Nov

Gaming Frenzy…..

Gaming

*****THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS*****

So this week I ended up with 3 days off having asked for the Friday off to make sure I could go and see Airbourne and apparently getting weekends off too. Excellent I thought – lets play some games! So much was this a good idea I finished 2 in 3 days!

So on Thursday night I sat down on my favourite chair and ignored all friend requests on the 360 and sat down to play Gears of War 2. I had a checkpoint from partway into Act 3 which gave me a decent start on the night. After feeling a bit tired from work I waited till about 1am to get started (obviously) and never stopped playing right until the credits rolled.

One hell of a ride though I must say. Plenty of shooting, fighting and caves big enough to use a mortar in! Plenty of nice twists and fresh ideas (I wanna ride a Brumak! ) and whilst the ending was fairly easy I think it fitted in nicely with the game.

A couple of things did bother me however – where the hell were the Beserkers!? They were brilliant and really changed the pacing of the first game and made you think a little abotu your actions. The game could also have used a little more variety in enemies as fighting what felt like my 100th Reaver in the same level got a little tiresome….Anyway enough moaning – I enjoyed the game throughly and fully look forward to trying to get better at the multiplayer.

The other game I finished this week was Mirrors Edge. Quite simply this is a phenominal game that I reckon everyone should play. For those who have no idea what I talking about this game is essentially free-running in first person. It can make some sequences fairly tricky to do but feels immensly rewarding when you do them right

On the the whole the game encourages you to use the enviroment to your advantage and generally discourages gunplay altogether. There’s even an achievement for finishing the whole game without killing anyone with a gun! However you can still use your fists and feet to perform some pretty brutal moves that can stun/knockout enemies extremely quickly. Combined with blasting past them, running up a wall turn round and jumping on their head this can quite a lethal skill set.

A definate plus point to this game is the intensity of it. From very early on in the game you get used to running away from the ‘blues’ (police) and trying to avoid not only snipers but regularly trying to lose helicopters! This obviously leads to some very exciting chase sequences where a single mistake can see you shredded by bullets.

Whilst the overall story mode is fairly short (I purchased Friday night, finished Sunday night) there is plenty of longeivety added not only via achievements but also the speedrun & timetrial modes. Whilst there is a guided way through the single player levels those with good eyes and balls of steel will see many alternate routes. Whilst their is no online mode you can download ghosts of other peoples times which will give you some sort of guide as to where your insultingly slow.

Tied to this is an amazing soundtrack which goes right from frantic up tempo when being chased by helicopters to chilled out ambient whilst climbing tall buildings and running along rooftops. Overall the whole package is amazingly well put together and a simply stunning use of the Unreal Engine to boot.

Sadly I have to go back to work on Monday (errr today 17/11/2008) but on a positive note this week see’s the sequel to one of my most played online games come out….Rock Band 2! Roll on Thursday….