REVIEW: Splinter Cell: DA.
Developer: Ubisoft | Publisher: Ubisoft | Format: Xbox 360
Reviewer: Craig Gallagher Current
interest in all things covert has lead to numerous mediums tackling the
subject. Films, books, TV, they’ve all tackled the material.
The most prominent of all has been the author Tom Clancy, who has
created some of the most brilliant and intelligent to deal with the
subject matter. Ubi Soft have in recant years released a slew of Tom
Clancy endorsed titles and Splinter Cell: Double Agent is the latest.
Like the others in the series, DA begins with you learning the
basics of the game as we are introduced to the characters and story.
Being a Tom Clancy game it’s not long before tragedy befalls someone,
and in DA this someone just so happens to be Sam Fisher.
A new recruit
dies due to their carelessness and even Sam’s daughter is killed. Both
events affect Sam and set him on a course which will eventually lead to
him following the title. There are numerous decisions that the player
must make as they progress through the game, each decision affects the outcome of affairs.
What makes DA so unique is that you have to ensure that both
agencies trust you throughout the entirety of each mission or else you
lose. Do you for instance shoot down an innocent helicopter pilot so as
to gain preference with the JBA or allow him to live indebting yourself
into the NSA’s good books?
There is a multitude of decisions similar to this on offer
throughout the game. And being a game the decisions become more
difficult as the game progresses. The multiplayer has been tweaked,
mostly for the better. The Spies Vs. Mercenaries has been overhauled
and now it really works. Up to six people can play online or at home
with a system link. The variety of missions and objectives for
multilayer is substantial.
Best of all, Michael Ironside returns as the voice of Sam. Shame
that when they eventually make Splinter Cell the film , they’ll cast
someone like Orlando Bloom in the role.
Double Agent is a great addition to the Tom Clancy franchise and one which deserves a space on your shelf.
REVIEW: Need for Speed: Carbon
Publisher: EA | Developer: EA | Format PC (Xbox 360)
Reviewer: Craig Gallagher Most
racing games set out with one goal in mind, to make the player feel as
if they are doing 200 miles an hour while sitting still behind a
monitor.
The absurdly joyous sensation that this delivers when done correctly is
something to be in awe of. Thirteen years since its launch the Need for
Speed franchise is still going strong with this latest release.
The range of customisation, challenges and additions on offer is
rather extensive, though the game is only a small step forward. There
is no real change to the Most Wanted formula which isn’t generally a
bad thing but it does stop Carbon from being a true break out title.
The story behind proceedings is the most generic of one note tales
imaginable. You have to compete in and win a number of races in each
part of the city in order to progress to the next. After you win a
territory you will have to protect it by competing in challenge
matches.
These races are a boring and repetitive addition which seem to serve
no real purpose than milking a few additional hours of play.
No one buys a Need for Speed game for anything other than the racing.
To be honest I’m pretty sure that most NFS fans skip the in-game video
and just race paying no heed to the wafer thin plot.
The newest addition to gameplay is the team aspect of the racing. As
you progress you are offered the option of hiring up to three team
mates to act as blockers, drafters and scouts. Drafters race in front
of you allowing you to gain speed by slingshot into the lead. Blockers
stop other racers from passing giving you the advantage and Scouts are
sent ahead to locate unmapped shortcuts.
The races are the usual selection of circuit tracks, checkpoint
races, sprints and a new type of radar race where positions are decided
from your collective miles per hour. As you traverse and familiarise
yourself with the city Drift racing becomes accessible. All this is
carried out with the care we expect from the franchise.
NFS Carbon is a decant title but it’s hard to justify buying to
anyone familiar with Most Wanted. It’s basically the same game with a
few tweaks and additions. In fact I’m pretty sure that certain aspects
of the game are identical.
REVIEW: Red Steel
As a gritty shooter featuring John Woo-style gun- and sword-play
wrapped in a gritty Yakuza plot, it would become a poster-boy of sorts,
a game used to shoot down accusations that Nintendo’s software line-up
was too family-oriented, that the control scheme was a gimmick, and
unable to cope with the more traditional game genres.
Unfortunately, playing the opening act of Red Steel does little to
quell these concerns. The controls feel awkward, with sword-play in
particular feels contrived and unresponsive. The plot falls flat,
relying on the most generic of devices - an honourable boss’s daughter
is kidnapped by an immoral upstart. The opening levels involve slogging
through all-too-familiar corridors and factories, hiding behind crates
and detonating conveniently placed explosive barrels, lurching from one
contrived set-piece to another.
However, it is worth persevering. At about a quarter of the way through
the game, the factories and corridors give way to well-realized
Japanese streets and tea-houses. A credible world is created, with some
excellent environmental effects and a rousing j-rock soundtrack. The
controls click, and it becomes almost effortless to gun down foes with
an ever-increasing arsenal. The sword-play still feels awkward, but is
confined to rarely-occurring duels.
Despite borrowing ideas from genre-leading Halo - the recharging
health-bar and two weapon limit are present here too — the game look
and feel is closer to Rare’s Goldeneye. Much like the classic Bond
game, the combat relies more on a quick hand rather than mind, with a
shock awe approach as likely to work as more complex tactics.
The graphics too are big, angular and more grounded in reality than
those of Halo. And what the visuals lack in polygons, they more than
make up for in environmental effects — from flapping curtains to
shattering glass, the world is credibly brought to life.
First impressions, as they say, last. That said, if you can overcome
the initially off-putting controls, level-design and storyline, Red
Steel rewards you greatly with what is a highly polished, accomplished
shooter, and a great omen for things to come in the genre on this
hardware.
Nintendo Wii Wii?
Irish blogger
and journalist Adam Maguire has found articles on the Nintendo Wii which look
nearly identical, one was published on the BBC News website, published the day after on RTE.ie. Read more here.
REVIEW: Monster 4×4: World Cir.
Reviewer: Brendan Tinnelly Monster
Trucks. Like its followers, it is big, dirty, loud, over-the-top, and
very in-your-face. Perfect fodder for video-gaming. A shame then, that
this videogame translation is rarely anything other than pedestrian.
makes its appearance in the shape of a packed-in steering wheel
attachment for the Wii’s remote - allowing you to steer the remote
wildly to steer your truck around the game’s multitude of tracks.
Originality then quickly says its goodbyes for the rest of the
experience, and we were are left with a very pedestrian racing game.
a port of a year old XBox game onto Wii hardware, the graphics are
per-functionary at best. The track-side scenery is angular, and the mud
textures are, well, muddy. And although not terribly essential in a monster-truck game, the sense of speed is quite lacking.
);
//–>
of the whacky racing features are present and accounted for. Power-ups?
Check. Speed boosts? Check. Upgradable cars? Check. Obligatory
fire-truck? Check. The tracks vary from Egypt to Alaska to Mount
Rushmore, and yet save for a change in texture colour, they don’t
really vary at all. Outside of wholly derivative design choices like
these, there is practically no sign of personality. Relying as they do
on copying the hundreds of identikit racers out there, any attempts to
be whacky or zany entirely miss the mark, and we are instead left with
a soulless, joyless experience.
title is rescued somewhat by a healthy amount of multi-player options,
including soccer and combat mini-games, but are made somewhat redundant
by the fact that without the steering wheel attachment, the game loses
perhaps its only hook. As the single-player game is incredibly brief,
playing with friends, provided you have all the necessary equipment,
will perhaps provide you with most of your value for money.
not that Monster 4×4 is a particularly bad game - it’s not. The problem
is that it is not a particularly good game, nor shows any ambition to
be so. It is almost painfully inoffensive, and as such is never going
to be any more than average.
Channel 6 Game On now on Sky
Sky satellite subscribers will now have
access to Ireland’s only TV computer games program ‘Game On’ as the channel it
broadcasts on, Channel 6, was made available on Sky channel 223 this
week.
Game On is a half-hour long program with reviews and news. Previously, Channel 6 was viewable on NTL and Chorus cable networks in urban areas.
The channel was first set to launch on both Sky
and the cable networks. But it is understood that the company pulled
out of the original talks with Sky because the satellite broadcaster
would not offer Channel 6 a prominent position on the program guide
close to RTE and TV3. The new deal does not offer such.
SITE NOTICE: Reviews
Games Toaster would like to apologies to
our viewers for the slowness of publication of reviews. As the editor,
I take full responsible for this.
As well as our readers, I am also taking this opportunity to apologies
to our industry contacts that provide us with review copies.
We have now taken on an extra reviewer who should help us clear some of
the backlog and make sure this doesn’t happen in the future, and we may
take on a second extra reviewer if necessary.
Although news is the main focus of this site, when we are publishing reviews we should do so promptly.
Regards,
Cian Ginty
Editor, Games Toaster
REVIEW: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
Developer: Ubisoft | Publisher: Ubisoft | Format: Xbox 360 (PC)
Reviewer: Cian Ginty Running
into a roomRun into the room; go on, I dare you. full of heavily armed
men who have no qualms about killing you would be suicide, and so it is
in Rainbow Six.
Terrorists want to take over the world, so they start in Las Vegas
in this team based tactical shooter with the glossy graphics you’d
expect from a next generation console.
Moving away from the overly tactical titles in the Rainbow Six
series, in Vegas tactics still remain central. Running off on your own
will also get you killed, using team members, whom you
control, is the key to the game. But just pointing them into the middle
of a fire fight will get them killed.
The game generally has the right balance of tactical movement and
entries, and action. From just running down corridors picking the enemy
of as you go to making the right entrance into a room — whether
it’s
smashing glass and rappel down ropes or moving into a room fast enough
before the hostages are killed. The in-game tactics where planning
ahead is needed by using infrared vision and a fibreoptic camera under
doors.
If you just want to quickly shoot your way through a game, Vegas,
where you get bogged down in fire fights, probably isn’t for you.
Otherwise it’s a good blend of graphics, tactics, and action.
REVIEW: Gears of War
Developer: Epic | Publisher: Microsoft | Format: Xbox 360
Reviewer: Cian Ginty 
of War is the type of game you think about when buying a console,
it’s a triple-A title shooter that easily gets the blood rushing.
Halo is the Xbox family of consoles’ headline title, Gears neither
beats it or lands under it. The two games are in one sense not
altogether comparable. They should stand side by side as different
games — Halo is friendlier as a ‘pick up and play’ mainstream
game,
while Gears is hardcore.
It’s glossy and gruesome, it’s beautiful to look at. Graphically
there’s very little we can complain about. Although, one massive boss
near the end of the single-player game looks rushed up close and
bullets can sometimes hit where there’s only thin air, but this really
doesn’t detract from the game overall.
One of the main points the games stands out on is the ‘run, duck and
cover’ system. When running the camera switches to an upper behind
angle while the player character, Marcus, has his head down and
crunches like a rugby player — bringing to mind scenes out of a war
film.
Once running and holding down the same button, you hit cover and
your character automatically uses the cover as a shield. Here you can
duck in and out half-using cover while firing or shoot fully behind
cover with reduced accuracy.
Gears of War doesn’t stray too far away from proven formulas of shooting based action games, it does however excel at such.
Dare to be Digital open day tomorrow
An
open day for the student computer games competition, Dare to be
Digital, will take place from midday tomorrow at the Digital Hub’s
Digital Exchange in Dublin.
As Games Toaster reported last May prototypes will be constructed in Dublin this year, with 9 of the 10 weeks of the competition spent in Ireland.
“Rather than just sending one team to Scottish finals, we will be
selecting six teams from the whole island of Ireland to be
represented”, commented Michael Hallissy, of the Digital Hub back in
May, “The six teams will take part in a mentoring and support program
in Dublin during which they will build their game. Support will be
provided by Irish and UK games companies. At the end of a nine-week
support programme, they will then travel to the University of Abertay
for the grand final”.
Last year at the international competition in Scotland, a Derry based team, Rule of Thumb, won in three categories — ‘Best Use of Technology’, ‘Best Team Player’, and team member McNicholas won ‘Best Artist’. For more details visit daretobedigitalireland.com.