Games Cheats and Reviews

Developer/Publisher: TimeGate Studio
Price: $29.99
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Acquired: Review Copy Provided
Verdict: A wholly generic Sci-fi campaign with a decent multiplayer aspect.
Pros: Re-spawns are controlled orbital drops, temporary lock-on mode for shooting, decent graphics.
Cons: Extremely generic, slow default character movement, map size to number of player ratio is bad.

Section 8, which was originally released on the PC and Xbox 360, has finally made it to the PlayStation 3, and with some improvements too boot. The name derives from the military term “section 8,” which is a reference to a military member who has been discharged because of mental disorders. The reference obviously being that the service members in the game Section 8 must be insane to go on the missions they do. So, does the title stand for that reason, or are we all crazy for playing the game?

I never actually saw a grassy landscape in the game. I played mostly multiplayer, but it was all rocks and sand for me.

The single-player campaign in Section 8 is wholly uninspiring. It is the epitome of a generic sci-fi shooter. In fact, it is basically a tutorial for multiplayer. The very basic premise is that an organization called ARM is taking over government-controlled worlds across the galaxy. Your team is sent to investigate these happenings and fight to bring down ARM. That’s really it. There is no character development, and no real reason to care about your characters. Additionally, everything looks so similar. That’s the uninspiring part. I never felt as if I was experiencing different locations (with the exception of terrain).

The multiplayer part of the game is where the game actually is decent. It is obvious from the main menu that multiplayer is king in this game as it is set above single player in the menu list. In multiplayer, you pick from a list of classes (assault, recon, artillery, etc.), and you select a spawn point. Spawning is actually a HALO drop from 15,000 feet. At mid-point in the drop, you hit the air breaks and have some control over your actual landing, with a view of the radar map. That means, you can spawn drop in right behind an enemy mech and start lighting it up.

The maps in multiplayer mode are huge. Normally that would be a good thing, as I’m the guy who gave up Modern Warfare 2 in favor of Bad Company 2, but there just are not enough players on the PSN to make these large maps interesting. Additionally, default character movement is quite slow (you are in an armored suit), making traversing the maps even more boring. There are two short-term solutions to this issue. First of all, you can perform a short burst of speed because of the power of your suit. It is extremely fast, but does not last forever. Additionally, your suit has jet boosters, which allows you to perform great bounding leaps. Once used, the jets must be recharged.

The color palette in Section 8 is really bland, which makes everything look the same. Moreover, the bland palette makes shooting more difficult than it should be. As your enemy zig zags to dodge your fire, aiming becomes an issue as he blends in to the surroundings. If the camouflage was an intentional mechanic, it could have been cool, but it was actual just a bland color palette choice. Again, with a bad thing, there is a good. There is a short auto-lock mode that allows you to lock onto an enemy for a short period of time. Again, once used, this power must be recharged.

What are you looking at? I'm crazy you know!

The PlayStation 3 version of Section 8 has made some improvements over the PC and Xbox 360 versions. First of all, there has been a graphical overhaul. Though the graphics look better, my complaint still stands regarding the palette. Additionally, the PS3 version supports the ability to run a dedicated server from a PC, which is pretty awesome. Too bad nobody is actually playing the game.

Section 8 will not even come close to replacing Modern Warfare 2 or Bad Company 2 in gamer’s libraries. Nevertheless, if PS3 owners are really itching for a sci-fi, somewhat Halo-esque multiplayer experience, then grab up Section 8 on the cheap. It will not completely scratch that itch, but it may rub a little lotion on it.

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

CoffeewithGames.Blogspot.com says, "The Conduit had 141 days, or 4 months and 18 days, of reporting data, before Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex was released on November 10, 2009.

I think the data clearly shows that Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex players are playing the game a lot more than The Conduit is being played, even though there are currently fewer players reporting data for Call of Duty, than there are for The Conduit."

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You’re playing the game, you’re fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Scenes are often made more confusing because you don’t know something the character clearly does and the twist ending hinges entirely on the fact that you don’t really know anything about them and are never in full control.

You aren’t playing the game, the game is playing you.

VG247: When Microsoft announced at X10 that there would not be a PC version of Alan Wake, it was explained away that the game was best suited for a larger screen – like a television.

According to Oskari Häkkinen, head of franchise at Remedy, playing the game on the telly is more of a preference than anything, as the company has a long history with developing games for PC.

Speaking with VG247 in London this week, Häkkinen told us that the decision to axe the PC version was more about focusing on one platform at a time than anything else.

Game: Chronos Twins DX
Publisher: EnjoyUp Games
Developer: EnjoyUp Games
Price: 1000 Nintendo Points
Genre: Platformer
Pro: Runs Very Smooth, time travel is always cool, interesting idea
Con: Easy to be distracted, twice the chance of death, oddly devoid of a tutorial.

Chronos Twins actually started out for the GameBoy Advance; however, development of the game moved to the Nintendo DS so as to capture a new market of gamers. It was released on the Nintendo DS  in Europe several years ago, but never made it to North America. Chronos Twins DX was made available for download through the Wiiware channel just a week prior to it’s release through the DSi download. Now that you have had that history lesson on its development, let’s get to a review.

The Chronos Twins DX story revolves around a race of psychic beings known as the Llhedar. They are trying to defeat an evil alien race called the (sigh) “Twime” from taking over their planet of Skyla. You play as “Nec” –one of the Llhedar– who  are able to exist in two different time periods at once thanks to a machine of their own making. Nec is on a mission not only to stop the invasion of the evil Twime, but also to avenge his brother “Nash” who died trying save the planet, as well.

There are several  different control schemes that you are able to use while playing the game. You can either use the Wiimote  and Nun-chuck combination, or you can use the classic or the GameCube controller. I won’t go into detail on how the controls are laid out for each of them, as I assume you’re all smart and adults, so for the sake of this review let it be known I used the Wiimote/Nun-chuk set up. Movement is controlled by the analog stick on the nun-chuck; that’s simple enough. You have a weapon in both time periods, so firing in one is done with the “A” button and in the other time period with the”B” trigger. Jumping is accomplished the same way, one time period is the “C” button the other is the “Z” button. It sounds confusing at first (and is) but once you play enough of it you start to get a handle on which fingers control which time.

As may be obvious from the above, Nec is able to exist in two different time periods: the present and the past. These are represented by the top and bottom screens. Nec’s movements are exactly the same in both screens. When one version of Nec moves forward or back, the other version of Nec makes the exact same movements. This allows you to manipulate either of the time periods to get through both of them. For example: when faced with a large gap in one time period, more than likely there will be either a walk way or some means of spanning the gap in the other time period. So when you walk on solid ground in one time period, you will basically levitate in the other time period. Make sense? This also has a way of working against you as well. Enemies in the past will hurt you in both time periods no matter what. If an obstacle like a spiked floor exists in the past, you must find a way to navigate around it using a handy little feature you can unlock later in the game. At one point you are given the ability to freeze time in one time period and allow it to continue flowing onward in the other. This allows you to solve the handful of environmental puzzles the game throws at you.

How much fun is this game? Wel,l in my opinion, it’s got a fairly limited amount of fun. Even after several hours of playing the game and finally getting the hang of the controls, I still had trouble with the “two time period” thing. Maybe it’s just me but I was constantly getting hit, falling off ledges, or dying simply because I wasn’t looking at the correct screen. Sure, that boils down to me basically not paying attention, but this also is the inherent flaw in having a game that has this type of gimmick. Having things that want to kill you in two different times and on two different screens makes it twice as hard not to die. Maybe playing it on a large screen TV was to my disadvantage. Perhaps this game should have just stayed on the DS given that I can easily play with my attention spread between two different screens when they aren’t so large. The up side to this is that there appears to be no limit on how many times you can die. I died A LOT and never hit a screen that said game over. Granted, I did have to start back at beginning of the stage I was in, but it never felt like there was much of a impetus to play things completely safe. In addition, the game hands out check points pretty regularly, which I guess it should be doing, given this “die often,” “pay attention to two screens” style of play.

I do like the fact that it throws in some boss fights here and there. These are usually the best example of use of the dual time zone gimmick. Most of the fights will have the boss in one area while the other screen is clear. The key to winning each of these battles is to use both areas together to overcome your enemy.

I really wanted to like this game a lot more than I ultimately did. I gave it a fair chance to win me over, but in the end I just didn’t dig on it. That could just be my preference in games. I am normally not a platformer kind of guy but decided to branch out a bit. As I said, I think the best course of action with this game would have been just to stay on the smaller screens of the DSi. It’s not a horrible game by any means, it just has more flaws than high notes with me. Hopefully there’ll be a demo and y’all can check it out. Wait, does the Wii even do that? Nevermind, then.

ARS: Mass Effect 2 relies heavily on dialog and story to grab gamers, but many playing the game are having problems reading the text. The problem is most acute for those with standard-definition sets or those with smaller high-definition televisions. There is a 14-page thread in the official forum with gamers complaining about the text, and we’ve had readers e-mailing us about the problem as well.

"I can barely make out what some of the words are, even on my friend’s HD TV it’s nearly microscopic, very annoying," one annoyed gamer wrote. "On ME1 I enjoyed reading about planets and so forth, now I nearly go blind from trying to read blurry small text on ME2."

ARS: The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is based off an anime series, and developed by Project Aces (Ace Combat series)… so it’s no surprise that the animated cut-scenes and in-game dialog tends toward the overwrought. We’ll leave the story alone-although it actually is somewhat interesting-so we can talk about the control scheme. The game tries something most Wii gamers aren’t used to: by having you hold the nunchuk controller in your right hand and the Wiimote in your left hand, it simulates holding a flight stick and throttle.

It’s a very unique way of dealing with flying on the Nintendo Wii, but does it work? After playing the game for hours last night, I can report that the experiment, sadly, seems to be a failure.

Those of you who aren’t tired of Modern Warfare 2’s bugs, unbalanced weapons and repetitive over the top action… well, you’re probably still playing the game. For everyone else, a new shooter has finally decided to stop running with its tail between its legs and try its luck on store shelves. Army of Two: The 40th Day will offer a fun co-op experience for those looking for something new.

There are several cool features that Army of Two brings to the table that other shooters don’t have. First of all, it is very much a cooperative experience. A lot of the firefights require you to work together, and when there is a pause in the action you can still interact by congratulating each other, giving each other grief or playing rock paper scissors. You must also work together to get over obstacles or pull a fallen comrade to the safety of cover. Secondly, the game forces you to make morality choices that are clouded by the fog of  war. That is, you must make the choice in the heat of battle and it isn’t always clear what is wrong or right.

Lastly, you have several tools at your disposal that don’t involve pointing at something an making it die. One clever mechanic is a mock surrender that lulls your enemies into a false sense of security before you take them out flat footed. You can also customize weapons to best fit your playing style.

Army of Two’s multiplayer should also be a blast. You can cooperate with your teammates to complete objectives or enter into a co-op death match mode where players fight in pairs. No matter what part of Army of Two you play, cooperation is the name of the game. I recommend playing this with a buddy as I doubt the your partners AI will be that great. Even so, Army of Two should be a fun change of pace for those of us who enjoy bringing a friend to battle.

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

Burn360: Earlier in the year we had a sneak peek at the Beta for 1 vs. 100. The concept was fun. Get together with your friends and play a live action game show from the comfort of your living room. This was a fun time when I thought I was eligible for prizes but when the rumors where squashed that no MS points were to be won, the nightly 1v100 sessions came to a halt fairly quickly. During this time we noticed that Microsoft was doing an excellent job of promoting the game through a reminder system when a game time was approaching on any given session I would check to see how many of my Live friends would be playing in a live session of 1 vs. 100 and the numbers were fairly staggering between all of our xbox live accounts roughly 20% would be playing the game, now this was during the beta, and with the new season starting back up we were interested to see if this would have carried over into the real live season out of the beta. With prizes thrown into the mix it seems like a shoe-in right?

If you use Twitter you may have noticed that your Major Nelson sent 20 twitter messages urging his followers to hop on and play tonight with tweets about the 1 vs. 100. While this is….