Left 4 Dead is a multiplayer survival horror set in the modern day. The first person shooter involves co-operative gameplay allowing you and three other friends Continue Reading

Silent Hill: Homecoming has been out in the US for a siginificant amount of time now, so being the Silent Hill fanboy that I am, I decided to import it before it’s initial UK release on February 27th. It was definately worth it!

I am not going to give away any of the story, so I’m going to keep this short and sweet and stick to the mechanics of the game. The game keeps up with Silent Hill tradition and is VERY atmospheric. Although you don’t start off the game in Silent Hill, you are in a very similar town, and it’s still creepy as hell. The movement is fluid and the controls are handled very well, with inventory screens being opened by holding the L1 or R1 buttons and a map (seeing that you have found one) being opened with Triangle. Combat controls are also very easy, with Square being heavy attacks and X being quick attacks, combo’s are put together quite easily. Gun controls are what you would expect with L2 being used to aim and R2 to shoot.

Graphics wise, the game is good, but not what it could have been given the PS3’s full potential. Since the game is mostly set in fog or darkness you can put that aside though. The area’s look great, and so do the character’s. The enemies are looking as good as ever, and are getting even stranger, and harder to kill. Although the Feral’s look strangely similar to those in Resident Evil.

Overall, Silent Hill: Homecoming sits in a very good position in the Silent Hill series and is a great debut on this gen of consoles. The graphics are good, but not to what the PS3 is capable of (Siren: Blood Curse, Dead Space). The cutscenes are excellent, and the story is spot on. Controls are easy to pick up, and this overall is a very enjoyable experience for Silent Hill fans and newcomers alike.
The game is Trophy free at the moment, with possiblilty of a patch from Konami in the future.

8.5/10.

Being a huge fan of the original Killzone I was wetting myself waiting for this to come out. As soon as I jumped into the demo, I was blown away by the graphics, they really need to be seen in person to believe, amazing stuff. The sound is also very well done, with explosions going off around me through my surround sound. The Hellghast look awesome, and still have the strange creepy cockney accents. The guns are perfect, and the control layout is very well put together, and comfortable to play with.

I did feel that the controls did need a LITTLE fine tuning, so I set my Y and X axis sensitivity up to almost full so I felt more in control of the weapon I was shooting. There were also a couple of glitches in the demo, for example a soldier running around in circles repeatedly, and a chair blocking my way into a room i needed to go in, but it’s a demo, these things happen, right?

The game looks to be sweet, everything about it is awesome, and the multiplayer looks set to be something else. Lets just hope those little glitches are fixed by the end of the month!

Demo – 9/10

When I purchased Conquest, I was expecting very good things. The idea seemed awesome, and the demo was excellent, especially online. It’s just a shame that it stopped there.

The first level is probably the best level you will get to play (the same as the one in the demo). Slashing up orcs is great for half an hour, but once you realise that all the other character classes apart from Warrior suck, then the game starts losing it’s appeal. The gameplay is very dull and repetitive, especially when all the enemies seem to do is block. The level layouts are designed horrifically basic, and often have you ending up dying by accident by falling into water (yeah, you can’t swim!) or falling off a cliff because your flame attack throws you that way. There is nothing to explore, just a linear path with some open area’s in the middle. The missions range from destroying things, to killing a main character with another main character, even though half the time you die and have to do it with a normal class.
The concept is amazing, especially the Rise of Sauron campaign where it plays as though Frodo didn’t destroy the ring. It also pieces together parts of the film to make it go with the story, which works very well. It’s just a total shame that the gameplay cannot back it up.

The graphics in Conquest are nothing compared to what the Xbox can, and has pulled off before. Maybe if this was released in 2006, it would have been overlooked, but living in the times of graphically superior games like COD4, Mirrors Edge and even Burnout Paradise, you would expect Conquest to be brilliant, especially where the Lord of the Rings world is so mind blowing in the films.

When playing the game online, I found it frustrating that it was only possible to get a kill by either luck, or being the asssassin and becoming invisible. The game modes are okay at best, the Deathmatch mode is boring, even the Capture the Ring mode sucks, and that’s what I was looking forward too most. Most of the matches were laggy, and had characters jumping around everywhere, which caused me many times to just take out the game and punch it, repeatedly.

The game was such an awesome idea, and had me excited about it since it was announced. It’s such a shame that it was obviously a rushed, money making attempt at making one more Lord of the Rings game. The gameplay is rubbish and stressful, and the graphics are laughable. The online play is not even worth looking at, and will probably be dead within a couple of months. If you want a half decent Lord of the Rings game, you’re better off trying the film tie-ins on the PS2…99p on eBay!

4/10