So you purchased a Nintendo Wii for Christmas but the kids soon pointed out that they need an extra accessory to play multiplayer with their friends, chat with their friends long-distance or save money on batteries. We’ve all been there before but this time we’re prepared with some cracking essential New Year Wii Accessory price deals for you. Hurry and check out these discounted Wii accessory prices from Amazon as they end on January 10th 2009.
This weeks episode of Gamesweasel is brought to you in association with GoDaddy and offers you discounts on hosting and domain names. Use one of the following Gamesweasel January 2009 GoDaddy coupon codes to save you money - weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over $50 or £25. Some restrictions may apply, please see the GoDaddy web site for more details.
This weeks episode of Gamesweasel is brought to you in association with GoDaddy and offers you discounts on hosting and domain names. Use one of the following Gamesweasel GoDaddy coupon codes January 2009 to save you money - weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over $50 or £25. Some restrictions may apply, please see the GoDaddy web site for more details.
This weeks episode of Gamesweasel is brought to you in association with GoDaddy and offers you discounts on hosting and domain names. Use one of the following Gamesweasel GoDaddy coupon codes for January 2009 to save you money - weasel1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and weasel2 gets you 20% off orders over $50 or £25. Some restrictions may apply, please see the GoDaddy web site for more details.
It’s almost the end of another year and each year seems to bring another version of the racing franchise Need For Speed. This new one sees you infiltrating a gang of street racers in order to uncover some organised crime and drug syndicates. Just how racing against them somehow leads to arrests isn’t quite clear. Still, it’s an excuse to race around the city streets and avoid the cops. Even though you’re on their side they don’t know that so there’s another excuse for some high-speed racing and a high probability of losing your no claims bonus.
The game claims to be in an open world format but that’s not really the case. After an initial race from the cops at the start of the game, you’re free to race around the city. We’ll, I say race but there’s no-one actually competing against you and unless the cops find you and start to chase, there’s absolutely no goals to find and no races to stumble across. To get into a race you either hit up on the d-pad to get a map of the city with races available, or hit down to go the nearest race. You’re then faced with a loading screen before the race begins. Unfortunately, even in the races the open world isn’t used. You’re sent down a linear path with a few varied routes but nothing that feels free. Compared to Burnout Paradise this is a huge disappointment.
This being Need For Speed, it isn’t just a case of getting from A to B. Some races are straightforward but there’s also Highway Battle where you must leave a rival in your dust and stay ahead for a certain amount of time or reach a set distance. And of course there are police chases where you can smash through structures to leave carnage for them to crash into.
My other problem with the game is how easy it is. Even if your car isn’t as good as everyone else’s, it’s easy to steam past them and come in first. You then get driver points which up your stats and eventually lead to you buying bigger and more powerful cars. Also, on the PS3 at least, the framerate is appalling. Even playing offline, it plays with the type of lag you’d experience playing online with a bad connection. At high speed, it’s so bad it can make you crash and ejects you completely form the racing experience.
Because I played the Need For Speed Undercover PS3 version, I’m giving marks for the PS3 release only. Unfortunately, Need for Speed Undercover fails to deliver on everything it promises and the terrible framerate means it’s effectively broken so it gets a very bad 3 out of 10.
If you’re a regular browser on the PlayStation Network, you’ll have noticed an episodic horror game available for download called Siren: Blood Curse. This is a re-versioning of the PS2 original and it tells the story of a number of characters including an American TV crew and a college student who have happened upon a forgotten island where strange rituals are taking place and what appear to be the walking dead called Shibito stagger around and hunt you down.
In a departure from most survival horror games, the game makes you even more vulnerable than a character in Silent Hill. Each chapter has a number of goals you must complete before moving to the next chapter and the story jumps about as you play each character battling for survival. Although you do get hold of guns later on in the game, there’s also an element of stealth. When a Shibito spots you, the edge of the screen flashes to warn you. It’s then a case of either finding a weapon to knock down your enemy for a short while, or hiding in cupboards, under beds etc until they go away.
A novel addition to the genre is the ability to ‘Sight-Jack’ other characters and enemies. You can lock onto other characters and then the screen splits in half to show you their point of view - useful when trying to avoid the gaze of a Shibito or to find out where your companions are as you escort them. Unfortunately there are far too many of these missions throughout the 12 hours or so of gameplay and if they get in trouble they do little to keep themselves alive.
For a downloadable game, the graphics are pretty good. Character models are convincing and the Shibito are suitably creepy. They even make really strange noises that send a shiver up your spine. Your surroundings could be a little less grainy but I guess that’s the look they were going for. It’s also a little tricky to see where you’re going when the screen splits in half and it would have been nice to use the right analogue stick to rotate the camera a full 360-degrees. Maybe that would have made the stealth section s too easy though and cut out some of the claustrophobic tension.
In all, if you like survival horror games and you can get through the first two chapters before the action really gets good, it’s worth a download or few.
