Shoot Many Robots - First Thoughts

A friend of mine suggested this game to me a while back and I am kinda glad he did, it's a fun little game. Shoot Many Robots is a side scrolling shooter and as you might have guessed by the name of the game the primary aim of the game is to shoot many robots (10,000 of them if you want the Shoot Many Robots achievement). There are many different types of robots starting with choppers which are small little robots with chainsaws attached to them which are normally found in large hordes, then we have Hummers which are annoying little flying robots that shoot rockets, then as levels progress you get bigger and harder robots in your path such as the hot rod, which is pretty much a gattling gun and can hurt quite a bit if you get the way of its barrage of gun fire and a number of others that I won't go into but you can read about here if you are interested.

The game is both single and multiplayer. The multiplayer is however just a coop version of the story mode. While playing by your self is quite fun and fairly challenging, but this game seems to me like one of those games that should be played with some buddies while having a couple of beers, it's fun, fast paced and quite chaotic. Perfect for those nights of drunken gaming.

Shoot Many Robots also has a leveling and weapon unlock system, which seem to becoming more and more of a trend with shooters these days which I'm not the greatest fan of, but I'll not get in to that rant right now. To get to the max level (50) doesn't take all that long, so long as you join in coop games on Hard or Insane difficulty, I went from level 1 to 45 in a matter of a couple hours, unlocking guns and gear on the other hand can take a fair while longer as they seem to just drop randomly in game (I believe it's when you kill the harder robots, but don't quote me on that) which you then have to buy at the store with nuts and bolts you pick up during your robot killing adventure, so getting everything would take awhile.

Overall it is a cool and fun little game definitely worth the £8 I spent on it on Steam (it is also available on XBLA and PSN and I would suggest it to others who are in the need of a distraction until that next big game they are wanting comes along.

First Thoughts of Groupees 'Be Mine' Bundle

I recently bought the Groupees 'Be Mine' bundle and thought I'd do a little write up of my first impressions of the games included in it. All of these games if bought separately would cost over £40, so getting these at the absolute minimum of $1 is quite the bargain, I would suggest paying more as you will get your moneys worth out of them. I've already gave each game at least an hour each so far, that is since earlier today when I bought this bundle, I'm definitely going to put a lot more time in to all of these games.

Xotic is a strange little game. The basis of it is to progress though levels collecting things, you do this by shooting at them which breaks them and gives you items to pick up. Running through levels destroying stuff and collecting items seems simple enough, however there are many things put in your way to slow you down though like the weird enemies in the game, such as mutant looking things and spiders seem to explode if they touch you which are really quite annoying as they keep respawning until you kill there nest. Which is something I didn't realise the first time I encountered them so I just sat killing waves of them when all I had to do was walk round the corner and blow there nest up. Then you get the likes of huge gaps you need to cross, which can be done in a number of ways depending what upgrades you have. You can sit and cross it by placing a number of platforms underneath you as you jump, this has the higher fatality rate, if you can find an upgrade in the level that gives you flight, that is the far better solution to these giant death holes. It's not so much flight but more the ability to jump after you've jumped. It seems pretty cool.

Next we have Wasteland Angel. I had heard of this game prior to getting it in this bundle, so I somewhat knew what I was getting into with this game. It is played from a top down perspective as you drive around in your car shooting stuff. The game starts you off  in your car outside a town which you have to protect from waves of enemies. While this is pretty much the game, it does change it up occasionally to stop you getting bored and gives you boss battles. I've beat the first two which are big nasty armoured trucks with a couple flamethrowers attached to the front for good measure. Took me quite a while to beat it first time round, using napalm is the key for these guys. After the boss battle you get a bonus round which puts you in first person perspective. The first bonus stage was survival based, where you had to survive as long as you could while trying to get the highest score you could by shooting things. The second bonus stage was a time trial check point type race. 

There are a couple of platformers in this bundle. I will start with BEEP, it's a cute little game where you play as a little robot called BEEP, hence the name. You begin in a spaceship with a number of planets around you this is the level select menu which is pretty cool. After choosing a level, it looks like you standard platformer, plenty of platforms to jump on and what have you but come equipped with a gravity gun which is very necessary as there are movable platforms, debris in your way which you can move and it can also grab things (ie collectables, which happen to be little gold nuggets) which are out of reach. You also have what I think is a BB gun which you will need as these levels are fairly hostile towards you. I have only played the first few levels and have came across a number of things that are a danger. You have robots that shoot at you, some weird flying electric fish, along with a shed load of lasers and of course plenty of holes to fall down. As I am on about stuff that kills you, if you do die I wouldn't worry too much about it as each level has regular checkpoints so you won't have far to go to get back to where you were. You also seem to have unlimited lives so dying isn't really an issue.

The other platformer in this bundle is named Sideway: New York. This has a slight twist on your average platform, which is the fact that you play as graffiti on the side of buildings. You aren't completely stuck to the wall though as you can use window ledges, drain pipes among other things to jump on. You can also spray paint your own platforms to jump up on, which is a nice touch, thought you can only do this in certain places, it is quite obvious where you can spray though. As with any platformer, it's not all fun, games and randomly jumping about, thought that is a major part of it. Of course you need stuff that will kill you, or at least to attempt to. The main enemy you come across are alien goo blob type things, there are other enemies as well such as flying paint blobs and other graffiti artists. The other graffiti artist was like a mini boss I beat the first one at the end of level 2 or 3, he paints more enemies to attack you. While he isn't too hard to beat and only takes a few jumps on the head to kill him, but the paint blobs can get annoying if you don't kill them quick enough and can become overwhelming. Just like BEEP you don't seem to have any lives so you can die as much as you want, it also has regular checkpoints as well so won't you have far to go when/if you die.

Lastly we have The Ball, I say lastly it's not quite you get a bonus game called Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals due to the bundle reaching their 3 grand goal. But that is a point and click adventure game and I am terrible at them. I did attempt that game but struggled to get out of the first room, so I'm not really the right person to talk about the game. Anyway onto The Ball. The game starts you off underground as you fell down a mineshaft. Your friends up top aren't helpful at all and just tell you to explore the cave. So as you have no other choice than sitting around for help which isn't coming anytime soon, you take a wander along the only path available which crosses a very unstable looking bridge which breaks as you cross it, so you fall down another level. Great start so far you've fell down 2 holes in just as many minutes. You then see a building ahead but before you get to it you pick up some ancient device. You can use this device to push special buttons the first of which allows you in to the building. Upon entering the building you find the ball. The device you picked up outside can be used to both push away and attract the ball depending whether you use the left or right mouse button. Once you have the ball you have to take it along with you as it helps you solve puzzles. Sounds strange I know, but as you progress there are a number of buttons to press to open doors and activate lifts. Some of these can be activated by you but some of them only work by being ran over by the ball.  It's a cool game and definitely seems a worthy addition to the collection and I look forward to finishing the game off.

First thoughts of Modern Warfare 3

So Activision have pulled out the stops and let folk try out the multi-player for their latest Call of Duty game. So me being bored and the type that only play CoD due to free weekends (I'm not the biggest fan but I'll play it if I don't have to pay for it. First impression of the game was good, and by good mean complete and utter wank. This is even before I entered a match. I was sat about in the menu for half an hour or so attempting to connect to necessary "online services". For the first few attempt I figured there will be a bunch of folk trying to play the game due to the free weekend. However I grew more and more impatient with the game the longer this went on. Sure there is going to be more people playing the game but surely someone up there at Activision HQ must of thought to check the servers to make sure they would be able to handle the influx of new players, it's not rocket science.

In conclusion my experience of Modern Warfare 3 consisted of:

• Mostly menus
• The game "Connecting to Online Services"
• Then error messages telling me the connection to these servers had failed.
  

I would like to thank Activision so much for wasting my bandwidth, and due to this frankly terrible service which lead to me not actually being able to play the game, I exited the game, went straight to my Steam Library and deleted the game. Half an hour of waiting to play a game is unacceptable should not happen especially from a game made by someone as big as Activision. I was willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt ignoring all the anti CoD flaming that always happens and give the game a shot, but all I got was menus. I'm still not going to say the game it self is good or bad because I don't know. The online servers however are terrible.

Mass Effect 3 Demo

I downloaded the Mass Effect 3 demo last night through Origin and played it earlier today, encountered no problems with it. It was my first experience of the Mass Effect series. I have been meaning to pick up the first 2 games but have yet to get around to buying them. First thing I noticed is the lack of advanced graphics options, which doesn't really effect me as I tend to leave graphics settings on default but I know a lot of people won't be too happy about this.

Also with the key bindings use, cover, and jump all use the same button. I'm playing on a PC I have a entire keyboard to use and don't need one button to do numerous things, I'm not limited to the amount of buttons like consoles with controllers. They need to make separate keys for each of these. It's doesn't sound like that big of a deal but I find it interrupts the flow of the gameplay. It's more annoying when your in cover and need to get up and run somewhere, there are times when I was running along with some cover in front of me and I went to jump over it but ended up ducking for cover behind it. I should be able to jump when I choose to not when the game says I can. The controls seem very console orientated and not at all optimised for PC, you know because it's a PC port of the game, the least you could expect is some decent controls. It's a shame because throughout my play through of the couple levels available in the demo I actually enjoyed the story and the gameplay, except the not so brilliant controls. If they get some decent controls implemented for the full release, I would definitely consider getting it.

On the plus side of things, the combat is pretty swift and accurate, both melee attacks and weapon combat. Also you don't have health regeneration like a number of recent games, which is a good thing, unless you play a cyborg character, have robotic implants or have some actual reasoning behind it doing so it isn't acceptable to implement into the game. It does have armour regen though which considering the game is set in the future, the concept is definitely plausible.

Overall the game seems pretty cool, but it's the consolised controls I can't get past. So I will probably give the game a miss until it turns up cheap on sale in a few months time or so. Also I feel I should play the first two games before I before I play this anyway. I know very little about the series or the characters in it so playing previous games seems like a good idea.

Nuclear Dawn

I recently picked up Nuclear Dawn through the Indie Royale bundle. I had heard of this game through a free weekend that it had on Steam a while back. The idea of the game is actually quite brilliant. When I first heard the game had merged FPS and RTS I wasn't really sure how it would work. But what they have done works quite well. 

There are two teams Empire and Consortium, each team has a commander which plays in RTS view. As commander you have to use resources to build defences for your base while expanding forward to help your team mates by building forward spawn points and supply depots for them. The resources needed to do this are gained at resource points by the rest of the team who play in FPS view. 

As an FPS player you get to choose to play as one of four different classes. Assault, Exo, Stealth or Support. As Assault you get to choose 3 different load outs. Infantry Kit, Grenadier Kit and Marksman Kit. 

• Infantry you get you play as Infantry with an assault rifle, a pistol and grenades as your weapon of choice. 
• Grenadier you get a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a pistol and grenades, this setup is extremely good if you buddy up with a siege Exo to take down the enemy base. 
• Lastly as Marksman you get a sniper rifle, a pistol and anti personnel mines. Also as Assault you get thermal vision which you have regardless of load out. This is essential for taking out those pesky cloaked stealth players. I really hate them they are really annoying for anyone that doesn't play assault.

Next we have the Exo class. Easiest way to explain this class is. Think heavy in Team Fortress. You have lots of health, and a big ass chain gun to start you off. As Exo there are only 2 load outs you get to choose from which are: Suppression Kit and Siege Kit. 

• Suppression as you might think is you and your chain gun you also get a pistol for your secondary weapon. 
• Then we have the Siege kits which vary a little depending on your team. They both do the same job none the less which is destroy enemy buildings. If you are on the Empire team you get a big chunky rail gun, where as Consortium get a rocket launcher. You also get a pistol as secondary just like the suppression kits.

Stealth is the next choice of class, and how I hate them. Just as I hate spies in TF. The sneaky little bastards. Anyway as Stealth you have 2 load outs. First of which is the more annoying of the two. 

• The Assassin kit which includes a sub machine gun, a pistol and depending on team again either Knives (Consortium) or Arm Blades (Empire). Combining your melee weaponry with the sneaking bastardness of the tactical cloak can be quite the annoyance as if you back stab someone it's instant death for the unsuspecting victim. 
• Don't want to get up close and personal with the enemy but enjoy the stealth aspect? Not to worry this game has you covered with the Sniper kit. Yes, we already have snipers with the Assault class. However if you are going to go down the sniping road. I would suggest being a stealth sniper. Why? Think about it you have the ability to kill from a distance and if people cotton on to where you are just stealth up and cheese it out of there. Snipers can be difficult to spot on the best of days, so a sniper with cloaking abilities it's a smart move. You do have to watch out for Assault snipers though as they can spot you with their thermal vision.

Last but not least I would say is the most important class of the game. The support class. As support your role is none other than to support (who would have guessed) the rest of the team which you can do in a number of ways depending which of the three load outs you choose. 

• First choice is the Medic kit and this doesn't really need an explanation. You play as a medic and help heal team mates when you can. You are equipped with a machine pistol, a regular pistol, med pack and some poison grenades. The poison grenades are quite interesting choice of weaponry. They are handy to deter enemies from capturing resource points.
• Next you can choose the Engineer kit. As an engineer your primary role is to help maintain buildings from enemy siege. They can also help out on offence as well with the EMP grenades in their arsenal which can disable enemy turrets which let the likes for Exos get in and do some serious damage. Along with your EMP grenades and repair tool you are also equipped with a shotgun, a pistol and anti personnel mines.
• Lastly is probably the most annoying of the support class. It is the flamer kit, which as you may have guessed includes a flame thrower, you also get a pistol and both poison and frag grenades. If played right this can be one of the most devastating classes to play with the ability to wipe out an enemy team trying to capture a resource point. As you don't have any long range weapons you have to be a little sneaky and try flank unsuspecting victims flaming them then disappearing again letting them all burn to death. 

At the moment the game has a total of six maps: Clock Tower, Downtown, Hydro, Metro, Oasis and Silo. Interwave have released SDK with the game so no doubt we have a bunch of modders on the case to expand this along with more coming for the developers in the future. It's a fun little game, but does rely on good team work. I have joined many random servers with my team running about all over the place which has lead to the other team who were more organised to kick our ass. Communication between players and the commander is essential for success in this game. I am glad I got this game and for the price I got it for is laughable. I would be more than willing to pay above the going price for it which stands at £14.99 on Steam. I have played a good dozen or so hours so far and will get more than my moneys worth out of this game.

Dreamkiller

Dreamkiller was on offer on Steam for £1.75 (Usual price £6.99) so I decided to pick it up. I did attempt to play this a couple years back when Steam had a free weekend for it but my then crappy computer couldn't run it properly.

This is a weird little FPS. You play as Alice Drake who has the ability to go into peoples minds and destroy their fears from within. After a short intro video introducing Alice (below) it starts you in the mind of some one suffering from Arachnophobia and you guessed it, you have to fight your way through hordes of giant spiders and finally killing a huge evil spider boss thing at the end. Doing so cures him of his phobia. Each level you enter the mind of someone with a different phobia which you cure by killing things. Which is always a good way to fix problems. It is an interesting twist on the standard 'get guns and go kill stuff' side of the shooter genre.

It does seem to be influenced by the likes of Painkiller, Serious Sam and those kind of games. I feel it should have more than the three difficulties that the game has: Bad Dream (Easy), Nightmare (Normal) and Insanity (Hard). Nightmare isn't all that difficult as I finished the first level without coming close to dying, where as Insanity is quite ridiculous and I died 2-3 times on the first part of the first level and numerous times after that as well. I think Insanity should be the 'Serious' difficulty (a la Serious Sam) and have a less brutal difficulty between Insanity and Nightmare. The AI isn't exactly the greatest but I guess as the levels progress and you face harder and more numerous foes it is less noticable, it's more when there are not many enemies about.

Overall it is a fun little game and for the few quid I did spend on it. I'm more than happy with it.

Jurassic Park: The Game - First Thoughts

Telltale Games have recently put out another Jurassic Park game. To be honest they aren't the developers I would have picked to make the game considering their game history of point and click games like Sam + Max and Monkey Island.

The game starts off with a cut scene of some woman getting tracked down by some dinosaurs, in which you have  a number of quick time events to do to dodge them and get away. This game happens to be all quick time events like Heavy Rain I guess would be the last game I can think of that uses this type of gameplay. So this is more of an interactive movie than a game. It can get quite frantic at times with the need for good old fashion button bashing goodness. If you aren't quick enough you can die quite nastily. There is one point in the first chapter where you are trying to shoo a baby triceratops back in to it's enclosure, just as you have it back in and nearly have the dino back in with use of the car horn and lights, you piss off mummy and it comes charging at you and knocks down the gate which traps you underneath, so you have to frantically button bash your way out from under the gate on top of you before before mother dino comes and crushes you to death by walking over the gate. There is a fair amount of different ways this game can kill you. 15 of which are shown on this video courtesy of gamesradar.com



I wasn't sure what this game would be like as it was coming from Telltale. It is actually pretty good so far, I've played maybe a couple hours now and only stopped to write this up. I would suggest using a controller over keyboard and mouse if you pick it up on PC as I did, as button bashing is a hell of a lot easier with a controller. It is also available on Xbox and Playstation as well so if you get it for console ignore the last sentence. I realise there are a lot of big titles coming out at the moment so no doubt this game will be completely over looked by most people. But if you see it on sale or if you have a spare £20 with nothing to spend it on. I suggest giving it a shot.

Thoughts of Dead Island

I've played a good few hours or this now. I kind of think of it as Left 4 Dead meets Borderlands. It reminds me of both, L4D due to the fighting though hordes of zombies, which you seem to come across bigger and nastier ones as the game progresses, and Borderlands due to the RPG type element, though I guess you could use any RPG game to explain that side of things.

I played like I said a few hours, you start off on the coast mostly working between a lighthouse and a lifeguard tower, but I have a tendency to get distracted and not follow the storyline in open world type games as I collect every quest available and go do them all at once before I even attempt the story. So after many side quests and many zombies slain just for the hell of it, I finally get on with the story. You start off helping the guys at the Lighthouse and Lifeguard Tower gathering supplies and such. Because you are on the coast and only have a few bars and occasional shop to ransack the supplies you do get don't last very long. So you are asked to further inland to the city to stock up on as much as you can fit in your armoured van (which you get a little earlier after finding a mechanic and saving his daughter) which looks pretty kick ass if I do say so myself. Anyway you head into town, end up having to help more folk in different scenarios. Along you go killing zombies with whatever weapons you can find, which leads me to my next point.

The weapon build system, you get random work benches round the island where you can repair, upgrade or create new weapons. It's a lot like the Dead Rising system. I'm currently using an electrified machete which seems to work quite well at killing most things, just need a knife of your choice, some duct tape, a couple batteries, some wire and you'll be frying zombies in no time. Though you do have to make new weapons every few levels or so as they lose effectiveness when you go up against higher level zombies, so make sure you weapons are round about the same level as you are, you don't start off with any weapon mods but you get more over time though quests or just random looting (which is a must if you want to upgrade).

You also level up after getting so much xp from killing or questing, giving you a skill point to upgrade your special attack, your weapon abilities or survival skills. Each of these very depending on which character you choose to play at the start of your game. I chose Xian, who is an undercover cop that is good with blades, which is why I primarily use machetes, I have 4-5 in my weapons list. But the other characters have different stats, be it more health, quicker attacks and different weapon specialities. Sam B is a stereotypical rapper that specializes in using blunt force (eg hammers, pipes and what not). Logan is an egotistical former pro-football player with a fondness for throwing things, and last but not least is Purna a former police officer turned bodyguard that likes to shoot. It is quite a n addictive little games, I've seen myself just about to call it quits, then thinking I'll just do one more quest then I'll turn the game off for a while, next thing I know its 2 hours later.

I haven't played coop yet, but will do some point down the line, from what I have heard about it though is quite good with you can drop in and out with friends or randoms whenever you like, and when you do join you don't have to stay together and can wander off from each other for a while if you have different objectives. So you can go do a quest your team mate has already done while they continue doing whatever they are doing. I reckon I will play through the game again with a different character once I have finished this run though. I'm definitely not bored with it yet. Whether I will get bored easier on a second play through time will only tell. It seems like a good little game, and I believe some dlc has been already announced for it. Hopefully they will keep updating the game so folk won't be getting bored with the content any time soon.

I would say if you like killing zombies and you like RPG aspects in games along with some pretty funky weapon upgrades, you should definitely give this game a shot.

Call Of Juarez

I finally got round to giving the latest game in the Call of Juarez series The Cartel. When I first heard of it all those months ago, I assumed it would be another old western shooter like the previous games. It's not, it's based on the US government agencies going after a Mexican drug cartel. I liked the last game with it's western setting, it's a shame this one didn't follow suit. The game does seem to play (excluding the car rides) very similar to Bound in Blood. There are a few annoying aspects in the game though the fact that if you don't keep to the exact line the mission wants you to take you get game over for leaving the mission zone, I found this out by trying to flank some bad guys and suddenly got a game over screen.  Also if you kill too many civilians it game overs you aswell this was found out in a car park shootout and I shot a couple many pedestrians behind a car. So you actually have to pay attention to who your shooting and not just kill everyone that gets in your way. The voice acting of the npc's that tag along with you are quite annoying aswell they keep having ago at you if your aim isn't up to scratch, then if you end up killing them all before they get a shot in they make some corny line about how you don't have to do it all by your self. It's the exact same line ever time, it gets annoying. The game seems alright and the storyline is okay, I can see me getting quite pissed off at the things I mentioned as the game progresses. It's not the Call of Juarez I was expecting but it's not bad. If they make another one, I do hope they go back to western style like in the previous games.

Hard Reset Demo

So the demo for this game came out today, so as I'm looking forward to it. I gave it a little download. Haven't finished the demo but played for an hour maybe, this is my first thoughts on the game.

First off the in game menu is pretty cool. It has robot arm type things, the kind you see on say car manufactor lines. They sit and assemble the menu, then when you click on whichever option it disassemble the menu and assemble the next/previous menu.

Controls seem to be your basic wasd setup as per damn near every PC game. You can't crouch though which is a little weird for a shooter but isn't really necessary even though I do keep hitting Ctrl purely out of habit. You have two weapons which can be easily accessed through 'q' and 'e' keys. It does have very simple controls qweasd, shift and mouse is all you need. 'Shift' is sprint, which is quite annoying as you HUD goes blurry while running and you can't shoot while doing so either. Also there doesn't seem to be a quick save or regular save option and it relies on checkpoints, which is disappointing as I like to be able to save when I want to save and not when the game wants to.

Onto the game itself, after the opening cut scene you get your first glimpse of the Hard Reset world, graphically it looks pretty amazing and this is on default graphic settings. It doesn't take you long after you set off to come across you first enemies which happen to be speedy little robot (dog?) type things with buzz saws for heads. They are easily taken care of though blowing up enviromentals around them such as gas canisters and power generators which seem to be everywhere. Due to me blowing up barrel and such it lead me to find secrets hidden behind walls. The first couple secret walls are frankly quite blatant, Essentially making sure you know there are secret walls you can blow up. Shortly after? (I think it was may of been before the first secret wall I really can't remember) you come across what seems like a mini boss (you go encounter more of them later, so I think it's just a pain in the ass normal enemy), they seem to jump out at you can charge at you and if you don't dodge it or just cornered you will die very quickly. The enemies I have encountered do seem to be very annoying and no doubt they will only get worse as the game progresses.

The two weapons you get are the CLN firearm which is a machine gun type gun, and the N.R.G weapon which has got a plasma rifle type thing going on, which looks pretty awesome. Which you can upgrade, along with armour and health and such. The cool thing is the upgrades aren't just your normal have some more ammo, have faster fire rate, while these are an option, you can actually upgrade your guns to have more guns them, this is frankly a great idea and I don't believe it has been done before, or at least not that I can remember anyway. With the CLN you can add a Shotgun, a Grenade Launcher, an RPG and Proximity Mines, then you can upgrade your upgrades, I haven't tried this out yet as I went for secondary fire for both of my guns, which adds a zoom element to the CLN and a charged energy burst attack for the N.R.G. With the N.R.G I noticed it recharges ammo upto 50 which is a nice touch. The charge shot on the N.R.G is also very helpful against the little robot dog things (I still have no idea what these are) so I would suggest getting this upgrade first chance you can. Also there is absolutely no reloading with is something I loved about old school shooters.

One last thing to mention is you actually get a health and armour bar on a little corner hud which bobs along when you shoot/move/do anything really. The armour regenerates in time but the health doesn't. I really do hate the whole 'I'm your standard off the shelf marine ready for war, but what's this I somehow have magical super human regeneration powers, all I have to do is hide in this dumpster from the world and suck on my thumb for ten seconds then I somehow am not crippled and bleeding to death. It's a miracle.' No it's not a mirable, it's bullshit. The amount of time it takes to create a video game you would of thought they could create a HUD telling you how much health you have. Games in the fricking 80's had them so I don't see why this isn't possible now. Fair play if you have a story explaining why this is possible, eg your part robot and the technology inside you can slowly regenerate injured parts of you or something to that effect, that would make sense. But no we will just go with magical army folk. Anyway before I get deeper into my tangent I'll stop.

It does seem like a pretty fun yet quite hectic shoot um up game which I reckon you will get better as the game progresses which all your weapon/health/armour upgrades. It is definately worth a look into and I for one will be getting this.

First thought of Bastion

This game has been out for awhile on XBLA, but has just been released on PC. I ended up giving it a download after seeing a number of reviews and gameplay videos. From the videos alone it looked like a decent little indie game. I have now played though a good couple hours making notes as I went so this post will actually have some form to it instead of the usual rambling on.

First off I have been playing with an Xbox controller, which is probably more suited to the game given that it's an Xbox game in essence, the controls for the controller are very easy to get used to. I did have a quick shot with the Keyboard and Mouse setup. They went with a basic WASD layout, was easy enough to pick up, aiming was more accurate, but over all I would probably say use a controller for this game.

You start of in bed, staying there until you move which makes you get up. Out of nowhere you hear a voice, this is you the player not the character. This is turns out to be the story being told overhead. The guy that voices it sounds pretty cool aswell. Anyway so there you are next to your bed and the platform you stand on is floating, little weird I know. A little bit more weird is there doesn't seem to be a way out, it's just a floating platform. So you move around and all of a sudden a path starts to appear infront of you. This is well implimented throughout the game, there seems to be no path until you get closer to it. I guess it is same kind of deal as the fog in games like command and conquer you can not see what is there until you get closer. It is a cool little feature. The enviroment on the most part is destructable, if there is something in your way you can destroy it 9 times out of 10.

The first level, is essentially a tutorial but they still fit it nicely in with the storyline. You get a number of weapons in this first level including a giant hammer, a gun and a bow and arrow towards the end. You fight though mobs of enemies and pick up items, the most important of which being a 'Core'. You eventually get towards the end of the first level and hop on a hover boat type thing, (I forget what they called it), which leads you to the 'Bastion' which will become your base of operations. Upon getting there you see a man, who happens to be the same guy that is narrating the story. He will tell you to put the 'Core' you found in a monument just ahead of you.

You do this and the place starts to come alive and starts rebuilding itself. You can then create a building which you can use for upgrades. The more you play the game and the more 'cores' you collect the more buildings you can build letting you upgrade different things. The upgrade system is quite simple, while you are out on missions you pick up little blue shards and other items all of which can be used to upgrade if you go to the right shop. You go in see if you have enough bits click which upgrade and BAM. Done.

I do find myself getting quite addicted to this game, as I said before I played for a good couple of hours and I was still wanting more, I only stopped to walk the dog and write up this. It is definately worth a play. Another thing I noticed is you don't seem to die if you fall off the edge of a platform, which happens more than you would think, all though that might just be my playing. If you actually die from enemies you get one continue then if you die after that you get a menu screen where you can restart, go to bastion, quit etc...