Title: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09

From: EA Sports

For: PS3

It must be a nightmare for Electronic Arts each year to take a game such as Tiger Woods 08, which is the best they can produce at the time, and improve on it only 12 months down the track. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the developer meetings when they decide what to change, add and leave out.

The latest incarnation of what is the quintessential golfing simulation on the market takes everything that has made it a success in the past and adds a few tasty little features which genuinely make the experience more enjoyable. Apart from one.

As you begin playing the game, Tiger’s coach Hank Haney takes you through some basic skill tests, much the same as the Madden Test in Madden 09, but you can’t skip it. He’s obviously a knowledgeable man, but also a downright pain in the backside. In Career Mode he analyses your game and makes you practice the shots that need some work, Yeah thanks Hank, but I’m well aware my chipping sucks – that’s why I try to get on every green in regulation, buddy. I guess it’s a touch of realism for the train-spotters, but personally I’d like an option to ram my 9-iron where the sun don’t shine on poor old Hank.

As usual, EA has treated us with their industry-leading character creation system as well as the EA Gameface where you can map your own mugshot (or anybody for that matter) onto your character. It takes about 15 minutes all up to do this and initially the results are average, but you can then go in and tweak every feature of your face and get a pretty good likeness. Someone asked me whether it’d be possible to take a picture of your arse and map it onto a character’s face – making a bumface golfer. Well I was intrigued by this idea and never being one to back down from a challenge I put it to the test. Sadly it didn’t work due to my arse not having some obvious defining features. So I compromised by choosing Colin Montgomerie instead.

Basic gameplay is exactly the same as previous years using the left thumbstick for the backswing and follow through. Keep it straight and the ball will fly straight. Only need 75% of a full club distance? Then only take the backswing back 3/4 of the way. You have full control over your swing and the tempo needed to hit the ball properly is very realistic (and having been a single-figure golfer, I know such things).
If you find yourself regularly duffing shots then one nice addition is the real-time feedback meter which will tell you exactly where you’re going wrong – a bit like a telemetry read-out in a race car. It helps to have some elementary understanding of swing dynamics to make head or tail of it though. As you progress in your career, your skills automatically adjust as you get better at driving or worse at your short irons for example.

If you’re even more keen to go tinkering then another new feature is the club tuner. Here you can tweak the weight, heel/toe balance, shaft flex and spin capabilities of your clubs, but this does have an effect on the sweet-spot of your club, and a smaller sweet-spot means it’s harder to hit a great shot. But not to worry, good old Hank will stick his 2 cents in if he thinks you’ve made a hash of it.

There’s a whopping 18 real-life courses to choose from in Tiger Woods 09 covering the full range of conditions. From seaside links and desert courses with patches of green to tight tree-lined fairways and open disorienting courses. Each one is stunningly recreated with amazing water visuals and vegetation. Some of the rock textures leave a little to be desired – but really – who cares?

Taking the game online in EA’s GamerNet sees another nice feature in the 4 player simultaneous play. This means that everybody plays at once, rather than waiting for the furthest from the whole to play first. So a round only takes as long as it would take to play solo. You get a nice coloured flight-path to map out the other player’s shots too. This is only available in Strokeplay as one of the nuances of Matchplay is that you can gain a huge psychological advantage by dropping your ball next to the pin from 200 yards out and putting the pressure on the next person to play. There are a range of other game modes to play online, even single hole challenges which extends the life of the game long past the Career Mode.

The back of the case indicates that the game utilises the SIXAXIS motion sensitivity of the PS3 controller, but for the life of me I can’t figure out where as the game itself hasn’t mentioned it once. But realistically, you wouldn’t need it. I’ve played the Wii version of this game, which fully utilises motion sensitivity and it’s awful, just awful. Full shots weren’t too bad, but the putting was an absolute shambles.

One minor annoyance in Tiger Woods 09, which only a golfer would notice, is that if you are on the light fringe of the green, you cannot change to your putter, which is quite a common thing to do especially if the pin is relatively near by. You are forced to chip it. Ideally you should have full access to every club in your bag at any time in the round.

At the end of the day, we’re presented with some new courses, some new golfers (including Natalie Gulbis) and some neat little features but cutting it back to a gameplay level, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 is much of the same thing as the last two releases. Which is by no means a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.
I’ll be playing this for many months to come.

Score 85%

Pros: Beautiful graphics, no seriously, they really are! Online simultaneous play is a blessing. Natalie Gulbis – did I mention Natalie Gulbis?.

Cons: Tiger looks more detailed than the other characters. Hank Haney is annoying. Yeah, I’m nitpicking here…

Watch the trailer

Title: TNA iMPACT!

From: Midway

For: Xbox 360

Midway’s first foray into the ring proves that they have what it takes to mix it with the big boys of wrestling simulations, but they do fall just short of a 3-count.

A glance at the Total Non-stop Action wrestling stable gives the impression that it’s a place where all the big names of the last 10 years have gone to see out their days until the body can take no more and their sagging man-boobs and paunches become a bigger obstacle than their opponents. But with relatively recent WWE headliners such as Booker T, Kurt Angle, Big Poppa Pump, Christian, Rhino and Sting in its ranks, and all looking in top condition, it soon becomes clear that TNA is no retirement home for the flabby to wallow around in the unique hexagonal ring.

Now it must be noted that I am a wrestling fan having watched it on and off since the days of Ravishing Rick Rude, Jake the Snake Roberts, The Ultimate Warrior and Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura. When it comes to wrestling games however I do have a deeply ingrained hatred of them stemming from the early days of some downright awful titles riddled with infuriating collision problems, horrific targeting systems and user-unfriendly controls (Backyard Wrestling anyone? *shudder).

Even with the more recent Smackdown vs Raw titles, I couldn’t help but go into them with a negative outlook. They struck me as being prettier versions of the same shitty games. I’m wrong in this assessment, I know, which is why I was determined to go into TNA iMPACT! with an open mind, wiping those preconceptions from my head altogether.

I’m glad I did, because there’s a whole heapin’ helpin’ of fun to be had here and surprisingly enough, while there’s still some elementary annoyances, the problems aren’t serious enough to be off-putting.

Starting off you can dive straight into a match with a selection of wrestlers (about 25 in all, half of which have to be unlocked in Story Mode) or head to the character creation section where you can design your own in a fairly basic creator. Here too you can assign moves and actions as you earn them during Story Mode – and believe me, you’re going to need more than the default move-set to survive. Once your character is formed the story begins with him starting his career in the back streets of Mexico, Lucha Libre style before competing n a Mexican Gauntlet match for a chance to cross the border into a US Army base and another Gauntlet match. Win that and you earn a trial for a spot on the TNA roster. At that point you’ve pretty much made it, and even though the matches do range from Solo, Tag-Team, Free-For-All and variations thereof to the very different Ultimate X style match (where you have to climb ropes to untie an ‘X’ from above the ring), it’s all much of a muchness until the end.

Your TNA career begins with some Tag Team matches and it’s at this point where you first notice the loading times. Each wrestler’s entrance is preceded by a loading screen (so that’s 4 loading screens), add to them the loading of the match before we see any wrestlers, and one more just before the match starts and you have to sit through about a minute of loading for each match. Luckily you can skip through the entrance theatrics, although it is nice to see exactly who your opponents are.

The control scheme, when compared to the likes of Smackdown vs Raw, is simplified but still takes some time to master before you can really be confident that you can pull off the exact move you want, when you want it. Left stick controls the movement of your wrestler, the face buttons perform punch, kick, grapple, pin, get in/out of the ring and climb the turnbuckle, and the shoulder buttons make your wrestler run, perform a reversal or turn any other move into a stronger move. I did find myself repeating favourite moves often but your opponents do wise-up and start using reversals easier if you repeat them too often, which forces you to change things up a little.

Your HUD includes a silhouette of your wrestler which changes colour according to the damage received on various body parts. There is also an Impact meter which, when filled, allows you to perform a signature finishing move by initiating a standing grapple. Next to that is a Stun meter which fills up if you are taking a steady beating from your opponent, when full your character will stand there, all woozy and you have to waggle the right thumbstick furiously to shake it off until the Stun meter is depleted. During this time your opponent is usually making moves to flatten you from the top of the turnbuckle. This manic stick waggling is repeated if you get pinned too. A separate meter will appear and the faster you waggle, the faster the meter will fill (which is also dependant on how much of a beating you’ve been subjected to). Fill the meter before the 3 count and you will break free.

Now I’m sure Microsoft have made their controllers to take a decent trashing, but the right stick really does take a regular hiding in TNA iMPACT! (I couldn’t help but think of the old arcade classic Hyper Olympics and using a coin to rub over the buttons).

Further button mashing occurs when a submission hold is applied. This takes you into a kind of mini-game in which a combination of buttons appear on screen which you have to press in order. The theory is to hit your combination before your opponent does to break free from the hold. The problem I found was that the button presses changed so fast that only the most seasoned Guitar Hero veterans would have a chance of hitting them in order. I found myself just rolling my thumb around on the face buttons and eventually I’d fluke a combo before my wrestler tapped out. It’s a feature that doesn’t seem well thought out., but least it wasn’t more stick waggling I guess.

The RB button is used to perform reversals and counters and if you can master this action (you get a fleeting prompt in your HUD) then this is the most satisfying part of the game. There’s nothing better (with beating your opponent to a pulp with a steel chair a close second), than reading a special move and countering it with a special one of your own. All counters can be countered however and when 3 or 4 counters are strung together the result is brilliant to watch.

Graphically, the game looks sweet, the FMV sequences are well detailed and the game barely skipped a beat at 1080p. The character acting and voices are excellent, the story is littered with black humour and the commentary is varied enough that it compliments the in-ring action nicely without being annoying.

Multiplayer allows for 1-4 players locally, all on the same screen which zooms out slightly to accommodate players being spread around the ring. Online you can play solo or team up with a friend to indulge in some tag-team action.

So my congratulations goes out to Midway for producing an extremely competent wrestling title in TNA iMPACT! If they can keep an old cynic like myself interested, then they must be doing something right.

Pros: Nice story mode. Fluid animations, especially in the reversals. Relatively simple controls.

Cons: Targeting problems as usual. Loading screens galore. Lack of women wrestlers. This game just might kill your controller.

Score: 75%

Watch this short “Making of”

Title: Smash Court Tennis 3
From: Namco
For: Xbox 360

Having seen some scathing reviews of Smash Court Tennis 3 I was interested to see just what could be so bad about the latest release in a series that I’ve regularly enjoyed, especially last year’s PSP release.
It’d be fair to say that while some of these reviews are over critical, SCT3 does have some serious disappointments and frustrating features along with some fun gameplay depending on what mode you’re playing.
Essentially the game is ripped straight from the PSP version with better graphics. The presentation is the same and not a lot has been added to inspire tennis fans.
I found the inconsistencies in gameplay to be the most infuriating, especially in Arcade Mode in which you have to play 4-5 matches depending on difficulty. I would breeze through until the final game and then all of a sudden my player would start over-running everything where before he would remain balanced.
Various annoyances like this ruined the game for me, but at the end of the day I still go back for more as I love the chess-like battle that is the game of tennis.

Score 65%

Title: The Sims 2: Apartment Pets
From: Electronic Arts
For: Nintendo DS

It would seem that the DS is a prime target for cutsie simulation games such as this. Games completely lacking in any substance that you initially might think “hmmm a game in which you look after puppies, kittens etc…how cute! I’d like to play that”, but then quickly realise it becomes a chore.
In typical Sims style, you take care of your pet/s by exercising them, feeding them and of course cleaning up after them. With your Simolean dollars you can buy them toys, outfits and get them groomed. Every now and then it breaks into a mini-game in which you will brush, wash, spray perfume on or stroke your pet (except for the snake – don’t spray perfume on a snake), however these all amount to exactly the same action and wear thin after the first time.
Graphically it looks better than the first Sims Pets game on the DS, but amounts to nothing more gameplay-wise. Even the younger gamers will get bored.

Score 40%

Robot Chicken Star Wars

It would seem we are spoilt for choice when it comes to Star Wars parodies in recent times what with the excellent Family Guy Blue Harvest and now Robot Chicken Star Wars. But the two are very different, with Blue Harvest being almost a remake of the whole film and Robot Chicken with its satirical, analytical and anarchic “what if?” view of the Star Wars series.

Featured on the US network Adult Swim, the award winning Robot Chicken series comes in 10 minute shows and is made using various models and action figures and stop-motion animation. Being stop-motion the shows must take an eternity to make and hence it’s understandable they are presented in short sketch style tidbits. Robot Chicken Star Wars itself is only 23 minutes long, essentially a double episode of the show and the skits range between a few seconds and a couple of minutes each.

Written by Matthew Senreich and Seth Green (who also Directs), the feature contains some hit and miss sketches along with a couple of running jokes. It has the blessing of George Lucas himself who also has a cameo in a humorous take on Fan Conventions. Many big names make voice cameos including Star Wars originals such as Mark Hamill and Ahmed Best (Jar Jar Binks). Temuera Morrison doesn’t personally appear but his character does in a somewhat homo-erotic scene with a carbonized Han Solo. The voice actor who plays Jango Fett does a pretty decent job of mimicking our Tem too. Other voice cameos include Malcolm McDowell, Joey Fatone, Hulk Hogan, Seth MacFarlane, Conan O’Brien and James van der Beek.

Highlights include a commercial for Admiral Akbar Cereal, in which 2 children are sitting at the breakfast table about to tuck into their boring breakfast when Admiral Akbar jumps forward and shouts “It’s a TRAP”.

Perhaps the best sketch is a take on the cantina scene where Luke gets accosted by the two bar patrons, one of which exclaims “He said he doesn’t like you – I don’t like you either”. This follows the non-English speaking alien from when he gets out of bed in the morning convincing himself that today is going to be a great day. His piggy-faced buddy then bowls in and convinces him to go to the cantina after work for a few drinks. As the first alien sees Luke at the bar he turns to him and asks in his alien tongue (subtitled for the viewer) where Luke got his hair done. His drunk buddy then steps in and as a joke mistranslates it into those famous lines from the film. Of course this escalates into Obi Wan stepping in to do some limb detachment. It’s a work of genius that needs to be seen to be appreciated.

Then there’s the skits that don’t work. One is an extended scene involving George W Bush which seems completely out of place and is unfunny anyway, and then towards the end there’s a Star Wars on Ice scene that, while cleverly and painstakingly made, goes on too long and brings the show to an anticlimax when it was clearly meant to do exactly the opposite.

The first watch of Robot Chicken Star Wars held a few laugh out loud moments, but then watching it a second time the humour was completely lost on me, not because of a differing mood, but I think it just got old very quickly.

Obviously a 22 minute DVD wouldn’t be worth parting with cash for, so it’s in the Special Features where the value for money lies.

EXTRAS:

About 1.5 hours worth including no less than seven commentaries!
An introduction to Adult Swim cartoons/animations.
Some commentary and video relating to other Robot Chicken episodes
Behind the scenes featurette.
Animation Meeting
Deleted Scenes & Trailers
Photo Gallery & Easter Eggs
Panel Presentation
A Light Speed Time Lapse of the whole production

Score 65%

Title: Soul Calibur IV
From: Namco
For: Xbox 360

It’s interesting to note that Soul Calibur IV is the first foray onto the current generation of consoles for the franchise. That’s a long time between drinks for a series that has a strong fanbase.

This weapons-based fighting game contains 30 characters to choose from including Yoda for 360 owners and Darth Vader on the PS3 version. Easy mode is a doddle for even beginners and amounts to nothing more than sparring practice, even with the final boss. However in the harder difficulties, knowing how to dodge and when to block/counter-attack is imperative to success.

We are given the basic Arcade and Story modes which are run-of-the-mill, but it is in the Tower of Lost Souls that gameplay gets interesting. Essentially a Survival Mode, you can choose to ascend the tower floor by floor, fighting some powerful enemies or descend the tower with two fighters, tag-team style. It’s where any longevity in the game lies apart from online fighting.

Graphically the game is very nice, especially in some of the special finishing moves and slow motion effects. Ultimately Soul Calibur IV is competent and fun, but as Yoda would put it – blow me away it did not.

Score 75%

Title: SingStar Amped
From: Sony London Studio
For: PS2

What’s that you say? Another SingStar release? Surely not!

Well yes, it’s time for SingStar Amped which, by the sounds of it should be chocka block full of cranking, head-banging hard rock songs. Alas for the most part it’s not.

Sure, there’s pumping anthems from Fall Out Boy, Iggy Pop, Quiet Roit, Faith No More, Choirboys, Cheap Trick, Kasabian and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. But then there’s others such as 4 Non Blondes, Blue Oyster Cult, Robert Palmer and David Bowie which are still great songs in themselves but serve to turn the volume knob down from 11 to a mild 6.

30 tracks all up and nothing to make it stand out from any other SingStar release, mark SingStar Amped down as mediocre.

Score: 55%

MULTI-GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING ARTISTS STING AND TOOL TO ROCK IN GUITAR HERO® WORLD TOUR

Police Frontman/Bassist Sting to Lend Voice and Likeness; Rockers Tool Bring Three Popular Tracks and Band-Designed Venue to the Game

Sydney, Australia – September 8, 2008 – Rock and roll legend Sting and progressive metal pioneers Tool are making their video game debuts, contributing more than just music, in Activision Publishing, Inc.’s Guitar Hero® World Tour.

In what will be the largest collection of artists ever to appear in a Guitar Hero game, singer-songwriter, actor, author, activist and lead singer/bassist of The Police, Sting will add his voice and likeness as an in-game character. Aspiring frontmen can take the stage as Sting throughout their vocal career or play alongside him as he performs one of The Police classics, “Demolition Man.”

Hugely popular alternative metal band Tool, known for their epic, intense musical arrangements and killer visual arts, will also soon be known for their contribution to the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour. Guitar Hero fans from all over the world will be able to rock out to “Parabola” and Grammy-award winning “Schism” from Tool’s critically-acclaimed 2001 album Lateralus in addition to “Vicarious” from their 2006 Grammy-award winning album 10,000 Days. The game will also feature an all-new venue designed in collaboration with the band and highlighting the art style that has become a staple in their music videos, live shows and album artwork.

When the house lights go down this spring, a new generation of guitarists, drummers and fearless frontmen will come together and rock with Guitar Hero World Tour. The latest instalment in the #1 best-selling video game franchise of 2007, Guitar Hero World Tour transforms music gaming by expanding Guitar Hero’s signature guitar gameplay into a cooperative band experience that combines the most advanced wireless controllers with new revolutionary online* and offline gameplay modes including Band Career and 8-player “Battle of the Bands,” which allows two full bands to compete head-to-head online for the first time ever.

The game features a slick newly redesigned guitar controller, drum kit controller and a microphone, as well as an innovative Music Studio music creator that lets players compose, record, edit and share their own rock ‘n’ roll anthems. Music creators will also be able to share their recordings with their friends online through GHTunesSM where other gamers can download and play an endless supply of unique creations.

Title: Too Human
Genre: Action
Players: 1 (Online 2 player co-op)
Developer: Silicon Knights
Publisher: Microsoft
For: Xbox 360

Website

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn’t become one himself”. It almost seems like Friedrich Nietzsche had a multitude of video games in mind when that gem sprung to mind. It’s a quote that sets the scene for Too Human, a game which at times has been classed as vaporware during its on/off again development over the last 10 years.

Yes that’s right, 10 long years. Too Human originally began development for the previous generation of hardware – and truth be told, it shows. More on that later.
Reading this review you could easily be lead to believe Too Human is a terrible game, but believe me when I say that it’s not, and all should become clear.

Too Human is a planned trilogy of games and I have no doubts that the storyline will be epic, should the next two ever come to fruition. But there will need to be more incentive in terms of gameplay for most gamers to part with cash for the whole set.

This third-person adventure sees the player cast as Baldur, a Cybernetic Aesir God thrust into the middle of an ongoing battle which threatens the very existence of mankind. Fired partly by duty and partly by revenge, Baldur must defend mankind from an onslaught of monstrous, ruthless war machines hellbent on the eradication of human life. The Aesir Gods have long sided with the humans against the machines but as the story develops a twisted tale of in-fighting, hidden agendas and conspiracies evolves.

Too Human tries to be something to everyone. It’s a hack & slash brawler, a third-person shooter, a cinematic adventure epic and a multileveled RPG focusing on weapon customisation, rune and equipment utilisation and the leveling up of skills. It can be all of these or any one of them should you see fit. It’s possible to play out the game without leveling up at all and using the original weapons – it might take you a long time, but it illustrates the player-driven gameplay.

However in some ways, this multi-genre crossing idea proves to be Too Human’s downfall. Sure, there’s some depth to the RPG element, but the combat play is mediocre at best – and despite its best efforts to be a story-driven cinematic masterpiece, hack & slash combat takes up a good 90% of your time. Sometimes it’s small sporadic battles with some minions and a boss, other times you can be surrounded by dozens of enemies who each take more than a couple of hits to destroy (unless you can administer a Ruiner finishing move).

This gets repetitive, fast. Clear an area of enemies, move on, face more of the same enemies, move on, wash, rinse, repeat. You do face different classes of enemy, which require a little thought when dispatching them (exploding ones that need ranged combat, or machines that fire at you from afar that need close combat to kill efficiently), but ultimately all your foe blur into one extremely long, seemingly endless battle. And even moreso when you take into consideration that this is the first in a trilogy. That’s three consecutive sagas of hacking and slashing your way through hoards of hammer-fodder for about 40 odd hours of continuous gameplay. Hence my earlier observation that there will need to be something to vary the monotony in the next two releases. Storyline alone just won’t cut it.

Speaking of repetitive. Being a Norse-themed tale (Baldur, Thor, et al), when you die a glowing Valkyrie floats down from Valhalla to carry your body to the heavens (just before you respawn). This whole sequence takes about 30 seconds all up, which I thought was pretty neat the first couple of times – but then I realised you can’t skip through this. Yep, you have to sit through it EVERY time you die – and trust me, in Too Human you die A LOT. After two of the four episodes in the game I had played for a bit over 6 hours – I’d estimate I had died around 60 times which means I had to sit through half an hour of the same Valkyrie sequence over and over again. It’s infuriating, frustrating, and just plain unnecessary.

Yet, I kept coming back. Why? That’s a question I keep asking myself, and the answer, I think, is this: When you die you respawn with full health, yet your enemies do not. All the enemies you killed before you died are already dead and the ones you have injured are still injured. This is particularly useful in boss battles where you could deplete their health bar to 10% and then die. When you respawn you have full health and they still have 10% making them relatively easy to finish off. It’s a feature that keeps you with enough motivation to carry on. It’s just as well, because had I needed to begin an area from scratch after dying then I swear I would have switched the game off after the first tough battle. So kudos to Silicon Knights (and the beta testers) for having the foresight to include this feature.

Now getting back to the graphics…

They’re a disappointment to say the least. As my son and I watched the opening cinematics we looked at each other and let out a synchronised “Ewwww”. There are times, when the occasion calls for a close up of Baldur or one of the other main characters then some effort has gone into the finer details and also in some of the particle effects. But in general the characters and surroundings look like top end PlayStation 2 quality. In fact I was playing Black on the original Xbox the other day and the graphics put Too Human to shame. There’s nothing about Too Human that screams current-generation apart from the scale of the game.

The control method takes some getting used to. Apart from being able to centre the camera behind Baldur, you cannot control its whereabouts. The left thumbstick is for moving Baldur and the right thumbstick is for melee combat. It would have been nice to be able to swing the camera around with the shoulder buttons, but most of the time you can make do with centering it often. It’s not ideal, but it doesn’t make the game unbearable either.

Ultimately, Too Human is somewhat of an enigma. In some ways it’s downright awful. At times I felt embarrassed for the developers. But then there’s a game which has some depth. It preaches over-reliance on technology and has an interesting storyline that leads into the next in the series. There’s also depth to be found at an RPG level if you are inclined to go fiddling around with your inventory and skills.
Whatever Too Human has going for it, it’s kept me playing longer than many recent games have, so despite all its faults, it has a certain x-factor, mojo or addictiveness.

Part of me wants to see the trilogy go from strength to strength, culminating in an epic series of games, but then there’s that small nagging voice in my head that wouldn’t be surprised if the next two chapters never see the light of day.

Score: 65%

Pros: It’s addictive and has depth beyond the repetitive hack & slash if you have the patience to delve into it.
Cons: Last-gen graphics, and average ones at that. The Valkyrie scene, oh the Valkyrie scene…

Watch the trailer: