Demo Station

This week was a small one for demos on PSN and Xbox Live, but here I will still give the my opinion on what dropped this week in this late edition of Demo Station.

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!

The Infinite Stream 02/02/2012

The Infinite Stream is where we post about items that are news-worthy but not necessarily require their own full article.  Check after the jump for news from 02/02/2012!

Demo Station

This is a section of the site where we look at the demos that are made available during the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Marketplace, Wii Shop and eShop updates from the previous week before singling out those worthy of praise or humiliation.

XBLA Treasure! - Doritos Crash Course

If you're anything like me, you will always love a bargain. I'm going to tell you about an awesome arcade game available on the Xbox Live Marketplace that everyone should download.

Infinity Feed's Top Video Games of 2011

Those game making people outdid themselves this year, giving us so many amazing games to play. So we at InfinityFeed have all picked our favourites, and figured we would share our thoughts.  See our picks after the jump!

A look at the 360 Avatar Marketplace

Today I'll be looking into a personal little gripe of mine, the Avatar Marketplace on the Xbox 360.

Game Styles on the marketplace

I guess you might say its a little geeky to care about my Xbox avatar but I see it as a fun little feature of the Xbox dashboard. However I also begrudge using Microsoft points to buy items or clothing for my little character when I can use them on a decent arcade title or expansion for a game.

Marvel Double Shot: Captain America vs Thor

*Pixel Punk has signed in*

This entry will be a Marvel double shot of two video games based on Marvel films.

Now I can admit that a lot of movie based games have had a long history of being terrible.....couple that with the fact that SEGA haven't been at their best for a long time and there isn't much to get excited about!

I started playing Captain America first which I blasted through within a few sessions and then I moved onto Thor....for the life of me I wish I had done it the other way around.

Battlefield 3 vs Modern Warfare 3

Battlefield 3 vs Modern Warfare 3

By Bieber

It's that time of year again when the latest batch of first person shooters are released, just in time for the festive season. As usual there are two main contenders, Activision's Modern Warfare 3 and EA's Battlefield 3. These two titles have had massive advertising campaigns and boast a host of new and improved features and gameplay but do they deliver? Well lets pit them both against each other and see if we cannot separate the noob from the vet.

The single player experience of FPS's has been neglected of late in favour of an enhanced multiplayer experience. Do either of these games break the trend?

The Modern Warfare 3 campaign mode tries to be an epic action story but ultimately fails to deliver. The game attempts to build tension through different mission types and game play styles, but isn't at all engaging and I found myself not caring about the fate of the characters. Activision tried to make the player feel like a badass right out of a Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie, but due the inept enemy AI most of the time the player is left feeling more like Reb Brown.

The Battlefield 3 campaign mode on the other hand is much more engaging, I found myself truly caring about the characters from the get go. The in mission banter between NPC's allows you to get to know the characters, reminiscent of the scene where Ripley meets Hicks and the rest of the marines in 'Aliens' for the first time, leading you to actually care about your team when under fire from the rather intelligent enemies. The gameplay is mixed up from time to time allowing you to be an airplane gunner or driving a tank, this succeeds where Modern Warfare 3 failed to deliver.

Modern Warfare 3's online experience is disappointing, feeling more like an expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2. Some things have changed slightly, such as the rewards system being split into offensive and defensive rewards, however this doesn't offer much new over its predecessor. The survival mode is back, sans-zombies. This time around the player is pitted against waves of increasingly difficult enemies, similar to Gears of War's Horde mode. While this is good it isn't anywhere near as ground breaking as the original Zombie Survival mode.

Battlefield 3's multiplayer experience imposes a bigger emphasis on working as a team opposed to running off on your own trying to be a hero. While it does not have a plethora of extra modes the customisation options available allowing for a more unique experience, keeping players engrossed and wanting to play more to unlock new content. This feels like a totally new experience rather than an expansion to previous content.

The graphics of Modern Warfare 3 are not much of a leap forward from its predecessor. The character models and environments still look great but the graphics fail when it comes to the backgrounds. This isn't so much of a problem when fully engaged in the action but once noticed it becomes hard to ignore, disengaging the player from the experience.

The graphics of Battlefield 3 are very detailed and compliment the intended game style very well. However this realistic approach can occasionally have a detrimental effect on game play as sections can sometimes become too dark to see the enemy. Despite this the game looks stunning and you may find yourself staring off into the distance.

In conclusion Battlefield 3 rules supreme over Modern Warfare 3. Whereas the latter lacks in depth, graphics and innovative ideas, Battlefield 3 delivers in all these areas, only lacking the extra modes. Clearly InfinityFeed recommends Battlefield 3 over its competitor as it is much greater value for money, rather than feeling like a glorified expansion pack. 

Batman Arkham City Review

Batman: Arkham City is one of the most anticipated releases of the pre-Christmas game surge due to hit the high streets around the world alongside the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, to name but a few, all vying for shelf space it will take something special to keep Arkham City’s disc spinning in your disc drive for longer than a week.

For the most part Arkham City is the same as Arkham Asylum in terms of visuals, audio and fighting mechanics. This is by no means a bad thing as Arkham Asylum was met to critical acclaim in these fields. The main change between Arkham City and its predecessor is the shift from linear game play with room for exploration to a more sandbox setting. The feeling of openness in Arkham Asylum is true testament to how well designed the game was as it was extremely linear with a few hidden baubles for you to go off the beaten track to find. Yes, as Batman you had to go from A to B with nothing much to do in-between but you had the choice of how to get there. This does not ring true for Arkham City.

Arkham City takes you, as Batman, and dumps you slap bang in the middle of the newly created segregated portion of Gotham known as Arkham City. At first this can be a little imposing as you get the sense of being Batman, lost behind enemy lines where pretty much everyone wants your head. Arkham City is very much a living, breathing city, albeit one based on the incarceration of its inhabitants, with enemies and NPC’s reacting in different ways to actions happening around them. I can recall once witnessing, whilst perched atop a gargoyle naturally, two inmates exercising together, one doing sit ups whilst the other held his feet down. Arkham City is as much of a character in Batman: Arkham City as Rapture is in Bioshock, you get glimpses of what the buildings were once used for (such as courthouses, theatres and steel mills) when they still belonged in Gotham and you now know that they are filled to the rafters with those for whom the prison was built.

Getting around Arkham City is one factor of the game where the game falls flat. Commuting around in Grand Theft Auto (except for Grand Theft Auto IV) was tolerable because it was interesting and ultimately fun as the game allowed you to pull handbrake turns in a mule. In Arkham City travelling around the city is far from fun, feeling more like a chore than anything else. This can most probably be attributed to the size of the city and the lack of motorised transport available to Batman resulting in any attempt to travel across the city taking much longer than would be considered necessary.

The addition of a playable Catwoman was a masterstroke by the folks at Rocksteady. She controls the same as Batman but plays in a much different way. Catwoman is inferior to Batman in terms of physical strength and technology, requiring the player to become more adept at hand-to-hand combat and rely heavily on stealth, but as she is more agile than Batman she seems to move much quicker than our hero. She also has the ability to cling to certain ceilings and crawl cat-like through much smaller gaps than Batman can, opening more potential routes and hidden areas available only to Catwoman. The fact that she also uses her trademark sex appeal during fights, kissing enemies to distract them, adds to the feeling that Rocksteady know and understand the character, her motivations and, more importantly, her mannerisms.

Many of Batman’s rogue gallery are also present within the city with my only criticism being that there are perhaps a few too many crammed in when fewer, with acknowledging nods to others ala Arkham Asylum, would have sufficed. Too often there was a feeling that the story was being disjointed and split into very noticeable chapters where Arkham Asylum’s story flowed believably between the chapters to the point where you didn’t notice that a new member of the rogue gallery was the current focus of the plot, this lesson seemingly forgotten between games.

Arkham City is a fantastic game packed to bursting point with side missions, collectables and challenges to keep gamers occupied for weeks, for those who are easily distracted (i.e. me!) hours will be spent doing everything they can find to do before continuing with the next chapter in the story. Even once completed there is a plethora of challenge modes, collectables and side quests to do giving you plenty of bang for your buck. Visually it is stunning, Arkham looks and feels like it could be a very real threat to those who don the cowl unprepared for what lies ahead and this is further enhanced by the accompanying audio and musical score to really hammer home Batman’s feelings of apprehension.

Overall Arkham City is Arkham Asylum only bigger, better, more polished and well deserving of the 9 out of 10 score I was going to give it ... until I reached the ending. Like a good anecdote which should gradually build into a joke deserving of the prolonged build up the game was building up nicely only for the punch line to be forgotten to the disappointment of those whom had been gripped only to be let down at the finale. The ending was such a disappointment for me that I verbally exclaimed “WTF? Bullcrap!” and immediately docked the game a review point for the ending. Petty? Maybe, but I bought this game, played and loved every minute of it only for it to let me down in the most epic of ways imaginable at the finish line.

Score: 8/10