Review - Street Fighter IV

Co-written with Boss Man

• Game: Street Fighter IV
  
• Format: PS3
• Other Formats: Xbox 360, Arcade
• Developer: Dimps/Capcom
• Publisher: Capcom
• Genre: 2.5D Fighting

Street Fighter II defined a genre and created an impression still felt today, a game known for great characters and great gameplay. After years of re-releasing it with new additions, Capcom released Street Fighter III - a great game in its own right, introducing the series to a parry system and an array of new characters. Many of said new characters had an almost cloned move-set of those from the previous game. As good as it was, it failed to draw as big a fan -base as its predecessor. Many games have even tried to imitate the series: King of Fighters and Dark Stalkers spring to mind, but none so universally accepted as Street Fighter. Nine years since the last game, Capcom have finally created a new addition to the already bloated series. So after countless pretenders, will this new installment prove itself to be worthy of its title, or will it be another impersonator and eventually be forgotten?

Street Fighter IV is purely a fighting game. If you’re hoping for mini-games, customisation of characters or anything other than a toe to toe brawl, then this isn’t the game for you. The fighting game staple that is Arcade mode is included - this is simply you going one on one against a number of computer controlled opponents until you eventually reach the final boss. On completing the mode you get the second anime bookend to your character's story. The more appealing mode is Versus, where you can play local, or online battles against real opponents. New to Street Fighter is Challenge mode, where you can find multiple tasks, like Time Attack (you are given a time limit to defeat a number of opponents), Survival (you have one life bar through a few fights) and Trial, which is very much like training mode but introduces players to moves and combos with increasing difficulty.

Kameh-hameh… wait a minute…

As for the game's graphics, it looks nothing less than gorgeous. Cel-shaded style not too unlike Prince of Persia's is used to stunning effect. For fans of the previous games it may take a while to get used to Ryu and Ken’s added bulkiness, other than that slight qualm the graphics are fantastic and even better in motion. Street Fighter IV keeps the gameplay strictly 2D, but allows the characters and levels to stray into the third dimension, in a similar way to Super Smash Bros.

Street Fighter IV returns to its roots, with the original twelve characters from Street Fighter II. As well as the returning 12 there are four completely new characters, all with their own fighting style, moves and inputs. These four new characters are welcome additions and fit the bill perfectly. There are also three playable boss characters you can unlock. Included with the console versions of the game, you also have six extra characters from updated versions or spin-offs from the original series. In total there are 25 characters in the home versions of the game. There’s plenty of variety so there should be at last one character that takes your fancy.

"And what do they call you? Wheels?"

Now for the online, the options here are simple; Player Match or Ranked Match. Player Matches allow you to invite a friend for some matches with the online system. Lobbies here are limited to two people so unlike a local multiplayer match you can‘t have a group of friends taking turns. Ranked Match is you versus an opponent of equal or higher skill, fighting to be the victor. As you win a ranked match you gain points depending on how strong your opponent is and these points are deducted accordingly if you lose. Through these online battles you can unlock titles and an avatar for your online moniker, these give your Street Fighter alter-ego a personal touch.

Being a 2D fighter, it can easily be looked down upon for being shallow, but as fans know, Street Fighter can be exceedingly deep in the right hands. Unlike many fighting games, Street Fighter's simple controls give ease of access to newcomers, allowing them to play the game and have a good time in the process. Veterans of the series will not be alienated either, controls have been left untouched, even though some systems have changed. An example would be the exclusion of the parry system found in Street Fighter III, something called the 'focus system' has took it’s place and has proven to be quite a good inclusion. A focus attack when charged is unblockable, and when used properly they can lead into devastating combos. Street Fighter IV is almost perfectly balanced. If you lose, you know it’s because the other guy played better then you, but if you win, you know you deserved to win.

So does Street Fighter IV live up to it’s predecessor? Of course it does. With awesome characters, great gameplay and fantastic balance, this is easily one off the best fighting games ever, if not the best. Like Street Fighter II before it, Street Fighter IV doesn’t just impress, it pushes the fighting genre forward in one redefining leap.

Score:
10/10

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I Heart Zombies!

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark. There he is, shuffling towards you. A vaguely comical appearance, but there's nothing funny about him. He is dead but he is walking, and he is walking towards you with only the hunger for your flesh and brains driving him on. He is soaked with blood, most of it spewing from his gaping wounds. His jaw is hanging from his skull only by a stubborn bit of sinew, the tongue dangling from this unnatural cavity in his head. His ankle is broken at a viscerally nauseating angle, yet still he walks on it and you can hear it cracking every time he puts weight on it. It closes in. You're cornered. There's nowhere to go now. He gets closer, you can see your whitened reflection in his cold, dead eyes… you're paralyzed.

It's a rather unsettling thought, but deep down, every gamer wonders about what they would do to survive the Zombie Apocalypse that is definitely going to happen one day, when they terrorise y'alls neighbourhood. We all know we would probably just defecate ourselves out of fear and hope the smell scares the zombies away. But we dream of heroics, of saving our loved ones and guiding them to safety. A rather noble thought, and one not too dissimilar to other dreams of heroics, such as saving the beautiful lady from some form of danger and being rewarded with a kiss or a quick go on her breasts and then being giving three million pounds by her rich Father. But what's more appealing to us in the zombie scenario, is the chance for bloody violence in a completely righteous form. "They're dead anyway," you'll say, "but they're trying to kill us. It's self defense and it's euthanasia, we might as well enjoy ourselves if we can. Someone get me a chainsaw."

There's a blood lust in us all, a primal state of mind that makes us violent, that makes us beat each other up and sometimes makes us kill each other. Primates do it, and so do we; it's instinct. However, we (I'd like to think) have morals, and we know killing another is a most reprehensible crime. We do like to see films and games with bloodletting content, though. Think about this: it's weird that horror films are so mainstream. We revel in being scared and some of us actually like to see gory stuff in horror films. It's the part of us that slows down for car crashes, it's the part of us that crowds around a fight, the reason hangings and executions drew a crowd. The fascination in us all of all things morbid and macabre. And, truly, what is more macabre than a reanimated and cannibalistic corpse? Let's not analyse, but merely accept the fact that we're all pretty damn morbid, some more than others, obviously. In this respect, zombies are awesome. Whether they're the slow variety from the classic Night of the Living Dead and Resident Evil, or the fast-running motherfuckers from 28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead.

No mere mortal can resist the appeal of zombies, and when we go to bed at night we should all thank all those wonderful men and women who give us zombie films and zombie games, for they are preparing you for when grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom.

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Happy Birthday, TGN!

On this day in 2006, TGN (in its third iteration) did begin and the people did join and it was good.

In the years since, we have lost old friends down the back of the sofa, and we have gained new friends… mostly from Milton Keynes (well, I say 'friends'… more like acquaintances… not even that really). It's not all bad, mind. Okay, a lot of it has been bad; there have been a lot of arguments, a lot of bruised egos, even more bruised inner thighs, one instance of– two instances of anal rape and a shitload of Gorilla Masks.

Quite frankly, I don't know why we're all still here…

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Review - Tom Clancy's EndWar

• Game: Tom Clancy's EndWar
• Format: Xbox 360
• Other Formats: PS3, PC
• Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Genre: Real-time Strategy

Another month and another Tom Clancy game appears galloping towards us from the dusty horizon with more American gusto and patriotism than a bald eagle donning aviators, loosely based around another book that he didn’t actually write. With all of the pessimistic post apocalyptic games currently out - detailing how our current lives are all useless as we’re all going to die anyway – it is refreshing to finally be given the chance to actually aid in the events leading to Judgment Day, instead of scrounging for pressure cookers and bottle caps to throw at irradiated zombies.

As the name (vaguely) suggests, Tom Clancy's EndWar throws you knee-deep into the conflict of the third World War, taking you for a ride on the RTS wagon. From the word ‘go’ I was bombarded with several industrial tankers worth of information and as a result of my obviously inferior brain I took in absolutely none of it. Regardless of my complete lack of understanding, I managed to win my first mission apparently entirely by accident and as to this moment I still don’t know what my objective was or how I achieved it. After blundering through the first few introductory missions however, you soon get the hang of how the game wants to be played. For instance, my initial thoughts of the camera – perhaps jaded by the generous top-down views from many other RTSs – was that it resembled a horny dog tethered to a leash at Crufts, and no matter how hard you fought, it would still be hauled back in to who was holding it. After a while of play however, I found that the style of locking the libidinous hound of a camera to the selected unit’s perspective forces the player to utilise certain squads as scouts and even garner the high ground purely for the advantage of sight – something that adds a small amount more to the ‘realism’ tally against methods such as ‘Fog of War’ utilised on older style RTS games for the same purpose.

The main premise of the game is to rather predictably ‘win the war’ by siding with a superpower – America, Europe or Russia – and seizing control of the capitols in each of the three territories. Naturally, I chose to root for the home team and selected Europe in the hope to realise my childhood dream of annihilating America at the hands of Britain. Granted, at the time I envisioned doing so with ninjas riding dinosaurs. After a few plays through with the blue army though (apparently we’re blue), it came to my attention that there is a distinct lack of Britain being involved in WWIII. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that France is a big mover and shaker in Europe, but playing as the cheese-eating surrender monkeys for pretty much every mission is a bit of a letdown. You would have thought that Britain as one of the world’s leading powers today would at least get a passing mention in the next world conflict. Even the Aussies don’t get a look-in, and according to Halo they’re more abundant than Americans in the future.

The big draw of the game that I have purposely not touched upon until this point is the headset support, where a player is able to issue orders like a walkie-talkie throughout the battle. For the most part, this method of commanding works remarkably better than I had anticipated – picking up a great range of regional dialects – but predictably there are mishaps where squads don’t understand the soothing sultry tones of my voice. The key to victory is securing uplinks dotted about the maps, and when the game mistakes the words, “Unit 2, Secure, Alpha”, for ”Unit 9, Eat, Nuclear Waste”, I take that as a personal insult - implying something in the area of my vocal chords being no better than that of an electrified, epileptic strobe victim. With this attack on my ‘mouth noises’ (and my apparent tendency of taking things a little too personally), I find it much more effective and indeed faster to issue certain orders via the controller.

What you can't see in this image is Unit 9 eating nuclear waste

As the loading screens of Call of Duty 2 once told me, ‘there are no winners in war’, and this becomes increasingly apparent as the campaign progresses, with regions trading hands like the village bicycle and no progress in one area without losing another on the opposite side of the globe. When you think you just might capture Washington you have to run back to defend Paris before they start bleaching their flags. And while the unpredictability of it all might be realistic in some respects, after a while I can’t help but think it is a method of artificially extending the game’s lifespan as I fight the same battle again for seemingly the tenth time. But if a commander is not savvy enough during battle, they can find the tides turning far too quickly. Taking the Napoleonic approach with my French troops against the Ruskies, one battle saw me ploughing through their first wave of units in a heartbeat – taking my mighty fist of a battalion from point to point and securing them like the bitch that they are. Just when that little voice at the back of my head patted me on the shoulder, congratulating me on my sure victory, a giant turd of a Russian WMD annihilates my entire army, save for a single unit of cannon fodder who were running late to the party because Jenkins had a poorly tummy. Retaliating with an orbital laser of my own, I felt sure that victory was rightly grasped after that little blunder – but alas, a lone unit of Dmitri’s tanks had survived – presumably also due to poor punctuality. Taking immediate action, I sent my lads packing with their tails between their legs straight back to control point Alpha to do some emergency renovations to mission supports – all the while with hot doom fired over their heads from a distance. In the nick of time, my boys manage deliver a swift EMP to disable the enemy shields and dive into the nearest building to contemplate life and death. I quickly send in the NPC supports and take out the Boris while he’s weak to scrape a victory like plaque from the jaws of defeat.

Graphically the game leaves much to be desired, as I assume the general thinking from Ubisoft was that you’d be so far away from the action that you wouldn’t notice that the infantry look like little plastic toy soldiers, in both detail and animation. I found myself thinking that they should have their trousers round their ankles purely to complete the effect. I probably shouldn’t look further into those thoughts and neither should you. Aside from this though, the game runs very smoothly and can handle a great deal going on at once, so I can’t complain too much.

Signing into the ‘Theatre of War’ mode will hurl you into the ranked multiplayer of EndWar, and upon doing so for the very first time I was greeted with a right royal slagging-off from my commanding officer as he spouted insults about my absence from the multiplayer campaign and even accused me of desertion from my duties. If that wasn’t welcoming enough, he then proceeded to convey how disastrous the last week was for Europe. Now armed with morale-boosting thoughts, I selected a battle to fight that pointed out to me how matchmaking rivals Gears of War 2 for mind-numbing, soul-crushing lack of speed in finding opponents; unless that is, you pick a battle where your side has a distinct and unavoidable disadvantage, and suddenly finding someone to play against is almost instant. My point here is that people are bastards. I hate people.

Overall, Tom Clancy’s EndWar is actually a competent RTS and fills a nice little niche in the home console market. It’s not perfect, but it does the job – much like a gummy hooker. There, I managed to bring this review back down to my usual standard and all is well again in the world.

Single Player Score – 8

Multiplayer Score - 7

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Review - The House of the Dead: Overkill

A Guest Review by Mr Party Hat

• Game: The House of the Dead: Overkill
  
• Format: Wii
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Headstrong Games
  
• Publisher: SEGA
• Genre: Motherfuckin' Light-Gun Game
  

There are certain games that feel as though they don't want to be played, games that keep you at a distance lest you see the cracks in the foundation, the precisely oiled wheels that keep everything perfect in its sterility. The House of the Dead: Overkill is not one of those games. Overkill is a motherfucker of a videogame, a fourteen year old hussy that will flash you pink in the detention hall for a fiver and a lollipop.

The premise is simple and almost offensively transparent, riding on the coat-tails of Grindhouse, Tarantino's B-Movie love letter. Much of the over-indulgence of Grindhouse is (thankfully) held back by the limitations of the Wii. Tarantino had a multi-million dollar budget with which to make something appear as though it had been made for ten grand, the developers of Overkill were working with - to borrow a line from the game's protagonist - a 'fucking cripple' of a console. Inevitably this has worked, and as such it stands not as a pastiche of B-Movie 'art' but as an example of it.

It's an ugly, ugly weird-ass game. It's not trying to be anything different.

Overkill is an ugly game, both intentionally and technically. The edges aren't so much rough as non-existent, worn away to reveal the poles that were holding the edges up. It not only has the audacity to deal with issues that other videogames simply wouldn't touch, it actively hunts them down and shits in their bed. Early on you're confronted by a paralyzed, wheelchair bound scientist, who is being beaten by his carer. Moments later, on the advice of Agent G, "this motherfucking cripple has got to die". The game begs you to be offended, to throw your hands up and protest, then it shoots your hand and sticks its dick in the hole shouting STIGMATAFUCK!

There are flaws. Rather, there are flaws which hinder the game alongside those that make it wonderful. The unfortunate placement of the SEGA name, whilst perhaps necessary to drive sales, throws up images of executives in suits talking 'gangsta', trying to be down with the kids. In later levels the dialogue begins to sound forced, proving that motherfucker is only funny the first few times it comes from your Nintendobox. The aiming, too, suffers from a lag that I don't remember being present on the arcade HotD games.

But they are small flaws. Overkill is a game that wants you inside it, a game that would wipe its dick on your curtains and never call back. It's filthy heaven to play, and if you can get past the feeling of violation once you turn off your Wii, it's a game that you need to play.

Score:
Motherfucker/10

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Review - Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City

• Game: Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City
• Format: Wii
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Nintendo
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Genre: Life Sim

Everything goes black and suddenly you wake up to find yourself on a bright yellow bus staring into the face of quite a happy purple cat. He starts talking to you, and asks where your headed, apparently this bus is headed there. He gives you a map of your destination with the town hall flashing, your first destination. He then asks your name and asks a few questions about you moving into a new town, depending on your answers depends on your face. When you get out of the bus, you are greeted by a raccoon in an apron… yeah… he greets you and introduces himself. This is the general introduction to Animal Crossing, and has stayed the same throughout the series, the only different bit is the transportation you arrive in and in Wild World Kapp’n talked to you instead of Rover.

I suppose you could say Animal Crossing is a life sim, but one that’s completely different from any others. It’s extremely charming, and very colourful. The object of the game is to build your house up and improve your town. There are loads of things to do in-game to keep you occupied if you feel a bit bored. For example, you can dig up fossils and donate them to the town's museum, where every fossil you find is displayed in its restored form. You can also catch fish and bugs, which can also be donated to the museum or be used to redeem trophies on bug catching days and fishing tourneys. There is also a paintings section where real life paintings are displayed. These paintings are purchased from Redd in his newly established shop where you now only need one password.

It may seem all fun, laughter and all round light-heartedness, but Animal Crossing always has a message: your home is under threat if you do not keep up repayments. Try to consolidate your debts into one easy to manage monthly payment.

Animal Crossing is a game that you can’t really complete as there is always something new to do in town. To be able to make a kind of game like that successful you need to make it engaging and fun and Nintendo have done just that with Animal Crossing. They’ve made it very appealing to the eyes and kept the dull colours out as much as possible. Every character is different with their own individual personality, for example one character might be quite grumpy and hating of the world, whereas another might seem like they’re high all the time.

Another good feature about this Animal Crossing is the downloadable content. If you have Wii Connect:24 turned on in the game, from time to time Nintendo send you presents. These range from furniture to clothing, and they’ll have a special theme to them. For example to celebrate the release of the Pikmin remake for Wii they sent everyone a red Pikmin hat.

The Animal Crossing games are great for lovers of the Harvest Moon series or maybe even The Sims. And if you want to have a extra amount of interactivity in your life sims then this would be a great buy.

Score:
8/10

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Just a reminder...

All reviews from the TGN Blog can be found HERE.

And we have many more on the way, including Tom Clancy's End War and the Ultimate Box for Burnout Paradise.

We are doing something. Honest.

Continue reading Just a reminder...