Review - Infinite Space

• Game: Infinite Space
• Format: Nintendo DS
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Platinum Games/ Nude Maker
• Publisher: Sega
• Genre: Role Playing

Out of all the fictional jobs that we wish existed in real life, starship captain has got to rank near the top. Exploring never before seen regions of space, fighting battles with guns that could take out a small country and sending anonymous crewmen to die pointlessly, it's got everything. Strangely, despite the number of games that try to mimic Star Wars in some way, this Star Trekian life is something of a rarity in gaming, but now comes Infinite Space to satisfy all your redshirt-sacrificing needs.

The story focuses on Yuri, who in accordance with JRPG tradition is a young boy coming of age who must face up to his great destiny and mysterious powers. Said powers in this case being an ability to activate the Epitaphs, magic space boxes that are somehow connected to the Void Gates used to travel between systems. He also needs to face up to the Lugovalian Empire that is rapidly conquering all galaxies that stand in its way. As generic as the overall plot sounds, the characters, dialogue and subplots are consistently well done, as are the numerous homages - and not just the expected Star Trek/ Wars/ Gate similarities either, Arthur C. Clarke fans will recognise a lot of themes within the story.

Frak! Smeg! Frell! petaQ! Drokk! It's not proper sci-fi until someone hurls a made-up swear word at you. Belgium!

At the heart of the game are your ships themselves. There are over a hundred in all, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The game offers an impressive level of customisation, with your design choices making a noticeable difference to how your fleet operates. Shields and armour let you go toe-to-toe with the enemy, radars and long range weaponry let you hold back and attack them from a safe distance, and security offices give a big advantage if you try to board enemy ships. Simply buying the best of everything is not an option, as your ship has fairly limited space for modules, so for every improvement you make there is a tradeoff in terms of something else that must be left out. You also need to manage your crew, hiring staff for everything from First Officer right down to accountants and the serving staff in the mess hall.

Ship upgrades are done through the medium of Space Tetris.

When battle begins, the two fleets are placed at opposite sides of a battleground, with the options to move forward or back, or to fire any weapons that are in range. There is a kind of rock-paper-scissors dynamic to the three main moves - Barrage is made up of three times as many shots as Normal, but can be almost completely negated by Dodge, dodging a Normal attack however just makes you easier to score a critical hit on. As the game goes on, you also gain access to fighters, AA guns, boarding parties and special attacks. The number of combat options is very limited when compared to the ship upgrades, but if anything this goes to underline just what a difference the right design choices make.

The battles use the strangely underused gimmick of turning the DS touch screen into a control panel

All this may seem somewhat overwhelming, and in truth it often can be. This fact is not helped by the often shockingly poor levels of user friendliness. There are dozens of stats to take into account, plus special skills for all your crew and many of the ships, but the only way to learn what they all mean is to drop whatever you're doing and go to the tutorials at a starbase. Ship customisation would also be a lot easier if you had the relevant stats visible on the top screen - as it is you are told what improvement the current module will give, but not how effective you already are. Most unforgivably, there is no way to look up your current objectives, so if you can't remember where you are meant to be going then your only options are a) fly to every one of the dozens of nearby systems, checking every building until you finally reach the one that sets off the plot, or b) GameFAQs.

These annoying problems with accessibility may well be enough to make many players give up in frustration, but stick with it and once it clicks the scale and ambition are truly impressive. A great game at its best, it's just a shame it makes you work so hard to see it.

Score:
7/10

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Review - Guitar Hero Van Halen

A Guest Review by Tom McShane

• Game: Guitar Hero Van Halen
• Format: Xbox 360
• Console: PS2, PS3, Wii
• Developer: NeverSoft
• Publisher: Activision
• Genre: Music/Rhythm

If there’s one guitar solo in the history of all music (nay, all sound) that makes women moist and gives guys the nut-chills, it’s Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’, and before now the only coverage the spandex-clad, harmony-fuelled rock gods have had in the world of music video games has been a cover of ‘You Really Got Me’ in Guitar Hero II, and a blisteringly-difficult rendition of ‘Hot For Teacher’ in World Tour. So is the addition of a Van Halen iteration to the roster of band centric Guitar Hero titles enough to give you those Eruption-esque chills all over again?

The answer, sadly, is no. Unlike the Aerosmith and Metallica instalments, this is quite a lacklustre effort from the folks over at Neversoft. Picture the scene; Van Halen are in their prime, rocking it with some of their best known songs with flamboyant frontman David Lee Roth. They’re leaping around the stage looking like they’ve been poured into the skin-tight spandex and leather… wait. That’s right – Van Halen’s major, non-musical traits (their typically 80s outfits; their over-the-top stage presence; David Lee Roth’s flowing hair) are all but absent from this game. The band appear as they did on their 2009 tour – complete with a short-haired David Lee Roth, a rather aged Eddie Van Halen and lacking both original bassist Michael Anthony and any of the band’s signature stage presence.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the core of the game, mind you. It’s still Guitar Hero, and the plethora of classic Van Halen songs (all from the arguably superior David Lee Roth-era) are fantastic fun. Pretty much every single song that made Van Halen who are they is in here – ‘Panama’, ‘Jump’, ‘Eruption’, ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Running With The Devil’… the list goes on and on for 25 songs of rocky goodness. In fact, you could take the songlist from this game and easily package it as a ‘Best Of’ that fans (myself included) would lap up and hand over a tenner for. But there’s nothing new here that stops the game becoming anything more than a glorified expansion pack that rapes your wallet of £40, which also unfortunately seems to be the way the whole Guitar Hero franchise is going.

The game mechanics are exactly the same - in fact they might even be worse, seeing as Guitar Hero: Van Halen actually lacks the drop-in/drop-out play mode of Guitar Hero 5, despite the VH iteration being the newest game in the series. Everything looks the same (save for some gratuitous red, black and white Van Halen striping around the menus) and the on-stage models are much the same too – incredibly realistic looking, but when it comes to movements they’re stiff and lifeless. The animated band does move about a bit and pull off the odd stage antic (like the David Lee Roth spinning the mic stand) but it’s all very half-arsed. There’s just no Van Halen magic to it at all. Maybe I’m expecting too much for some 3D animated models to capture the same stage magic of the real-life Van Halen from way back in the 80s. Or maybe that’s the problem with the game and why the first statement sounds like I’m having to make excuses for a game that feels rushed and half-finished. I mean, what’s so ‘Van Halen’ about short, neat haircuts, a nice shirt and smart jeans, and a reserved, ‘in awe of a stadium audience’ stage presence and attitude.

David Lee Roth’s ability to hit those high notes is no surprise after you get one look of the spandex tightly hugging his crotch.

Yeah, ok, you can unlock stage models of the band from their spandex/ass-less chap era (late 70s/early 80s) but there’s two reasons why this is totally rubbish, the main reason being that it’s totally backwards. This classic 80s formation of Van Halen is that one that should be available from the very beginning; long hair and ridiculous skin tight, glittery costumes is the epitome of Van Halen and the glam rock era they championed. The rather polished, ‘we’ve grown up now’ look of the modern-day Van Halen is the costume and model set that should be unlockable – not the real Van Halen!

Which leads me into the second reason as to why the character sets are completely backwards – it means that for a large part of the game it just doesn’t feel like you’re playing as Van Halen. It feels like you’re just playing as some random collection of computer-generated rockstars performing away in the background on an extra-large Van Halen song pack on Guitar Hero: World Tour. And that’s all the game is really – an expansion pack. Hell, those lucky American folk got this for free if they bought Guitar Hero 5.

So if there’s a bottom line here it’s “don’t buy this game”. It’s such a shame as Van Halen are the perfect band for a game like Guitar Hero – catchy riffs, blistering solos (one thing to mention about the game is its racked up difficulty in comparison to a lot of older GH material) and screaming lead vocals. But it’s pulled off in such a way that will leave you feeling short changed. Maybe if some generous American fella is selling his free copy on eBay dirt cheap, or the market price responds to the abysmal press scores it’s been given (averaging less than 66% on GameRankings as well as a meagre 4.9/10 on IGN), then it’ll be worth it. Until then, it’s probably best to crank up that Van Halen record and air-guitar around your room like a buffoon. It’s cheaper and much more satisfying.


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Paint by Numbers - The Lightgun Game

Ah, the light gun game. One of the last bastions of UK arcade gaming. If you’re out scoring some strikes at your local Megabowl you’ll inevitably see a small cabinet next to the pool and air hockey tables, conjuring memories of those old classics such as Time Crisis, Virtua Cop, et al. Why not have a play for nostalgia’s sake? But then it hits you: £2 to go on a game I’m blatantly not going to last more than 4 minutes on?! That’s 1.2p per every second spent playing! Are you having a laugh?! Jambo spares no expense as the genre is torn apart…

1. Peripheral vision:
Okay, you’ve spotted a cabinet or picked up a game, but you’ll need to get accustomed to the controller. The most widely used home console gun is the G-Con series, created by Namco, and for the most part it’s pretty good - if a tad boring. For the real hardcore out there, you can find replica sniper rifles at all good online retailers (and some crap ones too). However, if that seems a bit too over the top for you, there are some other choices. The general consensus seems to suggest that the best way to play these games is with some wireless light guns (the Joytech Sharp Shooter series is pretty much gaming bliss in this field). If you’re feeling slightly frolicsome, you can purchase two of them and go through the two player co-op mode for some dual wielding fun. Sometimes, the gun you use to shoot with doesn’t represent the weapon you’re using in-game. It seems a common misconception that automatic handguns are capable of firing both grenades, flames and shotgun shells as well as your standard ammo. Some arcade cabinets will boast the holy grail of light guns: The recoiling assault rifle. This beaut’s got more kick than David Beckham had in the second round of the ’98 World Cup. Sometimes it’s worth the £2 just to feel the recoil against your shoulder.

2. The lead characters and the plot:

Who remembers this? Seventeen internet points if you do!

The lead characters are usually American CIA/SAS/FBI/random-abbreviation operatives who have been hired to save some kidnapped President’s daughter, fight off evil insurgents from neighbouring countries, or to kill the President’s daughter as she’s now working for the evil insurgents… or something along those lines. To be honest, you don’t play a light gun game for the stunning script, dialogue and cut scenes. Let’s be fair, the voice acting is usually a similar experience to hearing 5 year olds trying to read the long words from the Broadsheets and the characters have the charisma of a baked potato. The main protagonists are usually white males, mid to late 20s, and appear like they wouldn’t look out of place on the catwalk – certainly nothing like any special arms operatives I’ve ever seen.

3. Events in gameplay:
The scenery is pretty generic at best but when playing one of these games your attention is primarily on the enemies so you miss out on such stunning backdrops as forests, trains and the inevitable ship encounter (which predictably gets capsized making everything go awry), and your generic Hollywood-esque bridge explosion. The likelihood of fighting a boss in a helicopter or private jet (you never see a poor end of level boss, do you?) is very high and you can expect that once you dispose of them they’ll fall backwards (still shooting) and blow up their own vehicle. Silly sausages.

4. The enemies:
You’d think that a global enemy cartel would have stricter quality control when hiring goons, or that at least they’d give them a shooting range test - as they appear to be the worst shots in the world. They get less hits than Hanson's fansite, for God’s sake. For some baffling reason the ‘big boss’ decided somewhere along the line that they should colour code their thugs in order of how hard they are. A good - if slightly flawed - plan as it means you just bust a cap in the harder enemy’s head before moving on to the ones that camply leap out into the open in a ridiculously bright-coloured jumpsuit.

Shitty zombies!

5. The unexpected…
As a rule of thumb in this genre, always expect the unexpected. Characters you thought you had killed have most likely been rebuilt (I’m looking at you Time Crisis 3) and some of the characters will show moments of unforeseen strength. For example, one enemy might tear off a gun turret and proceed to hurl it around like a baseball bat (again, I refer back to the Time Crisis series here).

Sometimes, the genre strays away from its traditional roots. Ninja Assault puts the player in control of a Ninja trying to rescue the kidnapped Princess from an evil Warlord (see, I told you the stories were all the same!). Now, you’d probably expect the light gun to be used to control a rudimentary crossbow or to throw shuriken or something like that. You’d be wrong. According to Capcom, Ninja wield pistols. Seriously. The less said about that the better, I feel.

***

It should be pointed out that Light Gun games provide a lot of fun and are a great source of fun in co-op so they are definitely worth a look. They’re like what the Bad Boys films are to the film industry; a trashy, unrelenting demonstration of explosions and headshots that does nothing to detract from the main action and for this they should perhaps be forgiven…

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