• Format: PSN (version reviewed), PC, Mac, iPad (sigh)
  
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Telltale Games
  
• Developer: Telltale Games
  
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/thedevilsplayhouse

This latest season of Sam & Max got off to a great start, and then it got even better. In last month’s episode however, the quality of the jokes took a kamikaze nosedive – seriously affecting the overall experience in a Sam & Max adventure. It was with some trepidation, therefore, that we approached the penultimate instalment.

The episode starts out promisingly enough, with a great take on the stereotypical zombie movie siege scene. A most welcome bonus is that, for the first time in this season, the top quality jokes start a – comin’ right from the off. In fact, top quality jokes are to be found throughout the three hours or so you’ll spend playing. As with all well written adventures, we found ourselves purposefully leaving any sensible or logical – looking dialogue choice that might advance the plot until last, in order to fully explore the script. Much like the inane conversations we tend to conduct with family and friends, in fact.

The canine Al Jolson tribute band didn't go down too well.

In terms of plot, Alley of the Dolls sets things up nicely for the final episode. You finally come face to face with the mysterious Dr Norrington, and learn a little more about the true nature of the Devil’s Toybox, the Toys themselves, and Max’s powers. You also of course get to the bottom of all this ‘army of Sams’ malarkey. If you guess who’s behind the clones before his/her identity is revealed then you need the services of a good psychiatrist, as your thought processes clearly aren’t in sync with those of the rest of us. Nonetheless it almost makes sense, even if three important questions (why are the clones of Sam, where did the clone master get his DNA from, and when did he get a chance to do the cloning? Or design, build, and use all the relevant equipment for that matter?) are never answered.

Mind you, it ain’t got nothin’ on the plot holes in Heavy Rain.

Still, if you’re prepared to accept a giant anthropomorphic rabbit with incredible psychic powers and his fully dressed 6ft tall canine friend, you shouldn’t really be worried about such matters. Of more concern are a few minor blips in the gameplay. Generally speaking, Alley of the Dolls is a straightforward point – and – click (well, walk – and – click) adventure. That’s no criticism in itself; but after the effort Telltale put into giving previous episodes fresh ideas and clever puzzles, the ‘you know the drill by now’ attitude here is a tad disappointing.

Away from our keyboards, this is as sophisticated as our humour gets.

Ironically perhaps, it is the one time the episode tries something new and convoluted that stands out as the one disappointing, pace – breaking moment. The Cthonic Destroyer may sound like a 19^th century euphemism for a penis, but it is in fact a new Psychic Toy Max needs near the end. The puzzle you need to crack to grab it centres around a combination of setting four dials and – a little help for you here – two of Max’s existing abilities. It’s supposed to be a process of elimination but, whether you beat the puzzle on your first attempt or your tenth, it will almost certainly be down to luck.

Ultimately however a game of this kind lives or dies on its script and puzzles. The script is the best yet and the puzzles, while slightly less inventive than in previous episodes, are solid (the one mentioned above excepted). This is almost Sam and Max back on top form. We hope that for the final episode next month, we can take away the word ‘almost’.

4/5

• Format: XBLA
• Unleashed: 28/07/10
• Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
• Developer: Vector Unit
• Players: 1-4 (offline), 2-8 (online)
• Site: http://www.xbox.com/

Can a racing game have soul? The genre certainly fights an uphill battle. With emotionless heaps of metal zipping around tracks devoid of human life, there’s not a lot of room for charm. Yet you can feel it every time you get a takedown in Burnout or dodge and weave through a dozen opponents in Blur.

A racing game’s soul comes from the thrill of speed, the challenge of your competition, or the satisfaction of a well-taken turn. In arcade-style games, it can come from outlandish, Bruckheimer-esque moments, an impossibly-long powerslide, or a mile-high jump.

That said, Hydro Thunder Hurricane could use a little soul-searching. An update of the 1999 arcade boat-racing game Hydro Thunder, Hurricane attempts to recreate the thrill of that original in a downloadable XBLA release, with mixed results.

Hurricane starts off on the right foot. The first race event takes place on Lake Powell, a canyon river with huge waterfalls, cave short-cuts, and a maniacal helicopter dropping bombs into the water. If you’ve played the previous Hydro Thunder then you should know the story – collect as much boost power-ups as possible and attempt to rocket around the track from beginning to end. It’s as much about chaining boosts as it is about winning the race.

In this respect, Hydro Thunder Hurricane nails it. Most of the tracks are well-designed, with several different paths, tricky jumps, and strategically placed power-ups that will satiate any speed addicts. The overriding issue is that almost every thing else about the game attempts to undermine this simple thrill.

The first culprit is the game’s single-player mode. Beyond the 8 standard races, the event structure is heavily in favour of the gimmicky Ring Master and Gauntlet modes. Ring Master is similar to a slalom event, requiring you to navigate carefully through rings or suffer crippling time penalties. The sensation is akin to threading a needle repeatedly. Gauntlet suffers the same issue, as explosive barrels are strategically placed around the track to kill you any time you try to have fun. With these two events taking up at least two-thirds of the single-player game, there’s little fun to be had here.

Multiplayer focuses on racing, which is good, but one questionable design decision manages to strip away a lot of the enjoyment. Boost power-ups that would usually give you a fixed amount of boost now give you a variable amount based on your position among the other racers. The result is that being in first place is a miserable experience – you’re always running dry on boost, and everyone behind you is having fun and catching up. It’s an especially odd decision considering that the game already allows you to draft behind your opponents from a great distance.

Hurricane’s gameplay is so unfulfilling that it throws the fun of the original into question. Perhaps this was just a case of rose-tinted lenses? No, the original Hydro Thunder is actually a much faster game, with much more whimsical, unrealistic controls that gave it the soul this current version is lacking.

There are a few tweaks that could be made, especially on the multiplayer front, that could salvage Hydro Thunder Hurricane. There’s a solid backbone of fun at the core of this game – something brilliant that you can find in those initial single-player races – but developer Vector Unit doesn’t give it room to breathe, crushing the fun under the weight of a soulless, unpleasant experience that’s hard to recommend.

2/5

• Format: PS3 (version reviewed), 360
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Codemasters
• Developer: Trickstar Games
• Players: 1 (+Online Multiplayer)
• Site: http://www.playcricket2010.com

This reviewer, being Scottish, has a distinct lack of knowledge on the sport of cricket. As a matter of fact I always thought a Googly was an internet search engine! Playing football has always been our favourite pastime up here, although as a nation we’re not that good at it either! The FIFA and PES series of games battle it out every year, and give you the chance to fill Rooney’s boots, and let’s face it he was posted missing during the World Cup. Now Codemasters bring you International Cricket 2010. The question is: Is there any point in playing a cricket game, when you can play the real sport for less money and probably have a lot more fun as well?

When you first load up the game, you are hit with the Kasabian tune Fast Fuse, all very EA Trax, and some nicely presented menus, which have obviously taken some inspiration from the EA sports stable of games. From the menu you can go through a tutorial, which we immediately started with. This is pretty comprehensive and goes through all the batting and bowling options available, as well as fielding. Each tutorial is unlocked as you perform the relevant moves requested.

The player models lack detail, and are characterless.

When you are batting, the bowler lets you know where he is aiming with a helpful green circle projected onto the pitch. You then need to assess where to hit your shot by using the right stick to point to where you want the ball to go. You can choose your stance from front foot or back and also a wide variety of shots, both defensive and attacking. It’s then all about your timing when you try to hit the ball. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do you’ll be whacking the ball out of the park.

Bowling is again all about timing, with you subtly moving the aforesaid green circle until you get the message ‘good length’ or ‘stumps/LBW’ which you need to hold in place to perform a decent pitch. There is also another meter that lets you know the moment to release the ball. Too early and you’ll be short of the target, too late and you’ll bowl a no ball. There is also slow bowling to get a handle of, which has a lot to do with the spin of the ball and aiming your shot accordingly.

Fielding is very simple to do, but is quite infuriating as you need to time your button press according to a circle that appears on screen, which changes from red to amber and then green. This is quite hard to do as the transition between each colour is so fast, that you regularly get butter fingers. It’s less about watching the ball and more about QTE which is a tad disappointing.

The 3rd person camera angle makes it hard to judge your timing

Once you’ve mastered the tutorials you can choose a game mode to play. There are a few options available here, from One Day International Matches, 20 Overs, Test Matches, and Tournaments (Round Robin) which are selected from around the world, as well as the ability to create your own tournaments. There is a choice of 16 International teams to choose from and 21 stadia recreated from the most famous cricketing grounds in the world. The One Day Internationals and Test matches are extremely slow to play and require a lot of patience and time, which most gamers probably don’t have. So a game of 20 Overs is perhaps what most people will play, as it’s quick moving and a more attack minded game.

There is an online mode in International Cricket 2010 as well, but we struggled to find a match; so we’d suggest you find a friend with similar cricketing interests to play against, and who has the patience to play a few overs.

Compared to the well realised menus, the in-game graphics are really disappointing, with almost PS2 level textures and the cricketers’ faces all look really basic, like something you’d create in an EA sports title – with no real sense of expression or character. Also the animation is pretty stilted with quite obvious changes between moves, and no real fluidity. The new action camera angle doesn’t help things, as it can be quite hard to gauge your timing. There are also only a few teams that are licenced (England and Australia), with the rest getting the age old PES style close approximations, although there is an editor supplied to make the necessary corrections if you so wish. The pace of the game is quite slow as well, which has as much to do with the subject matter as the game itself.

The 21 stadia are all authentically replicated.

All-in-all it’s not a bad game, and has given us a good insight into cricket, and all its intricacies. Perhaps the addition of Move or Kinect control might give you a better connection to the sport than simply pushing the buttons, like the Tiger Woods games have achieved on Wii. But we reckon in the meantime, you’re better off going outside, while the weather permits, and playing the real thing.

6/10

• Format: Xbox360 (version reviewed), PS3, PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Activision
• Developer: High Moon Studios
• Players: 1-3 (Co-op), 2-10 (VS)
• Site: http://www.transformersgame.com

For any child of the 80s the name Transformers will mean something. To every parent of the 80s it will probably mean something as well, just not in as positive a way. There have been countless animated incarnations based on the cartoon that started it all and there have also been games. The most recent games were based on the Michael Bay movies – perhaps predictably meaning that they were terrible. Now High Moon Studios is trying to set a different trend with a Transformers game that isn’t tied to anything.

War for Cybertron draws influence from the original cartoon more than any other source and has been officially recognised as the canon plot for the lead up to it. What this means is that from start to finish there are homages, nods and everything else that will put a smile on the face of any fan who remembers ‘G1′. But how big is that fan base? Substantial, we would guess, but how many of them are gamers and how many of them would like a game of this sort?

To say that High Moon Studios has borrowed numerous gameplay mechanics from other successful games would be an understatement on par with telling someone that Halo players tend to be a little impolite. This fast paced third person shooter doesn’t just feel a bit like Gears of War, it feels like Marcus has put on a Gundam suit to fight Mecha Locust.

It isn’t all the same though as War for Cybertron has no cover system beyond the old fashioned style of, you know, physically moving behind something and using it as cover yourself. Instead, you have the ability to transform. This isn’t particularly necessary other than to speed through highway type sections, but can be a useful method of avoiding attacks from bosses.

The gameplay is often frantic as you and up to two friends move through area after area clearing it of enemies with a variety of weaponry in either the Decepticon or the Autobot campaign. The campaigns go in chronological order (though you’re free to play either first) and tell different events of the same story. This might disappoint fans as there is no showdown between Optimus Prime and Megatron. This is the start of their war, not the end.

Cybertron is a decent looking planet and sometimes the cityscapes can be picturesque. This is the Unreal engine working well; it’s just a pity that the passages you’ll be traversing most of the time aren’t anywhere near as nice. There is also pop-up quite often and sometimes there are very obvious unfinished textures. These minor issues don’t detract from a decent action experience however.

One of the wisest decisions High Moon made was to bring in Peter Cullen to voice Optimus Prime. He delivers his lines with such dedication and skill that it’s like a how-to for the rest of the cast which, with only a few exceptions (Nolan North as miscellaneous characters, Johnny Yong Bosch as Bumblebee, and Fred Tatasciore as Megatron/Rachet), are average at best. The soundtrack is filled with 80s hard rock that will probably make teenagers shudder but acts as yet another example of who High Moon had in mind for this game.

Besides the three person co-op mode for either campaign there is also a fully fleshed out multiplayer which might as well be called Call of Duty: Cybertron. There is a class system and within that there is a skill system, a perk system and a kill streak system. Modes might have fancy Transformer type names but they still boil down to Capture the Flag, Plant the Bomb, Team Deathmatch and so on. The actual customisation for a multiplayer character is simply picking a body and then using your own colours. It isn’t really ‘making your own Transformer’ as promised, even counting the custom skills. Despite that, the multiplayer is above average and very fun to play – but can credit really be given here?

It is worth pointing out that that transforming serves far more purpose across the multiplayer modes already mentioned and the obligatory Horde mode (called Escalation here) which we haven’t really mentioned as these days it’s only worth mentioning if a game doesn’t have a Horde mode.

There is also one giant flaw that, while it can be manipulated in the campaign, is still an issue in the multiplayer modes. Due to the wide bodies of most of the characters you can play as and the fact that their hand transforms into the gun which they have equipped, it doesn’t quite match up to the cross-hair on screen. What this means is that you can fully hide your body behind scenery and essentially shoot through it because the game thinks you are shooting around it. This leads to being able to fire on opponents from corners or pillars on the maps without fear of being shot back.

Even if Transformers is new to you, even if you don’t like the movies or the cartoons, War for Cybertron is still a solid third person shooter at its core. It hasn’t taken any risks as far as gameplay goes but has as a result created something which will have wider appeal. War for Cybertron is a game that fans will love to death for all the nods aimed directly at them and that newcomers will be pleasantly surprised by when they go online to start racking up kills and experiencing what it’s like when you don’t need to jump into cover while under fire, when you can just transform into a jet and fly away.

7/10

Fomat: PS3 (version reviewed), 360

We’ve all heard of the modern mantra of inviting every child to a birthday party so that none of the little dearies get upset and learn about rejection too early in life. It’s best that we let it hit them later on when they can simply start a blog about their innermost pain. Well, Naughty Bear wasn’t invited to Daddles’ birthday party; in fact, Naughty Bear doesn’t get invited to much. Let’s see how he handles it.

The setting for Naughty Bear is absolutely brilliant, and ripped straight out of the imagination behind lots of 90s children’s television. The peace loving teddy bears of The Island of Perfection snub social outcast Naughty Bear, who then has to go about dealing with it. However, instead of doing it in a depressive and upsetting way which will eventually teach the other bears a moral lesson about accepting every bear for who they are, he turns excitedly demented, causing him to take out his frustrations violently.

The game happily lets you chase bears around with machetes, handguns, golf clubs, and just about anything else that lets you pound fluff into the ground. If you aren’t content enough with beating them to death, you can psychologically scar each cuddly critter as well, slowly driving them insane. If you do it enough, you can even take them to the tipping point and coerce them to commit suicide. The comic plume of stuffing that launches from a bear’s head when it shoots itself is a very clear reward for emotionally bullying them over the edge.

Oh dear, it looks like Naughty Bear has been playing a bit rough

This twisted and sadistic comic humour is backed up by a very familiar sounding narrator whose nostalgic tone of voice happily tells you how naughty you are being at every turn. It really pains us then that such a fantastically setup idea has been so poorly executed.

Gameplay focuses on gathering naughty points, which are awarded for carrying out dastardly deeds against everything, which generally revolves around scaring the other bears. You can be quite plain and simply hack them to bits but very often, snaring them in a bear trap and terrorising their friends whilst they are forced to watch will net you higher scores.

Each level is made up of three or so areas, but very often you encounter the places that you have already been through which gets boring quite quickly. The other sad thing is that the game only has seven levels – but to unlock them all, you need to replay each one over and over again, trying to unlock bronze, silver and gold trophies by being as naughty as possible.

How helpful of him! Drying out that other bear's crotch

Each re-run of a level tasks you with doing things slightly differently, whether it is to kill all bears, not get spotted or complete goals within a time limit. It only changes the rules concerning how you should play the level though, rather than changing anything that would make the experience noticeably different. It really feels that the new challenges you unlock to replay a level should have been put in there as optional goals for achievement and trophy hunters. Having to redo the same level over and over again gets very old, very fast and seems like a lazy approach to artificially extend the life of the game.

The main objective in each instance tends to be about teaching a particular bear a permanent lesson by killing them. Of course there are many bears between you and the target, each one a potential fountain of points, but extracting those points just becomes routine after a while. There are plenty of context sensitive actions which very often give you the choice to kill or scare the victim, with terrifying them netting you more points. To activate these though, you need to be standing in just the right place which can be fiddly to find, especially if you are trying to evade an unhappy bear that is pursuing you with an axe.

The game starts off quite easy as all of the colourful, rather naive cuddle buddies seem to bumble around blissfully unaware of the horror that is about to be inflicted around them. You can hide in the shrubbery which makes you fairly invisible – only sneaking out to sabotage equipment – before sleuthing back into bushes like a psychotic cougar, enthusiastically waiting for the opportunity to murder the poor soul investigating whatever you broke. This only works for so long though, as later in the game the bears get uzis and often chase you out of bushes. This stealth mechanic can get frustrating as sometimes it can be difficult to know how safe you are on the later levels, especially if you are trying to avoid unnecessary contact as part of a challenge.

Boom! Fluff shot

The main objectives never seem to change, making these tougher enemies the only real difficulty escalation, unless you discount the more ridiculous challenges of ‘don’t get hit’ or ‘don’t get spotted’, which seem to only be there for frustration. All of this is amplified by there being no checkpoints, meaning a judgement error in the last area earns a complete re-run of the level. Each repetition feels like you are climbing the same hill over and over again, just with more weight added each time and sharp bits digging into your shoulder blades.

We really wanted to like this game, we really did. The darker sense of humour is the only saving grace that this game has to offer, as it is draped over the dried out husk of a 3D arcade formula that doesn’t give any satisfaction to the player. At the very most this game will be worth having a quick look at if a mate has it, as it will definitely crack a smile on your face, which ups the score slightly. Other than that, we can only recommend that you too snub Naughty Bear like his peers do, and just hope that he goes away so we can all enjoy our lives that are better off without him.

4/10

• Format: PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Realtime Worlds
• Developer: Realtime Worlds
• Players: Massively Multiplayer
• Site: www.apb.com/

APB (All Points Bulletin) is the hotly anticipated MMO from Dundee based developers Realtime Worlds – best known for Crackdown on Xbox 360 – and the brainchild of creative director Dave Jones. Jones is known in the industry as one of the founding members of Rockstar North and co-creator of the Grand Theft Auto series. It’s unsurprising perhaps then, that on first viewing people feel a niggling urge to describe APB as ‘GTA Online’. But there are further influences that are evident in the design of APB that may describe better how the game actually plays. Jones himself claims Counter-Strike as a major influence and it’s easy to see where he’s coming from, with small tactical objective based missions forming the core of the experience.

Gathering together these disparate influences into one game and then basing it in an online world, you get a gaming experience that is unlike any other. The basic structure of the game sees you choose between a Criminal and an Enforcer, then facing off against the opposing faction in a wide variety of different mission types, across two districts of the fictional city of San Paro. As well as fighting there are ample opportunities for personal customisation from creating your character, designing tattoos and customising clothing, to pimping out your ride. The customisation in APB (as you may already have seen) is excellent. Simple to use yet very powerful tools for creation and design are on offer, allowing you to create or copy intricate symbols, songs or graffiti sprays, in the process of creating a unique identity for your character. If you lack those skills in design and your symbols look like you’ve shoved a couple of decals together in the vain hope they might look cool (unlike us here at Critical Gamer obviously, we’re all design geniuses *cough*), there are other ways to procure yourself designs from more talented players through the game’s auction system. Despite the game being very young, there is already a wealth of talent on display, with people striving to make a name for themselves through creating their own clothing brands, or churning out ‘death-themes’ -small snippets of music your opponents hear when you’ve killed them.

Exciting design tools and unique player crafted equipment are excellent ideas and well implemented, but they alone make a game not. For APB to succeed, the action and driving parts of the game too need to be satisfying, varied and balanced enough to hold the paying players’ interest in the long term. This is where the game stumbles slightly. Combat to the newcomer can seem clunky and relatively old fashioned. Modern third person action games nearly always employ a cover system; APB forces you to do that part yourself, crouching behind cars or walls and leaning manually. For a game that calls Counter-Strike an influence, it may also seem like an odd decision that head-shots play no part in the game, but in truth they would only serve to make the game frustrating due to the sometimes random nature of the spawn system. Combat then is about situational awareness, weapon selection and tactical play in groups. Make no mistake, APB is not a game for the solo player, soloing is a frustrating and slow paced experience; and while the option is there, you’re better off avoiding it. APB really comes alive when you group up with other players and take advantage of the integrated Vo-ip system to communicate and work together towards your objectives. At this point things become progressively more hectic as the action flits around across a district, with the two opposing teams dashing towards objectives, destroying each other’s vehicles and melting each other’s faces with the varied selection of weaponry.

Differences between the two factions are mostly a matter of taste. Criminals have a more hectic time of it, with bounties being placed on them for Enforcers to try and claim, meaning even between the normal mission based play they’re never truly safe. Enforcers have access to less than lethal weaponry which allows them to subdue then arrest criminals – a risky strategy in team play, but it pays dividends of increased rewards and unlocks some of the better equipment in the game for those with the necessary skills to be successful at it. Both factions have access to different vehicles. The Enforcers get an exclusive Jericho muscle car, while the criminals get the Porsche-esque Bishada. Car handling is initially vexing, especially for GTA veterans, and you may find yourself crashing constantly when you wrest control of one of the faster cars. But persevere and you’ll find it worth your while, pulling off expertly timed handbrake turns during high speed chases to impress your allies as you come to terms with the nuance of control.

APB comes across as a game that is more than the sum of its parts. The combat may be somewhat old fashioned in its execution, but when it’s coupled with the dynamic cities and fast paced team-play, as well as its revelatory customisation, it’s difficult not to like. The game does have a degree of repetition and grinding elements as you work your way up through the ranks of the faction specific organisations. But there is a hell of a lot of potential in the title and even as it plays at the moment, there are few games that can get the adrenaline pumping in the same manner. Speeding across the city, music blasting out your car and swerving into the middle of a pitched fire-fight as your passenger hangs out the window taking pot-shots at your foe is just as good as it sounds. There’s work yet to be done on the title and we hope for a patching system as progressive and ambitious as the rest of the game, rather than just churning out extra content. If Realtime Worlds can do that, APB could develop into a game that surpasses its wildly popular and long-serving influences. For now though, there are criminals doing mean things to puppies and it’s up to us here at Critical Gamer to head forth once more and dish out some 44. calibre justice.

8/10

• Format: PSN (version reviewed), PC, Mac, iPad (sigh)
  
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Telltale Games
  
• Developer: Telltale Games
  
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/thedevilsplayhouse

The latest season of Sam & Max is now in full swing with this, episode 3, marking the halfway point. It’s been a triumphant return for the dysfunctional duo so far – can Telltale Games keep it up?

As suggested by the end of episode 2, you start off here with Max’s pedigree chum Sam going solo. This is used as an excuse for a slightly different style of gameplay; rather than directly controlling Sam’s movement and exploring the environment, each time you visit an area Sam automatically jumps into interrogating the NPC lurking around there. With the emphasis on dialogue, you’re prompted to interrupt the story your NPC is giving at the right moment – and with the right technique, such as a threat or an accusation of lying – to glean more information from them. In this way you pick holes in the witness accounts you’re given, and go back and forth between interrogations until you work out what to do next.

"Put the doggie treats in a bag! DO IT!"

It’s yet another way The Devil’s Playhouse prevents the experience from becoming stale, and is a welcome example of something completely new. Unfortunately however, the humour of the whole of this first act’s script is dead on arrival. You can see where the jokes are, but they just don’t work. After the slow starting but ultimately hilarious first two episodes, it’s like being given the keys to your local sweet shop – which you then find has been turned into a very small Jehovah’s Witness hall.

The second act returns to traditional Sam & Max gameplay. Although you find Max, most of your time here will be spent with SammunMak at your side and, frankly, we wish it wasn’t. As a character, he’s fine; but he has a typically irritating Saturday morning cartoon kid’s voice. You know, one of those ones where a woman in her late thirties supposedly sounds just like a ten year old boy?

At least the puzzles remain enjoyable and clever.

Max remains at your side for the whole of the third act and perhaps because of this, the comedy finally threatens to stutter into life. Threatens to; it occasionally stands up before collapsing again, like a rotting zombie. The episode is enjoyable from start to finish thanks to the ever – enjoyable puzzles and solid game design, but a Sam & Max game without a tidal wave of successful jokes is like a simile without… you know… one of those things at the end that makes it… never mind.

Poor Max, he accidentally watched five seconds of Big Brother.

Episodic games always seem to suffer from dips in quality. We believed that the latest season of Sam & Max would be different, but we’re sorry to say we were mistaken. As previously mentioned, the game design is as excellent as ever – but if the quality of the script doesn’t climb back up to match it again (and stay there), this is one season that will go out with a fizzle rather than a bang.

3/5

• Format: PS3 (version reviewed), 360, PC, PSP, Wii, DS
  
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
  
• Developer: Traveller’s Tales
  
• Players: 1 – 2
  
• Site: http://games.kidswb.com/official-site/lego-harry-potter/

In theory at least, the phrase ‘Lego Harry Potter Videogame’ is to children what the phrase ‘Excruciatingly Detailed Violated Childhood’ is to book publishers. Regardless of quality there are masses of people ready to pounce on it cash in hand, and the sales have already reflected this. Doubtless aware of this fact, have Traveller’s Tales tried to give the fans a decent game for their money?

Every Lego game so far has stuck to the same basic formula, and this is no different in that regard. Much of the scenery, and all of the vehicles and characters, are designed to look just like Lego – exact replicas of the real life sets wherever possible (kerching!). This means that destroyed characters and objects collapse into their component Lego parts, and the currency used to buy unlocked extras are the Lego ‘studs’ scattered when such destruction occurs.

Again as in previous Lego titles, you’ll be building as well as destroying (though you’ll usually have to break something to get the parts). Most of this building is automatic once you have the bricks but now and again, you’ll need to guide one brick onto another. In this way you can progress by creating platforms, bridges, and less obvious items. The building is done via the first spell you learn, Wingardium Leviosa – which works in an identical manner to The Force in Lego Star Wars.

"I'm not wearing that hat, I'll look like a brick."

Other spells you learn during the 24 story levels (six levels for each year) aren’t used nearly as frequently, but still prove essential to progress; usually because some enemies are only vulnerable to one particular spell. The other gameplay element used as a minor obstacle to progress is mixing potions. Each potion requires three ingredients, which translates to a mini fetch – quest. All three ingredients are always very close to one another however – often on the same screen – so this is never frustrating. Once prepared the potion bestows some ability necessary to move on, such as extra strength to pull a chain which opens a door. Revisit a level in Free Play mode however, and you can usually bypass potions altogether.

When a story level has been completed it is unlocked for Free Play, which allows you to play through again armed with spells learned in later levels, and the ability to switch between any and all characters you’ve unlocked and purchased. So for example you can use a strong character such as Alan Moore lookalike Hagrid to pull a previously useless chain, or an evil character such as Bobby Kotick to build something impervious to ‘good’ magic (no, Kotick isn’t really in the game as an evil wizard, but we wish he was). In this way you can find and collect the characters, crests, and gold bricks (which unlock bonus levels) you were missing the first time around. There are even red bricks which unlock cheats to be found between levels. It is literally impossible to achieve 100% completion of the game in one playthrough and in fact, we’re not convinced it’s possible to come close to 50%.

The slightly surreal bonus levels offer a break from the story mode. Created with the level builder included on the disc, they’re basically there to show the player what’s possible, and are completely different from the story levels. There are in addition four brief tutorial levels for the ‘builder’, which are slightly misleading. They actually tell you very little, and barely hint at the complexity of the editor. The complexity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it’s very impressive what you can do with the level editor. Younger gamers will quickly become frustrated however, and wander off to find something they can pull the legs off. Such as a cat (possibly). What will frustrate older gamers is that they must start off with one of the bonus levels rather than build their own from scratch, and there’s no LBP or even Joe Danger style level sharing.

Write your own caption - just keep it to yourself.

So most of your time will almost certainly be spent with the story levels, and thankfully they’re great fun. The game throws something new at you every few levels and yes, this is certainly partly down to the source material – but it’s also attributable to the developers’ determination to provide good old fashioned fun. No decent review can ignore the game’s sense of humour either. It’s gentle family friendly stuff of course, but excellently done – present not only in the cutscenes, but also during gameplay. Very few jokes rely on the Harry Potter story, so can appeal to everyone. That said if you haven’t read the books and/or seen the movies, then the lack of dialogue renders trying to understand what’s going on in the cutscenes as difficult as trying to understand the London tube system while drunk.

As always two people can play together (in the same room) and in this game, that’s an excellent opportunity for a parent or older sibling to help a younger gamer with the puzzles – particularly those with fiddly brick manipulation. A less welcome trademark of the Lego games is screen tearing, which unfortunately comes back here too. In our case at least however, switching on the ‘v sync’ option eradicated the problem. There still seem to be a few minor bugs; in one instance, we had to exit and then re-enter an area in order for a magic painting to acknowledge our existence.

If you have a disturbingly obsessive hatred for Harry Potter, this is not for you. If you are a fan of the boy wizard and/or Lego games – or in fact, if you’re just a fan of good games – you should find dozens of hours (presuming you’re something of a completist) of entertainment here. If you’re the kind of nut who thinks nothing of sitting outside a bookshop at 4am wearing a pointy hat, you can add at least one mark to the score; this is easily the best Harry Potter game so far.

8/10

• Format : PSP (version reviewed), PS3, iPhone
• Unleashed : Out Now
• Publisher : StormBASIC
• Developer : StormBASIC
• Players : 1
• Site : http://www.stormbasic.com/

Sony’s answer to the iPhone/Touch has been a strange and twisted “yelp”, like a griffin getting his foot jammed in a doorway. Instead of releasing a new all-singing all-dancing PSP, they took the current one they had and ripped bits out of it. Then they flattened it with a steamroller (or maybe even a rolling pin, the jury’s still out on that) and sold it for even more than the one with its bits still attached! The PSPGo’s apparent saving grace and Sony’s answer to the games in the iTunes store is the minis series. It’s here that you will find Tehra Dark Warrior.

Dragons; no fantasy adventure would be complete without them

The opening story reads much like an old text adventure which seems rather strange, unless you’re under 25 and think a ‘text adventure’ is something you do with your latest lover. As the game opens up it becomes instantly reminiscent of the N64 era in its lighting, colours and shadow which (for a mini) is quite a pleasant surprise. What you get on-screen are fairly chunky and solid looking graphics; a tad too ugly for the big screen but rather pleasant on the PSP and let’s be fair, that’s where you’re going to be playing it. Less of a surprise is Tehra herself, a tattooed warrior-goddess type who thought the most suitable armour to fight hoards of Orcs in would be the string from her morning mail package delivery. The music, it must be said, is done with panache and sets the tone for the huge undertaking of Tehra’s job, to destroy the dark forces; you know the deal. Crescendos of orchestral magnitude conjure the feeling of battles that belong in Lord of the Rings, and when combined with some of the artwork within the storytelling text screens it really makes you want to kick some medieval fantasy ass. That, sadly, is where the promise ends because once you start playing there will be a shadow of darkness so big that no sheepskin-G-string can turn your attention away from it.

Going on dates with Tehra was always difficult

Tehra’s little trick throughout the game is being able to turn herself into a demon which means a nastier, meaner and more unpleasant version of herself (and also blue-er!). What this boils down to is a few seconds of unblockable attacks and almost invincibility by pressing the left shoulder button. Sounds good? Well, apart from those mentioned above there aren’t any other up-shots. No extra moves or magic, just the same basic slash, slash, slashing that you do as-per-normal and believe us; there’s a lot of slashing. There are a few set moves for her slashfest which are: up high slashing, down low slashing, and a general in-your-face slashing. There is magic to try and mix it up a bit and although the fire/electric magic moves are upgradeable, they still feel underwhelming and even unresponsive to use.

Keep slashing, keep slashing, keep slashing....

Unresponsive; that’s really the best word for the controls on the whole, as you’ll notice when trying to block incoming attacks. The timing window you have to deflect attacks is so minimal you’re best off putting your hope into your dodge button. If only that worked. The camera puts itself in such awkward places that when faced with multiple enemies, just seeing who’s attacking can be hard, let alone dodging projectile attacks at the same time as fighting. Tehra Dark Warrior has a lot of nice ideas, even if they are mostly found in every other fantasy RPG. Its biggest shortcomings though are in its fight mechanics. Clunky and slow controls combined with awkward camera moments really let this down, lord knows how this plays on the iPhone!

2/5

• Format: Wii
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Developer: Nintendo
• Players: 1 or 2
• Site: http://supermariogalaxy.com/

The original Super Mario Galaxy was by far the best game on the Wii, and is also one of the greatest games of all time. Nintendo haven’t released a numbered sequel to a Mario game since Super Mario Land 2 on the GameBoy in 1992, so can this new entry hope to capture some of the original Galaxy’s magic stardust, or does it fall tragically into the black hole of identikit sequel?

The original Galaxy hit you with so many new ideas in each level, that it seemed impossible for Nintendo to create a Mario game that could raise the bar any further. The good news is this sequel does manage the impossible, and deserves its place amongst gaming’s greatest. With the release of Wii Fit, Wii Music etc, naysayers thought Nintendo had lost their magic, and it’s so gratifying to see them pull off such an amazing feat. This game re-affirms the belief that when on their game, no one can come close to Nintendo’s creative flair.

The new spaceship is a lot easier to navigate around than the previous game's Observatory

The first thing that will hit you when you start playing is the graphics. They are simply breathtaking for the Wii, with a colourful palette, and some insanely creative worlds to explore. The characters are all well animated, and with some huge boss characters to fight, the game amazes at every turn. Just how Nintendo manage to create fur so convincingly when even the HD consoles struggle we’ll never know!

Now the one thing that Nintendo lack, even with all these marvellous worlds to explore, is the ability to change the formulaic plot of Princess Peach being kidnapped..again! But who cares when you encounter levels with such ingenuity and variety. The aim of the game is to rescue the Princess, by collecting stars from each of the galaxy’s levels to power your spaceship towards the final battle with Bowser. If you’ve played the original Super Mario Galaxy you’ll be instantly at home here. The main hub this time is a much more compact ‘Mario’ spaceship, and you don’t need to go to different areas of the ship to navigate to a new galaxy. It’s a much simpler affair, with you simply taking the captain’s wheel and plotting your next move on a simple map, much like previous Mario games. This saves a lot of aimless wandering and is a welcome addition. Probably our favourite new feature though is the return of Yoshi, the loveable sticky tongued dinosaur. His return really adds a lot more variety to the levels. The ability to play through some levels as Luigi, Mario’s brother, is also welcome; but he doesn’t really bring anything different to the game, and at the end of the day his addition ends up feeling like a wasted opportunity.

Dodgy caption competition!

Each of the game’s levels has its own theme, from lava and water to the obligatory ice level. On some levels Mario can gain powers for a limited time. There are a few that return from the previous Galaxy including the Fire, Bee and Ghost suits, which enable you to shoot fireballs, fly like a bee, or float through walls ghost style respectively. New additions include the Rock suit which turns you into a boulder that you roll around in, there is also the Drill that enables you to drill through planets, which is well implemented in some of the levels. Another addition is the Cloud Mario outfit that lets your character create cloud platforms to help you reach distant areas. You can also pick up a balloon that inflates Yoshi to let you float around the levels, or in one instance use him as a torch to illuminate the platforms in front of you, by collecting ‘Light Yoshi’ power ups to traverse the pitch black level. Each of these powers is never overused and are expertly crafted into the gameplay in the well designed levels.

When it comes to the levels they seem even more outrageous than before, with the game taking you from a 2D perspective to 3D and then to an overhead view all in one level. One of our favourite levels started in a 2D perspective, before the angle changed and the level bent over in front of you like the scene in the new Christopher Nolan film, Inception, where the buildings fold over. Then towards the end of level we reached a flat platform with a button that when pushed made the floor rise up, much like a kids pop-up book, creating new platforms. There are also levels where there are buzz-saws that not only kill you, but are sawing apart the level that you are trying to traverse! Some of the levels are reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet, with gravity playing a part in your race to find the Star. If you are struggling to get past an area, Rosalina from the original Galaxy appears, and you can let her take you past the offending obstacle – the only downside being that the star you collect is bronze instead of polished gold, making you feel like an inadequate gamer. Hardcore players looking for a challenge can collect Comet Coins which unlock extra levels, with a much higher difficulty than the initial playthrough; so collecting all 120 stars can be a daunting prospect.

Some of the bosses are huge, and the graphics are top notch on the Wii

Now the only thing we can mark this game down on is the lack of originality of the plot, and the fact that some people may get motion sickness with some of the topsy turvy worlds that you encounter. The re-use of some of Mario’s powers may bring a sense of deja vu to some of the levels, but they never outstay their welcome, and the addition of the new powers takes the game in new refreshing directions.

It can never hope to recreate the original’s initial wow factor, but Super Mario Galaxy 2 is so full of ingenuity and creativity, that you are wowed just by playing it. With each level being a tour de force of different ideas that are never overused, and are fun-filled and challenging. This is arguably the greatest Mario game of them all, if not one of the best games of all time. The question is where can Mario go from here? But then we thought that the last time too!

10/10