Portal (Xbox 360 Version)

Ironically, Valve don't usually make very different games these days. They all run on the Source engine and anyone could notice the huge similarities between, say, Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source. Despite this, even though they all run with a lot of similarities, they're all GOOD. Valve just do what they do really well, and it's enough because the products are always damn enjoyable games. Yet Valve have outdone themselves again, as with Portal they have shown an ability to not only have another good game on the Source engine, but also something completely different.

Portal is a puzzle game. It's not a shooter, it doesn't have multiplayer, there are no zombies and there are no counter terrorists. It IS in first person, but it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't. You begin the game waking up in a holding cell, as an unknown character (well, a Mexican woman with yellow eyes) and are set along a path to begin a chain of puzzles which, ultimately, will all revolve around opening the next door to the next area and to the end of the test where you will apparently be served cake and given 'grief counselling'. To do this, as the name suggests, you use portals. The main tool of the game is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and when you have the fully upgraded version given to you about a 1/10 of the way through the game it is able to shoot two different types of portals onto any flat, white surface: one blue and one orange. Go through one portal, and you'll come out the other. While this is a simple concept, this evolves into a huge number of different uses, the most difficult of which being the 'momentum' technique. This involves jumping off a ledge into a portal on the floor, which will gain enough speed to launch you through another portal and onto a ledge you couldn't otherwise reach. Of course this done using Valve's standard modified version of the Havok engine.

But with all this, Portal is just a puzzle game with a new mechanic, albeit with something that's hardly been touched before. What sets it apart is the environment. Sure, on the surface it is just a set of white-walled rooms, filled with buttons and doors and 'Emancipation Grills', but the way the AI character GLaDOS starts off guiding you through the areas but slowly becoming more sentient-sounding and eventually all-out sinister, and the chilling markings on the wall from previous test subjects writing things such as the iconic line 'The Cake Is A Lie', and the reality of the Enrichment Centre when you leave the test area; all these things make it not just a small side-project of a game but a full game in its own right. It's memorable, and even though you learn just about nothing of who your character is, or who made the Enrichment Centre that your tests are in, the mystery of these things is what sticks with you enough to have a real impact on the player.

While Portal has the features of a high-budget and well written game, it is still a short experience of about two hours. However, seeing as this is amongst the giants that Valve have released such as Half-Life 2, this is a gem, and probably one of the best puzzle games ever released. 9/10.

Brutal Legend

It's been a while since I've been able to write a negative review, I guess I've been buying too many good games. But then, Brutal Legend came into my life. Why, oh why.

Irritatingly, this is one of the most different games to come out this year. Tim Schafer, the writer of the game, is known for awesome games like Monkey Island 2 and Psychonauts, and his good writing ability. Which makes it more ironic that this game is badly written in both structure and storyline. It is set in... wait where is it again? Supposedly in the 'land of metal', but then it also sometimes suggests that the protagonist Eddie Riggs has time-travelled to some other time, he is destined to free them from the oppressors of metal posers and glam rockers. This would be great as it sounds out-there, funny and something that most metalheads could relate to, but it tends to shift from jokey to taking itself seriously so often that you wonder if the developers genuinely thought this was going on. You meet characters of the resistance, build an army with them and eventually take back the land in a story of love, honour and betrayal in the name of metal and 'real music'. Unfortunately this is plagued by terrible characterisation, particularly on the part of the agonizingly cringey Jack Black taking the role of Eddie Riggs shouting 'metal' things like 'ROCK ON' which sound plain embarrassing on the part of metal, and the uneventful cutscenes which always seem to be plentiful in awkward silences and generally not a lot happening. In fact, there are a lot of famous people doing their part in voice acting for Brutal Legend: Tim Curry does a good job being the ultimate evil boss, but metal legends such as Lemmy from Motorhead and Rob Halford from Judas Priest play big parts but fail to make any impression; I reckon they should have been themselves more in their roles instead of entirely their characters. 

The art style of the game is a high point, the cartoony-ness of the land is great, with random creatures of metal wandering around and giant mountains of amplifiers standing tall in a humorously exaggerated way. However the area to explore is actually quite small, and in terms of things to explore for the game lacks too; the side missions are about as bad as Just Cause's.

Gameplay also doesn't elevate above endless whacking with the X button and Y to guitar solo (which, actually doesn't make any noise), or a combo of the two. You can purchase more moves and combos and general upgrades at the shop - the shopkeeper is Ozzy Osbourne, and he actually did a good job in voice acting - but not only are these particularly good but they don't tend to help against the absolutely huge amount of enemies in the game, most of which are pretty overpowered. While the range of unique environments you encounter in the map is impressive, especially considering the small size of the realm, it will still revert to running along certain roads and whacking stuff. Some sections incorporate elements of Real Time Strategy; you are given the temporary ability to fly to give you the birds-eye point of view, and you can spawn friendlies using the currency of dead metal fans' souls  with a number of different classes. Each class has strengths and weaknesses but, once again, these sections are often too hard and they all seem to die, leading you to always resort to the tactic of 'just make as many as you can and rush'. 

The game DOES have a multiplayer mode, but I didn't have the time or patience to play it. While aesthetically a good game with nice animations, character models and environments, it fails in just about every other area it attempts to excel in, humour, strategy and, most of all, metalness. Jack Black couldn't have been a worse choice in lead voice actor (I would say Bruce Dickinson should have done it, but then I wouldn't want him in such a bad game) and it seems that Tim Schafer not only has lost his ability to write great games but also knows nothing about metal. 3/10.

Guest Review from EnglishCarBomb - Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360 version)

As a special treat we have a guest review from resident angryman/Valve minion EnglishCarBomb who also writes in the Brain Remnants and Music Reviews blogs. 

I’m a huge Valve fan if I’m to be honest, Counter Strike, Day Of Defeat, Portal, the Half-Life 2 series, you name it, I’ve played it to death and beyond. And so obviously, like every good Valve fan, I need to play Team Fortress 2. I played it for aeons on the pc and thought it was one of the most valve-licious games ever (yes that’s a word). The constant updates on the gameplay kept it going, made the game never get boring, which to be honest, the raw version of the game is. 

For those who live under what I like to call ‘the Great Rock of Infinity Ward’, Team Fortress 2 is a First-Person Shooter (no, it doesn’t have direct relations to CoD), in which you go on one of two teams. The red team, and the blue team, in the true old-school FPS spirit. Within that team, you get to pick a certain character, one of 9, the Scout, the Pyro (my personal favourite), the Soldier, the Demoman, the Heavy, the Engineer, the Sniper, the Spy, and the Medic. Each character has their own unique weapons, abilities, and even characteristics. For example, the Heavy is a huge Russian man with an eccentric love for his gun, Natasha, has a shit load of health, and his weapons are a fucking huge minigun, a shotgun, and his fists, while the Demoman is ‘a black Scottish Cyclops’ (he has an eye patch, so you could equally say he’s a black Scottish pirate) who is…well…Scottish…and black. An interesting combination. His weapons are a grenade launcher, a sticky grenade launcher (it shoots sticky grenades, the gun itself isn’t sticky) and a whisky/scotch bottle.  Back to the teams. They must compete in a few different game modes, but really they can just boil down to point capturing, and trying to shove a cart into the enemy base (sounds a lot less amusing than it is). So yes, it’s a relatively simple game, but unbelievably fun at the same time.

Anyway, in later months, I bought the Orange Box. The Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2 and Portal all for 20 quid on the 360? HELL YEAH. By the time I got round to playing Team Fortress 2 on it, roughly 5 months later, it actually became, somehow, the one thing that made me feel a mild tinge of regret towards buying it. Valve seem to have some humungous loathing for people who use the Xbox 360, and wish them all a miserable, slow, painful death. In a way I agree with them, but that’s no excuse for not releasing ONE SINGLE UPDATE. You can’t gain new weapons, you can’t even upgrade the dispensers or teleporters (they’re things the engineer can make, which on the PC version can be upgraded twice to make them more efficient). There’s about 6 maps, a collection of the worst excluding 2fort and Granary, and around 5 players online at any given time. And the glitching. WHY ALL THE GLITCHING. You finally find a server on 2fort and BAM, everyone getting critical hits, and killing everyone on their own team. Everyone’s flying around in the sky and all you can do is curl into a fetal position in the darkest corner of the map.

So as you can tell, the Xbox 360 version isn’t quite as glorious as the PC version, so my recommendation is, buy the PC version, and buy the Orange Box anyway, because the rest of the games on there, are nothing short from valve-licious. 4/10.

Half-Life 2 (Xbox 360 version)

I'm probably the last human on earth to play Half-Life 2 so I feel pretty guilty for doing this review, but I'm working my way through the Orange Box and this is the first.

There's something about a game which was 'amazing for its time' and is still just as good that strikes me as awesome. I really don't know how Half-Life 2 does it, but something which revolutionised graphics, physics and NPC interaction would be expected to be somewhat dated now with these kind of things used in everyday games as standard, but the formula of the game and the way these things are used still manages to raise it above these things and bring it to be one of the best, if not the best, FPS of all time.

A gripping storyline isn't the focus of the Half-Life games, it's really based on the personal adventure of Gordon Freeman - the one Free Man - in the context and his mission to save humanity from the alien Combine invasion which is suggested to have happened 20 years prior to the game's beginning. You begin on a train to City 17, now a place completely overrun by the Combine to meet with Barney and your former colleagues, now part of the human resistance. A majority of your objectives are based on 'meet me at [location], to get [weapon] and/or meet [character]', but it's the environments you travel through to get to your destination, the enemies you face and the way everything seems so alive around you that makes the game stand out so much. Even though the shooting is nothing original, it still retains a feeling of complete uniqueness. 

The game will take you a good 10 hours to complete and during this time there are no cutscenes, no third person: everything is shown to you as Gordon Freeman and the gameplay is continuous. You will go from sector to sector in real-time so you will get a loading screen from time to time as the next environment is loaded and it's incredible how Valve have created this. It's not a series of maps, it's basically one huge road which, at the end, you find yourself at the beginning of as the human resistance rises up enough to take City 17 and the Combine fortress The Citadel down. 

Sure, a lot of games can be big and have a lot of different environments and enemies. But Half-Life 2 is complimented with unmatched physics, enemy AI causing them to group together, take cover and fall back when overwhelmed, and graphics which might not be as photorealistic as modern games but still do a fantastic job at painting a picture of a war-torn fractured human society. You will have to take full advantage of the heavily advanced Havoc physics engine to solve puzzles to get to the next area, proving Valve's ingenuity and adeptness with environment interaction. The epitome of this is the gravity gun - allowing you to pick up objects - some very large ones too - and hurl them at your enemies, sending them flying off with it. I've still yet to see a weapon in a game which so effortlessly describes the game in itself.

I see that I'm not going very far with this review, and it's because it's so hard to describe what makes HL2 so incredible and above just about every other FPS out there. Without a doubt it has to be rated a 10/10, this is simply one of the games you have to play in your life. Defining gaming as it is today, sincerely from the gods at Valve.

Left 4 Dead

My apologies for this disgustingly late review. Not only have I been procrastinating a sickening amount but now the SEQUEL for this game has come out and it is truly late. I am as sorry as you are indifferent.

Valve at last made the jump the consoles with this survival horror installment (originally based on the zombie servers on CS:S), even if it's at the sacrifice of a reliably likable fanbase.  With the somewhat suggestive pun in the name, you play as one of 4 survivors in the zombie apocalypse in an unknown city, relying on each other to get the group to each iron-doored safehouse and eventually to a rescue vehicle. This takes place in the same formula on 4 different hour-long campaigns: No Mercy which involves a rush to a hospital roof, Blood Harvest taking place on a farm, Dead Air on an airport and Death Toll along a highway. Playing on your own, these aren't fantastic due to an element of repetitiveness and pretty stupid AI, however provided you have Xbox Live or even just another controller for split-screen this is where the game comes to life in co-op form. You'll find yourself in plenty of 'L4D moments' in a similar way to Battlefield in which incredible or hilarious things that could only ever happen once are just bound to happen. For example, while I was playing co-op on Blood Harvest some annoying kid on my team thought it would be funny to not go in the Saferoom so as to not trigger the checkpoint and start the next area. We shut the door on him. A hunter (basically a zombie ninja) jumped on him, pinned him to the ground and started tearing him to shreds as he lay helpless. We left him to his fate.

This is not the only multiplayer mode as there are also Survival and Versus. Survival is literally a case of 'you're going to lose, it's just how and when'. You're cooped up at a lighthouse with 3 allies an infinite zombie horde approaching, and you stock up on weapons, explosives and health packs and hope for the best. You're given a clock to see how long you can last, however this isn't always bursting with fun as the lighthouse is the only map and it tends to be too simple. Versus, however, is the real Left 4 Dead experience in my opinion. 4 players play as the Survivors, and another 4 as Special Infected: these types are Hunters, Smokers and Boomers, each with varying weaknesses, strengths and attacks. The Infected may respawn but the Survivors do not, so they really have to rely on each other to survive, moreso as some of the Infected are now being controlled by humans and can use their attacks strategically and tactically. Unfortunately being an Infected is plagued by a horribly long respawn time of between 20 and 30 seconds twinned with a tiny amount of health so it is usually less frustrating being a Survivor, but it is a great mode anyway.

What Valve also do suitably in a co-op aspect is the way you have to use your supplies efficiently. You start off with a fairly poor main weapon (pump-action or SMG), one pistol and a health pack. You can heal each other and sometimes their need is more than yours so to keep them alive you have to sacrifice your own lifeline, definitely contributing to the Survivor feel of the game and an odd fraternity to your allies; people you've never met usually. Throughout the campaign you gain better weapons, a second pistol, pain pills - temporary health boost for desperate times - and an explosive. Explosives do mass damage and these can really save you and your teammates when the situation looks grim but, like health packs and pills, the campaigns aren't overflowing with these so you might not be able to get another for a while and you really have to think about using it before you mindlessly throw it at the nearest thing that moves. 

Left 4 Dead does NOT have the best online community as a lot of them are kids just buying the game as another blockbuster to cash in on, and this can sometimes mean they're more interested in getting an achievement than reviving you, but I can't knock Valve for making such a brilliant co-op game. Provided all 4 survivors are you and your friends, you've got a unique experience that you can't replicate in any other game, save Left 4 Dead 2. Yes, the AI are plain silly and the campaigns could have had a little more variety than just different environments, but with a good connection and a headset, you stop noticing and focus more on your survival from the near-endless swarm of bloodthirsty undead. 8/10, but knock off two stars if you haven't got Xbox Live or a buddy to play with.

Call of Duty World at War: Nazi Zombies for iPod Touch

Shoutout to Rob Wells for brutally forcing me to play this and review it. I'll keep this quick.

As far as handheld consoles go, the iPod Touch is probably the most limited, usually keeping to simple motion-controlled games based on dodging objects or solving puzzles, which is why any FPS is either bad or pretty impressive considering the platform it's on. So despite my somewhat violent hatred for Call of Duty, for an iPod game I was still pretty impressed with the Touch version of Nazi Zombies.

If you remember before all the DLCs when it was just Nacht Der Undertoten, that's what you get on the iPod Touch, and I mean that to the letter. Everything from the Help Room and upstairs to the Mystery Box, it has everything. While in comparison to what you'll get on a full console I don't find that much fun, on a tiny thing made to just play music it's brilliant. The controls are based on look, run, aim, fire, and CONTROL which fixes barriers, opens new areas and activates the Mystery Box. You realise that this is really all you need and it becomes a challenge you really want to work at before long. 

Graphically it's also impressive for an iPod, it matches roughly PS2 quality which really isn't too bad. Take into account the selection of weaponry AND the fact it can be played with friends over WiFi and you've got yourself a top of the range iPod game. DLCs of all the other maps are said to be coming out so this really has everything you need for the full Nazi Zombies experience. I would say the only really downer for the game is its difficulty, you're killed a little too fast considering how tricky it can be to run away with the touch-screen analog sticks. 

In all, even though I usually hate handhelds and Call of Duty, this was genuinely enjoyable. The price tag of £6 is a bit much for any iPod game but I would say it's worth shelling out if you're on a lot of bus journeys and need something to keep you occupied for a fair amount of time. 8/10.

Assassin's Creed II

We all know Assassin's Creed I was a good game and not a bad start to the series, but definitely with a lot of flaws, some of which could really hinder the whole experience. A great, previously unexplored idea and fantastic setting, but who wants to do the same missions about 9 times over, with little or no character development in the frankly awful cutscenes, and you can't swim? Well, despite Ubisoft doing not a great job with some of the Splinter Cell games, and making a diabolical follow-up to Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, it seems they've gained a skill all too few developers have: scouring the internet, seeing what people didn't like, and changing it. This is a sequel with a difference, and sets a very good example.

The setting of Creed II is both the same and completely different. It picks up exactly where the last one left off, in the room of (presumably) Subject 16 who you find out more about in the course of the game, and follow Desmond a lot more, discovering a good deal about the war of the Assassins and Templars continuing into the 21st century. However, when in the Animus, you're now accessing the memories of a different ancestor, Ezio Auditore, in 1400s Italy. You're only given two cities this time, but not only are they absolutely huge (Florence and Italy), you are also given access to a couple of smaller towns, and your very own town with the great Villa De Auditore where you can touch base if you're short of weapons or money. The cities are complemented with a much-improved crowd dynamic; you can blend with anyone and there tend to be a lot more civilians who instead of just walking robotically round huge scripted loops, actually stand in groups and talk, or shop, or (as irritatingly as the Harrassers in the first game) run up to you and play music. It is clear that this is the type of environment Ubisoft wanted in the first game but fell short of. The cities in general are, for the most part, a lot easier on the eyes too. When standing atop a building, you're not looking at a flat sea of yellow, brown and white. Beauitful European architecture is all around you and it's not hard to recognise some of the breathtaking landmarks, in particular the gigantic Duomo in Florence.

The storyline really takes off during the course of the game, while it takes a little too long for Ezio to take his true Assassiny form (even though he already has the ability to free run like a pro), a lot of questions are answered and even more asked, allowing at least two more sequels. More about 'the truth' is uncovered and you begin to understand the Assassin motto 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted' to a greater extent. It is considerably more complex than the first and I would say you are missing out on 60% of the game if you are not following it or have not played Assassin's Creed I. Thankfully the story is now shown in actually watchable cutscenes with decent camera angles and some fantastic facial expressions; the graphics aren't mindblowing but the faces are some of the best I've seen in a game. 

A very strong point of the predecessor was the combat system. It allowed skill and without irritating button-bashing you could fight elegantly with nifty counter attacks shown with gruesome detail, with a variety of weapons. Even this strong point has been improved upon, there are about 30 different weapons in all, ranging from swords and daggers, to spears and axes, to throwing knives and even a small gun. Fighting different classes of enemies spices it up and you have to use different tactics accordingly, and new moves such as fighting unarmed and disarming enemies means you can recover and get your own back if attacked off guard. I can't say it any more; Assassin's Creed II has one of the best combat systems out there and you'll find every fight being unique. 

For all these improvements, there are little criticisms to make. The main I find is while the actual cities look better and are more fun to traverse, the setting of the first game had a feel of religious tension, of 'Holy War' that brought it to life, and showed the contrast of the different cities. The most you'll get here is gang wars and it simply isn't the same, not to mention in this environment assassins are expected to be around, whereas during the crusade it's a much more original idea. The voice acting could also have been a lot better, it's far too obvious that it's done by Americans due to painful Italian sterotypes, eg 'Mamma Mia!' and the use of moronic American vocabulary, such as 'gotten' and 'someplace'. It's a minor criticism, but it's sometimes quite distracting.

Assassin's Creed II probably won't get into the books as one of the best games ever, but it is very, very good. Being one of the best single-player games I've had this generation, I rate it 9/10. Not perfect, but without a doubt worth a buy, so long as you're acquainted with the storyline of the previous game.