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By Michael Charge, 28/07/2010 4:17 pm

This week in news… Michael Jackson, Valve gives out more gifts and a possible end to conflict in Korea through games?

Dead singer’s estate tells derivative zombie type to “Beat It”

PopCap this week have said the Dancing Zombie from Plants vs. Zombies has been changed from its original Michael Jackson in Thriller form as seen in all current version of PvZ to a different form in all upcoming games such as the XBLA release and retroactively patching it out of some variants with the iPhone being the first. This is due, according to MTV Multiplayer, an objection made by the estate of Michael Jackson. PopCap has also produced a press release, citing this change as a “business decision”

To be honest, I don’t really see the issue with having a zombie Michael Jackson eating plants. Unless life ends up mirroring art…

Valve bans MW2 players… before giving them a better game

Oh PC MW2 players. Not only did you loose out with the lack of dedicated servers and mod support and expensive DLC, but over the last weekend many players ended up being banned by Valve’s VAC system. It turns out that an error that is normally ignored in the anti-cheating system ended up being counted as a hack and so led to all these innocent players potentially being forced to rebuy the game for £40 off Steam itself.

Valve however soon found out their mistake and as well as unbanning all the affected gamers, they also gave them two free copies of Valve’s own Left 4 Dead 2, one for themselves and one for a friend. Just another reason why Valve is awesome.

Relic announces that Space Marine is coming to PC – Fans rejoice

Relic, makers of the Dawn of War series and Company of Heroes, had previously announced a Gears of War-esque game for Xbox 360 and PS3 called Space Marine, focusing on those Power Armoured religious nut jobs which appear in every piece of 40K artwork. Unfortunately, there was no mention of a PC version which was to a primarily PC company (their last console game was The Outfit) was equivalent to shooting themselves in the foot.

Due to this there was much rejoicing when a few days ago Relic released news that they are now going to release a version for the PC at around the same time as the console edition in early 2011.

This is a game I’m really looking forward to as the marines have always seemed perfect for this style of game. The fact it is also coming out on PC gives a bit more choice although I will probably choose the Xbox 360 for simply the sake of controls.

Starcraft 2 released – South Korean economy collapses

12 years on from the release of Starcraft, the sequel has finally been released to the raving masses of the PC and Mac fandom and the overall reaction is pretty good.

I personally have little interest in Starcraft – the only thing I really like is the campaign as Blizzard know how to make RTS campaigns (see Warcraft 3). The multiplayer is just the wrong style for me, more about build orders and speed rather than clever use of units.

That’s it for this Week in Games.

Next week… Who knows?

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By Michael Charge, 27/07/2010 2:33 am

I went to go and see Inception tonight and I have to say it is a rather excellent film. The Dark Knight wasn’t a one off with Nolan making this film a great fun that is a deeply involved crime caper one one level and something else on the other.

(There may be spoilers at some point in the article so I recommend if you haven’t seen the film don’t read on)

Continue reading 'Ideas for Inception – The Game'»

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By Michael Charge, 21/07/2010 11:59 pm

This is going to be a weekly news post for games along with an opinion on said story. Its like Midweek Madness but without you this turning into a normal blog filled with my life story

This Week…

Valve release Alien Swarm on Steam for Free!

On Monday, Valve released an updated version of the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod for free to all Steam users along with the development kit. As with the original, its a four person isometric view shooter which plays quite a bit like game version of Aliens the film.

The game is really, really good and I’ve spent most of today playing it and levelling up. As its free I really recommend you try it out. If you aren’t sold totally than my review will be up soon on This Is My Joystick.

Also its free. As in nothing. How many other companies give games away for free?

Steam link here

Xbox Live Players to Decide the Final Carmine’s fate!

In every Gears of War game to date, the Carmine brothers have not really done that well with both Anthony and Benjamin meeting a slightly sticky end in Gears of War one and two respectively. With the release of Gears of War 3 next year, its safe to assume that the next Carmine will probably not survive its playtime. However, Epic have thrown it open to let Xbox users decide if he sticks to the pattern of if Clay Carmine will break the chain. The decision is being made by the purchase of one of two avatar t-shirts (one for each option) or by buying one of the shirts for real at Comic Con which is on in San Diego this week. The money raised from the sale of these shirts goes to Penny Arcade’s Childsplay. I love both the idea of this promotion and the fact that the money is going straight to a charity that helps to provide games for children stuck in hospitals in the US, Canada and the UK.

Oh, and Carmine must Die.

Voting starts on July 29th

Plants vs. Zombies coming to XBLA and PSN complete with multiplayer

Plants vs. Zombies is on every single platform known to man by now and is coming to the Xbox 360 and PS3 this year in its entirety. Along with the tower defence game we love and the funny minigames that help to make it last forever, the game will also include both Versus and Co-Op modes. What they will actually be is unknown but a leaked achievement list mention Co-Op bowling.

Aww yeah.

PvZ is on PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone already and available on Steam, the PopCap store, on disc and in the iTunes App Store

New Alice Game Announced – Does not contain Stephen Fry as Cheshire Cat*

EA has announced a sequel to a great interpretation of Alice in Wonderland, American McGee’s Alice. The new one, called Alice: Madness Returns, takes Alice back to a twisted version of Wonderland where she must combat both the denizens of this bizarre and corrupted realm and her own madness. However, she must also fight in the real world using the abilities of Wonderland to assist.

The first game was really good. It had a fantastic art style and a rather clever twist on the traditional story where everything was majorly messed up. This sequel sounds like it carries on this vision and brings it to a new generation.

Good luck finding the original game though – it didn’t sell too well and now it is almost impossible to find. The sequel is out in 2011.

*which is crap

That’s it for this Week in Games.

Next week… Who knows?

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By Michael Charge, 16/07/2010 6:18 pm

After several months of delay, and two false starts, Johnson Ramblings is back with the usual group to ramble from topic to topic. This time we discuss how Lego Dwarfs work, the World Cup, Red Dead Redemption and it being game of the year and much, much more (including Sven impressions and Charge generally being wrong or freaking out)!

Warning: We did bleep out one or two points where we mentioned some names so it may suddenly beep. Don’t listen to this while drifting off to sleep.

Also we are still using a phone to record this (being corrected by next episode) so apologies for the sound quality

Get it here!

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By Michael Charge, 10/07/2010 7:00 am

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft
Year of Release: 2009
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Tom Clancy is the man for near future military action. Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon are all landmarks in their various genres. H.A.W.X. was an attempt to bring that calibre to the arcade air combat games which had previously been ruled by Ace Combat.

As I mentioned before, H.A.W.X. is a arcade style flight combat game from Ubisoft Romania, those fine fellows who brought us Blazing Angels. This shows as the game handles very similarly. The A button is fire missiles, B is cannon, right trigger is accelerate and left trigger brakes. Oh and entering the Konami code allows you to fire kittens rather than missiles. (just joking. But wouldn’t that be awesome?) However, instead of flying around in old propeller driven monoplanes or biplanes, you instead take to the skies in the latest in military hardware and carrying enough ordinance to turn Leeds city centre into rolling plains. And to fit the near future Tom Clancy thing, these planes appear to have computers that are able to work out the opposing pilots every action and line you up a course on it mean you can fill it with hot rocket powered lead. Similarly, these planes are designed for idiots and so have safety locks on them. By double tapping the triggers and switching to OFF, you can toggle these which allows your jet to do drifts and other such tricks to glide around the sky. These two modes help to spice up the combat and both also look pretty cool.

The story is the usual Tom Clancy military thriller. Guy fighting for USAF is fired (bizarrely mid mission while still carrying a load of bombs) and joins a PMC. Years later, said PMC become involved in battle alongside the US in South America. Deciding that the US are nicking all their money, the PMC (in a twist a blind person could see miles away) invades the States. The player, being the type of person who probably sleeps in the Star Spangled Banner, rejoins the US and beats up every PMC jet who attempts to attack him. Its an alright story (although the obsession with PMCs in all the Clancy games is kind of worrying) and does a good job setting up the missions, but lets say it won’t win any awards. The mission on the other hand are all superb. From bombing African rebel camps, to protecting Air Force One, the varied missions make flying great fun. However, there are one too many escort missions which may drive people insane as they are nowhere near the same level as fun. Similarly, the game can get really annoying when the designers thought it would be funny to jam your plane, limiting your ability to use missiles. Although good fun, when they do it four time, it looses its novelty and instead becomes a pain in the ass. Additionally, the game also bridges the gap between GRAW 2 and Endwar showing some of the political changes that occurred to pit the world power against each other and the rise of Captain Mitchell up to a position of power he held in Endwar.

The other point about H.A.W.X. is the COD4-esque XP system. By levelling up, you unlock more aircraft and weapons packs. This system does add a lot of replayability to the game, as many of the best weapon sets require you to reach level 40ish. Multiplayer is a good way of getting points and is also great fun, although hampered buy a lack of modes. The addition of an attack/defend mode (so beloved in the singleplayer) would provide some much needed variety. A really good point in H.A.W.X.’s favour is the sheer number of aircraft. There are around 50 aircraft ranging from the venerable MIG-21 up to the F22 and beyond including the SR-71 Blackbird. The vast majority of these aircraft have unique cockpits and models, although the variants are often just reskins of the outside with some different weapon choices. The number of aircraft will drive completionists to madness unlocking all of them and their weapon loadouts and skins. Graphics-wise the game is really impressive. The aircraft models have good look to them, with a shine off the cockpits and the wings as its reflects the sunlight. The world also looks good, until you reach less than 100m above the ground where the satellite imagery based textures start to show their limitations. However, most the time you are that low level, the scenery is not really what your concentrating on. The sound is also pretty good with the jets having different sounds for their roaring engines leading to air battles sounding spectacular with the explosions added. It is however let down by the appalling voice acting from your briefing officers, which was almost as bad as the ones from Men of War. The score is also the usual stirring orchestral track which as become a staple of both the Ghost Recon and the Rainbow Six series.

H.A.W.X is an absolute blast to play, but has a serious length issue. I finished the story in around 5 hours on normal. Admittedly, I only got to level 20 and had tons of aircraft left to unlock but for many people that would be enough. Therefore, if your only interested in the story, this game is more of a rent. For everyone else, the game is worth of a purchase but only if its around going for cheap. It isn’t really worth the RRP, even at launch but pick it up for a bargain and I guarantee you a fun few hours blowing 4 million pound jets out of the sky.