This week Matt Cuttle talks:
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The Project Gotham Racing games have always been a big deal. The original MSR that started the whole thing off was a biggie on Sega’s Dreamcast and the PGRs since have come out with big launches of consoles. Which is why I was surprised when PGR 4 popped through my door without a procession but with a little whisper. Obviously Microsoft have blown all their marketing budget on Halo 3. However, that means it doesn’t have so much pressure to be good, and it is good, just not fantastic.
This game, as with others, isn’t about how fast you drive, it’s about how you drive fast. You get Kudos points for not hitting walls, drifting and sliding round the courses. The more points you get, the more levels you unlock and the further you can get in the game. They’ve added a few new features to this one. Some work well,some don’t. The first thing you’ll notice when you look at the box is there are now motorbikes to razz around on.
The good news it’s easier to stay on these than Moto GP, the bad news is for some reason it’s just doesn’t feel like they belong in the game, even with the ability to earn extra Kudos by popping wheelies and doing tricks. There’s also a new career mode which plays through an entire season with dates on a calendar. Weirdly, if you fail an event, there’s no option to try again. The game just moves onto the next day so you don’t get to learn from your mistakes and really nail the tracks.
One thing they have got spot on is the weather effects. You can be halfway through a race and it will teem it down which effects the way your car handles and makes it drift further. You also get heat waves which unfortunately don’t have such a severe effect.
Online this is a solid racing game and you can also watch races and clips if you don’t actually want to join in. It takes everything they did in PGR3 and tightens it all up. You still get the occasional lag with cars breaking the laws of physics and teleporting about occasionally but this is part of the perils of online play.
PGR4 is a great driving game but for me, just a little too technical. I enjoy burning round tracks in Burnout. PGR4 gets 7 out of 10.
Here is My my review is Fatal Inertia on the Xbox 360. Now when you first see this game you’ll instantly think it’s ripped off WipeOut. And you’d be right to think that because in essence, it has. But that’s no bad thing as this game is every bit as playable and has some funky new weapons and fun courses to fly about in.
So, it’s a racing game and you work your way through a number of race events split over a few rounds where you aim to be top of the tree by the time all the races are over. You get to pick your ship, with new ones being unlocked as you progress through the game, and you can even decide what time of day you want to race and what the weather’s doing to give yourself an extra challenge.
Once you’re racing, there’s also some weapons to use I haven’t seen before in this genre of combat racing. There’s a rope you can fire out to attach two other racers together which can be fun to watch, and also magnets you can stick to other racers to slow them down and attract them to metal surfaces. You’ve also got the standard missiles and rockets we’ve seen before in WipeOut.
There’s also some great scenery, like desert, tropical paradises and icey levels where you even break under the ice to take a sneaky shortcut underwater.
The tracks are also wider than WipeOut which gives you a bit more creativity in a race but sometimes you can get lost between checkpoints and if you hit the reset button it sometimes dumps you back in a really silly place.
This one’s great fun for anyone who likes combat racing games but is let down by some silly track design and bugs that could have easily been ironed out before it hit the shelves. Still, worth a look and for that reason it gets a good 6 out of 10.
On this weeks gaming podcast we talk:
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There’s one thing you can almost guarantee when Nintendo bring out a game that’s based on a character that’s in some way related to Mario. That is, it’s usually going to be very good and have lots of new ideas. Once again, they’ve come up trumps with a game featuring Donkey King. It’s DK Jungle Climber and it really is something rather new and perfect for the DS.
Basically, the levels span over both screens and you control Donkey Kong most of the time with just 3 buttons. The A button to jump, and L and R for his left and right hands. You use these to grip onto pegs and rotate Donkey Kong around the levels. It’s kind of hard to explain but look at the screenshots on the website and you’ll instantly see what I’m getting at.
As you move through the levels you can thrust into bad guys to blow them up and collect bananas – lots of bananas. In fact more bananas than you’ll ever see in a lifetime – careful Donkey Kong, too much and potassium’s not good for you.
Each level’s quite short and not particularly challenging but this game’s certainly a welcome distraction on the bus or if waiting for someone who’s late for 10 minutes or even half an hour. Having a game playable in little bitesize chunks is exactly the way it should be for handheld gaming, not just a console game squeezed onto a cartridge.
You also get the help of Diddy Kong who can hitch a ride on your back, launch himself even further at enemies and hold items such as hammers to clear the screen of enemies.
Although a simple concept, initially it’s quite tricky to get your head around when to grab with each button and when to let go when Donkey Kong spins round those pegs. But, like anything, give it some time and you’ll get used to this new way of playing and really enjoy yourself.
It’s not the biggest Nintendo release on the DS this year but it’s certainly something worth a look. It gets a very good 7 out of 10.
Time now to look at another expansion pack for the game FEAR. This has fast become one of my favourite first-person shooters thanks to that fact it has great enemy AI, beefy guns and a supernatural element so scary it’s on a par with Silent Hill in terms of creepiness at times.
This one has a timeline that runs parallel to the previous full game and expansion, and features you as a new team investigating the incident Armacham. Your job In this new adventure is to find out what Perseus is, apart from a Greek man who ended up with Medusa’s head. Nice.
There are some new enemies in this one too, granted you’ll still have to fight super soldiers and weirdy things but also the Nightcrawler, and their lives again, and their lives will pull us through. Believe me, fighting him with his Peter Stringfellow hair would be scary.
The great news is this is a stand-alone expansion pack which basically means you don’t need the first game to play it and it’ll be cheaper than a full-price game. And they’ve included 16 player multiplayer in this one too for online shenanigans.
You can play it before the year’s up with the lights off and bicycle clips well fastened.
Sega Rally’s been around for as long as I can remember. At its core it’s always been an arcade racing game which is simple to pick up and play, zooming round the country roads and dirt tracks without too much trouble. Of course, for the hardcore among us we could look into it a bit deeper and use manual gears and powerslide round those corners to get the edge and a better split time.
So, this one’s the first one for the next-gen consoles and it’s got something new – ground deformation. Now we’ve seen this before with MotorStorm but in Sega Rally, it actually makes a difference to the way your tyres grip. Razz round snowy slopes and it’ll get moved away and compressed, go through gravel or deep mud and again you’ll make a track that will be easier to go round next time.
It’s an interesting concept but unfortunately doesn’t work as well as it should as the cars in this game are rather tricky to stay on the road, never mind navigate on the best bits you’ve worn away for yourself. It’s really very twitchy and for an arcade game, this isn’t ideal as it’s the type of game you just want to pick up and smash round the tracks for 10 minutes or so without really worrying about how the car handles. Colin McRae Dirt’s tricky enough but at least it’s supposed to be.
Your opponents on the track are also too good. Smash into one wall and you’ll never see them again. I feel like James May in Top Gear.
If you can get control of the cars it’s your usual Sega Rally affair, it feels very Sega –y if that’s a word and you get that geezer telling you where to go saying long left, easy right, maybe. Are you sure Mr talky man?
It also looks very nice too and is great fun multiplayer, although you may enjoy that more on the 360 with its rumbly controller and achievements points to get.
It’s good fun but the handling of the floaty cars does spoil the fun.
Sega Rally gets a very good 7 out of 10.
On this weeks videogame podcast we cover:
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