I was given this game to review only because Symonator or InfiniteStates were too busy to do a review, and no one else was even close to volunteering. It is christmas after all. I'm also not a fan of RPGs at all. My poison is battlefield bad company, battlefield 3 M.A.G. Or if I'm pushed, some modern warfare. I did give dark souls a go last week and kind of liked it, but it didn't quite grab me. But as I've been told a few times,

I need to get out of my comfort zone.

So thanks Dave for forcing me to review a game I didn't want too.

My first impression is that this is gonna hurt, it's basically a tower defence game with a large chunk of RPG elements, and it's the RPG bit that confuses the hell out of me. Thankfully though the makers haven't created an RPG game, it's still got some of that at its core, but it's not a full blown role playing game. So I created my character, chose my few perks and headed off into the guts of the game…

The arena. The first level is hard, even on easy it's still going to grief you some (or is it my lack of RPG experience showing?), you really have to play it a few times and level up your character and main weapon, which is easy enough as the MANA you collect is pretty plentyfull. So once you up you rank and skills a little you'll plough through the first arena quickly enough. But when you get to the second area you'll soon know about pwnage, and you'll need to go back to level one and grind your way up some levels. It took me about 4 hours to do it, and a few online games to get enough skill to get through the second stage. But liked said earlier, when it comes to RPGs I'm both a noob and a hater. So give me a break ok.

Strangely enough once I completed Arena 1and 2 arena 3 was a breeze. Arena's 4 and 5 were tough, but not as hard as the first two.

So it's safe to say that I've enjoyed playing this immensely, and I've yet to complete the game, I've enjoyed it so much that I've now bought the iPad and pc versions.

But wait there's more, didn't I mention the online part a bit back? Hell yeah, now that's what I'm talking about, but online isn't the only way to get your multiplayer fix, the game even features 4 player splitscreen. So what difference does it make if it has a multiplayer section? A freeking huge difference, for one, if you're a lower rank and grinding to get to the higher skill levels, you can really rank up quickly. Or if you're a higher rank, you can help others to get there more quickly, beat times, or just rank up your main weapon. But more than anything it it's just brilliant fun watching noobs run around wondering what the hell to do… Noobs like me. Still, it was great fun, and I know that once I've finished the game on this character I'll be trying the other characters to see what defences they build.

Now that reminds me of what this game really is about, it's a tower defence game. Building towers in this game is like many other similar games, its not what you build (well sometimes it is) its mostly WHERE you build. You'll learn pretty quickly where the main horde attacks from, what defences work best, and where they work best. But remember to keep an eye out in different sections to make sure they don't break through. So I hope I've got my point across that I really really love this game, yes the game I didn't want to review, not being an RPG fan I thought I couldn't do it justice. But yes I really really love this game. I've ploughed about 20 hours into it in 3 days, that's more than I would have played if it was a Battlefield game.

Not only that but I want more, I want to complete it on one character then start another to see what that's like. But I also want to play with friends, and so far I've talked Dave, InfiniteStates and possibly Symonator into buy it. Overall if you like RPG games then this is something you'll probably enjoy, if you like tower defence games, then again you'll probably enjoy the added RPG elements. That said the game does have a of niggling little problem, not game breaking problems, but annoying non the less. You can't upgrade your main weapon if you don't have an alternative to switch too. And that's it, that's the only problem, the game is sheer brilliance, it's been a massive hit on the iPad, its been a great hit on steam for the pc, and now it should be another hit on the playstation 3. Now if an RPG hater can love it, then you should too. Get it, add me and we can play online.

Alchemical Labratory: How to beat the demon:

Glitterhelm Caverns: A bonus level.

Bonus Room in the Tavern:

How to farm Millions of Mana and XP:

If you're not familiar with the game it's basically fly an AC-130 and shoot zombies. Simple enough, and it's usually those types of games that work. Keep it simple!

Well anyway I captured some gameplay video from the TV out on my HD-PVR, and some screenshots from my iPad… yep my iPad still needs to be used, and the game shows a very different display to the TV.

iPad captures:


So thats what you see on your ipad.

The top right icons are:
105mm – Big Badda Boom – slow to reload and one shot every couple of
seconds.
40mm Cannon – still a badda boom but not as badda as 105, upto 5 rounds per reload and fast fire.
25mm – rapid fire mingun, lots and lots of bullets an highly accurate (ish!)

If you didnt have TV out, this is what you'd see on the screen instead…

And the new level – Bakersfield:

 4 classic battlefield maps re-made in frostbite 2 for Battlefield 3, it includes 10 new weapons, 4 vehicles, 1 new game-mode and 5 new trophies.

It is free to all players who bought the "Limited Edition" (new) free of charge or £11.99 for those who could not obtain one.

Developer: DICE

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Release Date: December 6th (source: link)

Maps:

Strike at Karkand:

Gulf of Oman:

Wake Island:

Sharqi Penninsula:

Game Modes:

Conquest Assualt:

The Attackers have more tickets than the defenders who hold all flags the attackers must take back enough flags to start a ticket bleed for the defenders in order to win.

Weapons:

Famas:

L85A2:

MP5:

PP-19:

QBZ-95B:

MG36:

QBB-95:

MK3A1:

L96:

QBU-88:

Vehicles:

• F-35B Jet
• BTR-90 IFV
• DPV Buggy
• Skidloader (Forklift)

Trophies:

Complete Warrior (Silver)

"Got a kill with the following weapons in a life: Assualt Rifle, Jet, Tank"

Like A Boss (Silver)

"Got a kill with the skidloader"

Jaws (Bronze)

"Took a swim in the Oman Hotel swimming pool"

Third Tour (Bronze)

"Got a kill with each of the following vehicles: the BTR-90, DPV and F-35"

Gunslinger (Bronze)

"Got 10 kills with each of the ten Back to Karkand weapons"

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Unless you are one of the lucky chosen and cherished few (lucky bastards more like), you won't have seen too many StarHawk gameplay videos.

Well I'm here to make your day… This video is the first game I played of the beta, and it's nearly 20 minutes long.

Enjoy… more will follow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0JBWQemlyI

StarHawk PSN Beta

No doubt it was a classic game though, I think I'm still paying off my loan that I used to fund my playtime on this awesome game.

Back in the day it was also a 4 person networked racer, something very novel back then. Only a few games worked over a network, and this one was one of them, and with 3 other mates it went from jawdropping and amazing and took it up another level.

So what's it like to play today?

It's still the same arcade style racer, it still plays like ridge racer (handling wise) but it looks, sounds, and feels dated. That said it's still very playable, and if you liked the gameplay then, you'll still like it now.

There's a plethora of choices stil to be had:

Challenge

Karaoke – EH?

Speed Run

Time Trial

As well as the old fashioned arcade mode.

So there's plenty to keep you busy and enterained even if it's only for a short while.

Is it worth the puchase?
 If you liked the original arcade game… hell yes! If you're too young to even know about it, and got into more hardcore racing games then probably not. But it could still be fun.

video of the game in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPbYgFKqvv8

What's better than a rooster armed to the teeth? A rooster armed to the teeth, with a jetpack, that's what. Ratloop's latest PSN offering provides just that, and for the most part succeeds in making it as fun as it sounds.

It's a side-scrolling platformer with a traditional find object X to proceed mechanic, interspersed with side-scrolling flying sections. The first thing that struck me is the fantastic front-end music and bold graphical style. As I started the game, I thought that was all I was going to get, but the music fades in at appropriate times to add atmosphere as and when needed. The system works well.

The graphics are good as well, as you can see for yourself from the trailer. Big, bold characters, with suitably shiny map tiles and nice mood lighting. Coupled with a fantastic hand-drawn style to the backplates on outside sections. It all adds up to a very pretty game. However, it also has some drawbacks. 

First off, I should point out that this game harks back to the old school days before hardware was powerful enough to scroll levels and had to generate maps screen by screen. Why this decision was taken is anyone's guess as it was a style dictated by capability more than choice.
So the downsides of a flip-screen map are present: namely enemies walking on just as you are walking off. In all fairness though, it's never a source of irritation – just a strange design decision.

Another strange decision is to apply a warping effect on the the map layers that performs some kind of stretch as you move across the screen. Maybe it's attempting to induce a subtle parallax effect, but it just looks odd. It is quite subtle though, so it's possible you won't even notice it. But again, this doesn't detract from gameplay at all.

While the maps look nice, I did feel they also looked quite samey in places (within the same level). I often felt I was walking down the same corridoor with a different arrangement of obstacles/enemies.
This is odd as the levels can take a relatively long time to load. And at times it's not obvious where you can and can't move. For instance in overgrown areas, or where you are required to crawl through ducts.

The single screen design also means that you have to react pretty fast to enemies to avoid damage when entering a new screen. However, the gun play is very satisfying in this game. With a solid feel of connection between bullet and victim, and a juggling mechanic that has the dangerous ability to make you waste more ammo than you need to just to see them bounce.
Because the characters are so big, they need nice animations, and here the developers have delivered. And while the player movement feels animation driven, which is normally a bad thing as far as responsiveness goes, in Rocketbirds, it isn't a problem. So kudos to the developer for getting the best out of both worlds there.

Then finally, the jetpack sections (or more specifically, rocket packs). These are a welcome break from the platforming sections, and the controls are quick to pick up. However, I found the camera panning quite distracting when the game wanted to show me something and was often controlling my character off screen.
There is also a fairly steep learning curve when it suddenly throws homing missiles at you. I still to this date don't know how to avoid them, and largely find myself tanking through them to get the objective done before they kill me. But that is no doubt a fault of mine rather than the game's (assuming there is a technique to avoid them). In Smumary: + Plush graphics + Great music and sound effects + Nice feel to the gunplay and control + Jetpacks! + Interesting gameplay features – Single screen map design – Maps can feel samey within the same level – Fairly redundant stealth mechanic – Some unnecessary cutscenes – Level path can be hard to see at times

The Look:    80% Fantastic looking for the most part, with good atmosphere, can look a bit repetitive at times.
The Sound: 85% Great music, coupled with meaty sound effects.
The Feel:     70% Good feel to controls over all with levels well designed to the games strengths, but with a few issues here and there.

Overall: 76%  

Author: InfiniteStates

The open-world structure is the biggest change since Demon's Souls. Beginning in a rotting asylum for the undead, you move through a vast, connected world comprised of fetid swamps, grandly dilapidated towns and castles, magma-carved caves and tunnels deep within the earth, trap-filled dungeons and much else. Some are reminiscent of Demon's Souls' environments, like the rickety, swampy, disease-ridden Blighttown, whilst others are entirely new; austere marble palaces, murky forests, ashen lakes. The further you get in Dark Souls, the more hideous and creative the monsters and environments become. Thirty hours in, stuck in an underground poisonous swamp, you'll feel like you'd give anything to see the sun again. Dark Souls' design is so consistently twisted that it actually starts to encroach on your mental well-being after extended play – it never wavers for a second from its singular stylistic vision. There's no central hub, no safe haven for you to run back to and recuperate. Instead, there are bonfires strategically placed around the world. Bonfires are your checkpoints, the place where you can hunker down to replenish your health flasks, spend the souls of vanquished enemies on leveling up, repair your equipment, and meditate on your doomed existence. Resting at a bonfire ensures that you'll spawn there the next time you're dispatched, but resting also respawns all the enemies in an area (except bosses). Deciding when and where to rest, then, becomes a major part of your strategy. You can go through the same areas again and again, collecting souls and learning enemy attack patterns to make yourself stronger, or you can push onwards towards the next bonfire, risking the unknown.

These will kill you with fire.

online, you'll frequently see the ghosts of other players huddled around the bonfires, giving you a sense of togetherness and camaraderie in situations that would otherwise feel depressingly hopeless. Dark Souls' world is (for the most part) exquisitely designed around these checkpoints – shortcuts and secret passages open up that let you access more and more of the map from a single resting point, so making your way around a world that at first seems intimidatingly huge quickly becomes second nature. When you die in Dark Souls, you become Hollowed, and lose any souls that you've collected. Make it back to your bloodstain before dying again, and you can get them back – but you usually run straight into the clawed arms of whatever horrendous thing dispatched you the first time. Souls can be spent on leveling yourself up, buying an extra sliver of health or stamina or magical capability. Humanity, on the other hand, is much more precious resource; you can only get it from items or by beating bosses, whether in your own game or as a helpful Phantom in someone else's. It can be used to kindle bonfires, giving yourself extra health flasks, and to revive yourself to Human, which lets you summon other players to help you in your game. The combat system is the beating black heart at the center of Dark Souls. Given the sheer variety of demons after your blood – serpent-warriors, evil butchers, skinless undead, cat-alligators, skeletal swordsmen and much, much else – your survival depends greatly on how you adapt to changing situations. You can switch between armored tank and nimble thief just by switching around your weapons and armor. To be a mage or a healer, all you need to do is find a sorcerer's catalyst or a talisman. The game never forces you into a certain playstyle. There's no limit to what you can carry, for instance, so you can hold on to any dagger or bow or interesting spell in case it comes in handy hours later.

This will kill you with its tail. Which is an axe.

The way that magic works has changed since Demon's Souls, making it much more difficult to rely on it as an easy way out and forcing you to engage with the heart-in-mouth, up-close melee combat. Instead of a magic bar, you get a certain number of casts for each spell each time you rest at a bonfire – powerful Pyromancy or life-saving Miracles will usually be limited to just a few uses. Magic is as relevant to the game as ever, but it's no longer a cheap-and-easy, rechargeable long-range option. Sooner or later, especially in the boss battles, you're going to have to wade on in there with an axe and risk your hide up close.

This is one of many reasons that Dark Souls is considerably harder than Demon's Souls. (For context, I played through Demon's Souls about four times, and nothing in that game gave me the same trouble – and the same rush – as some of Dark Souls' crueler moments.) It appears to be FROM's mission to send you into harrowing spirals of despondency and self-pity at every opportunity. Levels and enemies alike are designed to be especially lethal. Like its predecessor, the game starts off borderline impossible and becomes more manageable the longer you play as you get together some half-decent equipment and build up your stats, but Dark Souls discourages grinding.

There's a slightly uneven, discouraging distribution of souls throughout most of the game, where extremely strong enemies reward you with only a few hundred souls. It evens out later; as the going gets tougher, the game design seems to acknowledge that you'll need to build up your level through repeating sections that you already know, and litters them with soul-rich enemies to farm. But overall, it's time-consuming and impractical to progress through grinding alone. Instead, Dark Souls' difficulty pushes you towards its forward-thinking online features. Dark Souls is tightly designed around its community and co-operative aspects, far more so than Demon's. Because the game doesn't bother to explain itself to you at all, you will rely on other players to build up your knowledge, sharing strategies, directions to secret areas and tips on where to find rare weapons and items, piecing together a collective understanding of arcane arts like weapons forging. This community aspect is the most extraordinary thing about Dark Souls – you're all in it together, and the knowledge that there are others sharing your experience is what turns Dark Souls from a depressing solo journey into a breathtaking collective achievement.

These will cut you in half, and push you off the ledge.

As you wander the parapets of the Undead Burg, you'll occasionally hear the tolling of the bell at the top of the gargoyle tower, signifying someone else's triumph over a boss. You'll feel spurred on to success yourself, reassured that it's not impossible, or you'll smile at the memory of your own victory if you're already further on. The shadows of other players move through the world, showing you snatches of someone else's game. Bloodstains splatter across the flagstones where people have died, replaying the final seconds of their life when you touch them. By offering yourself up as a phantom to assist in someone else's game, you can not only earn souls and Humanity, but you can learn new things, gaining experience from others. The absence of voice chat and matchmaking is integral to this sense of collective suffering and achievement. Your rescuer will always be a stranger. It is impossible to overstate how crucial online play is to the Dark Souls experience. Without it, it's half a game (and about four times as difficult, too, which is really not what you want from a game that's already difficult enough to sap your will to live). Multiplayer is your get-out clause, the thing that stops Dark Souls from ever being straightforwardly impossible, no matter what your skill level. There are points in the game where you actually need help; FROM's tacit admission of this comes in the form of NPC summon signs that appear outside certain boss battles, letting you summon help even if you're playing the game offline. Run out of Humanity, though, and this option is closed to you, leaving you with the choice between hours of grinding or hours of fruitless attempts at battles that are incredibly difficult on your own. Like everything in the game, though, the multiplayer has its dark side. Players can invade your world if you're in Human form and assassinate you. But this is a much less frequent occurrence than it was in Demon's Souls. In order to invade other players at will, you actually have to join an in-game covenant – otherwise you have to rely on limited-use items. There's also an indictment system where you can report someone who assassinates you, which enters their name into a giant, publicly-accessible Book of the Guilty. The emphasis this time around is very firmly upon helping other players, rather than hurting them.

This one has a present for you! The present is death.

The difficulty is central to Dark Souls' ethos, and shouldn't be considered a fault. Without it, it wouldn't be the game that it is, it wouldn't require the same ingenuity and persistence from you, and its rewards would not be so sweet. There are times, though, when Dark Souls crosses the line from thrillingly challenging to straightforwardly sadistic. There are frog-like sewer-dwelling creatures that can Curse you with their attacks, instantly reducing your health bar to half its former size; the only way to get cured is to visit a healer hidden deep within a dangerous ghost-populated area that's a long, long journey away (or to buy an item from a vendor, if you've got enough souls). Making your way through Dark Souls' death-trap world with half a health bar is hard enough, but the Curse effect stacks – so if you get caught again, you'll be down to a quarter of a health bar. A third time, you'll be down to an eighth. I know one Dark Souls player who lost something like 10 hours trying to make it to a healer when everything in the world could kill him with one hit. There's punishing, and then there's unfair. One of the mid-game bosses, meanwhile, emits corrosive bile that swiftly degrades your equipment if you get stuck in its flow, potentially leaving you standing naked in front of a hideous dragon with a broken sword. There's no way to repair weapons and armor once they've been completely destroyed, so it's possible to lose all your best gear in this battle. Similarly, there are areas in the mid-section of the game where the main challenge isn't overcoming the skinless poisonous demons that live there, but struggling not to get knocked off narrow, precarious ledges by their attacks.

THIS will kill you with its alligator-cat jaws.

Without wanting to spoil the plot, Dark Souls sends you deeper into the earth with every victory, becoming extraordinarily imaginative in its sadism. Dark Souls' story is subtly and sparsely told, leaving you to write your own mythology, giving you only cryptic, unsettling verses of vague exposition to go on. The world speaks for itself. But there are, despite its bleakness, real moments of beauty in Dark Souls – like the moment where you round a corner after one of the game's early bosses and see the sun for the first time, shining down through a break in the clouds, or the moment when you're standing at the top of a belltower looking out at the sprawling land below, trying to decide where to go next whilst you bask in the afterglow of a boss defeat. It's these moments, not the hours spent butting your head up against the same boss without success, that you'll remember about Dark Souls: the improbable, hard-fought victories, the game-changing discoveries, and the moments where a kind stranger lifted you out of a ditch you couldn't escape on your own.

The first time anyone at the IGN office sees Feed Me Oil they immediately ask me if I’m playing a new World of Goo. Visually the title is obviously inspired by developer 2D Boy’s great goo-filled puzzle game, but the gameplay is entirely different. And entirely awesome. Feed Me Oil is a fantastic puzzler, one that will challenge gamers of all skill, and a must-have for any iOS device owner.

Feed Me Oil is another one of publisher Chillingo’s games that has a very literal name. Just like Cut the Rope, your goal in Feed Me Oil is to put oil into the mouths of gigantic machines. To this end you’re given a set of tools that you can move around in the level, using them to direct the flow of oil. Over the course of the more than 30 levels it gets increasingly difficult, challenging you to move the oil in elaborate manners that boggle the mind.

The difficulty in Feed Me Oil is never a bad thing, though, and it’s always a joy when I have that epiphany and realize just how to solve the stage. Tweaking the tools is kind of like deciphering a math problem, only one that you can play over and over again. You see, while getting through the level once with all the tools is fine for progression, you get awarded additional stars based on how few of the tools you can manage to use. It’s silly, I know, but those dumb stars are enough motivation to make me replay the levels.

The pleasure that comes from problem solving never ceases in Feed Me Oil’s campaign thanks to the constantly changing level design. The earliest levels challenge you to create simple things like ramps and canals for the oil to slide on, while the later ones introduce tools that can do things like twist oil up into a vortex like it’s riding a wind current, or blow oil through the air via a fan-powered jet stream. The latter levels become elaborate and beautiful machines of your own design, where oil flows in intricate and controlled patterns. The art style may be similar to World of Goo, but it’s still pretty nonetheless.

Source: IGN

http://uk.wireless.ign.com/articles/117/1177007p1.html