Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a simple but addictive all out blast, consisting of 4 main game modes Race, Gauntlet, Ring Master and Championship. Points are earned for winning events on a sliding scale based on the results, as you reach different levels of points you unlock new boats, and levels. New boats vary in the usual departments, acceleration, top speed etc. The levels themselves are pretty damn impressive, there are a large amount of destructive elements and shortcuts, each level is also themed and as you race around events take place that vary the action. For example one of my favourite levels, entitled “Monster Island” sees you race around avoiding various giant monsters that interact with the flow of the water making the experience all the more bizarre, insane and most importantly fun.

The physics and game-play are as exaggerated as you’d expect and the game is all the better for it, as you unlock new boats with better handling you learn to fine tune your control and winning a race becomes all the more addictive. Slipstreaming competitor’s boats gives you increased speed. however the key to winning is definitely a combination of picking the best line and route whilst hitting as many nitro pick-ups as possible. Boosting works by collecting nitro pick-ups which top up your boost, this can then be deployed as and when needed.

Graphically Hydro Thunder Hurricane is as good as most Xbox Arcade games get, the water effects aren’t the best I’ve seen, but they’re good enough and this is a game that really is about the simplicity and fun of blasting along at over 200KPH.

One of the highlights of the game for me is the Ring Master mode, this mode sees you blasting through rings that are set out throughout the route. As you pass through each ring you get a small amount of Nitro. This simple game mode is highly addictive and great fun for trying to beat friend’s times and as you progress to pro and expert levels the smaller rings and varying placement force you to take some interesting routes through the courses. The one component missing from this mode is an option to race ghosts to see how well you’re performing alongside others, this would have added another competitive dimension to this otherwise great mode. The multi-player split screen is also great fun that plays beautifully with a rock steady frame rate and bought back memories of Hydra Thunder’s 4 player split screen on the Nintendo 64.

Overall Hydra Thunder Hurricane is everything you expect and want it to be. Just the right level of fun and addictiveness with enough game modes and unlocks to keep you going for weeks. At a price of 1200 MSP (£10) you can’t go wrong.

Crackdown 2 is an odd game. While at its molten core, it’s an explosive superhero romp, replete with fifty foot leaps of faith and SUV-slingshots, on the surface it’s the epitome of lazy and uninspired sequels, recycling the same move-set, the same cars and weapons, even the same city. But beneath the all too familiar facade, Crackdown 2 is a game of the purest form, simple but effortlessly addicting.

For a customer, Crackdown 2 is an exercise in principles. Do you purchase it for its merits as a game, or do you decide not to for its shortcomings as a sequel? Read on to decide…

Project Sunburst

Is anyone an AA member?

It’s no picnic being a Pacific City resident. Since enduring the gangs of old, now the sprawling metropolis is the battlefield for a three-pronged war between freedom fighters, mutants and one reckless Agent.

The story in Crackdown 2 is barebones, an excuse to pit a super-powered Agent against Mad Max-style soldiers and hideous freaks. Cell, a local militia committed to destabilising the Agency regime, has stolen vital cogs from a vast network of machines built to purge Pacific City of its mutated populace.

Armed to the teeth with guns and biceps so big the cast of Predator might blush, the Agency tasks you with recovering the lost Project Sunburst components from Cell strongholds, then to drop to Pacific City’s underworld and face the freaks on their own turf.

Extra Crispy!

Crackdown 2 isn’t interested in its story. It’s an afterthought, summed up no better than the audio-logs scattered across the city, each one containing more plot-points than the entire game itself. But you shouldn’t be concerned with Crackdown 2’s lack of story, as you’ll write your own as you delve deeper into its toy-box and discover the abundant potential at your disposal.

You’re constantly evolving in Crackdown 2. Glittering orbs spew from fallen enemies, and either fill your firearms, explosives or driving skills, depending on the nature of their death. You begin with a standard-issue submachine gun and patrol car, but soon you’re toting harpoon guns and an SUV capable of launching itself into the air.

This sense of constant progression, of rewarding effort, is the vein that courses throughout Crackdown 2, almost, but not quite, atoning for the absence of solid story structure and varied mission progression. Agility Orbs, the pulsing spheres scattered across Pacific City for your consumption, epitomise the simplicity in Crackdown 2’s appeal.

You Freak

Worse than Weatherspoons on a Saturday

So far, so Crackdown. So what’s changed? Pacific City, though the same in name and layout, is but a crumbled ruin of its former glory. Toppled buildings, ramshackle favelas, raging fires, wrecks and rubble are the order of the day – the city is in its death throes. Cell patrol their strongholds, roaming the streets in cars bristling with blades, as frightened civilians scurry to and fro.

But when darkness falls, the freaks emerge. Shambling, pus-spewing outcasts of the mutant kind, they’re supposed to be searching for new victims, but instead exist solely for your own amusement. Hundreds froth on the screen, which you can happily plough through in a car or scatter with a nicely placed blow from a lamp-post.

The freaks, as a concept, seem promising, and in the opening stages are responsible for much giggling. The UV Shotgun, which fires concussive blasts of UV light, hurls dozens of freaks into the air, where they vanish into glittering dust. But it soon becomes incredibly repetitive, the recycled missions not helping to alleviate the stress of facing the same shambling freaks over and over again. They do come in different shapes and sizes, some freaks capable of chasing the Agent on rooftops, others hurling cars, but they’re not challenging enough to pose a threat, and thus just as boring as their weaker counterparts.

Fun With Friends

The opportunities in Crackdown 2 for mayhem, violence and general craziness are insane. Pin enemies to a car with the harpoon gun, and then ride around as their bodies flop lifelessly on the hood. Attach the brilliant Mag grenades to a car, then two more to adjacent walls, and watch as a pulsing line of electricity tethers the car to either wall and transforms it into an impromptu slingshot!

Then, there’s co-op. Invite up to three friends to your game, or join another, and carry out ridiculous schemes, like attaching a tank to a helicopter with a Mag, one player piloting the chopper, the other onboard the tank, swinging like a wrecking-ball, burping rockets on the hapless citizens below.

A competitive multiplayer mode is available, too. PVP is a chaotic but enjoyable mess, obviously rough and unfinished but brimming with potential. Rocket-Tag is a sign of what Crackdown multiplayer could be, as one player dons a glowing crown and must escape his attackers, who are armed with rocket-launchers, from nabbing his helm.

Sequel Syndrome

As far as sequels go, Crackdown 2 is slacking. The story is generic and fails to develop, it simply ends. The structure is repetitive and uninspired. It recycles concepts, weapons, and vehicles. And the faces for the Agents, brilliant in the original, are now so ugly it’s no wonder they receive a helmet upon their first upgrade.

But to judge Crackdown 2 on its merits as a sequel may be wrong. It’s endured a hastened development, from a brand new studio tasked with delivering a game in less than a year whilst establishing staff and structure, too. But it’s also not very concerned with the conventional PR bullet-points, like “an epic story of redemption and betrayal”, or “fifteen new features, including the ability to sleep”. Crackdown 2 wants you to explore, it wants you to try things and experiment. It’s the odd uncle who offered you booze on your twelfth birthday, in regards to the frowning parents to insistent on good grades and university.

After a couple of warm up 2 vs 2 games, we decided to draw the top teams from a hat and then play a tournament, having drawn Argentina I was quietly (actually loudly) confident.

I managed to win my first game 2-0, even though I was distracted by the pizza guy turning up and seeing everyone else eating , luckily I managed to grab a a couple of slices at the end of the game. The next few games went by and I was knocked out of my second game by Randip, who to be fair has spent far more time playing FIFA than anyone else, and who eventually went on to win the tournament playing as Italy.

All in all a great night, I can highly recommend the World Cup Edition of FIFA, they’ve made some great improvements as well as building in live updates and scenarios from the actual World Cup as it happens.

The next day I had a quieter evening just watching a Blu Ray with my girlfriend, awesome deal from T-Mobile!

I’ve only had 5 mins to play with this update, and of the two i’d say the Facebook one is probably the most useful, even though it’s the social network i use the least. The ability to be able to look at photos is somewhat useful. Whereas with twitter you’re unable to follow any links that are tweeted, so sometimes it’s useless.

Anyway, take a look at some bad quality photos I took of the screen below,

So King of Fighters IIX is my first experience of the series, and overall I’d say it was a pleasant experience. It may be that i’m older and i’ve got more patience for learning special moves, but the game was really easy to get into, the 3 on 3 style format was refreshing.

Unlike most other beat em-ups KOF lets you pick three characters, you then get to choose the order you want to play them in. One of the great things about this is you can pick a combination of fast/slow/powerful fighters, which keeps the gameplay relatively fresh even after 3 or 4 bouts. The controls are really easy to pick up, the normal high/low punch/kick combos are all there as are

the roll the d-pad style special moves. I found most of the special moves fairly easy to pick up and the repeating control combincations make it easy to master two or three chracters really quickly, making it easy to quickly pick your three best fighters.

The real fun comes with being able to link attacks creating huge combo moves. For example linking command moves, such as a heavy punch plus direction and then moving into a special move or two can take a good 25% of an opponents health away. This type of thing gos down great on xbox Live or whilst playing with a bunch of mates, although the massive combo success rate drops heavily as beer consumption increases.

Graphically the game is very different to anything i’ve played in recent years, KOF still uses all hand drawn sprites, and doesn’t apply any filters to smooth them. It seems weird but I found this  retro style really appealing, again it might be an age thing, but it really bought back those late 80s early 90s arcade memories.

I played the game on the regular difficultly and found it relatively easy, which is saying something. Seasoned beat-em-up players will probably want to crank the difficulty up.

Overall I’ve found it an enjoyable experience, and i genuinely have found the game really addictive. The very accessible control system really makes the game easy and quick to get to grips with. It’s a brilliant addition to the xbox get-together night rotation of games.

I’m a fairly patient person, actually that’s a lie. I hate queuing, waiting and anything else that prevents me from getting to where i want or doing what I want to do. What made this lack of Xbox worse was that my pre-order of Guitar Hero 5 turned up just as the broken Xbox 360 was going back. In fact I had shiny Guitar 5 on one side of me and busted broken Xbox 360 on the other awating collection by UPS.

That day i walked back from work, straight into my local Tesco and bought an Xbox Elite. In my head the justification was that I’d have a larger hard drive etc. The fact that it had HDMI didn’t really register as much of an advantage, except for maybe some tidier cabling.

The Xbox Elite has some obivous advantages straight away, for a start it’s definitely a lot quieter, although i’ve heard some of the newer permium and arcade consoles are also equipped with quieter DVD drives these days. The power brick is actually a little bit smaller, not loads, but it all helps when you live in a 1 bedroom flat.

The biggest advantage however is the picture quality through HDMI. Now, I’ve read quite a few technical comparisons of component and HDMI xbox connections and people have said there’s little difference. This didn’t seem to be the case for me, and from comments I’ve read on various forums people’s opinions seem to differ. I’ve come to the conclusion that the level of improvement might depend on the TV you’re using. I’m using a relatively new mid-range 40in Sony Bravia, the picture quality on component wasn’t bad, but i always detected a slight ghosting, which initialy annoyed me but i got used to it. Through the HDMI connection the picture is incredibly sharp and the colours seem a lot deeper, black is a lot, well..  blacker. Which isn’t bad for an LCD TV.

If you’re not tempted yet, check out the video below and you’ll be £10.20 poorer by tomorrow evening.

I’d seen advert for RFG, but nothing about them really made me think, wow that’s something new I really want to play it. As soon as someone mentioned you can destroy the environment and best of all you can do it with a giant mech if you so wish, I was in there. The game is basically a standard open world free roaming job, which is great, but the real icing on the cake is that you can destroy pretty much any structure and object, buildings, bridges, vehicles etc. You play the part of a explosives expert of sorts so you start of equipped with remote explosives and a big old mining hammer type thing, both of which are capable of levelling structures in their own way. Vehicles can also be driven through and into building causing damage. Once a building becomes structurally unstable they usually collapse in a fairly realistic way. My favourite structure to topple at the moment are the giant  smoke stacks.

I haven’t actually finished the game yet, but i’d say it definitely gets better as it progresses, I recently even found a smaller walker called a “Walker Light” which even included a jet pack. My only critisisms at the moment are that the walkers rarely come into the game at least up until the point I’m at, but I’m guessing that’s to stop it from becoming too easy, the cover system is also very limited and tends to be more difficult to use than just standing behind something and manually ducking, also the character and the vehicles find it very hard to climb most hills, which is strange for a game where the landscape is made up of steep ridges and hills which can provide excellent cover for an attack.

Check out the video below for examples of the geomod destuctive environment and how it adds to the gameplay.

I’ve been playing the game for a few hours here and there the last few days, and I’m finding it hard, I’m not the only one either. The copy I bought from Game was preowned, even though the game had only just been released. The guy in the shop said the owner returned it the same day because he “hated” it. That’s where we differ though, I don’t hate it at all. I’m really enjoying the challenge, the change in fight mechanics is definitely for the best, it all feels a lot more realistic even the pace of the fight feels a lot better.

It's a good likeness, even down to the muscles

It feels a lot less like an arcade. You can’t easily parry an opponents punches anymore and therefore hit them with constant haymakers. You have to be a lot cleverer. There’s a whole counter punch system that’s been added, and this is where the heart of the new fighting system lies.

Counter Punches cause a lot more damage. In order to pull off a counter punch you need to successfully dodge your opponents punch and then throw a punch immediately. This takes away a lot more health and causes more damage, whilst making a satisfying sound. You you also weave now which makes dodging the punches more realistic. In place of the parry from Fight Night Round 3 you can block and throw a counter punch, however the catch is you can’t just hold your block up to do this. You need to block at the exact moment the punch connects, my problem with this is that it’s almost an advantage to have your block down and keep trying to bring it up when you think your oppoenets punch is going to connect. When in reality you’re better to keep your guard up all the time.

The other feature that impressed me was the ability to upload front and side photos of yourself to the EA Sports site, you can then download these in the game and use them to make a boxer with your likeness and to be fair it worked very well for me.

Overall though it’s hugely enjoyable and it’s great that the controls and mechanics have changed for the better, this’ll keep fans of the previous games busy whilst progressing the game towards a mnore realisitic interpretation