Title: Wheelman

From: Tigon Studios

For: PS3

You may not know it, but the man that brought Riddick to life – Vin Diesel is an avid gamer. So much so that he’s started his own game development company. Whether that means he has seen the writing on the wall for his acting career and plans to star in every game remains to be seen. Personally, I don’t mind the guy as an actor, he’s pigeon-holed himself a little and I don’t see him doing many period pieces or romantic comedies, but what he does he does well.

I don’t need to remind you all of the trail of bargain-bin liners that are the usual movie-game or game-movie conversions. Despite the odd exception, the list is a veritable cringe-fest of cash ins and rushed releases. However I get the feeling Wheelman is a game made specifically with an eventual movie in mind, albeit a movie that closes the gate after the horse has bolted, if you catch my drift.

Wheelman is Vin Diesel’s latest vehicle (pun intended) in which the player controls Milo Burik (Diesel) as, funnily enough, a wheelman, driving dangerous missions for various criminal figures in and around Barcelona, Spain.

Wait. What? The hero is one of the bad guys, I hear you say?

No, don’t be silly – our buddy Milo is, wait for it… an undercover agent!
So undercover in fact, that even the local constabulary know nothing about him. It would seem that when Milo joined his particular enforcement agency that he received a special dispensation to be able to dish out as much collateral damage and break as many laws as he sees fit. You can smash civilian vehicles on a whim, terrify pedestrians and crash through obstacles and roadblocks without any implications whatsoever. In a game, this type of behaviour can be excusable in the name of “entertainment”, but if there is to be a follow-up movie then gaping loop-holes like this could render it a farce from the opening credits.

If I were to break down Wheelman into likeness percentages it would be as follows: 20% Grand Theft Auto, 20% Need For Speed Undercover, 40% Burnout Takedown, 10% Pursuit Force and the other 10% split between the movies The Transporter and Fast & Furious.

Much of the game is spent on missions running errands for key figures in the city’s criminal underworld, all the while building your street cred with rival gangs. Missions can range from delivering items, stealing vehicles, all out street rumbles or hunting down particular people. As the name would suggest, missions in Wheelman usually requite a decent amount of driving, but every now and then comes a chance to leave the vehicle and run around guns ablazing.
The fact of the matter is, this becomes repetitive before too long and déjà vous soon kicks in as you race across town yet again while yet another wave of enemy vehicles tries to take you out.

This high speed game of bumper-cars allows you, when battling at close quarters, to execute a “combat move” (a flick of the right stick) which, much like Burnout, results in your enemy’s vehicle crashing spectacularly. Your own vehicle certainly isn’t impervious to damage of its own. If your rims are tearing up the ancient streets of Barcelona and your car is adding to the already smoggy atmosphere then with the press of a button you can perform an “airjacking” of another vehicle (think Pursuit Force), which sees your character leap from your damaged vehicle onto a nearby vehicle, slide in the window and kick out the driver. Don’t you just wish it was that easy? Although with some congested roads in Auckland it wouldn’t be too hard to be perfectly honest.

Taking the over-the-top driving into consideration, if you’re looking for a driving simulation then turn around and look the other way. Wheelman has arcade handling which is very forgiving and requires very little skill or experience to pull off successfully. This will appeal to those of you looking for some action without having to think to hard about it and without having to redo levels over and over just to progress. A thinking man’s action game this is not.

Graphically, Wheelman has its ups and downs. Barcelona has been rendered quite nicely, some vehicles and the main characters are above par. But then there’s auxiliary details, generic vehicles and characters that look like they’ve been copy & pasted straight from a Nintendo 64 game.

At the end of the day Wheelman is a rental, just for a bit of fun where you can turn off your brain and cause some virtual carnage.

Pros: It had the potential to be a lot worse, but there’s some rainy weekend fun to be had in Wheelman.

Cons: Repetitive missions, some blocky graphics, repetitive missions and ummm… repetitive missions.

Score 65%

Watch the trailer

30 Years of Space Invaders

“I’m just going to play Spacies” or “I spent all my pocket money on Spacies” became the mantra of a generation of youth in the late 70’s & 80’s.

Despite there being a plethora of other, far more advanced arcade games by the end of that decade and the fact that actual Space Invaders cabinets were few and far between at this late stage, ‘Spacies’ was the term that encompassed not just a game, not just a genre of games, but a whole form of entertainment.

This is indicative of the impact that one solitary electronic game had on a generation, an impact that still ripples through the gaming industry thirty years after its 1978 release.

Space Invaders, for the one or two of you who haven’t had the pleasure, is a two-dimensional shoot-em-up in which the player controls the left and right movement of a laser cannon across the bottom of the screen. The player’s cannon is partially protected by several stationary defence bunkers which can be shot away gradually by both the player and the advancing ‘invaders’.

There are five rows of eleven invaders which slowly move uniformly across the screen, dropping down one line each time they reach the left or right extremities. The aliens’ goal is twofold, trying to shoot the laser cannon, at which point the player loses one life, and trying to avoid being shot themselves with the view to landing on the ‘planet’ surface.

The in-game music is a rhythmic, marching, heartbeat-like throbbing bass which speeds up along with the pace of the action as you shoot more invaders. Eventually the player is left with a solitary invader to shoot which is travelling at a frenetic pace. Killing this final enemy often proved to be the downfall of many players as timing a vertical shot to hit a swift horizontally moving target took considerable practice and/or luck.

Shooting the invaders earns the player points and every so often the player would be given a chance to shoot a bonus UFO which would travel across the top of the screen. Shooting these bonus ships required a well place shot between invading ships and was essential to acquiring higher scores.

Tomohiro Nishikado of Japan spent a year designing Space Invaders and developing the hardware to run it on. In 1972 Taito released a mechanical game named Space Monsters, and it is widely reported that this partly inspired Space Invaders along with a dream Nishikado had about Japanese school children being attacked by alien invaders.

Atari’s earlier electronic game Breakout was also an inspiration, with Nishikado aiming to create a game with the same feeling of relief and achievement when a level was cleared. In Space Invaders, this post-level relief is enhanced due to it being the first arcade game to feature an intermission of sorts.

The next level required the press of a button to start, something which is has been a mainstay of most electronic games ever since – although in the last fifteen or so years that pause has been needed to load graphical information into the hardware’s cache.

Space Invaders helped to turn what was considered a niche industry of novelty children’s entertainment into a global goldmine. In fact following its release, Space Invaders caused a temporary shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan (the coins used to operate the game itself) and by 2007 Space Invaders alone had earned Taito approximately NZ$850,000,000 in revenue. To this day, the Guinness Book of Records recognises Space Invaders as the #1 arcade game of all time.

Not surprising then that a long list of games, many very successful in their own right, were based upon the same ground breaking formula. Well known arcade classics such as Galaga, Galaxian, Moon Cresta, Phoenix and Defender all owe a debt of gratitude to the game that paved the way for all that followed.

Space Invaders spawned a number of sequels, remakes and remixes on several formats. In 1980 a Space Invaders release on the Atari 2600 console proved to be one of the first ‘killer apps’ and quadrupled sales of the hardware. Some other ports and copycats received a far less enthusiastic reaction however.

Space Invaders is as synonymous with electronic gaming as the guitar is to rock music. It opened the doors for what is now a bigger industry than film or music. The pixilated imagery of the invaders is known across the globe by consumers spanning three generations.

Sound bites from the game are instantly recognizable by gamers who might not have played Space Invaders for thirty years. It’s ingrained into the synapses of thirty-somethings whether they were avid arcade gamers or not.

It’s an icon of a time where games were designed to make you want to insert another coin, then another until your pocket money had vanished down that slot at which point you’d stand there and enviously watch the next kid do the same.

Nokia XpressMusic 5800
RRP $899

Whether Nokia wants its XpressMusic 5800 to be compared directly to Apple’s iPhone or not, the fact that the main physical feature of both phones is the touch-screen and lack of a separate numeric keypad means that it’s hard not to.

Like the other XpressMusic models, the 5800 is made with multimedia playback firmly in mind. The music playback is second to none when it comes to mobile phones. Included also is an FM radio and MP4/WMV (among others) video playback. To facilitate this, the phone comes with 81MB of built-in memory and an 8GB SD card (upgradable to 16GB).

The 5800 is a stylish black unit with a slick red highlight and weighs in at 109 grams which isn’t too light so to be fragile but heavy enough so that you certainly won’t forget it’s in your pocket. There are buttons on the 5800; three on the front (send/end and menu), an on/off at the top, camera and volume buttons plus a lock button at the side.

The 3.2” touch-screen (640 x 360 pixel, 16×9 ratio) is definitely the dominating feature as there’s no escaping its usage. Anything you want to do on the phone requires some touch-screen interaction. This could put many people off but Nokia has made using the touch-screen a breeze with a recessed stylus at the bottom right corner or an optional plectrum (guitar pick). SMS text messaging can be input by several methods – the traditional alpha/numeric keyboard (this is the best if you’re using your finger to input – although without raised keys, no-look texting is difficult), a mini-querty keyboard, full querty keyboard or by handwriting recognition. The latter three definitely require the stylus for input. I was skeptical of the handwriting recognition as a viable form of input but was pleasantly surprised at how well it picked up my writing and after a little bit of practice turned into one of the faster methods after the full querty option.

Using the phone’s accelerometer, changing the orientation of the phone also changes the screen to match. This works reliably most of the time but it does occasionally need to think about it if you are flicking through menus at the time.

The 5800 comes with a 3.2MP camera with obligatory Carl Zeiss lens (it should be noted here that the iPhone only sports a 2MP camera) and takes decent enough pictures with a good selection of photographic options to choose from.

Other notable features are an Internet browser and email capabilities – both simple to set up, a GPS receiver and Nokia’s free map service (you will be charged for data usage). Add to those all the standard inclusions like calculator, conversion tools, basic office apps and games (2 included + more available via download).

For a feature laden phone, I found the XpressMusic 5800 to have an excellent battery life which far exceeded the latest N-Series Nokias. In fact in terms of value for money and functionality I would take the 5800 over the N96 any day.

Apple’s iPhone still manages to keep its nose in front of the 5800 purely because of the sheer amount of 3rd party applications available, but Nokia’s entry into the touch-screen market runs a very, and I mean very close second.

Black and Decker Smart Select/Zone Range

As more and more New Zealanders choose to undertake minor home renovations themselves, the clever folk at Black and Decker have tailored a range of tools aimed at the consumer end of the market, which help turn you into a DIY expert. The range features a Zone Mouse Sander, Smart Select Cordless Drill and Smart Select Jigsaw.
I spent a morning sanding down an ornate rimu coffee table which had seen better days due to spillage, knocks and kids using the Zone Mouse Sander and a tedious, hand crippling, time consuming job was actually a great deal of fun. The mouse sander told me exactly how hard I needed to press and even sensed when I was working on more delicate parts (including curved edges), adjusting the pressure needed to perform the same job. I was well impressed and the Zone Mouse Sander made even myself look like a master tradesman.

The Black & Decker Smart Select Drill:
The 18V Smart-Select Cordless Drill makes drilling easy, with an application selector that allows the user to choose the desired application. The drill then automatically adjusts its speed and clutch settings for optimum performance.

• Hammer action for drilling into masonry and concrete
• Variable speed for controlled drilling and screw driving
• Single sleeve, metal, keyless chuck makes bit changing quick and simple
• Forward/reverse switch for added versatility
• Anti-slip soft grip for more comfort
• Easy, quick change of batteries due to new slide pack battery locking system
• 1.5hr battery for a longer run time per charge
• Battery level indicator lets you know how much battery charge remains at any time

The Black & Decker Smart Select Jigsaw:
The 650W Smart-Select Pendulum Jigsaw illustrates a variety of visual icons allowing the user to simply turn the dial to choose the desired application such as curved, straight or bevelled cuts in wood, plastic or metal.

• Smart Select technology automatically sets jigsaw to optimize any cutting application
• Variable Speed Dial provides 7 speed settings to match any cutting application
• Accu-Bevel Angle Adjustment provides accurate bevel adjustment with quick action lever & indicator window
• Tool-Free Blade Change provides fast, easy blade changing
• On Board Blade Storage holds up to 3 blades and has a see-through door
• Sightline Channel: open channel design for better cut line visibility

The Black & Decker Zone Mouse Sander:
The Zone Mouse Sander features an LED display which helps the user determine how much pressure to apply when sanding, ensuring the very best result every time. When the correct amount of pressure is applied green lights show on the LED display, and when the user is applying too much or too little pressure red warning lights appear.

• Zone Technology – using an LED display screen indicates if you need to increase / decrease the amount of pressure on the sander for optimal sanding efficiency
• Detail base is designed to give better results when sanding intricate areas
• Ideal for paint / varnish, cleaning glass, removing rust and sanding in tight spaces
• Fan cooled magnet motor for long lasting low vibration performance
• Hook and Loop paper fitment for quick and easy changing of accessories
• Dust sealed switch protects electrical parts from contamination
• Rotatable base allows user to rotate paper as it wears, extending the life of the sanding paper
• Contour attachments included for intricate sanding and polishing tasks
• Rubber grips for comfort and control

Title: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X
From: Ubisoft
For: Xbox 360

Decent flight simulations are few and far between on gaming consoles. The Ace Combat series is the best of the slim-pickings and with the release of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, Ace Combat has nothing to worry about.

H.A.W.X does a lot of things right; it’s got impressive graphics created from satellite imagery, 50 different licensed planes with solid flying physics, an interesting (if generic) storyline, drop-in/drop-out co-op play and plenty of cross references to the successful Tom Clancy franchise of games.

But it lacked two important features for me. Firstly – a sense of speed. Obviously at high altitude the ground appears to be passing very slowly, but this seemed to barely change when flying at tree-top level even on the hardest difficulty. I understand that towns rushing past in a split second would make gameplay almost impossible but there must be some kind of middle ground as opposed to making the supersonic jet fighters seem like Cessnas.

Secondly, and for me this was the fatal blow, I found the game ridiculously hard. Not the actual flying, but the sheer numbers of enemies right from Mission 1. I’ve played a lot of Ace Combat but Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X just didn’t grab me from the get-go.

Score 65%

Title: Nerf N-Strike
From Electronic Arts
For: Wii

I’ve always wanted a decent Nerf gun, so when Nerf N-Strike for the Wii arrived containing a Switch Shot EX-3 Blaster gun with 3 Sonic Micro Darts, the inner child in me was released and every fly on the wall, mirror and poster became a target for this surprisingly powerful gun.

That aside, popping out the spring-loaded firing mechanism allows for insertion of the Wii Remote, turning the gun into a light-blaster. The game itself is most definitely designed for kids, being non-violent (well, as non-violent as shooting a weapon can be) and relatively simplistic compared to other light-gun games.

Basically, it’s a series of mini-games which range from shooting attacking robots or other moving targets to knocking down structures. The best games are the ones that employ actual physics on the target object.

The gun works really well with the Wii Remote, but if mine is anything to go by, it’ll get more use separately from the game itself. Nerf N-Strike is a decent game though and doubly good value with the hardware included.

Score 75%

Title: Resident Evil 5
From: Capcom
For: Xbox 360 (R18)

Resident Evil 5 is the franchises first foray onto the current generation of consoles. An interesting fact considering the Xbox 360 is entering what could be called ‘middle-age’. The previous game RE4 is widely recognized as one of the all-time classics of the last generation both graphically and in gameplay.

RE5 had some high expectations to live up to and it’s done a good job of meeting many of them. Graphically it’s a triumph and combined with the score and atmosphere, the game is a cinematic masterpiece.

RE5 has been made with co-op game play in mind – it really is best played with a human controlled character either locally or online. It can be played in single player with an AI buddy, and it works fine, but just having that extra dimension in terms of strategy and communication makes this a co-op gamer’s dream.

I’m not going to delve into the thrilling storyline here, this is Resident Evil, all you need to know is that there’s zombies, guns, potions, herbs, dogs and scarce ammo. Welcome home.

Score 95%

Title: AC/DC Live Rockband Track Pack
From: Electronic Arts
For: Wii

The best way to review a group game is with a group so I managed to find some people who have never played any form of Rockband, and the more experienced, like myself. It’s a complex game in terms of their musical style. I love playing the drums, but really struggled to keep up while my guitarist found the music challenging and our vocalist fell a bit flat.

While Rockband is a great game and AC/DC a good addition for fans, it would be fairly hard to pick up if you hadn’t played any music sims before. We did like the informational tidbits about the band when waiting for songs to load and we loved rocking out to T.N.T. – definitely the stand out track of the game – and not just because it’s the only one we got all the way through first time round without being booed off stage! We loved the long intro to Thunderstruck and You Shook Me All Night Long was easily the most enjoyable to sing.

Score 65%