Review: New 'n' Tasty! Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

Developer - Oddworld Inhabitants/Just Add Water

Genre - Puzzle/Platformer

Platform - PS4

Release Date - 25/07/14

Price - £17.99

This is a game I was looking forward to more than any other before release. The first two Oddworld games on the PS1 were a big part of my gaming childhood. I believe I ended up trading a Pokémon Gold cartridge with a friend for Abe's Oddysee (when game trading was a thing you did with your friends and not for in store credit. God I'm old) and it was one of the most unique and difficult platformers I had played at that time. Also, you could make Abe fart on command so it was already scoring points with me. I certainly remember the excitement building up to Christmas when I knew I had Abe's Exoddus to open on the morning of the 25th.

New 'n' Tasty is a HD remake of the original Abe's Oddysee. I should be quick to point out that the game has been remade from the ground up, rather than going the remaster route that simply increases the resolution of the existing textures and keeps the gameplay identical to the original. I don't think you'd be able to get away with up-resing PS1 textures anyway.

The game stars the titular character, Abe. Abe is a Modokon floor waxer and employee of the year at the largest meat processing plant on Oddworld; Rupture Farms. The Mudokons are a tribe of blue/green skinned humanoid aliens, and the slave labour force of the Magog Cartel. Abe is introduced hanging in a dingy, steel, cylindrical cell awaiting his fate having been captured. Why is Abe being held?

Well, working late one night, presumably to win employee of the year two years running, Abe stumbles upon a meeting between his boss, Molluck the Glukkon, and the other Glukkons on the board. Turns out profits are slipping and the board are worried. However, Molluck has a plan to put Rupture Farms back in the black, by turning Abe and his chums into the next tasty treat. Abe decides he doesn't fancy that and goes on a quest to escape Rupture Farms, discover his destiny and eventually return to Rupture Farms with the goal of shutting the oppressive factory down.

The main goal of the game is to take Abe safely through each area while saving the other 299 Mudokon workers, upped from 99 in the original, held up in the factory. This is done with the game's patented GameSpeak mechanic. Abe interacts with his fellow work mates through the power of spoken word, issuing simple commands so his people don't end up on the Glukkon menu. A typical conversation looks like so:

Abe: "Hello"

Mudokon: "Hello"

Abe: "Follow Me"

Mudokon: "Ok"

GameSpeak can be used to both help and hinder your Mudokon brethren, depending on how nice or cruel you're feeling. You can liberate the slave labour force by leading them safely to bird portals and chanting near them in order to set your people free. You could do that, or you can have them walk into a mine, grinder or bottomless pit for laughs. Workers are both on the main path and in hidden areas so rescuing all factory employees is quite a task. Your stance and number of Mudokons you save will affect the ending you receive, however, so think about whether you want to be a messiah or an asshole.

The platforming is a fairly standard affair. Navigate Abe through each environment, avoiding environmental hazards such as pitfalls, mines, meat grinders, gun toting guards known as Sligs and other interesting creatures. The thing that sets Abe apart from other platforming heroes is he is fairly defenceless. Most areas will require stealth and timing to advance through them rather than running through each area and jumping on things. Running aimlessly through areas will get you killed. Repeatedly. This isn't to say Abe doesn't have any tricks up his sleeve.

As mentioned above, Abe can chant. Chanting can be used to open bird portals, but it can also be used to possess Sligs. If Abe chants long enough while a Slig is on screen, you take control. This is fairly useful as it means you can scout the path ahead, as well as clear out any other Sligs on your path. When de-possessed, your Slig explodes into a mist of blood and body parts. Nice.

The puzzle elements really come into play once you escape from Rupture Farms and enter the wild of Oddworld. The most common puzzle involves finding a password consisting of whistles and farts, which is chirped back to a native Mudokon via the power of GameSpeak in order for Abe to continue his journey. The trials of the Scrabania and Paramonia temples feature some testing environment navigation; trying to avoid contact with the wild beasts of Oddworld while lighting temple flintlocks.

While New 'n' Tasty is its own game, it's hard not to compare it to the original. In some obvious areas, it shines above it and in others it falls flat. The environments look fantastic in comparison to the original. I know that states the fucking obvious. A PS4 game should look better than a PS1 game, however, the beauty of the wild of Oddworld in contrast to the oppressive atmosphere of the factory environments are still intact and look better than ever. The character models are full 3D rather than the 2D sprites of the original and they look gorgeous. The animations of the characters also closely match the sprite animations so it doesn't look odd.

Another major difference is the scrolling of the games environments. In the original, each area was confined to its own individual screen. New 'n' Tasty does away with that and the environment scrolls with Abe's movement. This change was a bit jarring at first. I was nervous to advance further into an area when I knew there would be Sligs lurking but this became less of an issue the more I played.

A change brought in from exoddus is the inclusion of the "All o' ya" GameSpeak command. The original game would require you to speak to each Mudokon individually, meaning a lot of back and forth to drag your friends to bird portals. Shouting "All o' ya" alerts every Mudokon on the screen at the same time, meaning you can issue one command to a group.

The exoddus inspired QuikSave feature is also a great addition. The original game was unforgiving and certain environments required exploration and trial and error in order to get to the next checkpoint. Death resulted in you starting a section all over again and could become quite frustrating. QuikSave creates a temporary checkpoint wherever you are at that particular time. If you die, you can load that QuikSave and solve that particular puzzle from that point, rather than doing everything all over again.

Possession is also easier. Once a Slig is on your screen, it is locked into the visible area while Abe chants, unlike the original in which Sligs could move freely from screen to screen if it could navigate across multiple screens. I don't know how I feel about this change. I feel certain possessions I managed wouldn't have been possible in the original and made a particular section easier for me.

I am fairly certain the soundtrack is exactly the same as the original and I feel that this was the right choice. The audio and the environments just go together like hand in glove and having it completely redone or remixed wouldn't have felt right. In fact, I'm listening to the soundtrack as I write the review. As soon as the game started and I heard the music for Rupture Farms, it brought a gargantuan grin to my face. Additional idle dialogue has been added for the Mudokon workers and Slig guards which bring added personality and humour to the game.

However, there have been audio changes I am not too happy with, namely the change to the way both Scrabs and Paramites now sound. The howls of Scrabs and screeches of Paramites have been replaced and they sound neutered, less powerful creatures, especially Scrabs. The original sounds put fear into me and, to me, were iconic and instantly recognisable. Had they been played to me without any context, my mind would instantly think "Scrab" or "Paramite". Although they are still to be feared if you encounter them, they feel less intimidating and that's a real shame to me.

I do unfortunately have a few gripes with this remake over the original, the main gripe being the control scheme. Abe's default movement is now running rather than walking. In order to get Abe to walk, you have to half tilt the analogue stick. I have always found this a massive pain in the arse in games and have never liked it. I don't understand why they couldn't have kept it at holding a shoulder button to run and have Abe walk by default.

Movement also feels less precise than the original. I feel this is more down to me being used to the old way Abe moved, i.e the position Abe finished in would be down to where he was on a grid, in comparison to him now being to stop in any position in the world. This change led to me being splattered by meat grinders more often than I would like as I wouldn't know where Abe would finish when I centred the analogue stick. I also presume this change is down to the environment scrolling. This imprecision also means you won't know if you're too far to the left or right of a ledge to hoist up to it.

Jumping has also been changed and I feel this is for the worse. The original had a jump button that would advance you 3 spots on the floor grid. The up button on the d-pad was used to hoist up to higher ledges. The jump button now defaults to hoisting. Pressing the button and then nudging the analogue stick to the left or right quickly after now results in a hop. This change also resulted in a few unnecessary deaths. Considering you can hoist using up on the analogue stick, I really don't understand this change. And again, because of the imprecision of positioning in comparison to the original, hitting buttons in the wrong order could result in unnecessary death.

For example, there is a section towards the end of the game where the floor pattern is mine, mine, meat grinder above, mine, mine, meat grinder above, mine mine. To clear this section, you have to hop 3 times between the mines and time it so you don't get ground up. To make things worse, there is a timer in the background that, if it hits zero, will blow everything up and instakill you. Now, because of the imprecision of the positioning, I died many times because Abe's head clipped the grinder while it was fully up. This situational death would never have happened in the original game which displeased me no end.

UXB mines are also incredibly frustrating now. UXB mines involve Abe having to sit next to them and slap the button on top of it when it's green to deactivate it. If it's red while Abe slaps it, he's turned into puree. While the original had differing patterns between its green and red states, all UXB mines in New 'n' Tasty follow the same pattern. Despite this, they are incredibly easy to fuck up and probably resulted in half my deaths. Now, this isn't due to my "lack of skill". There were plenty of times where the light on top of the mine was still green at the point it was slapped and I'd still die. Not to say there weren't times when I mistimed it. But it felt like more often than not, I'd have timed it correctly only to be blown up.

I also encountered 2 strange bugs through my playthrough. One involved Elum literally falling through the floor on a pulley elevator while it was moving up. Killing myself didn't bring Elum back so I had to start the large section all over again. This only happened once. Another involved me not being able to hoist myself up a clearly "hoistable" ledge. I had to use a run and jump onto the ledge to pull myself up. I then jumped back down from that platform only to be able to hoist onto that ledge properly again. I know that New 'n' Tasty has been patched since but I don't know if these issues have been reported, never mind fixed.

Overall, despite the gripes I had with the game, I still enjoyed the experience and have played it more than twice. The second playthrough felt better but this is more an account of the first time. The game is beautiful, the cutscenes are great and despite the issues with controls, I feel this is more because I was so used to the original control scheme. If you have not played the original games, these may not be issues to you and you can enjoy it for what it is. At £17.99, it's well worth the purchase for a classic made new.

Review: Demon's Souls

Get on the Soul Train



Being a dirty Brit sometimes has its disadvantages. For example, Demon's Souls was released in Japan and the US quite a long time before it had even been considered for a release in the EU region. Having bought the game in April whilst on a trip to Houston, I have only just managed to pop the disk into my PS3 very recently, and I regret not doing it sooner.

Part of the reason for this is that the games supposed epic difficulty kind of put me off. I am the kind of gamer that has a habit of attempting to snap my controller due to me perceiving a games imbalance towards me, the player (see the Fat Princess review). However, to my delight I discovered that Demon's Souls cannot be placed into the "What the fuck!?! That's Bollocks!!!" category.

Demon's Souls puts you in the position of an unnamed hero attempting to cleanse the kingdom of Boletaria from a horde of soul eating demons. These demons come in all shapes and sizes and are generally quite a nasty bunch. Your hero ventures through five varying zones, each with their individual grunts and boss demons.

You can pick from 10 classes that range from magic users to melee whores. Each start with their own specific equipment and soul level. Your character can be customized in terms of looks, and through stat points. You obtain souls throughout each area in Boletaria by killing monsters. These souls can then be used to upgrade weapons, repair armor, buy magic and miracle spells and upgrade your characters stat points.

Each time you spend souls on stats, your soul level increases, as does the soul price for your next stat upgrade regardless of what stat you upgrade. This means you have to put a fair bit of thought into what strengths and weaknesses you want your character to have, making the RPG element of the game quite deep and interesting. The equipment your character uses is also of importance. Should your character become overburdened wearing heavy gear, this affects your ability to move, sprint and dodge attacks so picking what you do and don't use could make the difference between you dodging a sword swipe or getting it shoved so far up your arse you'll need to invest in incontinence armor.

Those who say Demon's Souls is hard are both right and wrong. A better description would be that Demon's Souls is not for the stupid. If you attempt to run in Dynasty Warriors style, cutting through each enemy you encounter, you are going to find that your stamina will run out very quickly and swords a plenty will be stuffed quickly into your abdomen, face, legs and chest. To avoid this, other players throughout the world can leave you hints through messages on the floor. You can also touch bloodstains which replay the last moments of your fellow players. By doing so you can make sure you are fully prepared for advancing further into the level.

You need to get a feel for how your enemy moves, attacks and the equipment they have and then make a decision on how to take them out, otherwise you will be set on fire, impaled by arrows and spears, and each boss demon will take you out quicker than you can say antidisestablishmentarianism. This brings me to the main element of the Demon's Souls experience... Death.

Demon's Souls is one of very few games this generation where death actually means something. Unlike most titles that simply plonk you back to the last checkpoint you reached, dieing in Demon's Souls turns you into soul form. This means half your health bar, you start at the beginning of the level regardless of how far you got and all the enemies you've killed respawn. Wait, I haven't finished... You also lose all the souls you've earned whilst playing through and makes enemies harder to kill. That's right, it makes the game HARDER.

More importantly though, death is half of the experience of Demon's Souls. With each death, you learn something new about the game. Within the first world, I got a bit too overconfident (and ignored the floor warnings from other players) in my abilities and entered an area I shouldn't. This resulted in me being instakilled by a red eyed knight, losing 7000 souls and being reduced to 50% health in the 1 second process. It taught me never to ignore messages again. It also taught me how to fight those particular enemies in the future. The best thing about dying in Demon's Souls? It never feels cheap or unfair. Unlike in a lot of games where you can get half your health taken away by a cheap unaviodable attack, most attacks in Demon's Souls can be avoided with a timely dodge. But when you get hit, your health bar feels it. So I went back to soul form and tried to find someone to help or destroy a demon. However, playing in soul form isn't as bad as it sounds.

You are essentially told that the only way to regain your living form is to slay boss demons throughout the five worlds you will visit. While this is one method, it isn't the only one, and this is where the multiplayer elements of Demon's Souls come into focus. There is an item which brings you back to the land of the living, however these are rare and should only be used in certain circumstances. You can also leave a summon stone in the world and allow other players to call you into their world as a blue phantom.

If you successfully help them complete an objective, then you are returned to your world revived and with a helping of bonus souls. You can also invade another players world as a black phantom and kill them to return to human form. I'm the one usually on the receiving end of a black phantom ass whooping, rather than dealing them out but I can't always be a winner.

Another star of the Demon's Souls show are the environments in which you play through. The worlds in which you play are atmospheric and bleak and really do capture the sense of you being the only hero left in this world plagued with monsters. It also adds to that paranoia factor as you feel that an enemy could ambush you any moment, meaning I keep my shield up for the majority of the time I play. These worlds also have multiple paths and reward you for exploring the world, by offering you new items and equipment, or giving you harder enemies to fight.

The main attraction of Demon's Souls though are the boss fights. The bosses are huge in comparison to your character and fighting against them is brutal and painfully difficult. They will kill you in one hit if you're not prepared. But remember what I said up there? Each death is a lesson? With each death, you begin to understand how and when to attack. When a boss monster eventually falls, there is no greater sense of "I've done it!!!" in any game. I had that kind of feeling when I first completed Final Fantasy VII but I've felt a sense of accomplishment twice in one day by playing Demon's Souls.

Demon's Souls is the most unique game of this generation. It's unforgiving, it's punishing, and it will sure as hell piss you the fuck off, but the sense of achievement this game can bring is comparable to no other game on the market at this present time. Even creating the most epic level on LittleBigPlanet does not beat the satisfaction of making a Tower Knight falling on its arse and pounding it in the head until it dissolves away into the ether. Don't let the "hard" difficulty put you off. It's the best game I've played all year, and I regret not importing it earlier. I wholly recommend the Demon's Souls experience to anybody who enjoys a challenge and really enjoys gaming.

Fat Princess Review

This review is coming fresh off half an hour of infuriating frustration of playing Fat Princess, and as I've really tried to think about writing something for the blog, I really had no motivation what so ever UNTIL about 40 minutes ago.

I am going to start off this review by saying that Fat Princess is not a bad game. It is, in fact, one of the most fun and enjoyful multiplayer experiences I've probably ever experienced on a console. Fat Princess is a downloadable capture the flag style game exclusive to the PSN, in which two infamous team colours battle it out to rescue their damsel in distress by carrying her from the opposing teams castle dungeon to their throne, but with an added twist that a team can feed their royal captive cake to fatten her up, and thus making her heavy and harder to shift. The game supports up to 32 player madness with a multitude of game modes and a single player "story" mode and around 5-6 maps.

The game is smeared with cutesy graphics, which is surprising when the menu's and trophy titles have a schoolboy sense of humour which I laughed at when I first launched the game. To select the single player game modes you have to pick the option of "Play with Yourself". Need I say more? The game adds more surprises when you discover that the cute graphics is just a ruse when you see cartooney dismembered body parts and blood splattering all over the place. Yes, behind the cute cartoon exterior is the cold heart of a killer game. The commentary is also hilarious with quotes like "They're in r base, killing r dewds" in a John Cleese-esque accent. This game is in a far away place from Animal Crossing, and thank fuck for that!

Each player starts off as a common villager which has the ability to slap people to stun them, but can become one of 5 distinct roles by picking up hats dispensed by medieval hat making machinery. Each role has their own merits and shortcomings but more importantly, roles that will suit a play style of most gamers. Each class can also be upgraded to gain new weaponry and abilities.

• The Warrior:- Melee class which has the most amount of health and attack power in the game. Upgraded warrior gets a Guan Yu style spear.
  
• The Priest: - Healer class which can heal and drain the life of others.
• The Worker: - Resource gatherer that can cut down trees and hack through rocks to help build upgrades for hat machines and the castle. Upgraded worker gets bombs.
  
• The Ranger: - Class that can use a bow to maim from long range. Gains a rifle once upgraded.
  
• The Mage: - Spell caster that can deal large amounts of fire damage, and once upgraded can freeze enemies.

Each class within the game is necessary enough to be included, the worker class being of the upmost importance at the start of a round. The classes are well rounded and each is individualised enough to make teamwork possible. Some classes can't work effectively without the support of the others which is a great gameplay mechanic, as it should encourage a mixing of classes so that a team of warriors aren't running around losing. Classes can also be changed on the fly by picking up a different hat so if players become bored of one playing style, they can switch to another at the touch of a button.

There are around 4 multiplayer modes. Capture the princess, snatch and grab, team deathmatch and a football blood bath. The single player mode is nothing more than a tutorial which helps the player discover what class suits them. It does have a story element presented in a fairy tale book about 2 princesses that can't stop eating magical cake. I'm sure that's every womans excuse. The story mode isn't really worth playing unless you're a trophy whore and want a single bronze trophy for beating it. The backbone of Fat Princess is in the multiplayer mode, which up until 2 weeks ago, wasn't even working properly. A patch however, has sorted connection issues out so Fat Princess is now playable online.

Despite the multiple gaming options, the real game play mode is capture the princess. A quest which involves capturing your princess from the opposing castle and placing her fat ass on your throne, and keeping her and the opposing teams princess locked in her cage long enough to win the round. Players can also aid by escorting you by pressing the O button. This increases the speed in which the carrier runs, and can determine victory or death. Before all of this happens, workers have to gather enough wood and gems to build upgrades such as castle doors, improvements to hat machines and a catapult to help throw you deep into the enemies castle. Teams can also choose to capture outposts scattered around the map which is vital, as outposts provide health to players by entering the fort door, and are often placed near vital resources such as trees and rocks, as workers can walk right into outposts to deliver resources to the teams stockpile.

Overall, the game experience is enjoyable and fun and is definately worth the £11.99 and hard drive space. So why the infurating frustration? There is only 2 elements of the game that make it so wardrobe punchingly death screamingly annoying. The players, and the AI. If you are at the unlucky end of the internet spectrum, you can get drawn into a team of complete retards who couldn't tell their arse from a Fat Princess. I have joined a game that was about to restart the round and lost the game within a minute. A single minute. 60 seconds. about 30 of those painful seconds was the countdown to us losing. Death scream I did. Another thing I've noticed is that the majority of players don't fatten up the princess. It's a major gameplay mechanic and it helps you win!! Use it!! Fatten that bitch up!! In all the online games I've played I seem to be the only player that feeds her cake and others ignore it. It makes no sense to me, unless I'm missing something.

And another thing. Why do you have to include AI in a multiplayer game? You know I told you not to play the single player story? It's because the AI are moronic. If Fat Princesses AI was embodied in a person, it would have down syndrome. They dont try and complete the goal of capturing the princess. Titan Studios developed an AI team of score whores who only care about killing other players and AI. This is not the objective of capture the princess. Even when you order the AI to follow you they will follow you until they spot an enemy, and then they will score whore it up. You can order them to help you jump in a catapult, but once you grab the princess, none of your assembled team will escort you back to the castle. It took me half an hour to complete the last story mission. I was not amused. Another tenure of gameplay saw me being the only one to capture the princess but by the time that happened the other team had their princess. The battle for the opposing teams princess lasted 20 minutes, and we we're almost the victors. Then my team went into score whore mode, abandoned the objective and we lost. I falcon punched my wardrobe.

You see, the success of multiplayer games of this nature are determined by the community who pick it up. I mean there are games, such as CounterStrike, where one good player can completely dismantle a team, but Fat Princess is not one of these games. Fat Princess requires intricate and decisive teamwork to complete the objective. If there is little to no teamwork within the group to which you are assigned, you're destined for constant failure and misery.

I know you will always get newbs in any form of multiplayer experience, but a whole team? A team of people who cannot work together? A team of people who don't know what they're doing? It's a gamers nightmare I'm certain. There is the option of swapping teams (aptly named "team sucks?") but thats a defeatest attitude. Sometimes all it takes is a couple of experienced players to join and the roles reverse but sometimes that just doesn't happen, and you're stuck with wheelchair players for another half an hour until the map changes. But this problem is inherant in all team based mutiplayer games. TF2 is another perfect example of how things can go badly when you get drawn onto "that" team. The team that doesn't know what they're doing. Because it doesn't matter how good you are. If you're on a bad team, you're going to look shit.

Despite this, the game is worth the money because of the satisfaction you get when you get drawn onto a team that does work together. When you're the one that sits on the top of the scoreboard because you have helped your team achieve the goal. That's gaming satisfaction at its finest.

Metal Gear Solid 4 Review

I've wanted to write a review for MGS4 for a while, as I've seen so many high scores around popular gaming journalism sites and, if I'm completely honest, I really didn't see what they did. Maybe it's because they'd played it whilst it was still in production. Who knows? Now before any readers who have just discovered this blog (and if you have, you have more time on your hands than I do) and decide to belittle me for what I'm about to write, I have played every single MGS title, 1 through 4, back to back. I've played through each title at least 3 times just to get to grips with the story arc and I have found 3 subliminal messages that Kojima has tried to push since the first installment of the franchise.

1. Nuclear weapons are bad.
2. Walking bipedal tanks created to launch nuclear weapons are also bad.
3. War... ugh.. good god y'all... what is it good for?

OK, maybe the last point is a little off, as if there were no war, Kojima wouldn't be sitting on the throne of AK's he's created through the means of his vast currency collection off the back of the franchise. And also I've deviated from my original point. MGS1 was a masterpiece and has shaped the way some modern games are being developed. 2 was a storyline shambles with more plot twists than the ending of a saw film. 3 was back on track with amazing boss fights and a camo system that worked. MGS4 was just.... meh. It's the only word I can use to describe the hype and 10/10's the game has cheekily managed to score.

Let me start off by saying that MGS4 is one of the primary reasons I decided to buy a PS3 instead of a 360 ( that and I'm a Sony fanboy) and on my first play through, none of the cut scenes were skipped. My wallet even went out of its way to shed out an extra £30 to buy the collectors edition, featuring a making of blu ray and a plastic old snake figurine. That's how awesome I thought this experience was going to be. And to my excitement and joy it was delivered to my door a day earlier than release. I was the first person I knew of that was going to play MGS4. Insert the disk into my PS3 drive and I'm greeted by an old man in a black PVC bondage suit smoking a cigarette, and I have to watch this for half an hour while 4 gig of game data is saved onto my PS3's hard drive, while all sorts of health warnings are thrown at me every 10 seconds.

Still not one to be disappointed, I waited for Old Snake to finish taking the last drags of his cig so I could finally get my hands on the game, and seeing as I was going to do this properly, it took me around another 15 minutes until I actually got to control wheelchair bound action hero snake, and in all fairness to him, he can still shoot and break peoples faces thanks to his muscle PVC getup. I moved snake a few meters when the screen fades to black and another 2 minute long cut scene cuts in. My excitement is beginning to drain a little now. Cut scene ends and I begin to move him a few meters again. Oh wait... another small cut scene! The infamous REX ripoffs jump into action, my excitement ramps up a little again. I get to handle snake again for another 2 minutes, moving in and out of ruined buildings to avoid the watchful CCTV camera of the Gekko units. I get spotted and run for a door way and another fucking 20 minute cutscene introducing snakes octocamo. The worst element of this is the fact that this could have easily been made into an interactive setpiece in which you try to escape from the clutches of a maurading Gekko trying to turn you into old exploding body parts.

I mean I can understand that MGS has always been a story driven game but this is only the prelude to the main game, and so far, out of 30 to 40 minutes I've been able to hold a controller, I've only been able to make use of it for 3 out of 30. However, things are about to get a lot worse. I am now introduced to the events prior to snakes mission, and the mission briefing, a recurring theme before each act in which the plot so far is conversed between snake and Otacon for around another half an hour. But at least you can use Mk II while they're talking to find extra batteries and other hidden extras right? For 10 minutes out of the full briefing maybe. Take your favourite MGS and then times the cut scenes and codec chatter by at least 2 and then you have the full scope of how little play time you will have, considering the game can be completed in 2 hours minus the story.

My main gripes with the game, however, is the use of the tagline "Tactical Espionage Action" when you will be doing almost no sneaking whatso ever. Unlike MGS1 where sneaking was almost paramount until you completed the game and got either the stealth camo or bandana, within around 20 minutes of playing MGS4 you are given a tranquilizer gun that practically has an infinate ammo scattered around each act so instead of shimmying around ledges and using the octocamo to great effect, you'll be sitting in an open spot picking off guards with a tranq gun dart to the face and running to the next cut scene point. The textures look good until you get first person mode and get a good close inspection to find really blotchy, almost bitmap like patterns, and this ugliness translates to the octocamo suit when taking on the properties of the texture.

The amount of playing time is extremely disproportionate to the rediculously long cut scenes. And my biggest gripe of them all, is the fact that the only good bits of MGS4 were already shown off at various conferences during its development, and none of these elements were changed. Anyone remember the epic Raiden vs Vamp stand off trailer shown at E3 a few years back? That was in MGS4 in its entirety and nothing about it was edited or changed, so it spoilt the whole battle. The boss battles are unimaginative, the team obviously trying to replicate the success of the Cobra unit, and failing dramatically. Who gives a shit if they're all based on real life models? They aren't epic boss fights, end of, although shooting a crazy bitch in the face isn't all that bad actually.

Oh, and my major gripe is the whole of act 3. In which you will spend half of your time following a resistance agent, clearing his path of PMC soldiers so he can lead you to the resistance HQ. As stupid as some game mechanics are, nothing beats shooting a PMC while the agent looks in his direction, and then looks puzzled when the soldier drops to the floor in a "What was that noise?" MGS1 style. The second half of the act is you on the back of a bike shooting unmanned flying units topped off by a wank boss battle.

Despite this, there are a few redeeming qualities about the game. This section contains a few spoilers so if you havn't had the privelage of playing and don't want to know some of the plot, do not look here!!!

During the cut scenes you are given prompts to press the R1 button when a character mensions something memorable. And if you dare press R1 you are treated to some flashback images reminiscent of the old MGS games to tie plot points together. The character models are incredibly life like, stylish and will be difficult to match (until uncharted 2 comes out anyway). So good infact that when watching a cut scene my mum burst into the room and asked what I was watching, presuming it was a TV show. When graphics can fool your mum, you know they're good! The shooting element works well. Infact if anything it works a little too well as it completely cancels out the need to use stealthy tactics.

The only thing that redeems MGS4 in my eyes is the whole of act 4 in which you return to Shadow Moses all over again. With 1 being my favourite of all MGS games, I almost exploded in my pants when entering a full HD shadow moses complex. My pants explosion complete, however, when I discover that I can pilot metal gear REX, forcefeeding suicide Gekko units bullets and rockets whilst running through a crumbling tunnel of death, and to top this amazing act off, i get to kick the face off of liquid ocelot's metal gear RAY Bruce Lee style AND you get to watch Grey Fox impersonator #2 Raiden almost get crushed to death. Amazing. And the final battle between ocelot and snake is also actually awe inspiring. Almost a perfect good vs evil final fight. And I was also genuinely shocked at the return of Big Boss at the end, and him personally terminating Zero's life.

Overall, the game is slow until act 4 and then it suddenly hits the form that MGS is known for. As much as I hate the lengthy cut scenes, the lack of stealth mechanics, act 3 and all my other nitpicks, Acts 4 and 5 and the ending pretty much make MGS4 a worthwhile experience and as much as I rant about the cut scenes, they're actually executed quite well and it does give you an insight into the thoughts and emotions of the characters, and it is an emotionally exhausting ride from start to finish. Worth it if you're a true Metal Gear Solid fan. If you aren't there isn't much point in looking at the back of the box.

First Post Up!

As the first blog entry into this series of nonsensical rants, raves, and occasional views and reviews, I may as well explain who I am and what this lark is all about. This rather pitiful blog attempt is by a person who likes to be known as S2H (my mother doesn't call me that though), from a rainy little town in Devon, UK, who spends most of his evenings either on the internet or sat infront of his TV with a gamepad nestled in his greasy little hand.

This blog will share my passion (and anger) for the industry that I hold close to my chest, and the industry that holds me close to its arse as it seems to frequently shit all over me. Overall I will be posting my thoughts and feelings over new announcements, revelations and no doubt some leaks over games, hardware and anything else the industry decides to spit out. I will also share my opinions on some hot topics, such as the ever popular console flame war, the motion control fiasco and occasional reviews on some of my favourite titles from recent history.

May this blog be read by few, and payed attention to by even less.