BRUTAL LEGEND

I picked up Brutal Legend a while ago, having been excited for a long while about the metal-centric game from the most under-rated games maker I can think of. Tim Schaffer has a long list of excellent-but-publicly-neglected games under his belt, from Full Throttle (which Brutal Legend feels like a spiritual successor to) to Psychonauts, one of the PS2-era’s greatest platformers. That absolutely no one bought. Honestly, I think it was just me and one other person who spent any amount of time with the game, digging up hidden spearheads for a reason that escapes me now.

But anyway, I’d expected great things from it. And, for about the first hour, I was getting them. The game is layered with neat little touches, and driving around in a powered-up go-kart is great. You will never tire of squashing small hedgehog-like creatures in your front bumper. Even if it means veering slightly off course in order to smack into one, it’s satisfying. But enough of my animal cruelty tendencies. The rest of the game is built nicely, right up to the point where the ‘Stage Battles’ begin. Then the fun stops. And it drags.

They involve a ‘stage’ being set up, which you more often than not have to defend. Sometimes the objective is to then attack a rivals stage, or a certain other structure, or blah blah blah. It’s annoyingly vague at times, leaving you flying about the battlefield with no idea what you’re supposed to do. It’s like an ill-thought-out cartoony RTS, covered in Jack Black sound bytes. The AI is patchy and the troops you create don’t have any specific strengths or weaknesses. At no point does it feel like you’re commanding a strong army, which is something the game needs to stop players feeling like they’re just going through the motions.

It’s sad, because the rest of the game is quite fun, give or take the odd repetitive side-mission. The story is suitably OTT and the obvious love poured into the game makes it endearing to play, giving you reason to persevere. It’s just a shame that the same love also spurts out of the gaping, ugly orifices that are the Stage Battles. They just make a mess that can’t easily be cleaned.

BORDERLANDS

Like the rest of the games in this list, I’ve barely touched it. But first impressions are good. It is, as far as I can see, a Fallout 3 clone with lots of guns, running and much-needed co-op. Without co-op, it’s dull, but even a simple running-from-here-to-there mission becomes fun from taking pot-shots at your accomplices. Even running around, competing to gather loot is fun. My only fear is that all of this might wane quite quickly, leaving a boring, repetitive game that I barely touch. I’ll update you when I’ve played it more, in the form of a fuller review like the one for Brutal Legend.

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS

I’m four hours in to this supposed 80-hour epic (which will probably turn into something like 120-hours due to my propensity to check every little corner of every map) and no one has even mentioned dragons yet. What the hell, Dragon Age? More like Dragon-less Age. Eh Eh Eh.

I’m hoping that things change sharpish, because it’s started off well. It’s similar to Mass Effect but missing the guns and ramping up the amount of controllable war-dogs available to the player. The dog is awesome. He bites people and it’s awesome. So far, the game seems lacking in anything especially interesting, but it’s still strangely engrossing. He type of game that’ll start to bloom around the 10-15 hour mark, I assume. Bye bye life.

GTA4 – BALLAD OF GAY TONY

After the boring, trudge through GTA4, which I completed but can remember almost nothing about, and the even-more-dreary ride-a-bike-em’up of add-on Lost and the Damned comes the game that every wants. It’s loud, it’s brightly coloured, it’s splattered in innuendo humour and it’s essentially  GTA: San Andreas. IE – It’s fun. One of the first missions involves stealing a helicopter, blowing up a boat and flying off. All for a crazed man voiced by Omid Djali. Compare this to the first hundred missions of Lost and The Damned, which involved driving around a bit and making a nice little pattern with your motorbikes before shooting someone, getting bored and switching the Xbox off. It’s GTA, the way it should be.

MACHINARIUM

Short review this one: it’s great to look at, it’s art style is exceptional and the little robot thing is cute. But I got to the third screen, spent 15 minutes making a mine cart fly off it’s tracks, then switched it off because it was making me feel stupid. If I go back to it and it makes me feel any differently, I’ll jot my thoughts down. Right now I’m labelling it as pompous to make my stupid brain feel better.

OTHERS

I’m half-interested in a few others, like Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, but either cash or time restraints have prevented me from actually getting hold of them. Really, any game I buy between now and January is just going to end up as a time waster until I get my grubby little mitts on Mass Effect 2.

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