Toki Tori Review

O.K. this is a hard one. Um how do I put this? Lets see, good puzzles and that's where it all goes blank (You see what I'll mean when i go into detail). To say what it is, well it's a simple puzzler and that all it is a simple puzzler, but does this puzzler keep you playing or do you just leave it right where it is.

Story: You are a bird court up in this evil egg stealing plot, where every egg of your kind has been stolen and is now trapped. You yes you must save them by touching the eggs so the cage trapping them will explode. However that's where it ends, it seems indie games have little to no story which is a shame.

Gameplay: As i said you need to find eggs that are scatted around a small compact map, to help you get the eggs, you have "powers" like teleportation or bridge making. The difficulty curb makes a sharp tern right at the begging of the game the first 3 level are easy then all of a sudden the game gets hard and then really hard and then it's the next level then it's easy again and repeat. The puzzles are fun so there's no reason to complain about that.

 The game is very safe which makes it hard to review. There's nothing much too it and there is allot of replay value, so it makes it perfect for kids. So should you buy it, well when you have some spare cash buy it.

Liam Hackett

Wittyreviews: King Arthur,the Role Playing War Game

"Rule your destiny"

Kick ass,2 words which describe this game perfectly.Developed by Neocore Games I am VERY supprised this wasn't a professional,high budget EA kind of game.The graphics are gorgeous,the gameplay is fantastic and personaly,I love it.But lets not get bogged down in personal opinions,lets look at the nitty gritty.

First off,I play alot of RTS games,such as Medieval Total War 2,Dawn of War etc.So my views are that of someone who knows this type of game well.The graphics are gorgeous,as I've said.You can zoom right in to your soldiers and watch them fight.Nothing is more fun that seeing a heavy armour dude smash a mere footman into the ground! I'm yet to find many glitches but I did find one,sometimes when the Sidhe try to disappear the odd squad or two stay on screen but disappear on the radar,but hell I'm not complaining about that.

Gameplay,gameplay is important.It can make or break the game and in this case,makes it! It has your usual aspects of an RTS game,drag boxes,selecting units and such but on top of that you can cast spells! Oh yeah,magic.I laugh every time when I send my foes running home to mummy when I smash their archers with a good lightning bolt.You can even teleport,perfect for harrasing calvelry or taking out troublesome archers.The general types are replaced by the Knights of the Round Table.Sir Kay is your starting Knight and well I don't use him much.They come in handy in battle as they can be added to almost every unit,they can take down men in almost one hit and without them your armies would be lost,for a start armies can't move without a Knight leading them.During the game,quests will appear accross the map.Some are not very vital to your success but it's still important to address them.The main quests follow the plot line of the game ranging from Excalibur to the dreaded forrests of the Sidhe.The time moves in seasons,a bit like MTW but more than 2 seasons per year.In the winter,all the armies hold up in camp and level up.It's also the one time of the year you can manage your main stronghold.The gameplay isn't that hard to get used it,if you've played RTS games you know what your doing,but that doesn't mean it's easy.

Why isn't it easy? Because the AI freakin cheats! I swear it does! You know usualy in a game,the story progresses when you complete one objective? Not here,take your sweet time and the next bit starts up on top,usualy accompanied by 2 armies in the dead center of your kingdom.I cannot fight armies of ghosts,Unseelie and Welsh all at the same time,nor when the Crusaders arrive to smash my backside.That,is an aspect that needs tweaking,slooooow doooown game.Most RTS players like myself prefer to take their time and plan things out.And don't say to me "Oh juet keep an army within your kingdom durr",no shit sherlock but it's hard to do that when you're trying to take over an enemy kingdom since the only way to beat back their armies is to go in guns blazing since they will alyways,always always always outnumber you.Not that I don't like that,but come on play fair! I can't shove armies whereever I feel.

Oh but the Sidhe,my favourite aspect of the game and also my most hated.Basically,along the pathways of the game you eventualy get one of your many moral choices.To join the Seelie or the Unseelie,good or evil basically.Whichever one you choose,the other attacks you.In one quest after joining the Seelie you are told to send your "Strongest Knight and strongest army" to meet with a representative.I do that,since Wales is allied with me and the entire south of England is mine,what do I have to be worried about appart from the Crusaders? During the quest one of the Seelie says something about "powefull Unseelie armies" moving into your kingdom,your allies responce "Oh good,if your king can beat back this threat without the help of his strongest troops we'll know we made the right choice" what is fair in that!? Oh I get the point,you know can you win without your best,most trained men.I get that,I can do it,but come on! Warning please! It's moments like this that make your groan.Though I do like the Sidhe,they're actualy pretty fun to fight since they make you think your strategies instead of 'run and gun'.It's a shame you can't play as them,they're like the Eldar of DoW.

All in all,this is a good game.A very good game.I really hope they make more like it.Worth a buy.

Final Score: 4/5

Notes to producers: Tweak the things I mentioned about having to deal with so much,so fast.If an experienced player finds it tricky,your average player will get stumped.Stop overpowering the spirit soldiers,they destroyed my army which was twice their size.Make it so you don't have to have Knight leading an army to move it,it's kind of pointless.

Wittyreviewer~

Bob Came In Pieces review

Bob Came In Pieces is a very good indie game. Bob reminders me of another very good game Portal. Think about it there both puzzle base, both original and both very very fun. However Bob does have it's problems, but do the problems stop you from buying the game?

Story: The story follows Bob a green delivery boy. However one day when making a delivery he is struck by a meteor and sent crashing down to a planet in the middle of nowhere, which makes him LOST IN SPACE!!! (if only he was a pig who was a puppet) Although the story is delightfully silly you only here on it in the beginning and end cut scene which is a bit disappointing.

Gameplay:  Gameplay is very simple and very fun. You start the game with a ship with simple four thrusters (for north, east and west), but later on you will need to remake your ship that will go beyond the simple ship design. To do this you will need to rebuild your ship to help you with the puzzle you are faced with this is normally a physics puzzle but sometimes you will get puzzles the will need you to burn or Carry's stuff. To rebuild your ship you haft to find a pad that will enter you into a build mode this is where you can build you ship in anyway (as long you have enough peaces and you keep the main ship part).

Some of the puzzles are very clever with excellent design to boost. One of the problems is that you will never get to the brain busting hard puzzles till about 80% threw the game which is slightly disappointing. As i was saying you need certain ship parts to get threw certain puzzle for example a anti-gravity lift to pick up fallen logs that are blocking your way, or building a big pipe out of you ship trying to balance it so it will slightly touch a rock so it'll roll into place.

All in all the use of gravity and great level design make it a great almost perfect game (you herd me), unfortunately the story is not that long but at the price of £6.49 (or £4.87 till the end on Jan 2010) you must haft to buy this game.

Liam Hackett

Buy it!

Wittys Reaction to Gurren Laganns Final Episode

WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?!?!

CID the Dummy Review (very short)

O.K. This game may have a small budget but this is, bad and I mean bad. As there's not much to say about this game. I'll just give you the run down.

The Gameplay is rubbish: the big problem you move around on a 2.5D plane but the game is not made for it. You have a gun which is slow and hard to use. The puzzles are rubbish and it's very boring. To say the least the game is made for kids, but they went over the top with lowering the difficulty. so to say the least the game should of been made on just a 2D plane and the difficulty raised you could of had a descant game, but no it's rubbish don't buy.

Buy it?

Liam Hackett

AI War: Fleet Command and The Zenith Remnant

What do we have here? A Indie strategy game? With it's own Metacritic score? You must be taking the piss? No it's not, this game does have it's own Metacritic score and yes it is an indie game, quite strange really, but as we all now I refuse to give scores to my reviews (and always will) but it is impressive. Any how screw the score, lets see if i liked it.

Story: It's the future and civil war has broken out, but who cares because it never comes up in the game. It only comes up in the main menu never in the game, which sucks but still it's not as bad as Star Wars Episode 1.

Gameplay: This is why we play Indie games, for there simple gameplay.... Wait did i say simple? NO I mean complex gameplay. Let me give you an example: To win a game you must take over plants destroying everything in your way (it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's basically it). So how do you take over a planet, well you must first build an army to destroy it docks and command base, to build an army you must manage your Crystal, metal and energy intake. To do that you must build mines and energy plants. Than when you've done that you must build a thousand ships (no joke), and then you go threw a  portal to another planet and fight your way to the command ship once thats done ( there's more repetitive duologue from me) you build a ship (i forget it's name but who cares?) that will build a command ship then you must manage it's energy, metal and crystal input and it goes on. The point is there's allot of forget in this game and if you do forget something you will lose.

All in all (yes this was a short one) there's nothing much to it once you've mastered the basics you'll have moved onto the main party part (the multiplayer) and by then you'll be hooked. There's nothing much to the space battles, all it is, is one big management task, and you know what it's fun. I say pick up Fleet Command and if you still like it get Zenith Remnant.

Liam Hackett

P.S. The Zenith Remnant just gives you more ships.

Wittyreviews: 11Eyes

"For friends and for tommorow"

The Spoonyone once said: "It doesn't have to be good,to be awesome".Ladies and gentlemen,11Eyes is the perfect example of this.It's kick ass to see,horrible as hell if you sit down and think about it.It brings up plot points and then drops them lick lead weights,the characters have the same dimentions as an A4 sheet of paper and if you've ever seen Shakugan no Shana you've seen this before,I however have not so my view is fresh,but I know enough about Shakugan no Shana to know this show is cliche.

The basic plot is good enough to make it into an awesome,albiet predictable sci-fi show.It all revolves around an even known as 'The Red Night' which can happen at any time,anywhere,as long as it is within this single city.During The Red Night everyone disappears,demonic creatures that Kingdom Hearts wouldn't take roam the city,the Moon turns red and great spires shoot into the sky towards large crystals imprisoning a small girl.Only 6 teenages can witness this strange occurance and they gain powers to help them fight the evil within the Red Night aswell as the mysterious Black Knights who guard the crystals.Sound familiar? No? Well it should,it's the basic plot of alot of things.Kids gain power,fight monsters,rinse and repeat.Not that this is a bad thing of course,it's been done well before.There is only one problem with this show really...it's too short,the entire series is only 12 episodes long.12 episodes is not long enough to flesh out a story like this.This king of story needs plot development,character development,a substantial back story and a main villan that doesn't only appear for 20 minuits! This show also has alot of Higurashi elements in it,one of the female leads called Yuka goes into Rena mode about halfway through the series and almost kills one of the other female leads called Misuzu! This is one girl you do not mess with and even though I really like Rena,Yuka creeps me out,she even gets naked at one point..what the hell?

Which brings me to another point,the characters are seriously one dimentional,the only ones with depth are Yuka,Misuzu and the male lead Kakeru.The other characters are just sort of...there,for plot convinience I guess.Although Yukiko is awesome at times,especialy at the end of the series.There's also a couple of boob jokes in this series,they have no purpous except to make you laugh and even me,who thinks ecchi comedys are hilarious,doesn't find them funny,just wierd.But enough of my complaining,what's awesome about it? Any given action scene that's what! If there is one thing to merit this series on it's that the fight scenes are epic to see,not too flashy but just enough to keep you interested.I did expect a sort of Nanoha-esque final fight but there wasn't one sadly,but then again it might be better that way.

In short,is it good? No.Is it epic? Yes.I'm thinking Seikon no Qwaser is going that way too but that's for another time.My final rating: 3/5

Worth a watch but don't expect ground breaking stuff.

Zombie Driver Review

Remember when you where a kid and you had a PC or NES.You would always find this cheap game with a weird plastic casing and was made by a company you had never herd of. Well there indie companies, a small game company, making cheap games for cheap prices normal with a budget of ten pounds. Now a days all the best indie companies have set up on steam, so I'm going to look at some indie games seeing what are the good one and what are the bad ones. To start of with I'm going to review Zombie Driver.

Story: A explosion at a power station has terned people into zombies, you being one of the survivors must find other survivors, in a taxi, super car, limo and many other things with four wheels. Well that what i could figure out, most of the story i had to figure out for my self (it may not be a power station but it's a building that blows up that's good enough for me). The point is that you, yes you must run over zombies, find survivors and move on. In it's defence zombie games don't need to have a story, look at left 4 dead, lacking in story but makes up for it in the Gameplay.

Gameplay: You drive a car (of some type) driving around, running over zombies picking up survivors from schools, pubs and any other type of building. When i first loaded up the game I drive in to the nearest group of zombies i could find, but then all of a sudden my car slowed right down and I was taking damage, that's when i flashed back to last Wednesdays when i ran over a group of old Lady's (there fault the light was green), and my car was damaged because of all the flash was jammed into the wheels. So yes you slow down because of the flesh, not to say that's a bad thing, it brings allot of strategy to the game.

No the annoying thing is the camera it'll get in you way, for example a took a hard tern and the camera swung round so it was facing the car, then what normally happens is that the camera will take it's time of swing really fast making you drive into the pole. Another bad thing is the destructible in environments, most of it good but sometimes you think your driving into a flimsy wall but your not your driving into a brick wall with wood on it. The worst problem is the verity of missions being only one, you will soon get board of the game only playing 20 minuet bursts, but you'll always come back for more.

So all in all this is a good game, but it could of been so much more, for example, they could of added in some levels where you have a race with other cars trying to avoid the undead so you won't slow down and lose the race,But I say pick it up it's only £6 and it's worth the money.

Liam Hackett

Gears Of War 2

Gears Of War 2 can be considered as a bland main stream game only know for it's above average multiplayer. So is this game as good as everyone says it is or does the single-player wiff of golden piss? Well lets dive into this unknown liquid to find out.

Story: The story follows two of the muscliest humans ever to walk on the plant.It makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pussy, but then they are in full battle gear so they might be skinny men with chin surgery. The main characters are called Marcus and Dom, Marcus's character is more the hard on Sargent not making his emotions get in the way of his duty, which in my book makes him generic. Dom's character is abit over cooked, he has to much emotion on one character (no not Marcus) Maria (close), she's missing Dom's getting upset, a bit too upset in my opinion (well it is written by Joshua Ortega  a writer who did a star wars prequel graphic novel). There are other characters but they are more comic relief than characters.

Now onto the Plot. If you remember in the last game the Locust (a underground race of aliens) try to take over the world (OF COURSE!). At the end of the last game Marcus and Dom use a light-mass bomb to destroy the Locust. Well that didn't stop them, now there back and badder than ever they've destroyed nearly every city there's only one left and even that's struggling to survive. You and the army must take the war back to the Locust where it should be.... underground. The story is O.K. at best but no-where near as good as some other games that follow the same story line.

Gameplay: This is where we get to the heart of the game. The very reason it is so popular is because of what the first Gears Of War did to third-person shooter. It invented the cover system, now seen in nearly every third-person game; e.g. Mass Effect and Army of Two: The 40 Day to name two. Even if the cover system has nearly been done to death, the game stays fresh by it's great pacing, let me give you a example: sometime in the middle of the game you will battle hundreds of enemies underground when all of a sudden a giant worm will eat you...no joke, and you know what, it works. The worm section is probably my favourite part of the game, mainly because it comes out of no where, it's completely different and comes at the right time, in that section there are little to no enemies, you just run threw the inside of the worm looking for its heart(s).

The weapons chew threw meat like it's nothing (did someone say meat physics?) but you'll hardly ever stray from the set of weapons your given ( chainsaw gun, shotgun you get the point). The game is way too easy on the normal difficulty because enemies can unload a full magazine of lead into you and you'll only be slightly worried. Even if you do go down your A.I team mates can help you back to full health,but don't depend on them most of the time they'll be next to you shooting at some wall, later in the game there A.I.  improve (about time) but they're still annoying.

All in all the length and the pacing makes this a must buy for anyone who owns a xbox, it may look like a dumb action game and it is but think of it like Arnold Schwarzenegger, yes it maybe dumb and stupid but my god is it cool.

Liam Hackett

p.s. why is it that every sci-fi game or movie there must be a evil race ruled by some sort of queen?