shields, the Teapot Canon, that you can use to shoot balls of boiling tea to kill enemies at range and the Clockwork Bomb, a funny looking bomb resembling the always late Rabbit from the original story that you can detonate from afar. This last one is often used to apply weight on buttons so you can progress through the game.

Each weapon can be upgraded three times (with the exception of the Clockwork Bomb), each upgrade increasing the speed and/or damage and changing the way the weapon looks (the dagger gets a shine to it, the hobby horse gets a unicorn horn, etc.). This can be done by collecting “Hollow Ivory” (teeth) scattered everywhere in the game. Each enemy throughout the game has weak spots, and even though increasing the difficulty makes them sturdier and stronger, once you figure out the right way to kill each one of them it makes little difference, except when facing larger groups of enemies, which requires just a bit more of attention and reflexes. Your health bar is represented by a string of roses, each one divided into 4 parts. If you die in combat you are often taken a bit back in the game, to the last save point. However, if you die by platforming (falling, hitting spikes, etc) you will be taken to the last platform you were standing in. When close to death you can activate Hysteria Mode, making Alice invulnerable and increasing her damage for a while. This also makes everything go black and white (and blood-red) for the duration.



You can also increase the number of roses by completing the “Radula Rooms”, hidden bonus levels that may contain challenges such as, surviving in a sea of enemies for a set amount of time, killing a group of enemies or just answering a riddle from the Cheshire Cat. There are also some occasions in the game where you will be presented with some kind of mini-game, which is good to keep things interesting, as the game is considerably long and may get tiring or repetitive if you play it for a while. In addition, each chapter of the game has its designated dress for Alice to use, and upon completing the game you may then choose which dress you want Alice to be in, regardless of the chapter. Each dress adds a bonus effect to Alice, like getting more teeth from enemies, more roses or getting health regeneration abilities. Along the way, there will be tons of collectibles to gather, in case you want to completely unlock the character list, which contains some data about each character in the game, some text telling you more about Alice’s history, and all the cut-scenes. As you get closer to the end of the game, Alice will find out the truth about her past and will begin to comprehend what the train represents. The last chapter will happen inside the very own train where the final battle will happen.

Alice, being “part frog”, as described by her little sister, has a great jumping ability which is aided by the fact that she can use her dress to glide and double, triple and quadruple jump, allowing her to travel considerable distances without touching the ground. She can also shrink from a certain point up in the game, which must be done either to just progress trough the game, to collect hidden items or to activate the Shrink Vision, revealing invisible platforms and marks on the wall, that may act as a guide, telling you which direction to follow or as a clue, indicating hidden collectibles that may be close by.

Opinion

Well, first off, I should say that one of the first things I had to do after trying this game for the first time was to find out why my framerate was locked at 30. Turns out, the graphical engine is limited to 30 fps since that’s how the consoles run it. That’s all fine but why the heck would you limit it on the PC version? So, I went looking for the responsible file andchange the fps cap to 60. The graphics are pretty good and fluid when you do this, and the ambience of the game, at least the initial ambience is beautiful. Everything is so shiny and colorful, the artists and designers did an excellent job on that part.

 However, pretty as it might seem, this is definitely not a game for children. Unlike the animated movie, here we have a cruel reality where Alice’s condition gets pretty serious at some point in time, getting her sent to an asylum where gruesome things are done to her, the “treatment” so to speak (as you see later in the game). There is a considerable maturity level to this game, there’s swearing, dark secrets and dark and twisted zones that can frighten you a bit. There is even child molesting in the story.


The game is actually pretty big, I didn’t expect it to take me so long to finish being a relatively simple platforming game. The first playthrough on Hard difficulty took me 14 hours, plus I din an extra play-through on Nightmare difficulty to get all of the collectibles. In fact, although I really liked the game when I started playing it, about 8 hours in it began to feel a little repetitive. Not that much though, as the chapters changed, and so changed the scenery and the characters (most of them at least). There are various mini games along the way that help getting a bit of variety in the game (some are pretty fun). Also, as you advance trough the game, the story continues to develop, and you start to find out what really happened in Alice’s past that created such an internal conflict (initially, Alice is convinced that she somehow started the fired that killed her family, even though she can't remember it clearly) and you feel increasingly curious and eager to find out what really happened, keeping you glued to your controller (or keyboard). Speaking of keyboard, this is where the greatest flaw of the game resides. Even though it's a kind of console port, aside from the 30 fps lock detail (which can by easily dealt with) I saw no graphical issues at all, as expected of Unreal Engine 3 I guess. What I DID see was a disastrous keyboard support. The boat mini-game can become unplayable with the keyboard as the assigned keys for firing the canon or dropping mines may or may not work (re-assigning keys apparently only makes it worse, eliminating what little functionality you might have) and after about 10 hours in I was forced to change to a controller as an action key needed to progress wouldn’t work at all. I don’t really mind using a controller, in fact I have an Xbox360 controller for windows and I love it, but to play in Hard difficulty in a way you’re not used to at all (keyboard to controller) makes it a lot harder for you to progress, as you’re not used to the new key settings. As such, if you are going to play it on PC, I recommend using a gamepad from the start.

 As for the characters, they are bizarre to say the least, the Hatter seems to care with nothing but having tea, and that’s not everything. One of the first major objectives is to retrieve his arms and legs, stolen by the Dormouse and the March Hare to use as additional work force in their factories. Them too, seem completely fixed on getting stuff done (whatever it is), maniacal about their work. The Cheshire Cat is somewhat creepy with his skeletal appearance and mischievous aura, although maybe due to his soothing voice or apparent wisdom, is the kind of character I’d like to keep close.All the characters in the game are somehow weird and funny at the same time, some more than others, as you will find out if you ever play it. As an additional curiosity, the voice actor is the same one that did the voice for Mojo Jojo (The Powerpuff Girls) and The Eye of Sauron (Lord of the Rings).

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The Good	The Bad
Four different levels of difficulty, none of them unreasonably hard (I actually finished the game on nightmare!); Engaging story, keeps you glued to the game; Mature setting, it’s a darker game than what you might think.	Bad keyboard support; On the PC version the game engine is stupidly capped at 30fps. Even if this is fixable….what the heck, it’s Unreal Engine 3 we’re talking about;

Conclusion

Just like Alice Liddel, one experiences a variety of emotions throughout the game, either by the bizarre errands the main character has to do or the strange events Alice uncovers little by little, in the real world, as she finally solves the mystery of her past, the death of her family but also the trauma she suffered which might have been the reason of Wonderland's existence. A strange, yet captivating game. I picked it up for a bit over 10€ in Steam's Christmas sale and I didn’t regret it.

My Final Gameplay Stats

Time Played:	37 Hours
Achievements Unlocked:	Not available in the PC version.
Difficulty played the most:	Nightmare
Overall Game Progress:	100%

Aliens vs Predator

Developer: Rebellion Developments Publisher: Sega Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox360 Release Date: 19, February 2010 RPVP: 19.99€ Size: 15412 MB (PC) Genre: FPS

Overview

Aliens vs Predator is yet another game from this franchise, released in 2010 for Xbox360,  and PS3. At first glance is seems like a generic first-person shooter where you have to fight your way through a strange world infested with these things. But there’s actually a lot more to it, as you might discover in this review.

Plot

There are 3 campaigns in the game, one for each species. They are all related since they all happen mostly in the same areas and within a short time span. What follows is a small description of how each campaign begins, now giving out too much information as to how it develops further on (no spoilers!).

Marine

The marine campaign starts with a cinematic showing the inside of the spaceship where you and your squad are. When getting close to the planet where you are supposed to drop, a large predator ship appears out of nowhere shooting down another ship similar to yours, containing another squad, forcing your ship to land. You are knocked out by an object flying inside the falling ship, and wake up later, alone, after the rest of your squad is already gone forward. Here, you are contacted by Corporal Aquila T. (referred to as “Tequila”) who guides you trough deserted human bases (well, not deserted, as you eventually find out) so you can help her getting the power back on and getting communication systems back online, to later search for the rest of your squad. Eventually you find your captain after he is captured by Xenomorphs, but its already too late, since he has already been planted with an alien inside him. He talks to you and instructs you to kill him before the abomination is born. After that, you continue by yourself trough the wrecked bases, hoping to get a ride home. I wont spoil any more than this.

Alien

As an alien you see a cinematic showing a laboratory where infected people are kept, so the newborns are extracted and taken for experiments. As one of those newborns, you are kept alive since Karl Weyland Bishop, the head of the investigation thinks there might be something special about you. After a time skip, you see yourself fully grown restricted in a laboratory. A man appears, to experiment with you, asking you to perform some simple tasks (this is the tutorial where you learn how to control your character and how to make use of its abilities). Eventually you hear the call of the brood mother and attempt to escape without success. After a while there is a failure in the electric system in the entire lab, allowing you to escape. You then proceed to complete the tasks you are assigned by the brood mother, mainly killing marines and disabling their systems. The story goes on from here.

Predator

The predator campaign is rather simple, basically a ship of predators lands on this same planet where they drop several younglings, fresh out of their training ritual so they can hunt Serpents (the name they use for the Xenomorphs) and get into the great pyramid, where their ancestors fought long ago. The objective is to destroy the pyramid which has been trespassed by the humans, staining the Predators’ pride. The Game begins in the jungle, where one of your first objectives is to find a deceased young-blood and eliminate his body, so that humans don’t get hold of your race’s technology. Later you get to infiltrate the Weyland laboratories and marine bases, to disable their systems and recover certain artifacts taken by the humans. This is most likely the easiest of the three campaigns, due to the great physical abilities of this race.

Game Modes and Difficulty

In the single player mode, as said above, we have the three campaigns, Marine, Alien and Predator. I’ve played in a couple different difficulties in all of them. On Easy, everything is really easy to do, it goes as far as being able of go away for two minutes while being attacked and coming back to find you are still alive. In the Marine campaign you have a health bar composed by three blocks, who gets shortened when you take damage. If you can avoid losing an entire block and manage to stay out of harms way for a while, it will regenerate by itself. If you lose it completely, it’s gone. You can collect “Health Stims” that you can use to refill you health bar, but you can only carry three at a time. As a marine, alien blood is dangerous for you (it’s acid) so if you step on an alien corpse after you kill one of them you will lose Health. This isn’t a problem in easy difficulty, since you can barely see you health bar moving when this happens, but in Hard or Nightmare difficulty, if you accidentally walk over a corpse, you will lose most of your health bar. The weapons available  are all pretty cool, you have a machine gun with pretty big magazine, a shotgun with pretty good burst, a sniper that can kill aliens in one shot and a flamethrower that……throws flames. Aliens get increasingly hard to kill as you increase the difficulty, added to the fact that they are thin and move fast and in a random-like manner. The levels don’t seem to have an increasing difficulty with that boss right on the second mission, so you constantly need to be on your toes. The Alien campaign gives you a pretty simple tutorial right off the bat, which is cleverly blended into the plot. As an alien you can move pretty fast and even more so by sprinting. You have an indicator on the middle of your screen which always points to the ground (useful when you’re on the ceiling or walls) and that changes color depending on whether you’re hidden or in plain sight. You can execute a light attack or heavy attack and you can use you mouse wheel to get on walls or onto the ceiling. This is very confusing at first, as you constantly see the whole world spinning around you but once you get used to it, it becomes fun to maneuver. You can harvest civilians by sneaking up on them and grabbing them until a Facehugger comes and ….well.. hugs his face!

The predator campaign, probably the easiest of the three also has a tutorial at the beginning where you learn to use your basic strikes and your secondary weapon. This continues trough the first level, showing you how to use your cloak to become nearly invisible and you powerful jump that allows you to jump to seemingly unreachable places. This will be the skill you will be using the most to progress trough the levels. As a predator you have great physical skills, and can kill Xenomorphs with your melee weapons and execute finishing moves on weakened ones. You will also receive new more powerful weapons trough the campaign, some capable of one-shoting powerful enemies. Logically there are also a couple of boss fights.
In the multiplayer side of things, we have four different modes: Deathmach, where like the name says, the objective is simply to  get the most kills, supporting up to 18 players of all three species; Infestation, where a group of marines goes up against a single player controlled alien, where the objective is for the alien to kill each marine until there is only one left alive. Of course the marines who are killed turn into aliens too! Then there's Predator Hunt where a group of predators hunt a single alien with a short time limit where the objective is to get the most kills and the Survivor mode, which can be played by yourself or with friends where you stand in a relatively small area and attempt to survive as long as you can while waves of enemies keep coming, increasingly harder in intelligence and number.

Opinion

I'm not going to judge the graphics, I’ll leave that for each of the readers to do. For this I’ll provide some screenshots. Ok, so first off, there are a couple of aspects in which the difficulty level gets somewhat awkward. Aliens seem to take an excessive amount of bullets to die even on easy, and getting headshots on those sneaky guys mostly depends on luck. The ambience is very good, mostly dark and claustrophobic, but also with lots of open areas where you can see very detailed vegetation and nature elements, which is good. Tesselation works pretty well with this, enhancing several small details that make everything look more plausible. The radar on the marine campaign doesn’t seem to work all that well, many times indicating enemies that aren't there or that you cant\wont be able to see any time soon. On the other hand it’s a pretty good way to give good scares in most situations and to keep you on your toes. Same goes with the background music which sometimes gets faster or more tense suddenly, and tricks you to think you are about to be attacked. There also seems to be some problems with the alien AI, since sometimes you see them moving erratically over a small surface instead of coming for you as if they were stuck. This makes them even harder to hit, especially the smaller ones (the Facehuggers) that jump in your face and automatically kill you if you are low on health. There's also a couple of annoying bugs, such as falling trough the floor in certain missions, forcing you to reinstall the game hoping it gets fixed (this wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the game weren't over 15Gb) or getting certain sounds stuck and looping for the rest of the mission (most commonly being a small tap or click-like sound). The difficulties seem to be balanced, except Nightmare which removes checkpoints, making it extremely frustrating trying to execute a one-hour mission perfectly only to accidentally step on an alien corpse and dying. Well, no one told you you had to try Nightmare difficulty anyway. I did it on hard and it was pretty challenging already. and I died plenty of times in certain parts of the campaigns. The game has a decent longevity and with 3 different campaigns you have a lot of variety.

The good, the bad and the ugly

The Good	The Bad	The Ugly
Three different campaigns with interlaced plot. Play as either of the species; Doesn’t take long to load, even with everything maxed out; Fun multiplayer modes; Unlockable audio diaries that reveal more details of the story.	A couple of annoying bugs here and there; In certain sections, unless you have a specific weapon to do the job, its nearly impossible;	Strange alien AI, too much senseless movement.

Conclusion

Well, what can I say…if you’re not a fan of the franchise, you'll most likely like this game. If you ARE a fan, you’ll love it. It’s a pretty well done game, lots of different stuff to do, good longevity and unlockables and achievements that give you an excuse to play it again. I picked it up during a steam sale for 4.99€ and I didn’t regret it. And I'm not really a fan of the whole franchise. Perfect for when you just feel like blowing some alien heads off. The Ambience is great and the game is pretty solid.
The game can be found here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/10680/ 

My final gameplay stats

Time Played:	28 Hours
Achievements Unlocked:	37 / 50 (74%)
Campaign Played the most:	Marine
Difficulty played the most:	Hard
Campaign Completion:	100%

Darksiders

Details

Developer: Vigil Games
Publisher: THQ
Reviewed Platform: PS3
Game Modes: Single Player
RPVP: $19.99*
Release Date: January 5, 2010

Overview

Darksiders is a type of game that combines God of War style with The Legend of Zelda. To advance in the game you’ll have to kill hordes of demons and angels in a hack and slash combat style while having to solve puzzles and mazes where you’ll ultimately end up fighting the boss.

Plot

The game’s intro begins by telling you that heaven and hell have been always at war until an entity called The Charred Council, bound by laws to preserve balance and order, was drawn to the conflict.

The council was powerful and its enforcers were feared, a brotherhood known as The Four Horsemen, so both heaven and hell came to honour the council and a truce was forged. This truce was bound by seven seals that, if broken, would start the End War.

Then you see demons and angels falling from the sky in a contemporary world, fighting. After that you take control of one of the four horsemen, WAR, and the game begins.

Gameplay and Difficulty

WAR - The playable character

The game features three difficulty modes: easy, normal and apocalyptic, they affect the health of the enemies as well as their damage output.

The graphics are detailed and fluent and the background music blends with the scenery. The battles happen in the world so you don’t experience any kind of transition starting or finishing one. You can focus on an enemy so you are always facing him and the camera is very easy to manipulate. When the enemies are almost defeated you get the chance to kill them with a special move pressing circle, there is no mini-game if you do that but the rewards are different.

There are several dungeons where you need to complete several tasks using items you’ve collected to unlock the boss battle. Boss fights consist in doing specific objectives to harm or to be able to harm them with your weapon, so you can’t just swing your weapon until its defeated.

You can explore the whole map at any time you want (except zones that you need a specific item to access) but there really isn’t anything else to do after you’ve completed the main story. You can, however, try to collect all the pieces of the abyssal armour, because once you get it you can use it right from the start of a new game.

The game let’s you use three different weapons, a blade, a scythe and a glove. All of them can be enchanted with enchantments you find in the world. There are also four legendary enchantments that usually combines some of the normal enchantments powered up. The weapons have a level system which increases its power and they level up by being used in combat.

Combat situation with WAR's horse, Ruin

Its possible to use consumables as well and special abilities that use a “mana” system called Wrath. Your health and wrath bars can be upgraded by finding the respective health or wrath shards.

There is a special NPC that allow you to purchase combat moves, upgrades, consumables and wrath abilities, using the in-game currency. This NPC is located at specific places in the world and you will be able to use those locations to fast travel.

The controls are simple enough but the aim and throw system can become a bit confusing if you’re trying to do it fast. Fortunately you’re not required to use it much.

Opinion

WAR using the abyssal armour

For me, it is a good game. I’ve actually played it three times and got the platinum trophy, I think it has a good balance of cut scenes and playable time. The game isn’t very long nor short, which helps in its replay value.

There are a few things that I don’t like in the game though, you can fall easily from edges even if you are trying to jump over them, and if you’ve got the Power Strike move of your main weapon then sometimes you do it when you don’t want to and have to wait for the move to finish or to get hit.

The game could benefit from side quests and more NPCs because there aren’t many, although I think the world would have to be a little bit bigger for that.

Other than that, the story and gameplay were good enough to keep me playing for hours. The platinum trophy is fairly easy to get.

Verdict: Recommended!

The Breakdown

Positive Aspects	Negative Aspects	Needs Improvement
Its possible to explore the world at any time. Upgradable and enchantable weapons. Lots of abilities, powers and items. Fluent combat system. Good graphics and blending soundtrack. Well designed dungeons.	No side quests available. Low number of NPCs in the world.	Easily falling from edges. Plot could have been better explained.

My Playing Statistics

Time Played: 41 Hours
Trophies Unlocked: 43/43 (100%)
Difficulty played the most: Apocalyptic


*RPVP based on GameStop retail price for PS3