Madworld – forget all those balls you like playing with.

A new trailer for Madworld landed yesterday here on gametrailers  and it makes me salivate for the game even more than I already am.

Designed as a spoof of American sports reporting, complete with ESPN style logo, two enthusiastic commentators talk you through some great looking footage from Madworld.

My excitement runs a little deeper than it being an adult game on Wii however, the style of the game from its combat engine to the tongue in cheek humour is all reminicient of God Hand, an underappreciated title on the PS2 that everyone should check out.

And if you can’t be bothered to go an play it, here’s the best part in youtube form:

Late to the party: Patapon

Last year a little rhythm action strategy game came out on the PSP, aka the handheld no one cares about, the game went by the name of Patapon and even though I played and enjoyed the demo I never got round to buying the game, simply because it arrived at the wrong time. Caught up in the post 2007 wallet casualties, everyone who wasn’t throwing Mario around space was teabagging fools on Halo 3, Team Fortress 2, or bloody Call of Duty 4, *sigh*, no one had time for a quirky game on their dusty PSPs.

So when I spotted it for a tenner today I knew I needed to show it some respect, and also because those one eyed freaks were staring at me from the box, threatening to stab me in my sleep if I didn’t man up and throw a tenner at something a little odd, on a system I would need a spelunking kit to recover from the catacombs of my room.

You control the Patapon using drums, each piece of percussion is mapped to a face button and by hitting them in specific rhythms you command the Patapon to move forward, attack, retreat and whatever else comes later in the game. It’s very simple whilst you need a little thought when considering what type of Patapon you use in your formation and from there it plays like a rhythm action title, with the Patapon chanting along with your beat and performing the actions you ask, by playing a perfect beat they become more powerful.

Visually it’s a striking mixture of geometric shapes and one tone objects, it looks amazing on the PSP screen as your numerous minions throw spears, chop, and launch arrows at foes and it never faulters. Much like Loco Roco it is a game designed for the PSP in every way, visually, aurally, and in how it plays as levels will not take more than a few minutes making it an easy game to chip away at.

Assuming it continues to be as good as it has started, expect a lot more of banter on Patapon from me in the near future.

What’s more, aren’t they just the cutest?

Stupidly high res Halo Wars screens released, hype meter fluctuates.

Considering I’m on an RTS high from Red Alert 3 and now Dawn of War 2, Halo Wars is a pretty big blip on my radar considering it’s the Halo universe, but with me playing Captain Kees and telling every little unfortunate Spartan to rush at Wraith tanks like they were kids zerg rushing a sweet shop on pocket money day.

So when Ensemble say ‘here, have some lovely high res shots’ I naturally say ‘why thank ya gov, go ‘av a cup a tea on me’. At least I would say that were I a method actor currently getting in role for a stage production of Oliver Twist.

But I’m not.

So without further ado, cast a discerning eye over these 5120 x 2880 resolution piccies that I had to shrink because they were TOO AWESOME;

To be honest I wish the game was on PC, then the units might not look like they were made out of play dough by a six year old. But that doesn’t really matter when you’re fifty feet in the air barking orders at people the size of pin heads, so why release such high quality pictures of a game in which individual units look so bad anyway? At least in Dawn of War each unit is nicely detailed.

Roll on February 5th so I can see how this game plays.

Dawn of War 2 Beta impressions – flashing scythes and zealous marines.

I’ve not played Company of Heroes but I’ve heard this game is a lot like it, less about building a base and more about using units in weird and wonderful ways, and if it is genuinly the inspiration for Dawn of War 2 then bloody hell, I’ve been missing out!

Dawn of War was fun but my favourite way to play was the ‘capture all the strategic points and hold them’ method, so imagine my annoyance when all I get are players rushing my base and slaughtering me, I also couldn’t play as Tyranids, major minus point right there.

But now you can’t win by simply rushing an opponents base and raping their units,  because Dawn of War 2 is about slowly creating and utilizing squads, moving tactically across the map and taking resource points and power nodes to fuel your war machine. It requires battlefield awareness far beyond most games as you zip around using squads to pry key locations from your opponent, perhaps causing distractions before having your best unit appear behind an undefended squad and rip them a new one.

furthermore you choose a specific commander who you will be reviving and retreating many times during combat, each army offers three commanders and each offers a slightly different play style. The Lictor, pictured above, specialises in infiltration, creeping around the map and unleashing unexpected attacks, while the Hive Tyrant is a more in your face commander making his presence known, buffing up his allies and causing opponents to flee. Each commander can then be upgraded further during a battle with unique attacks which could either be personal preferance or chosen to counter your opponent.

From the time I’ve spent with it Dawn of War 2 offers a streamlined but obviously deep strategic experience, I’ll be playing the Beta further and should hopefully be able to give my fellow Hive Minds a few tips on playing the ravenous swarms at their command.

The Crysis of MMOs – TERA

Industry unknowns Bluehole studio have just thrown a trailer for their upcoming MMO TERA onto the wonderfully harsh world of the Internet, but for a website as fickle as gametrailers, the games graphics are actually turning heads.

TERA: The exiled realm of Arborea (its full, groan enducing name) is a game developed in the land of MMOs, aka Korea, and alongside a slick looking combat engine the game is pushing some serious polgyons but rather than babble on about them, here’s the video;

So let’s dissect the trailer, revelling in the interesting points and casting aside the unwanted entrails whilst casting a speculative eye over how exactly a game this dang pretty could possibly be marketable.

It sure is pretty, JRPG CGI pretty, and the art direction is a solid mix of massive cities and sprawling vistas. The most depressing thing is that all sources available show the game in compressed SD form rather than the beautiful crystal clear sceens that would do the game justice, not a fan of the hulk like magic casters myself but the melee classes look ready for combat and in the females cases, as ready as nerdy programmers will let them be.

But then the real shocker hits because combat looks fluid, fast paced, and with more action than an evening in Newcastle. If I had to draw comparisons, and I do, it reminds me of the Tales franchise with melee classes whipping out impressive slashes and leaps whilst spell casters run away from combat and volley spells in, like all good cowards.

Navigating the world also looks fun as characters run across sprawling plains and clamber up vertical walls, these heroes look genuinely skilled and more importantly, this should give locations some fun routes to navigate.

But how to make this sellable considering most PCs will not be up to this without spluttering and submitting to an early death… Considering black magic is probably out of the question, a Guild Wars model would seem correct to me with all players inhabiting the city whilst all mission areas are instanced for individual parties.

I’ll be keeping a beady eye on this one, if only to see how they market a game that will make your graphics card EXPLODE.

FEAR 2 demo, quick impressions.

Here’s a quick summary of my thoughts on the Fear 2 demo…

Because of Halo, every FPS has melee. Because of COD 4, every FPS has a scope/ironsight button...

The Look

- Slick, the creepy red sections have a nice sky effect alongside some serious glowing going on, very strange.

-A few big set pieces give the game a big chunky feeling often missing from most modern FPS games.

-It feels very claustrophobic, areas are littered with obstacles which means you’ll need a lot of spacial awareness, but there’s plenty to duck behind.

The Scares

-More jumpy than a bunny with twice the advised amount of Duracell batteries rammed into its back, who’s also dosed up on caffine.

-School area was ace but could have really gone for the creepy vibe more, it just had guff ghosts drifting menacingly towards you.

-I didn’t mind the jumpy parts that took you to the red locations as they were intriquing to the part of my mind that likes a side dish of plot with its mindless gory shooting.

The Combat

-Slow-mo makes combat very easy, but very satisfying.

-Shotgun to the face = win;

As the point I just made says, win.

-The laser ’sub boss’ was dump, and his laser was annoyingly stuck to my body draining my health, and he refused to leave his little room to chase me. Did I mention the encounter was shit?

-The section in the mech at the end was easy and rather chunky, a fun diversion but really detracts from the horror focus of the game in my opinion.

Overall

-Enjoyable FPS mechanics offset by a bombardment of jump scares, just doesn’t do enough new or feel as clever as I’d like a horror FPS to be. To be honest the game feels like three lesser games that met in a pub one night, (an FPS, a survival horror, and Mech Assault) discussed their problems and decided the best thing for all three of them would be to fuse into one mega ultra game. A good idea until you do the maths on combining horror and mechs…

Bonus points for this immensely scary tiger!

Make your mind up yourself by nabbing the demo off Xbox Live, PSN, or PC over here.

Dala’s Deadly Tips – Red Alert 3 Strategic Soviet Options.

So you’ve got the Soviet build order up and running, that’s a good start (if you missed it, click here to read the build order) but now it’s time to take the fight to your opponent and I’ve listed several strategic options you can employ, and whilst they are all individually effective a good attack will use a mixture of them.

Essentials:

-Expand

The most obvious tactic is to expand with either an MCV or a Sputnik from your new War Factory. If you follow the Terror Drone tactic then the MCV will undoubtably be faster but be sure to grab one or two additional ore positions near your base as soon as possible, this tactic is essential in Red Alert 3.

-Pester

As with expansion, the other essential tactic of Red Alert 3 is to continuously poke your opponent and as a Soviet there are several ways to do this:

Terror Drones – Train two of these and come at an opponents base from behind, set one to its secondary attack and leave one in the primary, if your opponent has been foolish enough to leave their ore collector undefended then destroy it, by using the second drone to stun it your opponent will not be able to repair the collector and get the bug out.

Bear rush – It won’t pester ore collectors but sitting bears outside an opponents barracks can cause them to spend funds on unwanted turrets and stop infantry production, a great psychological blow.

Sickle suicide – the bane of any infantry unit is the sickle, clever use of its leap will see a large infantry force decimated by it’s machine gun. Instead of jumping whole groups all at once use them one at a time to keep units such as Tankbusters and Javelins on the ground then move into your opponents base and try to take down an ore collector or two.

Desolator Devilry – if you tech up the centre of your protocols to a desolator airstrike, get a view on your opponents Ore Refinary and drop the bomb! You may kill the collector with this unstopable poison and even if you don’t you’ll still halt collection for a bit as they run away.

Also very effective against infantry.

-Check Expansions

Red Alert 3 is all about Ore, if you don’t check expansions then you’re letting the opponent win, keep looking at ore deposits and cut off your opponents supply at every opportunity, use Terror Drones at first then check with a group of two or three Twinblades later in the game.

Strategic Options:

-Cash Bounty

A fantastic early ability, slap it on those scouting bears, a Terror Droned collector, your own losing forces, or whatever is going to die to ensure a small monetary boost, it could make the differance between your Super reactor being built now or ten seconds later.

- Sheer Terror

Terror Drones are the most useful unit of the Soviet army, capable of both destroying and delaying units. Build several and take them to all potential expansions, this is a way to keep an eye on your opponent, and due to the nature of the drone they can jump into whatever vehicle your enemy is using to expand. On top of these drones create at least 5 to counter any vehicle rush your opponent has coming by stunning them on the spot rather than jumping in, you can create more drones faster than your opponent can create vehicular support so spam them if you think they’ll be using more ground units until you can make twinblades or hammer tanks to quell the uprising, and keep using them to pester!

Some units stopped mid motion by a couple of pesky Terror Drones

-Flak Attack

Allied players in particular may use a lot of air so while focusing on other things it’s a good idea to spam Flak Troopers to report inside your base then select and scatter them (x). Flak troopers can then be used to garrison buildings or swap to their mines in reaction to a ground assault, a nice versatile unit.

-Secret Agent Engineer

Whilst you keep opponents occupied with other units, tech up to an airfield and get out a twinblade whilst you train a few Engineers and some Tesla Troops (or whatever infantry you like really), bundle them into the twinblade and swoop it round the back of your opponents base or expansion, drop the troops off in the most Claustrophobic part of their base, to give their vehicles a hard time reaching you, and send each engineer to capture a different building while the Tesla Troops protect them, either your opponent will sell up in a confused panic or you’ll grab one of their essential buildings, win win. A Bullfrog can be used just as effectivley against Allied or Soviet expansions but purachuting into a heavily fortified base is suicide.

-Feel the Hammer

Once your Super Reactor is up get some Hammer Tanks out as they’re your best anti ground unit that doesn’t take forever to tech to and more importantly, a group of them coupled with the terror drone surprise protocol can do very well against an enemy attack, and a group itself can do some damage to an opponents basic defenses and expansions. Just try and cover them with a bullfrog or two in case of Vindicators or ZX Striders.

-Tier 3? I don’t need Tier 3!

Soviet tier 3 is unessential until you feel in control, spending resources on that Battle Lab could be better used on more Twinblades, Bullfrogs, and Sputniks to expand and pressure your opponent. Teching up all the way as soon as possible is a fool’s errand when you have so many options to annoy and wreck havok with cheaper units and early protocols, just keep their ore collection in check and build a balanced force.

Help! I’m Under Attack!

What? Your opponent is rushing you!? Don’t panic, remain calm, we’ll do our best…

Against Infantry – Bears! And lots of them, if you see an early infantry rush then don’t feel silly hiding bears to the side of your base. A sickle is also helpful. To strike back against this move the bears in between you, chances are they will infantry rush again and have spent too many resources to have vehicles in construction.

Against Vehicles – Spam Terror Drones, chances are you opponents vehicles will be concentrating on another building so the drone can get in unspotted and start hurting them, keep spamming them out your war factory until they are dead or your war factory is, now position the Terror Drones towards the front of your base, spread as to avoid protocol attacks, and all with their secondary fire activated to stop any other vehicles dead that want to try an attack, giving you time to recoup your losses and fashion a counter manouvre.

Against Air – Bullfrogs, Flak Troopers, and a lot of luck.

Against Naval – See against vehicle, told you Terror Drones were good.

—————————————————————————–

And those are my Red Alert 3 Soviet tips for now, I hope you’ve found something to help you improve your game.

You'll rarely, if ever see this many Kirov's in a multiplayer match, enjoy it in the campaign.

Dala’s Deadly Tips – Red Alert 3 Soviet Build Order.

When I first played Red Alert 3 I searched the Internet for a competant Soviet build order but to my woes there was a lack of well written guides on how to take the red army to victory. So I plunged into the ocean of Red Alert 3 like a crippled seal with only half a flipper and after hours of experimentation, humiliation, and eventual success I have emerged a beautiful adult seal called Ivan with massive tusks that all the other seals run (flop?) scared from.

And because I’m generous I bring my success to any other crippled seals who are being bombarded by mechanical robots and armoured dolphins so you too and bring glory to Mother Russia!

*note* this build order has brought me success in reletavily mid difficulty matches, don’t expect to read this and walk over anyone as it takes time and alteration, the build order is not infalable and you may need to modify it on the fly, don’t feel tied to it.

Before the match starts

Hold your left hand with one finger over E and another on F9

Match Starts!

The moment the game starts hit the aforementioned keys to get your Crusher Crane selected without having to move the mouse, now just throw it down instantly, every second counts!

Twiddle your thumbs for a bit and once the crane is down you’re in a good position, throw down a Reactor (F1) and a Barracks (F2), the  crusher crane means you can build two buildings at once in case you didn’t know, hit the 2 tab above all your building buttons!

The moment the reactor is up and running get your first Ore Refinary (F3) building then erect the second Ore Refinary once your Barracks are done.

Now the hard part, your two Ore Refinaries are in construction but don’t sit around, throw some bears out your barracks to scout the map and probably an engineer to nab an oil derrick. Now build whatever units you feel you need, a safe bet lies with Flak Troopers who are both anti air and anti vehicle but you may also opt for more engineers for a strange stealing rush or perhaps you need more bears, it’s up to you.

Once the Ore Refinaries finish building then it’s time to create a War Factory, don’t construct a second building on top of this as your funds will be drained by this point and you want those vehicles building as soon as possible!*

And that’s it for the default build order, from here it’s a hop to the Battle Lab for Natascha and Apocalypse Tanks, a skip to the Soviet Airfield for the invaluable Twinblade, or perhaps a jump to a Naval Yard for Naval Dominance, either way I’d recommend getting a sputnik out of your War Factory or move your MCV so you can expand!

Tomorrow I will be discussing the tactical options that follow this order and how best to use them.

*If you are playing a map that is predominantly water then replace this War Factory step with a Naval Yard.

Lord of the Rings Conquest demo impressions.

I do like free demos don’t you? A chance to take games you aren’t even going to buy for a spin just to find out how unbelievably uninterested you are in the final product and further cement your mind firmly in the ‘I’m not going to buy that, it is shit’ camp. At least that’s what I thought after wasting thirty minutes with the single player part of Dynasty Warriors of the Rings Conquest and I was all ready to categorise it as ‘complete dump’ when I went and tried the multiplayer and an hour and a half later, I’m not sure that was a justified opinion.

This game with a long name comes from Pandemic, the people behind the Star Wars Battlefront games and since the third game has been in the obviously incapable hands of Free Radical for a few years the chaps previously responsible for making epic multiplayer sci-fi battles have turned their hand to the fantastical with another mahoosive license in Lord of the Rings.

It plays the same as Battlefront, which consequentially played the same as Battlefield, which sees you controlling a specific type of grunt as you and the other grunts on your team push against control points, take them, and eventually deplete your opponent’s pool of reinforcements, or lose trying. The format has always been lacklustre when alone but incomparably epic with human opponents and comrades and Conquest is no different.

The Warrior is your basic melee class who you might think would suck in the face of all the arrows and magic that would get spammed his way but you are wrong thanks to a handy axe he carries on his back that, when thrown with precision, will knock targets to the ground letting you get up to them and start slicing them into tonight’s salad. The Mage is the best team player, sending short sharp bolts of magic in to help with damage, healing wounded allies, and holding up a damage reducing barrier are their key skills and mean you will be popular, and very deadly as a mage.

The archer is only player by pussies who don’t like to think about what they are doing, volleying powerful arrow barrages into the obviously braver than you warriors and using poison to slow down anything that looks slightly big or menacing, the pussy class. The last class is the rogue of the group who aside from dealing cheap insta-kill attacks to the camping archers makes the best anti monster class in the game with attacks that can take half a health bar off our next point of interest as the mechanical death dealers of the Star Wars universe are gone and in their place are Horses, Worgs, Ents, and Cave Trolls.

Horses and Worgs are just infantry transport but Ents and Cave Trolls are limited on a map and taking control of one means you are going to deal a lot of pain very quickly, sweeping attacks will leave countless players unconscious while the ability to heal yourself when safe means a proficient player can really deal some insane damage with one of Conquest’s vehicle substitutes.

The two levels available in the demo are the Shire and a random interior castle section so no  epic battles of Helms Deep or expansive field combat for demo players, but what’s on offer works to the gameplay’s strengths giving melee classes a lot of room to manoeuvre out of fire and get up and personal with ranged characters while the action is always intense even with only half the player count in a match and even a Balrog tearing up the field getting peppered with arrows couldn’t put a dent in the solid framerate or cause lag issues on my dire connection.

I’ve seen a lot of hate for the demo already and heard bad things about the final build of the game but all these complaints are being levelled at the single player and I hate to sound rather rude or offend anyone but there’s a reason that multiplayer is the first option on the menu and that’s because Lord of the Rings Conquest is a multiplayer class based game in which you get to play as a grunt in epic battles from the rich lore of Middle Earth with other like minded nerds, and from playing the demo I can tell that I would thoroughly enjoy playing the full game in multiplayer, and no dodgy Dynasty Warriors style single player could ruin that.

Skate 2 demo impressions

Skate still stands as one of my favourite titles of this generation with its simplistic stick tricks and the fantastic feeling of accomplishment after a succesful run, it took skating down to its basics and offered a more realistic alternative to Tony Hawk and his arcade inspired 100,000 point combos. The demo for Skate 2 hit Xbox Live yesterday and will be rolling onto PSN next week and my expectations were high as I went through the impressive character creation and took my ex-prisoner(?) onto the streets of New San Vanelona.

First the look, all the colour sliders have been pushed to the right giving Skate 2 a vibrant look, the camera is still focused on your board and apart from the expected changes to menus and a polished frame rate it’s very much the game you remember seeing a few years ago.

Tweaks and changes abound gameplay wise as soon as you realise buttons have been added to the old control scheme to make it both easier and add plenty of the manouvres missing from the first game such as lip tricks while other buttons let you deliberately bail and curl into a ball, or perform a judo kick whilst flailing through the air.You can also get off your board and while this controls as well as an iguana on square wheels, the ability to move ramps and rails around opens up more opportunities for creating your own lines.

The final point of note is the improved video editor, which boild down to one simple adition, the tripod camera. While still limited to having the lens staring at your berk on wheels for the whole replay you can place the camera where you want to create some more interesting videos than the static and samely replays possible in the first Skate.

So, Skate 2 is exactly what you’d expect from a sequal, more of the same plus some spangly new additions. While the off board activity is a little sketchy the core skating and trickery remains superb and well worth anyone’s time… If you’re not out of money after the goliath year that was 2008.