FUEL was my first purchase, at around £5. I’d read the hype that was happening before it’s release, with it’s ridiculously huge open world and the like, but for me the game was a let down. After banging my head against the wall whilst the necessary Games for Windows Live installed and updated itself (Closing the game around 4 times in the process, I mean, what the hell GFWL, why would you do that?), I leapt into the game. Well, no I didn’t, because I needed to adjust the graphics options, which you can’t do ingame. Sigh. Another restart of the game later and FINALLY I can start playing. And.. well.. I really didn’t like it. The actual racing felt clunky and rigid and the way of accessing races, whilst probably the best way to do it with such a large world, took you out of the game. Ditching races for the moment I decided just to explore, and whilst my surroundings looked nice, everywhere felt kinda samey.. Even climbing to some of the game’s Vista points just got me to see the same stuff in a prettier way. Having said that, the weather and light cycles were really enjoyable. Driving along a clifftop path whilst the sun is setting was the most fun I had in the game. What really killed it for me though is the poor GPS, if you’re going to have a game hyped up because of it’s huge gameworld, you might want to make sure it’s usable.

Whoops, went into a bit more detail that I’d meant to there, so I’ll quickly skip over the next three I picked up. Kane and Lynch wouldn’t even start and I’ve not launched Indigo Prophecy or Painkiller yet. Both games I’ve been meaning to play for a while, and finally picked up nice and cheap. Unfortunately, other games have been calling, but I’ll get round to them eventually. Also grabbed the Hitman pack, which wasn’t even on sale. Curse your purchase convincing ways Steam! Saints Row 2, Killing Floor and GTA IV also got bought cheaply, but I’ve not played them enough to write about those either. I wonder why…

Oh yes. Because Civilisation IV EATS TIME. Taking over 2 hours to complete the tutorial (To be fair, I did carry on with the game ’till I could nuke Ghandi) it’s certainly a game you need to set some time apart for, which we have indeed been doing. We need to finish that 9 player game we started last night people, it was going pretty awesomely ’till everyone had to leave. Anyway yes, classic turn based strategy game, if you didn’t buy it you lost out.

Red Faction Guerilla was a game I nearly didn’t buy when the sale rolled round, but was convinced to do so. Glad I was, because after I’ve jumped through the glitchy hoops of getting it working somewhat on my machine (The driving still lags, anyone got any idea why?) it’s a lot of fun. I’ve been.. ignoring the missions and smashing as much as possible with a hammer. Probably says something about me, but hey, hammers are cool. Not to mention explosives. Explosives are also cool. Combining the two is, well you get the picture. For £3.75, despite it’s bugs, it’s a fun-filled destructionfest. Boom!

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage was on sale for £1.70 one day. It has online multiplayer, so myself and a couple of people in dahouse (<3) decided to snap it up for that price. The opinions you get will be.. different, depending on who you ask. I enjoyed it, the mere pleasure of racing schoolbuses around a figure of eight track was, to me, worth the price alone. The handling, or lack thereof, grew on me, and the destruction derby mode is pretty damn awesome. Toby on the other hand, was trying to find a way to remove the game from his account entirely, he was that unimpressed by it. Deary me.

Finally the sale has gotten me playing Borderlands once again, which the DLC finally being cheap enough (and containing a G enough) for me to pick it up. Damn that game is fun, that is all.

So I have all of these new games to play! What shall I play, what shall I play… spoilt for choice really…

What’s that Valve? …Engineer update?

Eh, screw those games. TO TF2!

First things first, no, I am not reporting live from E3. Which is a shame, because that would be pretty awesome. But I thought that as this is predominantly a gaming site, and we haven’t had too many updates recently, I’d do a news piece and share a few of my thoughts.

As I was looking through stuff from E3 for Valve’s latest trailer, I found a link to ‘Driver: San Francisco’. Immediately Portal 2, which I already know isn’t coming out until next year, was forgotten. I have long been a fan of Driver, and I’d heard rumours that a new one was in the works, but I’d not come across any definite news.

That’s all changed now. At E3, a trailer and demo were shown, and the game was announced to be due for the last quarter of this year, on all the main platforms. It looks promising. For those of you who’d rather watch a video of the event at E3 at this point than read my rambling piece, follow this link.

The original Driver was a brilliant game, which I have already written about in Retrocity (Remember that feature? I might get around to writing more of them after the exam season…).

Driver 2 I have played some of on an emulator, because for whatever reason there was never a PC version. It is equally brilliant, with similar gameplay but upgraded features, such as actually having curved roads. There is, however, the possibility to go on foot from one car to another, which is very difficult to control. Maybe it’s just the emulator, I don’t know.

And then we come to Driv3r, the third instalment. It was still a good game in my view, despite all the bad reviews it has, but somehow it didn’t convey the brilliance of the first two. I think the main problem was that it had too many on-foot missions, and weapons. It was trying to copy the Grand Theft Auto series, instead of doing what the last two games did best: driving.

So I was pleased to hear that the new Driver game, the first since Ubisoft bought the rights to the series, is taking Driver ‘back to the roots of the game’. It will be, once more, a game focused on driving. The classic driving environment of San Francisco has returned as the location for the game, and the music in the trailer has the same feel as that of the original game’s San Francisco tracks (In fact, I think it’s just a remix). Tanner is back as the controllable character, as he was in the first 3 games. (It might be worth me mentioning that there was a 4^th Driver, Parallel Lines, which I have never played, and which starred a different main character). But to enable access to a massive range of, for the first time in Driver, real cars without on-foot control, a new feature has been added, and must be explained in the plot. So it turns out this whole game is a ‘Life on Mars’-style story, with Tanner still in a coma after being shot at the end of Driv3r, and the action is playing out in his head. The new feature is called shift, and allows the player, at any point in the game, to select any vehicle on the map and jump into the driver’s seat instantly. Apparently this ability will be upgradeable, increasing the area from which cars can be chosen.

This feature has split the fan base, it would seem from comments on the video. Personally, I like the idea. It puts the focus back onto driving and eliminates the need for walking and weaponry which, although welcome in some games, I never thought had any place in the Driver series.

In conclusion, this game looks good. It looks very good. I’m seriously hoping it’s not too good in certain areas, though, because if it requires a high performance machine, I may just have to buy a new computer to play it on. And just to top off the awesomeness I see in this game, one of the available cars is the DMC DeLorean, which opens up possibilities for a potentially brilliant Easter egg when holding the speed at 88mph…

First off, was Quantum Theory, an epic FPS-Adventure game (Apologies for my poor ability to classify genres). From what I saw of the gameplay, it involves some…extremely large aliens, or monsters, and was seriously impressive in terms of graphics, as you would expect from a PS3 exclusive.

Of course, I can’t leave you with the 5-10 minute impression I was allowed by the attendants at the booth (It was very, very busy). Some research revealed the game revolves around the two main characters fighting their way through a “living tower”, in which cover and features of rooms can change throughout the game. With the game’s Gears of War-esque cover system, this could create some extremely interesting and difficult situations as gameplay progresses.

Second up was a fighter game, advertised only with a Japanese game. Once again, some research served me well, and revealed the game to be “Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage”, an upcoming Dynasty Warriors spinoff, based on the manga “First of the North Star”.

Once again, I didn’t get much of a play through of this, owing to the incredible volume of people, but I was suitably impressed. It was definitely reminiscent of the Dynasty Warriors games, with epic combos and dramatic special moves. The action can get a bit confusing at times, and it’s difficult to work out exactly what you just did, but it was still an extremely satisfying experience. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that every kick and punch seemed to send splashes of blood flying everywhere.

All in all, I was impressed by these 2 titles, and think Tecmo Koei did well to choose these to represent themselves this Expo, and look forward to playing them properly some time in the future.

Whilst MTTG stayed away from DDR (For good reason, you’ve not seen realistic breast physics ’till you’ve seen Daryl on DDR) we did try our hands at Beatmania IIDX, which is absolutely and utterly terrifying to play. For those not familiar with the title, I’ll just wait a minute for you to watch the following video.

Predictably, we failed at Beatmania. I think the highest we got was an E rank, on easy. Yaaaay us?

Instead we decided to move onto Rock Band, something we at least have some experience with, and lo and behold, a friendly tournament was going on. Well, that was too much to resist wasn’t it? We gathered the members of TurtleStomp and began our seeding song, Summer of 69. We failed, pretty badly. I do apologise for my awful singing London. All was not lost however! After a quick shuffle between singer and guitarist, we blasted through the song once more and seeded NOT LAST! Ok, maybe second to last wasn’t a great spot to seed, but it’s still undeniably not last. So there.

Returning for the second round, and after some missing-DLC sadness  each band left had chosen their song. The band in last didn’t show up, we were now officially last… however, considering it was out of three bands… that made us third in the running? We decided to take that as a good thing and launched into the setlist we had infront of us. Are You Gonna Be My Girl?, Suck my Kiss and Welcome Home. Failing no times and setting some not too awful scores we sat back to let the other bands wreak their havoc all over our lovely current position of first. Yeah, we came last third, the winners being the band of DDR:UK peoples.

But fun was indeed had, and hopefully we shall see DDR:UK at the October MCM Expo later this year. Revenge shall be ours!

After recently completing the first Mario Galaxy, I took full responsibility of playing it at the expo. Throughout both days there was a massive crowd around the game, implying it’ll be new and different to the previous game however after managing to play it at the last minute I found I could shorten this review to “more of the same” but that would make it seem like a bad thing, since it is still one of my favourite Mario games and so much has been improved.

First of the premise, which is the same as usual. Peach has yet again been captured by Bowser and you as the portly plumber have to go save her (I’d have given in by now and just let Bowser have her) by collecting stars from various levels (galaxies) and face several bosses along the way. So just like any other Mario game but that was to be expected.

Cloud Mario takes to the skies.

Now onto the new and improved stuff. Nintendo have really studied the previous game and improved what they can. Controls remain the same but are introduced with a friendly more familiar 2D style level. Level selection is done in an easier method than the old observatory similar to Super Mario 3, Co-Op is performed in the same way but provides help by snagging not only Star Bits the main player might’ve missed but also retrieve items, the camera has been improved and in a rare case for a game the camera will not need you to control it. Finally hints are present at what to do next and the option for additional help for the game is available should you need it.

All this makes the game much more accessible and fun to play, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy, far from it. All concepts introduced in the first game: gravity changes, comet challenges and even the bosses’ techniques have been improved, expanded and made more challenging. Completionists and experts also get extra challenges as you unlock more the more you complete. Playing a level as Luigi will open up developer speedruns and getting all 120 stars unlocks an extra challenge, expanding the game’s lifespan.

More playable characters are available this time around too. Luigi does not require you to play the whole game again to play as him and is available near the start. Mario’s trusty pet Yoshi also makes an appearance with unique abilities and classic tongue action to eat enemies and spit them right back at them. Speaking of abilities Mario has some new powers too: The Cloud Mushroom enables players to create up to three platforms by shaking the Wiimote. And the Rock Mushroom gives Mario the ability to roll up into a boulder and bowl down enemies.

So in short, another excellent Mario game with enough gameplay to last a long time. (Oh, and for you Mario 64 fans, there is a galaxy you might recognise in the game)

Dragon Quest is a series of RPG games from the developing houses of Japan, Level-5 (developers of Professor Layton), to be precise. With its origins in the good ol’ days of the NES, Dragon Quest has grown to extraordinary levels of popularity in Japan itself, repeatedly breaking sales records, but has fallen short on Western shores.

This lack of Western popularity probably explains why I was quite shocked to discover the 9th installment of the series on display at MCM, having never heard of the series. I was even more shocked, when reading up a bit on the game, to discover that the Japanese release was July 11th 2009, when the game was being advertised with a release date of July 23rd 2010.

Now, I was going to review the 5 minutes or so I saw of this game at MCM, before giving up because playing RPGs is damn near impossible when joining in a game already half completed by others. But upon discovering the insanity of how big and popular it really is, I’m going to hold off until official release when I can give you guys a proper look at it.

PS: This totally isn’t a cop-out, I just feel that such a massive game deserves more than “Lol, I played for 5 minutes and didn’t do anything”. It does look pretty good, though.

Jowan: Designated driver.

On the first day of the Expo, I noticed that on the ridiculously expensive Alienware computers ESL were using, people were playing Trackmania Nations Forever, a free game. I found this slightly amusing, and moved on.

On the Sunday, the Expo was less crowded. We found that there were competitions open to the public on the ESL stage. As the only person in the group who plays Trackmania, I was peer pressured into entering, even though I hadn’t played for months and thought I’d be really bad.

Maybe it would be a good idea to explain Trackmania, which is a free game, available to download on Steam or at http://www.trackmania.com. It is a semi-cartoonish racing game which I used to play a lot. It can become quite addictive trying to beat your best times, and that’s just single player. Multiplayer games become even more exciting and obviously more competitive. There is a huge selection of servers to play on, each of which can have different tracks. The inclusion of an easy-to-use track creator means that the possibilities are endless. Tracks range from small acrobatic tricks which, when done right, can be finished in seconds, to extremely long races with jumps and loops which might take several minutes.

Jumping a gap on an acrobatic track

There are two main game modes that I play. The first gives a time limit in which you get unlimited attempts at a track and the person with the best time at the end wins. In the second mode the tracks are raced in rounds, with everyone starting at the same time and the top positions in each race being given points until someone reaches a certain number of points to win.

I sat down in the chair as Racer 04, and started the warm-up rounds. As it turned out, I hadn’t entirely lost my touch, although I know I would’ve done better a year ago. After a few decent practice rounds, the competition started. I somehow managed to flip the car on the first race, which didn’t get me off to the best of starts, but after that I started doing well. I quickly made it to third place, behind the ESL Trackmania champion darkY, and Racer 07. We played three tracks, A01, A07  and C01.

The last section of track A01

On the second track, I apparently got the fastest public time of the whole Expo, which pleased me. On a few occasions, darkY failed to win a race, because he was giving us ridiculous head starts. This made myself and Racer 07 the only two public gamers to beat him at the Expo. In the end, I came third overall, despite a worrying start to the third track, and Racer 07 won the t-shirt on offer as a prize. Not a bad showing from the MTTG Trackmania representative, as I now am. It was only after finishing that I found out Racer 07 was a Blur rep, whose job is a racing game.

The event went out live on ESL TV, but I’ve failed to track down a recording. If anyone finds one, please post a link in the comments. I got mentioned in the commentary a few times, along with my ‘fan club’ of other MTTG members, who were made at some point to do a Mexican wave. [We do a damn fine Mexican wave -Tom]

I have now been convinced to enter the amateur ESL Trackmania league. I’m hoping custom paintwork is allowed, so I can use the MTTG car I’ve created and start advertising the site to a wider audience.

MTTG Car

Also, I noticed that the deadline for entering the amateur Counterstrike league is coming up. Fancy entering ‘olawd’, anyone?

The record for most handheld gamers in one place has been smashed at the 17^th London MCM Expo, and your favourite MOREtotheGAME writer was part of it. Oh, and Brett, Daryl and Sam were there too, but we all know I’m more exciting really.

Yes, the record previously held by Australia for the amount of simultaneous people playing on a DS was thoroughly beaten with over 500 gamers turning up to support the attempt. After constant reminders not to run the batteries down whilst waiting for the queue to finish checking in, the inability to get multiplayer working due the sheer amount of DSs around and a performance by British J-Rock artist Bentley Jones, everyone got down for 10 minutes of continuous play, after which the MCM Expo Group came away with a world record!

Oh, and Daryl won a DS XL in a raffle at the end. He just might mention that himself elsewhere, lord knows he’s been a jammy git since.

[Edit by Daryl: it's a DSi XL]

World Record ^^

Nom nom pizza nom.

And by Eagle, I mean MOREtheGAME.

That’s right, we have arrived in London for the wondertastic London MCM Expo, and this post starts our coverage. So watch this space for lots of games, anime and other assorted geekery. You can also follow our various antics on our shiny new Flickr account at http://flickr.com/photos/moretothegame/.

If any of you happen to be around, drop us a line at admin@moretothegame.co.uk, and we’ll do our very best to come say hi.

With my hopes of a resurrection of true narrative cinema gold crushed before I even entered the cinema, and having seen the trailers, I sat ready to be bored to death and be bathed in CGI blood. The second part happened, the first however, didn’t go as I had expected.

Don’t get the wrong end of the stick here, the dialogue is read with the energy of someone reading the telephone directory, the acting is nothing to write home about and what little plot there is won’t really engage you, but this is more of a B-Movie than the $40 million budget implies.

I never liked re-inventing the wheel, and I always love quoting the BBFC, so I’ll give you the synopsis they supply because it sums the film up so perfectly. “NINJA ASSASSIN is an action film about a young ninja seeking revenge on the clan who killed his closest friend.” That’s it, that’s the story. There are Ninjas, they are assassins, there is an assassin, he is a ninja. They fight. That is pretty much the only plot here.

To spice the movie up, however, and in true B-Movie style, you get action. Lots of action. And a lot of blood. How much, well, let’s ask the BBFC:

In NINJA ASSASSIN the violent battles between the main character and the clan he wishes to defeat are frequent and very bloody. Swords, knives, chains and throwing stars are all used to inflict injuries which always result in huge plumes of blood spraying into the air.

These plumes are, indeed, huge, and these battles are exceptionally frequent. I said that the dialogue was clunky and boring, but there isn’t enough of it for that to be a real complaint. The fight scenes are entertaining, in a very B-Movie way, and it comes thick and fast. It’s all a lot of fun, it’s all a bit silly, but it’s what you expect from a film called “Ninja Assassin”.

There is one last thing I would like to quote from the BBFC. Maybe I should start paying them for writing this blog for me. It’s about their classification of this film as an 18.

the BBFC Guidelines also state ‘that adults should, as far as possible, be free to choose what they see, provided that it remains within the law and is not potentially harmful’, and therefore ‘18’ was felt to be the appropriate category.

There was a time in the early 80s, amid the video nasties period, when a film like this would have been banned by the BBFC, but this time is gone, and this is, officially, not a potentially harmful film.

This won’t be winning any awards, it’s never going to score highly with a critical audience, but it’s fun, and that’s what you want from a high-budget B-Movie. That, and it isn’t illegal!

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This content is reposted from the Random Blog of Random Blogginess. The original post can be found here. It is used, with permission, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.