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So finally I got LittleBigPlanet yesterday, it was probably in the mailbox on Monday but I was too busy to check. I wanted to play a bit more before writing this review and the game was just too damn fun to let go of the controller last night. And I’m still trying to figure out how on earth to get my Nariko costume since my game didn’t come with the a card with the promotion code. I’ve sent an email to Futureshop and haven’t received a reply yet.

[update]:Turns out the promo was between Oct 3rd and Oct 9th, I pre-ordered mine on 11th, sigh. There goes my Nariko costume.

  

Story and controls
There isn’t really a solid story for LittleBigPlanet, you will be exploring and venturing out in different places and planets. The controls are straight forward and easy to get used to. Basically you can jump (hold down to jump higher and further) and pull or push objects. There are also these new and interesting actions such as smile, frown, angry and scared, each with 3 levels, so you can smile lightly, bigger smile and a crazy smile all executed using the directional buttons. You can also make your sackboy or sackgirl’s head move based on your SIXAXIS controller as well as making their hands move using L2, R2, L3 and R3. Such innovative features really help bring emotion and expression to the sack people. And one more thing, you can drag your L3 or R3 real fast from left to right or right to left to perform slaps (at people obviously!), which I haven’t got bored of doing yet. Then again, when you are actually going through a level you most likely will be too occupied to even bother playing with the expressions.

  

Gameplay, Graphics and physics
FUN, that’s the word that came to my mind when I played it for the first time. I found it particularly fun because I’ve used to play shoot’em up games for far too long, Call of Duty 4 for example, not that I’m complaining, I will never get bored of that game just that its just nice to play something that’s completely different for a change. Most of the time, this game is relaxing, but, maybe I just suck and/or impatient, I had to play some of the levels a few times before I could pass them in order to unlock the next area(s). I guess I should be glad that the game offers some level of difficulties, I mean after all, it won’t be fun if its too easy right?

  

This game is point based, meaning you get points by obtaining blue orbs. But that’s not very rewarding isn’t it? You can also obtain outfits, decorations, stickers etc. You can place stickers and decorations pretty much anywhere and sometimes they are used to solve puzzles to unlock more items. I believe one of the biggest selling feature of this game is the amount of outfits you can obtain and customize your sackboys or girls. You have the options to edit each part of your sackboys or girls such as head, face, back, neck, eyes, upper outfit, lower outfit etc. You can even choose to have the system randomly generate a look as well and you can imagine the number of combinations there can be as you obtain more outfits! You can save your look for a quick change as well as deleting them.

  

Graphics are top notch as well, I think the word I would use is, surreal. Its dreamlike and cartoonish but at the same time realistic with great lighting effects, vibrant colors and detailed textures of the surroundings. As mentioned before, the facial expression of your sackboys and girls are eye candies. Although it only supports up to 720p which most of us can probably not tell the difference between 1080p and 720p anyway so its not really an issue.

Aside from the normal beat-the-level kind of game, there are also challenges that you can unlock by obtaining keys. One example of challange will be to continuously jump up and down and get as many blue orbs (for points) as you can while avoiding the fire.

As you can see, this game packs TONS of features and I have yet to discover them all. I’ve had a chance to play a bit online last night and the online feature just makes this game easily worth 10 times more than the $59.99. You can play levels online with others (by the way some areas require others’ help to unlock) or you can play on your own. You can also pick the Quick Play option and you will be joining someone random and play whatever they are playing. The number of levels in LittleBigPlanet is pretty much infinite as long as people keep creating levels and sharing them, there will be new levels to play for as long as this game remains popular, which I am confident it will. You can also “hearted” your favorite levels and your friends on PlayStation Network can see them.

Aside from the graphics, the physics, yes this is my first time having a section, or rather one third of a section, dedicated to game physics. There are many obstacles through out the game, sometimes you will have to push or pull blocks in order to proceed to the next area. On the other hand you can, for example, be pulling a string left and right to shake the blue orbs or items down for you to obtain.

  

Sound
So far I have heard many different types of music, some are up beat, some are spooky and some are down right classical. I also like the commentary that is spoken in English with British accent, just love that accent. There aren’t any other types of sound worth mentioning. Let me know if I’ve missed anything.

Final verdict
I’m pretty sure I have not tapped into everything about LittleBigPlanet, but as you can see, the amount of contents this game has is incredible. The amount of customization of your sack characters is one of the greatest feature this game has to offer, I think personalization is what makes a good game….a good game! With personalization you can have a unique presence instead of looking the same as other people. Unlike some of the games that mainly target specific groups of gamers, LittleBigPlanet suits all types of gamers, even non gamers in my opinion. Finally, the fact that you can create your own levels and share them with everyone else online makes this game even better. This is what I would call a Web 2.0 game, correct me if I’m wrong though.

Finally after Resistance, Heavenly Sword and Metal Gear Solid 4, the PlayStation 3 has another worthy exclusive game.

9.5/10

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First I got the news from EBGames that the Mirror’s Edge demo will be available on November 6th, I guess its been pushed forward by 1 week and is released today. Its always a good thing! Unlike Little Big Planet, I am still waiting for it to be shipped from Futureshop, it said “Shipped” but I have yet to see it in my mailbox.

Anyway onto the demo.

Oh-My-God, that was literally what I said to myself when I was playing this game, I have never had so much thrill for a long time! Even though the demo lasted 20-25 minutes max (unless you keep dying). The game is similar to The Bourne Conspiracy where you have to act quickly otherwise you will be captured/killed. Compare to Bourne, I think Mirror’s Edge is the better one.

  

Faith, your character tells you the story in comic style during loading which is plus, its always better to be looking at something moving rather than the old boring “loading” text. The first part of the demo starts you off with a few tutorials of how to move around, jump, slide underneath objects, climb up. Aside from the basics, you will learn to disarm from behind or from the front, shoot or throw away the weapon. That’s not all! You will also learn to do crazy acrobatics like running horizontally on a wall then spin around and jump onto the opposite side (sorry I tried my best to describe). Its basically pressing 3 buttons but you need to really time your presses. So you can chain your moves and perform something crazy. One thing I absolutely love about the controls is that most of the actions are performed using just the L1.

  

The second part is the real deal where you have to jump/move/climb around to deliver a package to the other runner Celeste. In between you have to run away from hostiles and/or fight your way through. Let me tell you, the second part was a THRILL to play!

  

  

Graphics are AMAZING and able to run in full HD 1080p. I particularly like the way the lighting is done. The whole city looks very realistic. I couldn’t stop taking pictures while playing the game and graphics are that good. Definitely eye candy.

Can’t really comment much on the music there’s only one track and a good one of course. Kind of feel like the Metal Gear Solid opening music.

If you haven’t downloaded the demo, please do so! You don’t know what you are missing!

  

I really appreciate game companies releasing game demos because they allow us gamers to try out the games before purchasing them, instead of doing all the guessing and then taking the risk of buying something we don’t enjoy playing. Reading reviews and watching trailers from Gamespot and Gametrailers help a bit but you can never be sure until you have played the games YOURSELF.

The game will be released on November 11th.

Stay tuned for yet another hyped up game demo review – Tom Clancy’s End War.

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I saw the trailer about a month ago and was really impressed, then again, its only a trailer and probably not the PSP version. I took some time to play around with the PSP version of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and I was not impressed. Another disappointment. Again for the PSP version and does not necessary imply the PS3 and the XBox360 versions are just as bad.

You start off at the top of some building, typical. You will basically be swinging around from left to right or right to left, occasionally you will get inside some buildings, you have your basic punch combos and kick combos by repeatedly pressing square for punch and triangle for kick. You shoot out your web by pressing x, as well as holding a direction and press R to perform web swinging. You can also walk on walls and I had experience a buggy situation where Spidy was literally flying up instead of walking up vertically along the wall.

  

Overall the graphics are…well…pass, I think Lego Batman has better graphics than this game. So far I have only seen 3 to 4 variations of enemies PLUS Venom, which is the boss for first level. Oh yea after defeating Venom, you also get infected by the black matter and you can now turn toggle between original Spidy and black spidy with different abilities / attacks by pressing select. And basically you are just moving vertically and horizontally.

  

After the first level is complete, you can purchase new skills by spending you good Spidy points and bad spidy points, you can’t purchase good Spidy skills using bad Spidy and vice versa. Now how do you get Spidy points? When you interact with people, you get to choose good answer or bad answer, obviously good answer will give you good Spidy points and bad answer will give you bad Spidy points. You will get more by accepting quests from people that you encounter as well to gain more Spidy points.

  

So far that’s all I have discovered after playing Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, it was too linear and down right boring after a while that I’ve decided to turn off my PSP. Oh yea did I mention the voice acting is bad as well? I suggest sticking to the PS3 and/or the XBox360 versions. Or better yet, rent to see if you like it or not.

5/10

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For those that are interested in Mirror’s Edge, based on information from EBGames there will be a demo released on November 6th. Pre-order of the full game starts shipping on November 11th.

As a side note, my Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the PSP will be up later today!

And I’m STILL waiting for my Little Big Planet, hopefully I will finally get it tomorrow.

First impression the sci-fi third person shooter Fracture gives me is that it is very Mass Effect-ish. The first half of the demo allows you to get used to the controls, the environment and lets you test out the different weapons of the game.

The controls are pretty somewhat straight forward but slightly different. R1, R2, L1, L2 are all for weapons. Triangle button is for sprinting which shows a very nice blur effect to simulate running. As usual, the square is for reload and cross is jump. L3 is crouch and R3 is zoom. I was expecting some close range one hit kill like the knife in Call of Duty but there isn’t any, at least in the demo.

 

The environment looks amazing with detailed textures. As the first half of the demo, you get to try out the weapons. Two features that are pretty important in this game and are actually very innovative – raise and lower terrains with your weapon and two types of grenades. You will know where to raise or lower the terrains by looking for the corresponding symbol around the area you need to manipulate. Unfortunately there’s a limit to how high or how low you can manipulate. The effects of terrain manipulation are impressive, even more so if you use grenades to do the job! Aside from moving from place to place, raising or lowering terrains also help you during battles. For example, if you lower an area, you have yourself a trench and if you raise an area, you will have yourself a shield for a while from all the gun fire.

 

The standard rifle that starts you off in the demo is pretty “standard” and doesn’t give a powerful impression. The Black Widow on the other hand, can enable you to shoot up to 6 grenades that you can detonate all at once. Then there is the pulse sniper rifle which is pretty common (Unreal Tournament comes to mind).

 

There aren’t too many sci fi third person shooters in the next gen consoles yet, well at least not for PlayStation 3 unlike XBox 360 which has Gears of War 1 (2 coming out soon) and Mass Effect to name a few. I’m not sure if its worth buying, more of rental to me. I rather wait for Dead Space even though it doesn’t have online mode. But then again, if you have a PS3, do give the demo a try, maybe you might just like it! Just not quite my cup of tea.

 

Score: 7/10
Release date: Oct 7 2008

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I could hardly concentrate at work today because I knew once I got off work, I would be driving to EBGames close to my home for a copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Ever since I tried out the demo. I could not get it off my mind. One reason because I have hardly played any Star Wars related games prior to the release of this game. Although I was really close to getting Lego Star Wars but I didn’t in the end. That’s why I love downloadable content so much because you can actually try out the games before you buy. And a lot of the games that I like happen to offer demos.

But did the game live up to my expectation?

 

Graphics & Audio

The graphics are amazing and I have mentioned that in my demo review already. But with the demo you could only see so much since it was only part of a level. The voice over and lip synching is much more life like compare to other games with dialogues. One thing I forgot to mention from my demo review is that, the environments really give you the impression that you are within something massive like when you are inside the hangar or deep inside the ship’s core. And since so many people asked, no this game does NOT support 1080p full HD output unfortunately. It would be nice if it was though obviously.

And as for audio, I’m no expert but I like the sound effects, specially the lasers and when you are killing enemies with your beam sabre. The sound effects are really movie-like. I have not encountered any missing audio yet as reported by Gametrailers.com. It did mention about missing audio in the ending though. That would be such a turn off!

 

Game play & Controls

With the EMM engine controlling what materials to use for creating each object, the Havok controlling the objects’ movements and finally the last engine, the Euphoria engine determining how enemies react to their environments. The combined affect of the three physics engines really created a realistic experience. For example, watch closely when you Force Grip an enemy, if he is close to some crates, he will actually try and hold on to it. I think little details like this really add to over gaming experience. I have not encountered any clipping problems so far reported by Gametrailers and I hope I do not. The game is also somewhat on the short side as well with only 9 missions.

Controls are pretty straight forward, if you have played other action games before it will take you no time to get used to the figure out which button is for what purpose. When fighting bosses, you will finish them off by following a set of buttons much like in Heavenly Sword. If you fail to excute perfectly, you will have to start over again. Overall you will go through each level killing enemies with a few different combo moves, and the hack and slash may bored some players after a while. It quickly turns into a level grinding fest like an RPG game when trying to level (power) up your three forces – Force Lightning, Force Grip and Force Push. The forces do provide hours of excitement but after that, they become just a bunch of weapons. And did I mention there’s no online game play?

 

Final verdict

After all the hype generated over the past few months, I can assume this game will be a must for hardcore Star Wars fans. Those that are into third person action like Devil May cry may also find this game entertaining. But for how long? That really depends on how fast you get bored of repetitive game play with no online component. In my opinion, its another game that didn’t quite live up to the hype generated unfortunately. At least its good for a rental game.

7.5/10

 

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At last, after such a long wait, I finally got my hands on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo. The demo starts you off with the young apprentice having a conversation with Darth Vader (I spelled it Dark Vader before, oops) and facial expression is top notch. Then you start the level inside a ship, no surprise there. You are presented with a bunch of containers right in front of you in which the auto aim will target one of them for you, you can also lock-on to a target. You get to dash, defend, the saber attack, jump and 3 forces – Force Lightning, Force Grip and Force Push. Force Grip is extremely fun. I spent the first 20 minutes just to play around with Force Grip, grabbing every object I could and just toss them around, it was that fun! The environment is very destructible, you can literally break the windows and shutters will be down to stop air from escaping or you can hit the wall and parts of it will break apart. Force Push is another fun force to play with, you will be using it to “open” large doors which I’m sure will take you awhile to get bored of. I have not used Force Ligtning in any special occasion except shocking and frying storm troopers. Almost forgot, you can also chain and discover new combo attacks as you progress.

  

Near the end of the demo, you get to go head to head with an AT-ST, it wil not be an easy task though! I almost died fighting it lol. You get to finish it by following a set of button clicks similar to Heavenly Sword. If you get it wrong you have to start over again, but its not a show stopper.

  

Graphics-wise, its just amazing, I have nothing negative to say, facial expression like the way the young apprentice talks is very realistic as well as special effects like explosions and things getting sucked out of a broken window. The character movement is also silky smooth and fluid! Control-wise and game play, being able to chain and discover new attack combo isn’t new. But given the 3 forces, you will have hours of fun chaining different combos, shocking enemies and opening doors by “force”.

  

So if you have not had a chance to get the demo or you are hesitating, which you shouldn’t be, you should get the demo now and feel the FORCE.

 

The first Tomb Raider was released in 1996 and it was a big hit for the PC. Another chapter of Lara Croft is coming in a few months, November based on Gametrailers.com. This is one of those must get games. So far with two trailers, I can see the new game offers, as you can imagine, much better graphics, somewhat Uncharted-ish since both are rather similar type of game where you explore different places, but of course Tomb Raider being the more original. But I cannot comment anymore without seeing more actual game plays.

For now please drool over a more recent trailer or check out the HD version at Gametrailers.com.