Need for Speed: SHIFT Review

October 16, 2009 | Jay | 8 Comments

Need for Speed has come a long ways since its introduction back in the PS1 days. There have been many games since, 13 titles total, and many of them have a distinct theme or style. When Underground came out, the series really spun into popularity.

It wasn’t until Pro Street came out that people started looking down at the series because the game returned to it’s more realistic racing roots. Gone were the storylines and open-world cruising. The iteration, Undercover, went back to the open world racing and whatnot of Need for Speeds before it because of the critical negativity Pro Street received.

But this review isn’t about those games, this one is about the newest addition to the franchise, SHIFT. Apparently, SHIFT was supposed to have been a sequel to Pro Street originally, but due to the game’s previously mentioned less-than-stellar critic reviews, the name was dropped and SHIFT took its placed.

This is their first title that delves into the simulation aspects of the racing genre, leaving the arcade style of racing behind. Overall, this was definitely a good decision, as the game is more suited for my tastes. It’s not without its problems, though, as I will get more into detail from here.

Visually, the game looks amazing. It may not be the best looking, but it’s definitely up there! The cars are very detailed and the lighting just pops out at you. Sense of depth is very good as well and the motion blur you get as you’re speeding down a straightaway at 130+MPH really gives you a sense of speed (though, driving that fast in real life doesn’t result in that effect, but it still looks cool).

As you’ve seen from many trailers in the past, the cockpit view is superb. It really gives you a connection to the car and effectively makes it an extension of you. What’s really cool is when you do cockpit upgrades, you can actually see the roll cage and whatnot in there as well. Since it’s dynamic, the view responds to your acceleration, turning and braking so you feel like you’re actually driving it.

When you get in a wreck (and a lot of us almost definitely will), your helmet will shake violently and gray out the screen. When your senses come to, you can see the cracks in the glass and the damage done to your front end, both obstructing your view. There were moments for me when it got bad enough that I had to switch to an external view! The game also allows flipping over, so you can either cause, or be involved, in a spectacular wreck with a car flipping wildly on the road.

The tracks, a lot of them actual racetracks, are highly detailed and feel very much alive, with onlookers watching the races and photographing you as you pass by. If you’re inclined to do so, you can go ahead and snap photos of your car yourself! Some of the tracks have been modified in the backdrop slightly, so they aren’t 100% faithful reproductions of the tracks themselves, but the layouts are the same.

The visuals aren’t without their flaws, though. Occasionally, so much will be happening at once that the frame rate can drop to a very noticeable chugging. It’s not that frequent, but it is a nuisance when it does happen. The rear view mirrors also hold a few issues, as you watch your opponent behind you, you will notice a lot of pop-out in the background as things like signs and overpasses disappear. I mean, it’s not a huge deal, as you’ll be paying more attention to what’s in front of you. There is also some occasional pop-in as well, usually with billboards that feature in-game ads, but its not noticeable, as I’ve only actually seen that happen to me once.

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Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

September 29, 2009 | Trev | 3 Comments

Sorry it’s taken me a while to get this review up but blame Royal Mail for always being on strike, oh, and the fact I just can’t put this down. As I mentioned back in my demo impressions this … Read More

King of Fighters XII Review

September 4, 2009 | Darrin | 3 Comments

Pros

• Beautiful HD hand drawn art: This isn’t 3D models with stylized cartoon rendering, this is authentic classically animated 2D art and animation. 2D art used to be the norm, and it was always limited by the 2D … Read More

Psyclone TouchCharge Kit for PS3 Review

August 21, 2009 | T0SH | 6 Comments

My friend told me this was on clearance at BestBuy for only $25. Which is a pretty good deal, normally they run $50 at Amazon. So I decided to try it out. It comes with 2 adapters which easily connect to the DualShock 3 / Sixaxis. But if you want extra adapters they are NOT sold separately so that kinda sucks.

Style wise it blends in pretty well if you have a black controller. You can fit 2 on the charge pad at once. They are slightly magnetic so they won’t slide around on the charge pad. It takes about 4 hours to charge completely. When your charging the controllers there is a blue light that turns on.

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Fat Princess Review: Single and Multiplayer

August 13, 2009 | No Kill Tayler | 10 Comments

If you want to skip my negativity, skip this part.

Single Player

For those who are wanting to find a deep and enganging single player experience, look somewhere else. The downloadable game has a novelty feel to it, yes, but the experience I had with, “Play with yourself” portion of the game had some dumb AI choices. For example, you set up the catapult right? And you expect some of the little guys to come with you to jump over to the next castle, but no. They’re on the their own little adventure capturing resources. I even sat in the catapult waiting for them until they notice I was in it. Either way, I kinda felt like the single player should’ve been a straight RTS. But their are some positives.

It does give you a reason why we’re going and getting the Princess, and why she’s eating so many cakes. And it has some humor in it where you’ll hear a few cries like, “I’m hungry, feed me cake”. Her voice even changes every time you feed her cake as well. There are 4 different game modes, which you can go online or offline. Like I said, offline is not where the meat is at all.

The thing about the online is, you can find a game and usually you stick with it. The customization in, “Lets Get Fabulous” is varied. I mean that in a good way. You can change the color of your skin tone and hair. Their are 22 skin tones, hair and beard styles. Pressing the “Randomonizer”, Will give you a chuckle or two. Now back to what I think about the online.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

May 21, 2009 | T0SH | 4 Comments

I got this game just before I went to see the Wolverine movie, which I give 4 out of 6 claws. I won’t get into that here unless you want to in the comments. I played it for about 20 minutes before I left to see the movie. So I got to see the intro CGI cut scene. Which was awesome, gory too.

The lunge attack is fun, you can cover a long distance very quickly. After you connect with your enemy can link into 3 different attacks: a throw, a jumping claw stab, or go into the mount position with several repeated stabs to the chest. Last is my favorite, it looks very brutal.

Real time healing is a real treat to see and a first for a Wolverine game. You can even see his adamantium skeleton if he gets hurt enough. It shows bullet holes, knife gashes, etc. I wish you could zoom in to see it in more detail. Only way to do that is to stand still and rotate the camera just right.

It’s tough to kill Wolverine actually, which is how it should be. If the action gets to intense you can just find a quite spot for a bit to heal up before you jump back into battle. Which thankfully doesn’t take to long to heal.

Puzzles are in the game, they do make you think. But aren’t to difficult. I like scaling walls with Wolverine. Wish you could do it on any wall though, ah well.
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Street Fighter IV – Review

February 24, 2009 | Trev | 8 Comments

The second coming? Yes.

I am not the biggest beat ’em up fan ever (I prefer to shoot my enemies) but Street Fighter IV has converted me. Never before have I wanted to learn all the characters’ moves rather … Read More

PS3 Logitech Cordless Mediaboard Pro Review

January 22, 2008 | T0SH | 30 Comments

I got this for playing around with Ubuntu 7.10 Linux on the PS3 and writing messages & browsing the web in the XMB. It works quite well actually. Very easy to pair with the PS3, and it stays synced. I … Read More