It’s the Games Media Awards in London in October and Gamesweasel wants to be nominated for an award. So, we need your help. All you have to do is send an email to gma@intentmedia.co.uk saying you’d like Gamesweasel to be nominated for best podcast. Please.

Update

Nominations have now finished so thanks for everyone who put our name forward for the awards and we’ll keep you updated if we win anything.

Tags: Games Media Award, awards, Gamesweasel

Have you ever wondered why the Moon exists? Some people say that the Moon’s gravitational controls the Earth’s tides. Maybe this is true, maybe not, but one thing I can say for sure is you’ll never look at the Moon the same way again after playing Renegade Kid’s latest First Person Shooter for Nintendo DS.

Before I go into my review of Moon for DS I’ll ask you a question. How would we respond to a stronger and more intelligent alien species that saw humans as an expendable resource just as we currently do with nearly every other animal species on Earth? After all, the reasoning for Man’s behaviour has always been along the lines of being top of the food chain or being the most intelligent species. So what if some other species comes along who become the food chain leaders, would we have to fold over in a mound of our own logic and let them do what they like or fight back? Well it wouldn’t be much of a game if we just folded over so it’s safe to assume that we’ll be fighting back.

You take control of super solider; Major Edward Kane whose team is sent to investigate a hatchway found on the Moon’s surface. Not long after arriving on the Moon’s surface some heavy stuff goes down, the Moon base comes under attack by unidentified vessels and the rest of Alpha team have disappeared. General Lambert quickly comes onto the radio and tells you to get your ass down that hatch to investigate, so what do you do? Jump in the Moon buggy lovingly nicknamed Lola and drive to the hatch pronto. Lola comes into play in later missions too and let it be said, driving a moon buggy with a laser gun is always a pleasure.

After a short ride down a green elevator you’re suddenly all alone in an alien base under the Moon’s surface. Sure you have radio contact with your Technical Officer Tsuke and the hard hitting General Lambert but they’re not much use to you against the robotic defence droids flying about, here is where your Super Assault Rifle comes in. This SAR heavy duty weapon needs no ammunition and has a high rate of fire. It’s probably one of Earth’s most powerful hand weapons but is it powerful enough to defend yourself against Moon aliens with? Well the simple answer is, no not really. Luckily for you though you’ll be able to find more powerful Alien weapons throughout your journey in Moon, however these will require ammo top ups which are sometimes dropped when you defeat a baddie, you’ll also pick up health in this way too. If you’re familiar with the Metroid Prime series then I think you’ll be quite happy here inside Moon, for the most part you’ll be heading to locations marked on your map to find keys or disable power supplies to bring down force fields. Computer terminals scattered along the route slowly provide you with data records and diary entries which fill you in with what’s been going on here and why these aliens are so interested in humans. These entries are really well written and tell three different stories, each of which will chill your spine in a different way, but I don’t want to spoil them for you. Another similarity to Metroid Prime is the inclusion of access tunnels which Kane is too big to enter; instead of morphing into a ball like Samus; Kane carries a remote control droid which can be sent through to access switches and reach previously inaccessible areas. If you happen to search these tunnels quite thoroughly you’ll also find Alien Computer Artefacts which Tsuke can use to create Virtual Reality style training missions for you to practice your skills on, you can find three artefacts on almost every level.

For the most part you will just be walking through corridors shooting baddies and trying to reach the next save station before you run out of health. Sadly outside of item finding there isn’t much puzzle solving to be had and the onscreen map will prevent you from getting lost. Fortunately there are usually more than enough enemies to keep you occupied, none of them are too difficult to defeat on their own but in mixed groups they can amount to a challenge. For me playing though to complete the story was the main catch. Fans of Renegade Kid’s previous FPS on DS (Dementium) will be joyous to hear that the control scheme is almost identical. Directional movements controlled with the DPad and aiming via the stylus and touchscreen, just tap the left shoulder button to fire. Access your weapon select screen are just a tap away. Lefties never fear, you can swap the controls to the opposite side and play just as comfortably as a right hander.

Overall I really enjoyed Moon and found the storyline rather gripping and really recommend anyone who likes a bit of intrigue and Sci-Fi to take a look. Graphically Moon is a little bland and the environments hardly change from area to area apart from the walls changing colour. Things do to tend to look more slightly more industrial as you head through the game but variation is quite limited. The saving grace for the lack of detail is probably the super smooth framerate which hardly dips even when lots of enemies and weapons fire are all flying about. The only downside to the game really is the lack of multiplayer modes to be found, no online or offline play at all. Hopefully they’ll consider an online coop if a sequel is in the works.

If I had to choose one FPS title for DS then I’d actually recommend horror title Dementium first because it’s a little more varied and probably is more original but Moon is a close second with its more rigid Metroid Prime meets Quake 2 gameplay. 7 out of 10.

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Related: Dementium, Metroid Prime

Have you heard of the Madballs? Before I downloaded Madballs in Babo Invasion from the Xbox 360 Arcade marketplace I was completely unaware of the craze knows as Madballs which spawned in the mid 1980’s. After looking into the history I was surprised to see that there has been a Madballs cartoon series, comic book and of course; a series of toys. When I first started playing Madballs in Babo Invasion I was describing it to myself as Super Monkey Ball – but with guns. I then found out that Madballs is in fact a sequel to the free webgame called Babo Violent 2. I think this means that this is the third game in the series but the first with the Madballs licence, all a bit confusing isn’t it?

It’s hard to describe Madballs in Babo Invasion but I will try. You take control of an oversized eyeball called Occulus and arrive on strange planet who ends up joining the Babo military (the B*D*I). Your mission is to protect a powerful artefact (the Terracite) falling into the hands of the Mercs. You as Occulus start by rolling around the 3D map in a Monkey Ball esque way but rather than moving the level, your stick movements control the actual character or ball. You’re quickly shown the basics by your commander; Major Stone and then it’s off into the field for Babo’s newest recruit. It’s not long before you encounter your first wave of enemies; these aren’t the evil Merc’s but natural (and aggressive) species to the Babo system. First you’ll encounter Chompiis, these underground creatures pop up and attack anything moving near their nests, they’ll keep rolling towards you until they explode in your eye or you dispatch them with your weapon, luckily all of your weapons can destroy these lightweight baddies.

Like almost every other enemy in the game the next ones you’ll encounter are round balls too, the Moltoks roll towards you in a similar fashion but are much tougher to defeat and require more specific weapon choices to dispatch of in a quick fashion. So you continue through the pretty environments picking up new weapons, collecting keys and flicking switches to open a path towards the boss or next area. What makes Madballs in Babo Invasion more than just a ball rolling maze game is that when you encounter the real enemies; such as the Turret’s and Merc’s things get a little more interesting.

In a similar fashion to the Moltok’s these enemies are usually only susceptible to certain weapon groups, if you happen to have picked up the wrong one further back you’ll find it futilely bouncing off their shields. Combine this with often being in mixed groups and you can easily find yourself under serious threat, however you do have extra things in your arsenal to help you get by. As well as the large selection of guns to pick up (you can only carry one gun at a time) you can also find Grenades and Molotov’s. Because these can be thrown from a distance they can help you catch a snoozing Merc unaware, if you were to miss however you may find you’ve just woke him up and that he’s now rolling after you.

The other major element and one that sadly wasn’t implemented very well is transmogrification. At nearly every checkpoint you will roll past special chambers which will turn you into another one of the Madball family (if you’ve unlocked them that is). Typically most Madballs have varying strengths, weaknesses and special moves which can be useful in certain scenarios; however I hardly ever found the need to change character when Occulus is such a good all-rounder. It would have been better if the levels were designed so that you had more reason to change, or even, be forced to change but alas, they’re not.

That’s pretty much where the single player mode ends but if you are interested in heading online you’ll find a whole host of cool stuff to do. Firstly and most importantly you can choose to play the single player campaign with up to 3 other people, this really does brighten the game up and make the harder difficulty level’s beatable. Battle lovers should be excited by up to 16 player death matches and capture the flag modes as well as the rather intriguing Invasion mode where both sides have to actually build the map in real time. One team does one side and the second team designs the other, then you have the fun of competing to the death on this brand new map. This in game map building is a very clever idea and not one I’ve seen before, I wonder if more games will implement it?

These online skirmishes’ are really intense and the maps which are quite often complex mixes of tunnels and open area’s soon get overcrowded when up to 15 other people are rolling and shooting all about the place. Being a good looking chap I can’t pretend not to have found the Avatar battle mode the most fun; here your Xbox Live Avatar is sent into a chamber and transmogrified into a Madball; or to be more precise a giant floating head. You can’t help but laugh when you battle the silly faces of your friends or random people online, well I can’t anyway.

Madballs In Babo Invasion is a fun pick up and play shooter which is best enjoyed online with your friends and at 800 Microsoft points isn’t too expensive either. There are lots of things to like about Madballs; it’s a solid well made title with very crisp visuals and for the most part, an extremely smooth framerate. Playing the campaign mode on your own is a little stale and if you can play online coop I suggest you do, the basic storyline isn’t particularly gripping but then most games which focus on shooting aren’t famed for great storytelling are they? Madballs has a strong personality and some proper down to earth gameplay but it is lacking that little bit of finesse to make it a classic. I’m confident that the upcoming DLC will add that extra bit of spark so I’m going to award Madballs in Babo Invasion 7 out of 10.

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Related: Assault Heroes 2 review, Overlord 2 review

Episode 109
On this weeks episode of Gamesweasel we review Overlord 2 and Fallout 3 Point Lookout, plus you get the chance to win 5 copies of Watchmen The End is Nigh for the PS3. On the blog this week we have a Cocoto Platform Jumper review, a comprehensive Wii Motion Plus review, a review of Lets Tap and a look at how to use the Wii Guitar Hero controller with Rock Band.

• Overlord 2 review
• Win Watchmen The End is Nigh for the PS3
• Fallout 3 Point Lookout review
• Dantes Inferno review

Buy
To get hold of any of the games reviewed in this episode you can buy from the Fallout 3 Point Lookout Amazon and Overlord 2 Amazon pages.

Offers
This episode of Gamesweasel is brought to you with GoDaddy and offers you great discounts on hosting and domain names. Use the following August 2009 GoDaddy codes to save you money – WEASEL7 gets you 10% off domain name purchases, WEASEL8 gets you 20% off orders over $57 or £35 and WEASEL9 gets you 30% off .COM domains. Some restrictions may apply, see the GoDaddy web site for more details.

Gamesweasel is also brought to you with Squarespace.com, using the August 2009 Squarespace discount code ‘WEASEL’ at checkout will get you 12% off the lifetime of your account.

Win
For your chance of winning one of 5 copies of Watchmen The End is Nigh for the PS3 head over to our competitions page by 10 August 2009.

Contact us
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Screenshots

I quite liked the first Overlord game. Sure it had a few little problems like the camera control being the same as the control for your minions but nevertheless it was great to look at and fun to play thanks to some silly humour. I was hoping they would iron out some of the problems for this sequel but instead they’ve given us a slightly different game, only with the same problems as before.

You play as a new Overlord in this game, starting off as a child you do a tutorial mission where you learn the basics of magic, minion control and hitting things with your big hammer. You then fall into a lake and freeze, only to be found by the minions and raised to become their new lord.

Once again you control your minions by either locking onto a target and sending them to fight or interact with an object or you can sweep them around in front of you using the right analogue stick. The same problem exists though. You go to sweep them and as they move about, the camera moves with them and causes all sorts of chaos which makes you go cross-eyed at times. It all becomes very messy at times when there’s a lot happening on the screen. And remember you have to control your Overlord at the same time as the minions. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy has never been so crazy.

The gameplay is also a lot faster and action orientated this time around. There’s the occasional puzzle if you can call it that where you have to choose the right kind of minion for the job but most of the time you just plough through your enemies collecting their life force and summoning new minions via some portals around the landscape.

There are some more new things in this sequel. Your minions can now ride wolves and other beasts which gives them new abilities such as jumping over gaps and you can also operate catapults and other machinery at times to access new areas and progress. You can also go back and explore areas to find extra goodies with new found powers but there’s not really much incentive to do so.

And there’s multiplayer there if you really care. I can’t really see the demand for it though. Unfortunately Overlord II isn’t a great action game and that’s really what it’s become. It’s still slightly charming but not as much as the original Overlord. It’s still fun though so it gets a good 6 out of 10.

Get Overlord 2 now
New: Buy Overlord 2 from Amazon.com
Offers: Use our Godaddy discount codes to save money when buying web domains and hosting – watch the GoDaddy coupon video for more details, using the CCS discount code ‘AFGAMEFS’ will get you free shipping with any order over $30 and ‘AFGAME15′ will get you 15% off any order over $75.

Related: original Overlord, The Lord of the Rings Conquest review, Youtube Overlord 2 review