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The Cursed Crusade – Review

The Cursed Crusade launches you back to the time of the Fourth Crusade during the early 13^th Century.

It all revolves around co-operative combat, putting an Army of Two style focus on you and your partner battling your way through various stages together while using all manner of weapons, from swords and maces, to axes and spears. The combat is bloody, gory and the finishing moves can be extremely gruesome. Beheadings and impalings, anyone!? Read More

Review – Marvel Pinball

Simply Marvel-lous.

Zen Studio’s are known as the masters of the pinball gaming scene. Yeah, it’s a niche, but it’s also a fun one that they know like the back of their hand. Their latest offering is no exception. Four initial tables are included, Spiderman, Wolverine, Iron Man and Blade. Yeah. Blade. However, two additional tables, Fantastic Four and Captain America, are available as DLC.

Each table gives the player the chance to battle against the most notorious villains from each of the comics. These boss battles are unlocked in differing ways on each table, from hitting certain bumpers, shooting ramps in a certain order to many other more complex requirements. Read More

Review – Section 8: Prejudice

You can’t get much for $15 these days. A single ticket to a movie, but no popcorn; perhaps even a couple of pints at the pub (but let’s face it, you really just rent those).

No, $15 doesn’t go very far; that is unless you’ve just bought Section 8: Prejudice, a new FPS from TimeGate that packs a ton of value into a small digital package.

Prejudice is the sequel to TimeGate Studios’ 2009 offering, Section 8. While Section 8 was a full retail release, it’s sequel is a digital-only download, available on Xbox Live (XBLA) for the Xbox 360, on Steam (and other download sites) for the PC, and will be made available on the PlayStation Network later this summer.

The original Section 8 received mixed reviews, but Prejudice is turning heads for its intuitive arcade-style gameplay and creative twists on the FPS genre.
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Review – Killzone 3

Players of the previous Killzone games know exactly what to expect from this threequel, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting.

For the uneducated, Guerilla Games’ Killzone series carved it’s name into FPS history with the thrilling Killzone 2, providing fast and frantic battlefield action that felt amazingly authentic. You weren’t just playing through the action in Killzone 2, you were in the action, and it felt like every second counted in your fight to stay alive.

Killzone 3 has barely changed in the gameplay stakes, aiming for refinement rather than attempting an unneeded overhaul. It was a good call. Killzone 3 is tweaked in almost all of the right areas, offering a more rounded experience with a much better campaign than before, as well as a solid online experience to boot.
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Review – MotorStorm Apocalypse

MotorStorm Apocalypse is to gaming what Machete is to movies.

Insane, full of action, and above all else, clearly designed with men in mind. Real men, like Danny Trejo.

Before we get called sexist for that opener, let us explain. Ask someone to list the key elements of a ‘man movie’ and they’ll no doubt tell you guns, explosions, fast cars and a thumping soundtrack are all essential ingredients. Sony’s MotorStorm Apocalypse is packing these man movie ingredients in abundance, stitching them together to produce an insanely fun racer that showcases the kind of beefy, all out testosterone-fuelled carnage that even Chuck Norris’s beard would applaud.

Apocalypse is the third instalment in the PS3-exclusive “MotorStorm” racing franchise, and ranks as the best so far. If the quality and speed of the first MotorStorm blew you away, you’ll want to strap yourself to the sofa and hold on tight for this one.
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Review – Swarm

A lot of games were announced back at last years E3, and while a lot of people will have been distracted by the big shiny triple-A titles, there was one indie gem that really caught my eye – Swarm.

Created by Hothead Games and Published by UTV Ignition, this game puts you in charge of a swarm of 50 ‘Swarmites’. What makes this interesting is that you are in control of all 50 at once, there is no leader, you simply move them all around like a school of fish.

The basic concept of the game is a simple one; guide your 50 Swarmites from the start of each level to the end, scoring as many points as you can. The problem being that the levels aren’t friendly places to be. All of them are filled to the gills with things that want to burn, electrocute, slice, eat or otherwise mutilate your little blue friends.
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Review – Top Spin 4

Let it be known that this humble writer is no tennis aficionado.

Beyond recognising names like Federer, Nadal and Murray, and catching the occasional match while channel flicking between cartoons, my real world knowledge of tennis is little-to-none. But, without even really knowing much about the sport, Top Spin 4 just ‘feels’ right, and from the moment you play your first match, tennis fan or not, you’ll find it hard to disagree.

2K Czech’s latest tennis sim is one of those games that just seems to nail everything it needs too. It’s a tennis game that looks up to nobody, and why would it? Although it classes itself as a “simulator”, Top Spin 4 is actually an easily accessible, fantastically put together gameplay experience that expertly marries technical ability with pot luck chance.
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Review – Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

Even for a die-hard Sonic fanboy such as myself, there have been some dark times in the franchises recent years.

From giving the primary characters weapons such as swords and guns to turning Sonic into a “werehog”. All of these titles have had on thing in common, they all looked to have so much potential and then upon release proved disappointing.

So it was with no small amount of trepidation that when Sonic team announced Sonic 4 and a return to 2D,I allowed myself to get caught up in the buildup again. Now that it has been released I get to ask the questions – Will this be one more title that promises so much and fails to deliver? OR Will this be the title that brings Sonic spin-dashing back into greatness?

When you first fire up the game you are instantly granted your first dose of nostalgia, with Sonic proudly popping though the logo and waving his finger at you, which when you start a new game takes you straight into the first zone.

However the moment you finish that first zone you are given a reminder that this is a modern game, and (unless you also get to do the chaos emerald/Special stage) brought out into a world map when you can choose which zone & stage you want to play.

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Review – Dead Rising 2

Written by: Kieran McSherry

Zombies. They get everywhere, smear gore on the furniture and nibble the household pets/children – wholly unacceptable behaviour, even from the deceased. It’s no wonder that we ‘breathers’ find smashing their mushy noggins in so satisfying.

Dead Rising 2, the new third person, sandbox, pseudo-RPG, zombie survival melee-masher from Blue Castle Games, should help alleviate any undead related frustrations.

Not much has changed since Dead Rising (1). The action still takes place in a mall. Well strictly, it’s a gambling and shopping resort called Fortune City. Admittedly the overall area and level of detail make its predecessor look like a deformed half-sibling, but the games layout, set-up and formula remain unchanged. Core enjoyment is still derived from brutalising the undead in an assortment of comedic fashions. Everything has gotten a lot prettier, as expected, and it is easily one of the most genuine and cohesive sandbox worlds to date, all be it more restrictive than many others of similar genres. The in-game day/night cycle highlights a wondrous set of lighting, shadow and water effects, and even a balanced and realistic physics engine is present, meaning that decking a zombie never felt, or seemed, so real. Dead Rising 2 drops gamers right in the middle of the most authentic zombie apocalypse yet, and at the precise moment of that realization the fact that it’s basically just a tweaked re-release doesn’t seem to matter at all.
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Head-to-Head Review – Fifa 11 vs. PES 2011

When you think about it, football games are pretty hard to review. How do you judge them?
Do you use the sequel rules and concentrate on the way they they further refine what was already there, or do you constantly look for the biggest revolution in gameplay and realism?

With rivals PES and Fifa once again going head-to-head in an effort to be crowned the year’s “Best of Footy Gaming”, this years annual debate poses more of a conundrum than ever before.

EA’s Fifa 11 lines up with a host of refinements on the Fifa 10 mould, building on its solid foundations, adding the best bits of their Fifa World South Africa release, and introducing a host of new gameplay features that are geared towards realism. It’s arguably refinement at its best, and undoubtedly makes for the truest game of football to ever grace our screens.
However, Konami have gone for the total revolution approach with PES 2011, scrapping the last few years and working hard to change it into a more faithful representation of the beautiful game. PES is definitely the bigger change of the two, but it still ends up playing a pretty different game of football to FIFA.

Both games are great this year, so we’ve decided to compare them side-by-side to decide the match winner.
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