Episode 101
This week on Gamesweasel we review UFC 2009 Undisputed and InFamous, take a look at the headlines behind Heavy Rain, Star Wars Battlefront and STALKER Call of Pripyat, plus you get the chance to win 5 copies of Red Faction Guerrilla for the Xbox 360. On the blog this week we’ve got more on those Digimon adventure online games, a universal Wii guitar controller which works with Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, a Nintendo DSi review and how we got on with the official Wii lens cleaner.

• Heavy Rain Release Date
• Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron
• STALKER Call of Pripyat release date
• UFC 2009 Undisputed review
• Win Red Faction Guerrilla for the Xbox 360
• InFamous review
• Dark Void review

Buy
To play any of the games reviewed in this episode you can buy from the InFamous Amazon and UFC 2009 Undisputed Amazon pages.

Offers
Gamesweasel is brought to you with GoDaddy.com and offers you some great discounts on domain names and hosting. Use our Gamesweasel June 2009 GoDaddy discount codes to save money – WEASEL1 gets you 10% off domain name purchases and WEASEL2 gets you 20% off orders over £25 or $50. Some restrictions may apply so see the GoDaddy web site for details.

Win
If you’d like to win Red Faction Guerrilla for the Xbox 360 then check out our competitions page before 15 June 2009.

Contact us
Email: gamesweasel@mevio.com
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Screenshots

YouTube InFamous review

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InFamous may look like a GTA clone at first glance but when you play it, you find out it’s really not and it’s almost a mix between any free-roaming Spider-Man game and Assassins Creed.

You play as Cole, a normal citizen who’s on his way to work one day when a massive explosion wipes out the city. As you’re running from the carnage things aren’t quite as they seem when you get zapped by electricity and realise you’ve been given new powers to fire lightning bolts from your hands, recharge your energy from anything with power nearby, and blast stuff to kingdom-come.

Of course, the story follows lots of twists and turns involving government conspiracies and weird hallucinations as you complete story objectives and side missions that help to make you more powerful. As you progress through the game you get to throw lightning grenades, heal people and steal their life energy amongst other cool things. You also have moral choices to make which affect which power-ups you can use going forward.

The main reason this isn’t like GTA is the fact you can’t drive cars. The excuse is your energy blows them up, so you spend most of the time climbing buildings and running over rooftops. You’ll also find lots of goodies high up so I hope you’re not scared of heights. The game does a good job of guessing what you want to do when you make a jump which makes it possible to leap, scale, slide and swing around the city with ease. Occasionally you’ll fall to your death into deadly water but luckily you start again almost where you fell.

Although the game can get a bit repetitive in the middle, it does really ramp up again before the end and is a slick action game with some cool missions and plenty of bad ‘Reapers’ to fry, capture and run away from.

If you want a game which shows off how well your PS3 can throw around polygons which also entertains with a great story and presentation, it’s definitely worth a look. InFamous for the Playstation 3 gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

Get InFamous now
New: Buy InFamous from Amazon.com
Rental: Rent InFamous – free rental trial from Gamefly.com

Related: Star Wars The Force Unleashed review, Killzone 2 review, InFamous review

Tags: InFamous, InFamous, In Famous, PS3, Playstation 3, reapers, cole, free roaming, GTA

YouTube UFC 2009 Undisputed review

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I’ve seen quite a lot of the UFC game before its release and everything I’ve seen has been good. The graphics looked great, the presentation was spot on and the fighting system, if a little complicated at first, had enough variety to keep it fresh without sacrificing the realism the fans wanted so much. Thankfully, it’s all still good when you go into the shops to buy it. Let me tell you why.

UFC is the fastest growing combat sport in the world right now and it’s easy to see why. It’s brutal. Fighters with different skills are pitted against each other and it’s interesting to see how they size up against each other. Mixed Martial Arts (or MMA for short) is what it’s all about here and karate, Muay Thai, Judo and boxing are all fair game as each fighter attempts to get the most points. Of course what usually happens is a knock out and it’s the same in the game.

Career mode lets you create a fighter and uses a calendar system to schedule training, sparring and rest days between fights. Trudging through a calendar isn’t my idea of fun so luckily the fighting makes up for this rather dull career setting.

Boxing and kicking works just like Tekken, but it’s the clinch and grapple system you’ll want to properly learn to get the most of this game. Using quarter turns and clicks of the analogue sticks, you can get your opponent onto the ground and smash them into submission. You can also use the same technique to defend. You’ll want to go through the lengthy tutorial at the start if you want to play this game to the full.

The cage fighting is fantastic. Every punch and kick feels weighty and it’s a proper struggle when on the floor as you try to wriggle free or lock in a submission. It also looks amazing. Each fighter was scanned from head to toe and mo-capped and this has to be the most realistic fighting game to date. Even blood and sweat looks real and damage is gauged by how the fighters react.

One word of warning, do switch on the stamina meter in the options when you first play, because if you run out of the stuff, you can get KO’d in one hit. Something which frustrated me at first until I figured out that was where I was going wrong.

If you liked Fight Night and you love wrestling games, this is something you definitely want to check out – even if you’re not necessarily a fan of UFC. UFC 2009 Undisputed gets a ball-breaking 9 out of 10.

Get UFC 2009 Undisputed now
New: Buy UFC 2009 Undisputed from Amazon.com
Rental: Rent UFC 2009 Undisputed – free rental trial from Gamefly.com

Related: UFC Michael Bisping interview, UFC 2009 Undisputed interview with Marcus Davis and Neven Dravinski, Youtube UFC 2009 Undisputed review

Tags: UFC 2009 Undisputed, UFC 2009 Undisputed, cage fighting, UFC, Mixed Martial Arts, MMA, sports, rampage, Xbox 360, PS3, UFC 2009 Undisputed review

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News about the proper sequel to PC shooter STALKER. Call of Pripyat will feature the town of Pripyat as well as The Zone around Chernobyl. Expect all the weirdness of the first game with some much better graphics this time around. The STALKER Call of Pripyat release date has been announced for Autumn 2009.

Buy STALKER Call of Pripyat now
New: Buy STALKER Call of Pripyat from Amazon.com

Related: STALKER review, STALKER Clear Sky review

Tags: STALKER Call of Pripyat, STALKER, The Zone, Chernobyl, Call of Pripyat, release date, PC

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There’s a new Star Wars Battlefront game coming out for the PSP and Nintendo DS. It will be the second game exclusively for the handhelds and will feature 16-player multiplayer on the PSP and a 4 player mode on the DS.

Buy Star Wars Battlefront now
New: Buy Star Wars Battlefront from Amazon.com

Related: Star Wars The Force Unleashed review, Star Wars The Old Republic

Tags: Star Wars, Battlefront, Elite Squadron, PSP, Nintendo DS

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Looking forward to playing Heavy Rain on the Playstation 3? Well now you may have to wait until 2010 to get your hands on it. It’s shaping up nicely so the delay may be to get things ‘just right’. It does look impressive though and there’ll be more details about it revealed at E3 in Los Angeles next week.

Related: Sony E3 Highlights, Best of E3

Tags: Heavy Rain, PS3, release date, E3