Despite what comments I may make in this review, The Ball is an iconic game. It’s impossible to review this title without explaining (for those of you that might not know) the history of The Ball and its significance.

Up until recently the video game industry has one great, big, major roadblock. That was that the license costs for game engines and builders were astronomical…at least for average Joe. Many aspiring game devs (myself included) waded through the muddy backwaters of the internet to try and find engines we could build games on. The Unreal engine (which I’m sure you most commonly know from the Unreal Tournament titles and recently a vast number of releases including Gears of War, Enslaved and Darksiders to name a few) released its development platform 100% scott-free. You can legitimately grab yourself a copy and get building; the launch was the aspiring game dev’s wet dream. You could fully develop a game and pay the commercial licensing to Unreal only once it’s finished…it is, to all in intents and purposes the holy grail of Developer software. So where does The Ball come in to this?

Unreal launched a massive campaign to champion its new free platform, the winner of the competition being none other than The Ball. At that time the game was the shining icon of Unreal development, as well the example of what people could now do for free.

So a long time later Teotl Studios released The Ball as a full blown commercial game.  This is what I thought….

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Gameplay

The Ball really started life as a small indie project. It’s transformation to retail was arguably a leap too far. Unfortunately, the gameplay elements that make The Ball a potentially brilliant game cause many of its downfalls. The premise is fairly simple- you have a ball you can control, either by pulling it to you or firing it away from you. It can attach to objects you can then move (and it also comes in handy as a weapon).
One thing I did enjoy was the ingenuity of some of the puzzles.  Many of them were really challenging and a lot of time I had to tip my hat to Teotl. I definitely didn’t know a ball could so many neat things and, for the most part I really felt as though the developers sat down and thought through these tasks carefully. Some of the interesting elements were ones which added water. You had to start thinking not only in linear way but start focusing on layers above and below you. Given the physics, which were mightily impressive, you really needed to consider when and where the ball (and you) would go.
The team at Teotl did a great job conjuring up puzzles and tasks to complete with the ball and I can really see why a lot of critics want to compare this to the brilliant Portal title. Unfortunately, the similarities between controlling an environment altering object with a hand held super-gizmo ends there. If you’re going to compare The Ball to the Portal then there’s a bunch of elements The Ball seriously falls short on. One of my biggest gripes was that it’s incredibly easy to lose the ball. Worse still, there’s no way of easily locating the ball. There’s a distance counter, although if your ball is stuck round a corner and you can’t pull it towards you it’s about time to start searching. The game seemed to have a huge amount of dead-ends in its mazes. I constantly found myself asking “why the hell is this tunnel here?” There was nothing to discover or collect in these tunnels, really these dead-ends slowly ate away at my sanity until I developed a nervous twitch every time I was unfortunate enough to go down one. There was only one fate worse than getting lost down these passages though…..losing the damn Ball down one. I’ve already explained that if you do lose the ball it’s not always easy to get it back. Straight on to the creatures and combat- well, there’s not much to tell. The combat system is really, really basic. You just grab your ball and smash, simple. There wasn’t a fight where this wasn’t the case and the ingenuity of all the puzzles was lost on the creatures.
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if all these underground creatures were former players who’d slowly lost their minds getting lost in the tunnels. I was pretty tempted to join them at some points.
I’ll admit, it felt satisfying mauling waves of creatures with a giant rolling ball. Grabbing the ball and waving it about like a wrecking crew was definitely entertaining, but, it kind of loses its appeal after you do it 9,000 times. At times I think the addition of the creatures was more of an afterthought, something the developers added in, hoping to spice up the gameplay. In some ways it did, if only to keep your mind from focusing on the nightmare of navigating each level.

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Presentation and Difficulty

Beautiful! This game just bursts with polished textures, gorgeous ambient lighting and tight models. There’s a reason this game won “Make something Unreal”. On the face of it The Ball is a perfect poster boy for the Unreal SDK; Teotl really goes to town with everything the Unreal SDK had to offer at the time of release. It’s not often I find myself really impressed by the environment around me but damn, in my opinion Teotl could teach the hard hitters in the industry a thing or do about environment design. So how difficult was The Ball? Well, it was ok. I think if you’re going to contrast The Ball to any other “similar “game, it really doesn’t stand up to say- Portal. The game elements certainly became a bit more diverse and interesting through the progression of the campaign, but it didn’t necessarily become harder. There were certainly occasions where I would think “well, that new approach is nice” but I never once found it much more challenging. Perhaps this says something about how intuitive the game was? I’m not sure whether the game got more diverse or just more….bearable. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

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Final Words

There have been a lot of criticisms dropped here about The Ball. And I think that Teotl may have done better to leave their title as the Unreal Mod that won them so much acclaim. Perhaps in putting a commercial sticker over their title they’ve (sorry for the pun) dropped the ball on this one. As I said at the start of this review- The Ball is a paragon of the Unreal development kit. Whether you know it or not, it stands as an extremely important landmark in the video game industry. I tried to put aside its legacy when I reviewed this title and judge it toe-to-toe with other fully commercial releases. I’ve come to conclude that The Ball (the game) treads the fine line(s) between indie, tech and commercial- and really falls short on all of them. I’ve also come to conclude that The Ball (the Unreal Mod) is a champion of the industry and well, we should all just take a moment to reflect on what it means. No? Just me…?

7/10 (for the art+ the significance of the game).

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“Always bet on black” – Wesley Snipes, Passenger 57

With the words of the tax dodging thespian never more pertinent and the adventures ahead of me in New Vegas there could be no other option – SDG_LM was all in.

Fallout New Vegas immediately strikes out to differentiate itself from Fallout 3 by starting you in what appears to be the exact opposite of how three started. Getting robbed, shot in the head and then buried in a shallow grave is never the nicest start to your adventures but luckily you survived and now you’re out for revenge. Which in the Mojave Desert will be served hot, sweaty and with sand in your shoes.

You start off in the backwater town of Goodsprings and after an especially contrived character creation sequence you emerge squinting into the Mojave Desert wasteland. This lacks the punch of the previous fallout games escape from the vault and Oblivion’s outdoor emergence but then we’ve been in this world before and wasteland, like war, never changes.

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The More Things Stay The Same

Goodsprings sets the Wild West tone of the game but once out in the Wasteland you’ll soon settle into the usual Fallout3/Oblivion wanderings. The main quest to find your would-be killer leads you on a tour around the Mojave and the varied side quests along the way provide the real meat to the desolate bones of civilization. From helping a cult of Ghouls to deciding the fate of some particularly unfortunate vault dwellers the side quests can provide both comic relief and sometime genuinely tough decisions.

The main quest is an improvement on the first game and there isn’t a ball-achingly absurd conclusion to spoil things. The New Vegas setting also allows Obsidian to jazz things up a bit with The Strip, here you’ll find casinos to waste away all your profits and also see another side to wasteland living.

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You Want to be in My Gang

New Vegas does have a few new cards up it’s sleeve and the introduction of factions is a welcome one.  Most actions you take on quests will affect one group in one way or another and now that will dictate how that group responds to you in the Mojave. Quests difficulty can be completely altered by how lovely a faction thinks you are and some quest will have multiple conclusions where the easiest path may be to avoid your enemies even if it doesn’t provide the resolution you would like.  While these factions do add to the game, the ability to don a disguise to infiltrate enemy camps or wander unobstructed through the wasteland is a bonus however on several occasions these disguises wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference so you quickly resort to shooting first whenever possible.

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THEM!

Unfortunately you can’t talk about New Vegas without mentioning the myriad of bugs that the release version contained. By now we’ve all seen the numerous videos of invisible computers and bulging eyes but patches have been released and the game was very stable when I played it, only once did I have a game breaking issue that had me reloading a previous save game.

While it easy to overlook these issues when not affected by them, this is a major worry that more and more developers are releasing games that are effectively broken and is sure to cost the company sales in future releases.

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US!

Luckily the PC is a few levels above the consoles and includes 2 perks that the console versions don’t have and that is the MOD tools and the community. Already there are numerous MODS and fixes released by the superb community that both improve performance and de-consilificationallyfy the user interface. A list of the best of these can be found over at PC Gamer.

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The End is Nigh

New Vegas hasn’t been billed as Fallout 4, however the team at Obsidian have taken us back for more adventures in the wasteland and bugs aside have done a very good job. The dark humour of previous Fallout games is preserved and Obsidian have been able to use their knack to spin a tale to create a game that while retreading a lot of the same ground is better than its predecessor which means it’s very good.

9 out of 10

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(the Sudogamer Worms Reloaded Review)

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Since the dawn of computers (well … 1995) worms have been popping up on each and every platform known to mankind, locked in an endless war. However it’s been many years since they popped their squidgy but helmeted heads onto the PC and now, obviously under the advice of Sarah Palin, they’ve not retreated but reloaded set to wage their spineless battles again on the desktop computer.  The last Worms PC game was released in a pre-Steam world and the gaming scene has changed so much, so will they emerge victoriously? Read on to find out…

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Armada 2526 is a turn based strategy game and upon first view this appears to be ‘Civilization IV in space’. The premise being to colonize different planets whilst managing research and diplomacy before engaging in warfare against other races.

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There are seventeen different races that can be played each with their own slight differences giving different strengths and weaknesses which gives it an ongoing playability factor with each game having a slightly different feel. However unlike Civilization the number of scenarios that you can play in is quite limited, there are only 4 one of which is the tutorial, which reduces the scope for different tactics to be employed which damages the re playability of the game.

As with Civilization the game starts with a bit of a gold rush where players attempt to grab as many of the free star systems as possible to give them better opportunity for resource. Unlike Civilization the resources available at each system are limited in their scope which reduces the tactical element of which systems to go for first. Some are more hostile than others making things more expensive and some have asteroid belts that can be mined but there is none of the complexity that Civilization delivers. For example which resources you have managed to obtain as no effect on the tech tree and what units you can use or technologies you can research.

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In the same way as in Civilization there is a trade off between routes through the game depending on choice of buildings and research options. For example you could place emphasis on mining to generate cash or technology that speed up growth, or you could research weapons and build ships with a view to warfare against your neighbors. This choice matters and has a marked effect on the game as concentrating on one area to the exclusion of the others will come back and bite you as you start to run of cash of planetary populations start rioting.

The game is quite absorbing whilst not being up to the standard of Civilization however there are a number of things that less this game down of which the primary one is the interface. The various pop up screens that are activated by selecting radial buttons for research and construction are not movable on the screen and only one can be opened at a time. Which means there is a lot of opening and closing as you move backward and forward from the research screen to the map screen and back and similarly with the system view where buildings and ships can be created. These screens are all interlinked and the game can get quite complex in the same way that Civilization can and not being able to compare the contents of these screens at the same time means that you’re constantly having to try and remember the content of one screen whilst flicking to the next. There were also some graphical glitches on some of the buttons when you hovered them which made the game feel a little unpolished. the other issue with the interface is that whilst it is functional it is not particularly pretty and fails to make you want to play the game. Due to the nature of the game you spend a lot of time staring at this interface and it could do with being cleaner and better designed.

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Another issue is the tutorial, this is quite a difficult game to just pick up and play out of the box and as a result needs a good tutorial to lead you into it. Whilst the tutorial does cover all the major areas of the game mechanics it doesn’t allow you to do things as you read often a tutorial box pops up which can be several pages which gives you a lot of information. You have to remember quite a lot of content before you can get back to the game-play and try out what you have just read which means that you are constantly have to refer back to the in-game advice as you have forgotten something in the three pages of tutorial blurb you have to just had to try and remember.

Lastly the warfare mechanism is a bit pointless. The game loads a separate battle arena around a planet in the same way that the total war series does but unfortunately the comparison ends there. This could have been used to give the game a different dimension to make it something special. Unfortunately the tactics are limited to what formations you have you ships in (a choice of 3) and how you group your ships, other than that it is purely a matter of which types of units you bring to the party and how many. There is little opportunity for clever play resulting in you beating a more numerous opponent. It would have been nice if the system you were fighting in had some sort of effect on the battle itself, possibly the planets magnetic field effecting different ships in different ways. This area of the game seems pointless and I quickly resorted to just auto completing the battles I fought as to do otherwise just results in additional load times as the battel arena is switched to. The other thing which lets this area down is it is quite poor graphically, again if this was better then you may enter the battle scenes purely for the spectacle but this is just another factor contributing to the pointlessness of this area of the game.

Overall the game is quite absorbing and once you mastered the tutorial, started auto completing the battles, and have got to grips with the interface is enjoyable. However the down sides to this game hinder the enjoyment. Never the less if you enjoyed the Civilization series and are looking for something a little different then you will probably get some mileage out of this game. However if you are new to genre then I recommend waiting for Civilization V due out next month as it is likely to be a much better game given that Civ IV which is now quite an old game managed to better in may areas than Armada 2526.

Sudogamer scores it  6/10.

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I was 10 when Alien Breed came out for the PC (2 years after the Amiga release), and I can just about remember playing it at a friends house. It was great. Hugely playable, ‘arcadey’ and satisfying. Alien Breed was release to critical acclaim, it was an important release. One can clearly see its influence in ID Software’s Doom (1994).
I believe a big problem with Team 17’s re-release; “Alien Breed: Impact” lies in our expectations. In the early nineties we didn’t care much for cohesive, compelling story-lines, ‘next-gen’ graphics etc, it was playable fun titles that utilised the meager horsepower of our PC’s (or Amigas) that drew crowds.

So to release a remake of a top-down mindless Aliens-themed shooter in 2010 and for it to be relevant and popular with today’s gamers is a difficult task, and for me it falls short.

Presentation-wise the Unreal 3 engine looks nice, really nice. The environments are appropriately strewn with space debris, and there’s are plenty of nice looking ‘triggered’ explosions and “cave-ins” occurring throughout.

The graphics aren’t a million miles from a top-down Doom 3.  The light-mapping is great, when you shine your torch down a corridor or through a broken window its casts a great eerie shadow of the objects blocking the light.   Its a nice touch that often overlooked in big-budget titles.

In fact a Doom 3 comparison is an apt place to talk about some of the short-comings of Alien Breed: Impact.

It feels like lots of work was put into a tidy looking game engine, the controls (and on the controls; bonus points for having the 360 controller work ‘out of the box’ including rumble), and the sound.  Which all exceeded my expectations.  But they forgot about the game.

The game play just wasn’t fun for me, or satisfying. The only intro to the game you get is a couple of (pretty poor) comic slides, then you’re straight into the action. And by ‘action’, I mean collecting diary logs (like Doom 3), and looking for key-cards. It isn’t edge-of-your-seat stuff. At least in Doom 3 (which was also key-card and diary collecting) it had the genuinely creepy / jumpy moments that kept your pressing on.

While writing this review, I actually got a couple of hours into the game and had to restart because I got stuck. How infuriating? I’d be happy to take the blame for simply being shit at the game, but I wasn’t stuck because of a tough boss or from running out of ammo. It was because I had missed a key-card, a faintly illuminated object on one of the samey rooms in level.  The in-game map is no help at all; it implies some rooms are joined that aren’t joined and vice-versa.

You can search the various human corpses littered throughout the levels to collect money, and there’s also random ‘piles’ of cash dotted around too.  Annoyingly you have to press and hold on each corpse / locker for a few seconds to ‘search’, which gets tiresome pretty quickly.  Money allows you to buy upgrades and ammo for your weapons.  This feels like a missed opportunity, because the upgrades just weren’t imaginative or significant enough to make you want to bother.  I ended up just buying ammo and saving the game, which led to a small rejoice as a save-point was an excuse to quit out and take a break.

I didn’t get the opportunity to play any co-op during my time playing Alien Breed: Impact, but I guess the potential might be there with some more imaginative level designs and puzzle-based bosses.

This re-release of Alien Breed is episodic. I guess we should hope for better from the following iterations, or perhaps a re-think at the pricing, at £12.99 on steam its definitely one people will put off buying until a Steam Sale.

I first saw Alien Breed: Impact demoed at the Eurogamer roadshow in Leeds, a guy from Team 17 came along and showed some footage, and spoke of why the game was so important to them. I recall him saying some pilot ideas had been thrown around in the years leading up to this release but were disregarded for various reasons. I wish this had been worked on a little longer, as its repetition and unimaginative game-play forces me to mark it down somewhat.

Verdict: Polished use of the Unreal 3 engine, good presentation – poor game-play, and level design.

5 out of 10.

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Previously in my review of episode 1: I was forgiving of the rudimentary game-play in the hope that the next episode would build on the first one and expand its bag of tricks….
Unfortunately it hasn’t, instead this episode repeats the issues of the first game and makes no efforts to improve on the previous episode. Sadly, our guess is that the remaining set of episodes will probably be rehashes of the poor stealth action and several perfunctory puzzles with no over-arching storyline running through the episodes.  DEW DEW DOO…..

For  ‘Blood of the Cybermen’ they have replaced the Daleks with the Cybermen and, well, that’s about it.

The game sets you up with an actual cliff-hanger before the iconic intro kicks in and from there we are left to control the Doctor and his lovely assistant Amy Pond through a pretty mindless adventure. This time to stop the Cybermen.

An Arctic dig has uncovered a frozen Cybermen Ship and the dig team have been assimilated into Cyberslaves who are working hard to dig out the ship to restore it to its former glory. Luckily the Doctor is on hand to save the day. Unluckily you have to play through this sub-standard adventure game to do so.

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This episode plays like swimming through treacle. Rather than introduce interesting puzzles and game-play mechanics the makers have decided to place generic puzzles, a basic overused stealth mechanic and sprinklings of random platforming to slow down your progress and flesh out the game. There is a real lack of quality to the design of this game. In the first episode and at the start of this one you cannot walk off ledges however at one point in this game you can fall off as they include some slow moving platforms for you to travel between. This sort of fundamental change to the game-play mechanics introduced randomly makes no sense and does not fit – Mario this ain’t.

The game still contains the voices of the two main actors from the show however there are some sections where the Doctor’s thoughts are not spoken just presented in text which feel out of place. The story is not up to much either. They’ve really dropped the ball releasing an episodic game based on a television show and yet not tying the episodes together with any sort of storyline arc.

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So unless you’re a die hard fan of the show or you enjoy poorly designed licensed games I wouldn’t recommend this game. While I can understand the need to make the game accessible to all, poor design has made playing the game a slog and shoddy implementation like on television will turn people off.
You can download the latest episode of Doctor Who here, or watch this video of the Matt Smith on stage at Glastonbury with Orbital – we promise, you will enjoy it more.

3 out of 10

Doctor Who: City of the Daleks is free to all in the UK and as a free game there can be few complaints directed at it. However it does fall quiet short of the high standards set by the Television series which would be hard to match without a big budget.
The game starts you off like the TV series setting the scene before the famous Doctor Who intro music kicks in and pulls you into an adventure where you will be hiding from Daleks, collecting thingamebobs, solving the odd puzzle and asking the odd question or two.
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The PC version of Pure Football was cancelled, and (despite being a PC-gaming based website) we were sent a review copy of Pure Football on the Xbox 360, so what the hell – here’s my review of it.

Pure Football looked utterly terrible in the gameplay videos doing the rounds on YouTube, the players looked plastic, the animation wooden and it all looked rather laughable. I didn’t know anything else about the game before playing it; but I’m coming at as a big Fifa 10 fan.

Pure Football was pleasantly surprising; the game play is a cross between Fifa Street and Sensible Soccer. The default camera from the up/down perspective (rather than side-on, but this is an option), and it suits the stlye of the game very well. Pure Football feels brilliantly ‘arcadey’ (for want of a better term), with a solid consistent frame-rate and responsive controls.

The actual football ‘mechanics’ aren’t as refined as the latest Fifa games; through-ball for example feels totally random, but passing and shooting are great.

Ubisoft have employed a golf-game-style power-up meter for shooting, with a red zone (shank / miss) green (good shot) and white (‘pure’ shot).  “Pure” shot, brilliant? The last time I played a football game with a specific shot-type based on the name of the game was Addidas Power Soccer (on the Snes, I think) where certain players had an Addidas Predator Strike button (as well as shoot). It was ridiculous.

In Pure Football it works well – a pure shot gives you a rather entertaining ‘bullet time’ version of your shot where the camera follows the ball was it bends and dips around (or into) the keeper.  Crossing the ball is also great, you run down the wing and assuming another of your players are in or around the box, the camera shifts to that player and you have to tussle with a defender (press and hold ‘X’ on the golf-style-power-up meter) and a green means you beat them and get a shot on goal and white (pure) means you do with some style.

[singlepic id=127 w=320 h=240 mode=web20 float=center]When you create a profile in Pure Football you create your Captain (you), then choose his position, dominant foot and appearance etc. The matches are 5-a-side (your Captain plus 4 others) and over in 3 minutes usually – so it has the Trials HD “one more game” addictive property.   It beats Fifa in this department as well, as it constantly sets you challenges to unlock players, and to gain stat points to improve your captain.

Presentation is generally good; the graphics are only adequate but smooth, and the replays look good.  As mentioned above, the occasional ‘bullet-time’ matrix-style camera is thrown in there every now and then but doesn’t ever feel overkill. There is one one oversight where the level select map is stretched dreadfully out of aspect-ratio (short and fat), although I’m nitpicking, I’m sure this wouldn’t bother another sane human being.

There’s an argument this game should have been an XBLA title, or at least cheaper than £24.99 on release, and to some extent I agree.  But one shouldn’t write this off as a truly cheap / simplistic football game; there’s a lot of play-time here.  Loads of achievements, players to unlock, scope for adding to my Captain’s stats etc.

Additionally, I haven’t even tried the multiplayer (as there was nobody online with it this week).

Pure Football will suit the casual football gamer, who doesn’t want to plough hours into learning the intricacies / art-form that is Fifa; and just want some instant gratification.  Pure Football doesn’t take itself too seriously, neither should you.

Pure Football review score:  7.5 out of 10

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Please leave any questions or comments below!

Here in the Sudogamer basement we do sometimes give our graphics cards a rest and let the soundblasters take a break and at these times we like to partake in a little bit of flash game goofiness. This has inspired us to do what no site has done before and post our favorites in a game of the week type special article. Let me now take you on an epic journey as I declare our first browser game of the week to be…..Basketball.

Find out after the break what makes a game who’s instructions are ‘Aim & Shoot’ so damn addictive.

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[singlepic id=117 w=320 h=240 mode=web20 float=left]Presentation-wise this game would be far better suited to a Nintendo DS, mobile phone or an internet flash game.  It has a fixed (small) resolution which can be set to full-screen (a stretched 4:3 frame), and has very comic-book 2D graphic to it.
Read on to find out how I found it stands up as a PC game. . .

The House M.D. game feels slightly ‘budget’, and its clear they haven’t got the rights to use the theme song (as per the TV show in the UK) and use artist interpretations of the cast, despite this it is a reasonable effort to create something which is (however tenuously, at times) well ‘themed’ by the excellent TV show.

House M.D. takes on the form of a series of mini-puzzles strung together by scenes of dialogue to push through some medical episodes. For example these mini-games might be a word-search where you guess the diagnosis or drawing vials of blood by clicking and dragging a needle into a patients arm etc.  One puzzle asks me to choose between a torch, magnifying glass, torch and stethoscope to diagnose a patient’s condition. .  I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor on TV (never mind Hugh Laurie) using a magnifying glass to diagnose a medical condition!  I don’t think the target gamer or the developers dwell too much on these small things, as Glyphic Entertainment put it

“We create fun in every game we develop.  If a game isn’t fun, there’s not much point in developing it, so this is first and foremost on our minds.”

The quality of these games are fairly poor, with hit-and-miss ‘hot spots’ you have to click an object onto before it will allow you to progress.  On the unfinished review code I played some of the puzzles were simply too hard, I had to give up on at a puzzle about 6 or 7 in because it seemed broken.  Hopefuly this will be tweaked and fixed for the final version, so nothing to worry about too much there I imagine. [singlepic id=118 w=320 h=240 float=right]

Mini-games likes these are reminiscent of what we were accustomed to in early 90′s CD-ROM FMV games like 7th Guest and Blown Away.   They’re actually laughably bad, so bad in fact, it’s fairly funny in places! Sadly unlike those early CD-ROM games there are no real actors or eve voice-overs in this game,  just incidental generic music and text throughout.  Which is a shame, as a House fan I’d loved to have had some short snippets from the actors.

I almost get the feeling the developers were aware of these short comings as I found it almost (amusingly) self-deprecating at times. From the camp comic-book style the way House, Taub, Chase, Foremen et al are presented to the totally over-the-top reactions given by them to the various events in the game and the unbelievably corny script.  “Something stinks here, and it isn’t just Henry’s colostomy bag.” [singlepic id=112 w=320 h=240 float=left]Unbelievable. Brilliant.

The script feels at best like fan-fiction rather than anything genuinely ‘House’ – the banter and put-downs expected in your average House episode feel a tad forced and often unfunny. I can’t imagine Wilson ever using this line to House “You’ve been doing great lately. If you need a consult on anything I’ll be happy to help.“  Lines like that make me wonder if the writer has even seen an episode of House!

In all fairness to game creators I can’t imagine how better to create a game of a TV show that is centred around tight acting and a witty script – with the medical diagnoses’ often taking a backseat in House these days.  For me, a point & click monkey island style game where you limp around Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital making fun of people / solving medical mysteries / hitting on Cuddy would’ve been preferable [singlepic id=116 w=320 h=240 float=right]

Getting Massive Attack’s Teardrop and maybe some recorded dialogue from the show would’ve definitely won more favour with me.

This reads like a fairly damning review of the game, but for very casual gamers and serious fans of House the TV show this is definitely a bit of fun and at the fairly reasonable price of $19.95 (£13.81) will be probably snapped up in reasonable number.  However I imagine this to be the sort of thing bought as an impulse in greater numbers during a period of price-reduction or sale.

I’d probably describe House M.D. as a bit of ‘toy’ for fans rather than a ‘proper’ PC game (from the year 2010).  I’m not sure of the target audience, as I wouldn’t imagine House has a huge kids audience; however it may well tap into the older casual gamer who aren’t bothered about game mechanics or impressive visuals or any depth whatsoever, but are happy to ‘play along’ with the gimmick.

5 out of 10.

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Here is another simulator game that can trace its lineage to the famous IL-2 series. Gaijin studios who developed IL-2: Birds of Prey for consoles have entered the hardcore PC market with Wings of Prey. With Wings Of Prey they promise a new graphics engine, better game play and many new aircraft, amongst other things.

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Wings of Prey offers different levels of difficulty – from arcade-style to simulator so that everyone can play it. Although the game can be played using the keyboard, I highly recommend you get a joystick or some other controller (not sure whether an Xbox controller is compatible with the game) since it will be easier to play (anyone who has tried landing an airplane in Flight Simulator ’98 using keyboard knows what I’m talking about).

The main menu offers several single player modes: tutorial, campaign, single missions and training. They are pretty self-explanatory – the tutorial section is a very good place for every beginner to start from. The first tutorial starts with you at the controls of a Spitfire Mk II fighter and teaches you the basics of flying – turning, climbing, descending and landing. As you progress, the tutorials get more challenging with the last ones teaching you the basics of air to air and air to ground combat (the fun stuff).

[singlepic id=93 w=320 h=240 float=center]The campaign mode offers you six theatres of war to engage in. They follow historical order – starting with The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, Sicily, the Ardennes offensive and finally Berlin. Each campaign starts with a documentary video. Campaigns consist of several missions which you have to play in historical order. To progress to the next campaign you have to complete all missions from the previous one.

The most interesting part of the single player is the Training mode. Here you can set up instant action missions. You can choose your airplane, part of Europe where the battle takes place, number of computer enemies and weather.

[singlepic id=105 w=320 h=240 float=centerI found this mode the best if you don’t have time to go through the campaigns or the long single player missions.

At first I didn’t expect to get high frame rates since I was testing Wings of Prey on a laptop (a good one, but a laptop nevertheless) and chose medium graphics settings. Even at those settings, I have to say the visuals are very impressive. The ground, water and sky look very realistic. The details modeled on the ground are simply stunning – the green fields, roads and trees almost make you feel you are flying in the real world. When flying low over the trees I noticed that their branches swing in the wind. I can only imagine what this game will look and feel like at max level of detail. But enough about the scenery, let’s now look at what airplanes the player can get his (her) hands on.

Wings of Prey offers a wide variety of airplanes to choose from. Basically, you get to fly the most famous Russian, British, American and German airplanes of WW2 – from the old Russian I-153 biplane to the Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane and the P-51 Mustang. You can even fly the German WW2 rocket plane Me-163 ‘Komet’ which can go up to 600 km/h (considered fast those days). For those of you who are fans of flying heavy metal you can also fly bombers like the Junkers Ju-88, Heinkel He-111, Vickers Wellington and the B-17 Flying Fortress and hone your area bombing skills.

When it comes to game realism I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. If you are (like me) one of those hardcore simulator fans [singlepic id=99 w=320 h=240 float=center]and choose the realistic mode, then you have to follow all the procedures like the real WW2 pilots did. If you leave your engine too long operating at maximum RPM, then don’t wonder why after a while your speed gradually starts to drop and then your engine quits. If, during combat your speed gets too low and you keep pulling back on the stick to reach the bad guy don’t be surprised if suddenly the airplane enters a flat spin and starts going down uncontrollably. By the way, when the airplane goes into a spin, the ground around you blurs because of the motion – a pleasant camera effect that adds an almost movie-like dimension to the game.

The damage model in the sim is also realistic. When playing against a computer He-111 bomber, I damaged one of its engines and black smoke started to come out of it. When moving in for the kill I flew in the black smoke and my canopy suddenly became black. Later I realised that this was because of the leaking oil from the bomber’s engine.

For those of you who would rather fight against human opponents the game offers several multiplayer modes – from simple cooperative mission with two players on VoIP to large multiplayer lobbies and missions. You get access to the latter once you register your game online.

Well, that’s all the time I had to review. Overall, I am very impressed with Wings of Prey. If you are interested in airplanes, the game can offer you hours of fun as it takes you back in time and teaches you some of the tricks that the realpilots of those days used. It also offers you the opportunity to take part in the major air battles of WW2 – all from the safety of your own home.

[written by Nikolay Stoychev]

Sudogamer score: 8 out of 10

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Infinitely Ward’s Stimulus Package has brought me back to the madness that is MW2 online, and it was nice to see that in only the 10 minutes of playing absolutely nothing has changed. .

WHITEWINGNUT: “nooooob tubbbeeeeeee”
Scratchl Mix Me: “all i’m doin is running round i’m not hacking”
[dead]Sande: “fucking laggg”
BLACKWINGNUT: homo camp

Bailout is one of the new maps in the Stimulus Package, set in a war-zone-ruined set of apartment blocks and I’m pleased to report is very good. The map feels well-balanced, and feels pretty large compared to the standard maps. I found it really suits game modes like domination and team deathmatch where there’s not one single point of focus. Bailout is laid out thoughtfully, there are no particular ‘camping’ spots and has a lot of personality. Bailout is probably the best example of MW2, it shows the game off at its best.

Sadly, my experiences during the three sessions of playing this game were also some of the worst from a technical point of view – I had ‘teleporting’, lag and the hosts seem to drop their connections at least 2 times each round. Stay tuned however for further review of the other maps in coming days.

Meanwhile, check out our gallery of screen grabs from my time with with the game:

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And a fly-through of the level:

Sudogamer flythrough of MW2 Stimulus Package Bailout on PC from Sudogamer on Vimeo.

Bioshock 2 is very much more of the same, but with a couple of add-ons to keep it interesting. The difficulty has definitely been ramped up. In the first one you could get away being a run-and-gun type character, but in this one you really have to use each hackable item you come across (cameras / bots etc), as the enemies are tougher, move quicker, more aggressive and there’s less ammo to be had.

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