If you bother listening to our show, (if not I don’t blame you) you may of heard the ‘Extra Life’ ad, this is where you get people to sponser you to play games for 24 hours.
Unfortuntly due to other commitments none of The Tech Pod staff can do it this year, but don’t let that stop you!
If you are signed up for it post a comment with a link to your sponser page.
If you’re not signed up go to extralife.sarcasticgamer.com for more details.
After hearing many wonderful things about this game I decided a purchase was in order, I got it on PS3 (of course) due to the fact that you get to play as the Joker.
The story line is that Batman captures the Joker, takes him to Arkham, Joker escapes takes over Arkham, carnage ensuses.
Visually this is a lovely looking game, adequately dark and dismal, but where this game really shines is gameplay.
[No Spoilers] There are two types of combat straight up fighting and, my personal favourite, stealth. In regular fighting you punch and kick goons like there’s no tommorrow, if a whitish blue halo appears around a goons head, it means they’re about to attack you, a quick press of triangle, or Y, counters that attack and straight away hits back with an attack of your own, normally a kick to the groin, elbow to the head or something just as painful. Of course you have your regular attacks, with square or X, these are quite weak on their own but once you get good you can start chaining combos together and jump from goon to goon. Not only is this style of fighting fun to play it’s also fun to watch, my little sister, after seeing me kick some guy in the head, winced then said “wouldn’t it be cool if you could kick their heads off?” it’s unusual for her to actully enjoy watch me play, seeing as she doesn’t like playing games *mock horror*. The other type of combat is the stealthy type. What you do here is there’s a large room where you have to take down a certain amount of enemies without being seen, when I say you without being seen, it isn’t an straight away game over if they do, but you quickly get killed because they have guns, which seem to be loaded with Batman’s personal equivelant of cryptonite, so you don’t last long. You spend most of your time up on gargoles which are in most of these rooms, the first few times you do these is easy, kill-grapple-kill-grapple etc but later in the game [Minor Spoiler] explosives are rigged to the gargoyles so you can only stay on them for a second or two, this makes it a lot harder because there isn’t many other places to hide on the floor. There are several moves that Batman can perform such as inverted takedowns, where he string goons to the gargoyles, and silent takedowns.
Another major part of the game are the boss battles. [Minor Spoilers] Only a few are the tried and tested formula ‘dodge attacks then attack weak point for maximum damage’. For example [Major Spoiler] Killer Croc’s boss battle involves no direct contact, instead you creep along a board walk as slowly as possible, most of these battles are fun, and I haven’t come across a tedious one yet.
[Minor Spoiler] One of the last things in B: AA is the Riddler challenges, challenges set by believe it or not, the Riddler. There are three types of challenge given.
1. Riddler Trophys, these are just little trophys hidden everywhere across Arkham Island.
2. Question marks, all these are are question marks that are only revealed when you go in detective mode, the dot may be hidden in the background so you have to line them up the dot and the line and take a picture.
3. Riddles, these are just a straight up riddle with the answer around you. For example, [Minor Spoiler] one of the riddles is something along the lines of “Don’t forget to pay your respects to your parents”, so what you’ve got to do is find a little sign in memory of Batmans parents.
Seeing as I have listed a few of pros I’ll list a couple of cons. When you’ve got a straight up brawl none of the enemies seem to die soon, you’ll kick them in the head but you’ll only daze them and they’ll soon be up again, when you are fight 6 people or more it soon takes a long time to defeat all the enemies. Also the games ‘detective mode’ (where you can see special objects in the enviroment, or enemies skeletons no matter how many objects are in the way) means that you aren’t really suprised by any attacks, or you don’t miss any collectible objects that are on your main path.
Apart from these minor things and a couple of others there are no other problems, this is why I am giving this game a 9 out of 10 and a Joe thumbs up.
Modern Warfare 2 and iPhone on Vodafone and Orange
FIFA is the much loved football game for all ages from Electronic Arts. Fans like me have rushed out every launch day to get the updated game for their updated players and minor changes in game play and FIFA 10 was no exception. Well the rushing ou bit wasn’t but the minor game play changes was. Even though there has been no massive new feature, the difference in game play has been the biggest in any FIFA game ever. EA have made lots of minor tweaks and changes in this new version one being 360 dribbling and another more advanced ball physic’s. But all these hundreds of minor changes come together to create a game that is more realistic to the beautiful game.
FIFA 10 has really seen the AI upped a notch with more intelligent and human opposition countered with a more intelligent team mates making better of the ball runs and covering you when you evidently get played out of position or have a huge run up the wing.
Players feel more human for example today my defender jumped up to head the ball but missed and instead of miracly landing on his feat from a diving header like he would in a previous FIFA, he ended up face planting into the floor which not only made the game feel more realistic but was very funny to watch.
FIFA 10 looks as if it has got rid most bugs from its predecessors but seems to have brought a few with it. For example on 09 the commentators would always say that when I did a sliding tackle and the opponent got injured I was the one that had been crippled from my own tackle. Thankfully in FIFA 10 that piece of commentary hasn’t come up yet and looks as if it has been left out. The commentary isn’t perfect yet like the time when I had a goal kick but according to the commentators it was a corner. Overall the cometary it is much better than it was.
Despite these faults the game feels more realistic, faster, slicker and is as fun as ever. Definitely the best FIFA yet, a solid 9/10 from me!
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EA have recently announced that a Spore movie is in the works, being a massive Spore fan, this both excites, and worrys me.
If done well this could be a brilliant adventure/comedy movie that does justice to the game and ends up with EA selling loads more copies.
But this could also go completely wrong, because, really, what can they really do a film about? There’s not much in-game that’ll make good viewing, just good playing.
I hope this turns out good, but there’s a little niggling feeling inside me that it won’t.
Source: G4TV
