It’s been almost a year since my move from New Zealand to Australia and honestly say that my feet have hardly touched the ground. It all a blur; a whirlwind of games, events and previews. I’ve never written as much as I’ve done in the past year and things show on signs of abating.
On the review pile at the moment I’ve the DC Comics inspired beat ’em up Injustice: God Among Us, Namco Bandai’s Star Trek and Techland’s Dead Island: Riptide.
I’ve also a few bits of DLC that I need to talk about at some point, namely The Tyranny of King Washington DLC for Assassin’s Creed 3 and all those lovely bits of DLC for the most excellent Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I also need to drop some words about the Fuse and Grid 2 hands-on previews that I attended last week.
So that’s what I need to do, but what have I been doing?
First up there’s Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel which I reviewed over on the Game Console pages on NZ’s Techday.com, here. Can’t say that I was ever a fan of the series, I tried the demo of the first game way back and found it…well, a bit shit. To be honest I’m surprised the game tagged one sequel, let alone two. At least the devs have have a couple of prior attempts to get the formula right for The Devil’s Cartel and in utilising the Frostbite engine you at least get to shoot up the buildings in a rather spectacular fashion.
It took a while for the little voice in my head to stop repeating “this is shit, this is shit” over and over again, but when it did stop I found myself having some pretty guilty fun shooting Mexicans. I wouldn’t say The Devil’s Cartel brings anything new to the table, quite the opposite really. But it is fun just shooting and blowing things up without having to deal with any moral implications or other sissy stuff like that.
I had a lot of fun with Trion Worlds’ Defiance. Being a third-person shooter massively-multiplayer online game, or TPS MMO and on the Xbox 360, the experience was quite the novelty. But whilst the Defiance TV show looks promising, I’m not so sure about the game especially, as it happens, on consoles; console that are right at the end of their life-cycle.
From my previous experience with MMOs, they do require a hefty investment. What is going to happen when the new consoles come out? Will the game get ported over? Will players be able to transfer their characters? Too many questions for me, I’m afraid. Whilst I think anyone that’s never played an MMO before (i.e. console owners) ought to give it a go, I’d say that Defiance is a game best played on a PC for now. Check out my review on shanethegamer.com here.
The other week I took the train into the big city and had a go on Metro: Last Light. I’d never played the first game, Metro 2033, so I went in blind and left feeling a bit gutted that I’d been missing out. Thankfully Steam came to the rescue I now I’m deep into the subterranean delights of Metro 2033 on PC.
Last Light continues the rather grim post-apocalyptic tale of the first game about the survivors of a nuclear attack living in Moscow’s metro system. The hands-on followed the hero’s capture and subsequent escape from the clutches of a rather nasty Nazi faction that have also made their home in the abandoned metro tunnels. You can read my hands-on preview of Metro: Last Light, again on shanethegamer.com here.
Grant’s been busy as well, riding his little motorbikes in 2.5D across all those annoying level’s in Ubisoft’s Trials: Evolution Gold Edition on PC. He had a lot of fun with it, as you can find out here. I’ve played the Trials games on Xbox Live and they are some of the most addictive games I’ve played.
Lastly, A couple of my reviews have also been published in the May issue of the digital version of New Zealand’s NetGuide magazine. If you want to check it out for free, go to http://mynetguide.co.nz, type in the voucher code FREESINGLEISSUE950 and redeem your free digital copy.
Right that’s all for this time. Back to the island of Palanai for me. Time to resume bashing zombie backpacker’s heads in. That’ll teach ’em for staying in cheap accommodation.