Format: Xbox 360/ PS3/ Wii/ PS2 | Genre: Fighting | Publisher: THQ | Developer: Yuke’s Media Creations | Release Date: 29/10/10 | Price: £49.99

Greg Giddens wrestles his way through WWE SMACKDOWN VS RAW 2011.

WHETHER YOU enjoy WWE or not, the games sure do make it fun to step into wrestler’s boots, and WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2011 is no exception. The fights are varied and brutal and the atmosphere is gladiatorial and grand. What drags the experience down however is the lack of evolution over the years.

Aging design is certainly WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2011’s biggest problem.  The visuals haven’t been tweaked much and faces look particularly artificial. It’s also essentially the same modes, fighters and a slightly easier to use – especially with grapples – but predictable control scheme as it always has been, with only a few subtle changes and upgrades. Unfortunately that makes it feel samey and stagnant. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad experience, just that it’s only marginally different from previous year’s versions, that is with the exception of this year’s Universe mode.

Closer to the real thing

Universe mode is excellent. It’s a dynamic calendar of fights that imitate the real WWE experience brilliantly. Grudges emerge, alliances crumble, and fights can erupt into frantic scraps as other fighters force their way into the ring to aid or gang up on allies and enemies respectively. It builds an absolutely great atmosphere that is pretty damn close to the real thing, with all the drama and excitement you would expect. On several occasion my fights were broken up by one or two fighter itching to give me a beating, and sometimes they just couldn’t wait and floored me as I emerged from backstage, near winning the whole match in that single, unprovoked pre-emptive attack. It’s marvellous.

Outside of universe mode however, the experience hasn’t changed much over the years. If you’re looking for straight up fights then that’s exactly what you’ll get if Universe mode’s excellent life-like atmosphere doesn’t entice your commitment. It’s to WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2011’s credit then that it can support both play styles so well. Customisation options are impressively vast allowing those looking to create their own fight rules and setup the tools to do so. Additionally you can shape a career story mode and a user created superstar as well, complete with customised move sets. On top of all that are the 70 plus fighters to choose from. Whatever kind of wrestling game you’re looking for – odd bout for short term fun or full, lengthy careers – WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2011 can deliver.

Recycled

A returning feature hitting this latest offering from a few years back is the Road to Wrestlemania Superstar Campaign with roaming. Unfortunately it’s utterly awful. You can move your selected fighter around backstage, interacting with fighters, your manager, or training, before heading into the ring on a quest to claim your rightful title. But terrible voice work, a horribly nauseating camera, shallow backstage brawls and boring simple quests make the whole thing feel like an intrusive delay between each fight. It’s a mode that hasn’t seen any real improvements over its last appearance and falls short of offering the full role playing experience it intends.

What Universe mode adds to the proceedings, Road to Wrestlemania removes, or at least damages, and what remains is mostly unchanged. Online has the same scope of customisation to allow you to take the fight online, although lag occasionally ruins it, especially with the larger fights, and finding enough players for them is currently an issue. Opponents – human or A.I – are still able to bounce back very quickly despite a sound beating, punishing a lack of vicious momentum; it’s a problem from other version yet to be resolved. However, the improved physics when colliding with the environment and directional grapples complete with smooth animation are nice additions, although hit detection is still dodgy.

In the end WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2011 is still a good game, and thanks to the Universe mode and vast customisation options, it’s arguably the best version so far. However, with each iteration it loses momentum and next year’s version will need some drastic changes to prevent it from stalling altogether. Until then though there’s plenty to enjoy with this edition, especially if you’ve been absent from the annual releases for a while, just be sure to stay away from the Road to Wrestlemania mode, it really is awful.

7/10

What does this score mean?

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: God of War II, and telling the whole of Mount Olympus to come and have a go if they think they’re hard enough.

God of War II is epic. As a sequel, it sticks with what it knows. You travel through time to cheat death for the second time (third if you count the original Faustian bargain struck with Ares), escape the Underworld again and pop the heads off Gorgons for the sixty millionth time. It’s all dressed up around the need to find another god who’s wronged you and kick him in the face until he dies. Again.

It works. Oh, how it works. I completed my first run of the game (it’s about ten hours long) in two sittings; it would have been one if I didn’t end up getting frustrated by a particularly irksome boss two-thirds of the way through. Still, a rare feat for someone who likes to slowly nibble his way through games, chipping away in tiny hour-long chunks until the end credits.

To correctly understand exactly why it’s so moreish involves knowledge of complicated bits to game design that I could never possibly hope to understand. What’s clear is that it’s got tremendous pacing, throwing up sections and challenges in just the right order to stay compelling but rarely frustrating. Combat bits, for instance, conjure just enough enemies for the player to feel that Kratos is getting an opportunity break a sweat but never outstay their welcome. You only need to look at Dante’s Inferno to realise that must be a hard balance to strike – every developer would be doing it if it was easy, and they’re definitely not.

HEAVE HO
Despite its many imitations, one of the main reasons it’s never been bettered – in my humble opinion, anyway – is in its tremendous sense of weight. Everything carries a resistance, however slight, to Kratos sticking his pointy sword on a chain through their abdomen, so as you hammer away at the button to push the blade deeper you get a very real sense that Kratos is doing the same. Each boss is famously defeated with a QTE scene – which takes joint first with the colour brown as the worst thing in modern videogames, though this is excused – often so grisly you’ll be half-tempted to look away, which just serves to showcase how much of a struggle it is to take down these superlative beasts. It’s one of the very few games you could actually get away with describing as visceral, though I won’t because it would cause our beloved editor to have a heart attack.

Even opening a chest makes Kratos buckle at the knees and grunt in exasperation. It’s the medium’s best ever take on David Vs Goliath. Compared to his enormous world, Kratos is so very small. He is but one man against the whole of Olympus, and when the camera pans out you feel like a tiny ant on an impossible quest. Well, impossible for anybody else – Kratos’ unshakeable determination has an effect on the player, too.

It also helps that the production values are immense. Simply clicking ‘New Game’ causes your television to explode with sight and sound, with a grand booming aural accompaniment alongside the resplendent spectacle of mount Olympus and a thunderous voiceover.

God of War II is a standout example of a developer refining their craft for the inevitable sequel. The first God of War was good but didn’t quite understand how to pace itself: it put both of its bosses right near the beginning and left you hacking through mooks until the finale, for instance. The sequel might dazzle you with the same brash antics and hyperviolence, but underneath the hood is a game that wholeheartedly understands the details. You simply can’t help but finish it.

Martin Gaston is a staff writer at Play.tm.

Format: Wii/PS2/PSP | Genre: Survival horror | Publisher: Konami | Developer: Climax Group | Release date: 05/03/10 | RRP: £34.99

Shattered Memories is much like the feared movie adaptation of a popular videogame. Although there is a real Silent Hill movie in existence, it’s probably much closer to the canon story of the videogame series than this “reimagining”. Like a movie adaptation, Shattered Memories takes the basic concept of the first Silent Hill game – Harry Mason searching for his lost daughter after a car crash – and morphs it into a much shorter, watered-down experience.

All the principle characters make an appearance, although all have radically altered roles in the story. The supernatural elements behind the evil of Silent Hill have completely disappeared. In spite of this, the psychological element of the series remains intact, perhaps stronger than ever. In fact, Shattered Memories claims to psychologically profile the player throughout the game, in order to create a custom nightmare.

On paper, this is perhaps Shattered Memories’ most attractive feature. The game opens with Dr. Michael Kaufmann, now apparently a psychologist, asking the player a series of questions. While there are a multitude of factors to influence the game experience, the answers you give at the start have a heavy impact on how things play out. The characters that the player encounters, for example, are clothed in different attire, mostly as a result of these questions. Throughout the game, you’ll return to Kaufmann’s clinic to either answer a series of questions, or to complete various minigames in order for Kaufmann to come to conclusions about your mindset.

But its effect is questionable. The monsters change slightly depending on how certain questions are answered, but this mostly doesn’t matter, since you’ll spend the entire game running away from them as fast as you can, not really leaving much time to see your inner demons except when they decide to grapple you. That said, the way you respond to Kaufmann has a few moments that really showcase the way the system works. Early on in the game, you’ll be asked to colour a picture of a family home, and its occupants. When you eventually encounter the house and family in question, they will be the exact same colour that you drew.

The majority of the game revolves around getting Harry from point A to point B, usually having to look around the environment to solve various puzzles in order to obtain a key to a locked door. Gone are the days of obscure Shakespeare puzzles, or pulling a key out of a drain with a piece of hair and a hook. The puzzles in Shattered Memories are usually pretty simple: turn over three cans and see which one had a key inside, and suchlike. These aren’t the alarmingly easy puzzles of Resident Evil 4, nor are they are mind-destroying ones of Silent Hill 3. Instead, they feel just right for this type of game.

SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD
The puzzles themselves provide insight into the back-stories of the areas you’ll have to traverse. Gone is the small pocket radio that Silent Hill protagonists have traditionally carried. Instead, Harry owns a mobile phone, which emits noise when a monster is near. It also emits static when a text message or voicemail is on the way. The phone also has several other interesting uses. The built-in camera can be used to take pictures of ghostly figures trapped in other dimensions, to obtain text messages or voicemails from people who had been in the area previously. And, of course, the phone can also be used to answer calls from other characters, as well as to dial various extra numbers found hidden throughout the environment.

[Continues...]

Format: Xbox360/PS3/Wii/PC/PS2 | Genre: Action | Publisher: Activision | Developer: Luxoflux | Released: 26/06/09 | RRP: £24.99-£39.99

By Greg Giddens

Movie tie-in games are notorious for being crap.  Very few turn out adequately, and fewer still turn out to be good. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen sits right in the middle of the spectrum, but although it had so much more potential, it’s still better than most.

//Absence makes the heart grow fonder
We’ve been deprived in recent years of good robot games. No Mech Warrior games, no good Armoured Core games – the sub-genre has been pretty quiet. For that reason, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen does offer an experience we haven’t had in a while, and in many ways it’s well presented. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is certainly a better game than the original, but there are breaks in the narrative flow that distract from the otherwise fun experience.

The story loosely follows the film, but instead of forcing you to play through scenes in the movie you play two distinct campaigns – Autobots and Decepticons. Each campaign differs from the film’s story, allowing you to experience slightly different events. Add certain missions from both campaigns together and you can recreate the film, but the decision to promote a deeper and more fulfilling role by having the two campaigns allows for a much more intriguing game.

The ideas behind the campaigns are great, but the narrative suffers with dull mission briefings and debriefings, and a perplexing lack of cut-scenes and scripted sequences. There’s no real flow to the missions: you play through one, you’re “treated” to a quick summary of what’s going on and how well you did, then it’s off to the next. The briefing area is also a rather dull environment, void of light and eye candy; instead, it’s just a holographic map of the planet with Transformers standing around it talking. Perhaps the problems with this narrative flow are more due to inherency from its film father – and one does get the feeling that, if a fresh story was created instead of loosely following the films, a better game could have been made. Either way, a cinematic show of progression is greatly lacking.

In and out of missions, you will be guided through the story by different characters from the film, all voiced by their respective actors. It’s fantastic to hear the actors voicing their videogame counterparts, but some of the lines are unconvincing, some are badly written and other times they’re badly edited together. The saving grace of the voice problems would be Peter Cullen who voices Optimus Prime, and Hugo Weaving who voices Megatron. It doesn’t matter what they say. They’ll always sound cool.

Generally, though, the voice acting isn’t too bad, and adds some much-needed life to the presentation, but the graphics do little improve upon it. Although the majority of the Transformers look great, the environments are uninspired. The main Transformers look just as good as they do in the film, but the “minion” Transformers are very generic and lacking in detail – as are the buildings, which look very plain, lacking in textures. Further damaging the presentation are the small levels, lacking in design flare. Destructible environments are missing, something that feels almost necessary due to the nature of the film. Inadequacies aside, the lighting is very good – never is it too dark or bright – and the weapons firing and explosions are pretty good as well.

[Continues...]

Format: PC/Wii/PS2/PSP | Genre: Platform | Publisher: Oxygen | Developer: Twelve Games | Out now: £19.99

By Lewis Denby

Poor CID.  I’ve spent most of my time mindlessly smashing him head-first into walls.  It’s good that it’s a key mechanic in CID the Dummy, and that its animation is surprisingly satisfying, as it’s almost certainly what you’ll feel like doing a lot of the time – usually after he misses a straightforward jump, falls to his death via an invisible trapdoor, or shouts “Not such a dummy now, am I?” for the 18 billionth time.

He’s a crash test dummy, you see.  Bored of his mundane – and probably rather painful – day job, he finds his chance to prove his worth when a professor’s daughter is kidnapped by a pesky villain.  And – well – none of it makes much sense, or provides for anything more than a gimmicky backdrop for the equally tedious game at the fore.

//CID the dumb
First games from small-time developers are always tricky.  There’s a limited budget at your disposal, and not a whole lot of reputation to place you firmly in people’s good books before release.  The trick is to play to your strengths, find a niche and hit it hard, utilise your limited resources to create something engaging and intriguing.  CID’s niche is those who yearn for the side-scrolling action-platformers of the mid-nineties, but its imprecise mechanics, awful control system and lack of design knowledge hold it back.  Elsewhere, there’s little to maintain your attention.

The whole thing is just grossly unambitious.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re going to rehash a thousand old ideas, you’d better do them right.  If you don’t, you’ve a hell of a lot of catching up to do, and CID the Dummy doesn’t even seem to try.  It’s a clumsy amble from left to right, marred by frustration and boredom.  That it’s so messy would perhaps be forgivable if it weren’t so bland.

The fisticuffs provide for a welcome change of pace: there’s an odd sense of brutality to punching the various denizens of this world squarely in the face.  It never stretches past frantic button-mashing, and the less said about ranged combat the better. But it’s unremarkable fun.  It’s about as good as it gets.

It’s all needlessly archaic.  The shaky engine would have benefited from a little creative design; the clichéd story and characters could have been improved with a dash of personality.  But there’s none there.  Levels are empty, blocky and predictable.  Voice acting is at the level of the worst children’s television. It’s modest in its aims and substandard in its execution.

The final straw is the woeful optimisation, seemingly across the formats.  The resolution of the PC version is fixed and ugly, with unchangeable controls mapped exclusively to the keyboard – but you’re still told to scale along rails using the “move stick.”  And though we’ve not tried the Wii version, we’ve heard terrible tales of nunchuck-swinging nonsense that only serves to flail CID around wildly instead of performing the action required.

Ultimately, the satisfaction of punching things wears off, the frustration of being caught out by yet another instant-death trap kicks in, and CID’s crippling lack of creativity is all that remains on the mind.

3/10

What does this score mean?