Pages

Saturday 4 February 2012

Demo Station



This week on Demo Station I look at the First Templar, Pixel Junk: Sidescroller and Under Seige. As if that wasn't enough for one week to follow up I am joined by Pixel Punk as we take on Syndicate's Co-op multiplayer, giving you two opinions for the price of one!


Syndicate (Xbox 360)






Shep: I have to say that I am not blown away by the demo we just played. It had a few good pieces such as being able to hack work stations and heal comrades without having to be next to them, and really putting the emphasis on working together as a unit to achieve a goal but next time I go through this demo I will definitely make sure that a full squad of 4 players is being utilised, Punk and I breezed through the majority of the demo only to suffer, through our lack of numbers, at the finale.


I also hated that there was not split screen option to play the game, which has been something which has bugged me throughout the current generation of consoles. All my greatest gaming memories involve me and my friends gathered around a single tv, sitting on the same sofa and playing games. Can we have that back please?


If I were to play this game it would only be for the co-op aspect, not the single player. I seriously doubt that this game would keep my attention for that long without somebody else to chat to and laugh with.




Pixel Punk: Sadly for Syndicate, the demo didn't convince me to purchase the full game upon it's release. There wasn't anything majorly wrong with it, but on the other hand it didn't do anything to surprise me and blow me away.

Given more time, and using a full squad of four, Syndicate could prove to be quite entertaining. However, most of that entertainment would come from the people I played co-op with.

One particular aspect I liked was being able to use the left bumper to hack consoles, doors, turrets,  and enemy armour from a reasonable distance, which reminded me a little of 'Section 9' from the 'Ghost in the Shell' anime series. 

All in all I would purely recommend renting this game only if you've got three friends willing to play with you, and if you're bored waiting for other four player shooters to come out.



The First Templar (Xbox 360)



I know this game came out in 2011, but the demo was re-released on Xbox Live this week so I had to play it. This game is still shit, but I suppose I had better expand on that.

First things first, and I hate to bring this up but, doesn't that box art just fill you with awe and confidence? I for one cannot wait to play a game about a knight, a chick in hooker-boots and a seemingly pale blue world!

Everything about this game exposed a different pet hate of mine when it comes to videogames. The facial animation was so bad that when characters were talking their mouths would just flap up and down rather than believably forming the words, and the flapping was so nondescript that at one point 3 characters were on screen conversing with one another and I had no Idea which one of them was supposed to be speaking at any given moment. At one point as conversation switched between one person and another speaking the character who had spoken first just froze in place, unblinking, unstirring, unemotional .... it was like having a Terminator staring at you. This was worse here than it was in The Darkness II demo.

Another thing which really annoyed me was that there was no difference between the way the two characters behaved or moved. One character carried a sword and a shield whilst the other was graced with just a sword, yet both played exactly the same. I may be wrong here, considering I personally have never handled either a sword, shield or a combination thereof, but I would assume that since the swords of the characters were of roughly equal dimensions they would be of roughly equal weight, so why was it that the character carrying the shield (carrying more weight!) could move just as quickly and be as agile as the character without? I'm fairly certain that the more weight you are carrying the quicker and more agile you would be.

With the Templar knights and the setting of Cyprus I was expecting Ezio to come flying in from a nearby rooftop leading a bunch of assassins but I wasn't that lucky. Instead I got to play a demo without any form of exploration off of the beaten path, that was buggy as hell with enemies freezing in the "scarecrow" pose mid battle just waiting to be hit and where the voice actors plainly didn't give a shit.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME.



Pixel Junk: Sidescroller (PS3)



The Pixel Junk games are always quirky, fun and good value for money. I highly recommend that people look to download and become addicted to simple game play, compelling music and the simplicity of these games.

Pixel Junk: Sidescroller is exactly what it says on the tin, a flying sidescroller based on those found way (way) back in the arcades of the early 90's that I played as a kid (I feel old now). The whole objective is to make it from the beginning of the level to the end without dying (which I failed at) whilst shooting down enemies en route.

I loved the visuals where the screen had an old school TV type curvature around the edges and the bright neon colours of the game play.

There isn't too much I can really say about this demo other than go out there and play it if you have a PS3.



Under Siege (PS3)


This poor game never stood a chance, I hate Real Time Strategy games, especially when they are on a console rather than PC. Given that the mouse is better suited for more accurate movement and the keyboard has more buttons, the transcription of a complex order system to be mapped onto the buttons of a controller means that you end up having to do stupid things like pressing O whilst holding X and R1. Whatever, I just continuously told my squadron to attack everything  in sight, which seemed to work.

Other than that there really isn't much I can say. Only buy this game if you love RTS games and don't own a decent gaming PC.


No comments:

Post a Comment