Jackreyes' Gaming Blog

Football Director DS may well be one of the worst games I have ever played. It barely even warrants a review. It is clearly trying to bring the football management genre (of which I am a fan) to handheld consoles, in this case the DS. Sports Interactive and Eidos have done this somewhat succesfully with the PSP versions of the Football Manager series and Championship Manager series respectively. Whilst they are just watered down versions of the PC games they did still impress me. Football Director DS does not impress me in the slightest. At first I was pretty excited about the game being announced, after all, a portable football management game with touchscreen controls should be great, right? Seems this isnt the case, im not sure whether this is their fault or the DS’s.

The DS was never going to be able to handle a huge database of players and clubs, but it seems pretty halfhearted. You can only manage english teams – fair enough I suppose, but players from teams you may face in the Champions League or European Cup seem severely underrated. Does this make said teams easy to beat?.. No. the match engine seems to be mostly random and all down to luck. the best example was when i was managing Arsenal with no available keepers, about to play Chelsea. I  put Fabregas in goals for the game, I won 3-0. I can possibly see a 3-2 victory perhaps, but, not conceding a single goal? What is wrong with this game?? My list of complaints doesn’t end here, this is just my biggest complaint I suppose, the rest I can cope with. If you are already bored of reading this and well and truly put off buying the game, then I suggest you just scroll down to the final score.

Now for a more in-depth look at the game, I’ll start with the interface.

Nothing to do here…

As I said earlier, a football management game with touchsreen controls should be pretty great, but then.. that is if they aren’t hidden behind bizarre menu’s that don’t really seem to fit the requirements for… menus. Simply tap something on the touchscreen and you should see some information on the top screen. Hold down L and tap, and you’ll go into a page especially for that team/player. Seems simple enough, turns out to be fiddly and on the whole, not worthwhile, after all, you don’t really need to look at who you’re signing, the chances are they’ll deteriorate wildly in a few days at the club. Tactics seem pretty useless as well, nothing in-depth, nothing that seems like it would make any difference in a match.

Now back to the ‘database’. Quite simply, it just isn’t good. It could be worse, but not much worse. Some players have been transferred from their old clubs to new, some just haven’t. Shaun Wright-Phillips is a good example. He remains at Chelsea, when in fact he had moved back to Manchester City. The game has an editor, but it only allows you to change player and team names. There is a ’stat’ for each player type, Handling for Keepers, Tackling for Defenders and so on. Then Pace and Overall are supposedly distributed in the same way to all players. Some defenders look like they’re just as good at ‘Passing’ and ‘Shooting’. Its all rather mixed up and confused, and the rate at which players can deteriorate is ridiculous. The overall rating just skips around.

The match engine is just broken, and purely text based which also appears to be randomised.

Overall, this is the sort of game I’d expect to find for the PC years ago.. on floppy disk.

Maybe someone will make a decent football management game for the DS at some point, but until then, make sure you DON’T buy this awful product.

Ratings:

Graphics: 5/10 – Nothing special, no graphical match engine, but they’ll do..
Controls: 2/10 – Far too fiddly to work well, pity.
Sounds: 1/10 – Not mentioned in the article, not worth it really, just a few crowd cheers during games. Very poor.
Accuracy: 4/10 – Sure this rating only applies to certain types of games, but here, its probably the most important.

Overall: 2/10 – A huge letdown. Bring on Imagine: Packed lunch making, can’t be worse than this.
16%

~Jackreyes

So, this weekend I (re)discovered a great game: Frets On Fire. It’s a game based on Guitar Hero, Rock Band and other games like that. It let’s you play guitar with your keyboard, so no expensive guitar controller needed!

FoFix using the Rock Band 2 theme

Gameplay + controls: It’s a real guitar hero clone: You have 5 colored frets and one ‘pick’ or strum bar. You hold the frets (F1-5) and hit the’ strum bar’ (enter) at the rhythm of the music. Yes, just like in Guitar Hero. The original Frets On fire doesn’t have a career option, you can  play a song and try to beat your highscore and that’s pretty much it. However in FoFix (Frets On Fire X) you DO have a career option with different songs and objectives to unlock different tiers. The only downside is: you have to set up the career yourself by adding some code to certain files. It’s not hard, but the casual gamer wont be bothered to do this. The controls work very well except if you have a keyboard with certain key combo’s turned off. Some manufacturers do this, but I have really no idea why…

When  the Rock Band theme is used with FoFix you can also play the drums and bass. I’m not sure if you can sing, because I haven’t tested it myself.

FoF has 3 songs installed. On the frets on fire fan forum you have a HUGE database with songs, even the original guitar hero and rock band songs. You download them and copy them to your songs folder and you’re ready to rock! Note: These songs are all created by fans of the game, normal gamers like you and I, so these are not official. Yes, some are real crap.

The original Frets On Fire

Graphics: The graphics in FoF aren’t pretty good as you see above. In the mods however they’re awesome. The graphics look exactly the same as in the original games. There’s only one thing to mention: you can’t have movable backgrounds, so it’s just a picture. It doesn’t irritate me but it takes away a bit of the ‘Guitar hero atmosphere’.

Frets On Fire X with the Guitar Hero Theme

Music and sound: Can’t be better… It’s a music game after all.

My conclusion: don’t try FoF. Just immediatly download the modded version (FoFix) and install the guitar hero or rock band theme. Your expierence will be ten times better and you get better graphics and a career option. I know, there are still minor bugs in those versions but the coders update it once in a while. It’s all done by the community so they really care about what you think and what you like to have added.

Gameplay: 9/10 (depends on which song you play)

Controls: 7/10 (Drum is hard with a keyboard, some combo’s dont work, but that’s probably my keyboard)

Graphics: 9/10 (For the modded version, obviously)

Music and Sound: 10/10 (It’s a music game after all)

Overall: 90%

-Svenn

As I said in my last post, Sven and I decided to review 2 of 3 freeware games we happened upon, so… here we go.

The Lure of the Temptress was a point and click game for the PC, made by Revolution Games and released in 1992. Before I was born as it happens.

The game starts out with a cutscreen: The story takes place in a fantasy land

where you play as a civilian named Diermot. The King orders you to join the army and fight off a rebelling force led by a sorceress called Selena. You ride out to fight however, this is no normal rebellion, instead of people, there are evil ‘Skorl’ fighters. All of the King’s army are killed except you, you are taken to a prison where you awake and the game starts. You must first escape the prison and find out what you can and ultimately, save the kingdom. Sound a bit too clichéd? Well, in 1992, it was probably a reasonably new idea.

Not surprisingly, this game plays like a lot of other Point and Click genre games from the era. The storyline is fairly unoriginal as I already said. As for the actual gameplay though, a lot of the things you have to do on the game require logic, or just persistence. For example, to free your sidekick-to-be –Ratpouch- you need to find the knife on top of a barrel then cut the bonds, ok, that was a bad example seeing as its easy to see however, there are some more challenging tasks. Once you do have Ratpouch as your sidekick, you can tell him to do many complicated tasks. The game though, just screams generic point and click at me, but who doesn’t like the odd point and click game?

Controls:

What can I say? The clue is in the genre, you point, and you click. The default action for left-clicking is shown in the top left of the screen, for different actions you must right click and select an option.

Graphics:

Well, you have to remember, this game was released 17 years ago. The graphics are bound to be outdated, however, I must admit, I’ve seen similar graphics on bad DS games, and good GBA games. They were probably pretty impressive for the time. Personally, I really like the presentation of the game, it just reminds me of past games. Its not like you can’t see what is happening, they are reasonable, but its no Crysis, obviously.

Overall:

I know I keep saying it, but you have to remember, 1992. Long time ago. Besides, now its free, what have you got to lose in trying it? About 12mb bandwidth, but I’m sure you can cope with that loss if you don’t like the game. I do like the game and I imagine I will open it up again every so often and try to complete this tricky, logic-requiring game.

Gameplay: 8/10 – Classic point and click.
Controls: 7/10 – The right clicking can be a little hit and miss, maybe thats just me.
Graphics: 6/10 – Like I said, reminiscent of a GBA game.
Overall: 72% – Its free.

~Jackreyes

When Jack came up with this I was pretty excited. You can’t reject a free downloadable game, even if it’s old. After downloading the game and reading the 15 page manual (the game itself is +/- 70MB) I was ready to play.

When you start up the game, you see a comic-book stylish ‘cut scene’ explaining the story. Surprisingly, the story seems strong and revolutionary (especially for a game that’s released in ‘94). It goes like this: you’re Robert Foster and as a young boy you were discovered and raised by a weird tribe in Australia. The old wise man from your tribe predicts evil is coming towards their village. As you can guess, the wise man was right and you get kidnapped by some special organisation. You manage to escape but you’re stuck in some kind of super controlled and supervised city, Union City, and you want to get to ground level. And the worst thing is.. you’re on the highest point in the city. (Nobody could’ve guessed that.)

The whole game is about getting to ground level. Only people with high LINC statuses (a system that controls access to buildings, bank transfers, ..)  can get to ground level. If you have a low status, your stuck on the highest levels in the city and have to do the dirtiest jobs.

Gameplay: It’s like every point-and click adventure game. You click on items, combine items and talk to a lot of people for finding that special piece of information. The dialogues are filled with humour (well, it probably was funny back then) and not boring at all. You can skip every dialogue by clicking and the best thing of all, you don’t have to read everything. Yes, there’s voice-acting in the game, and I think it’s great! The lip-sync doesn’t look that good, but we can’t be too critical, the game’s 15 years old. So the whole game is clicking and being logic. If someone wants to go on a holiday, you buy tickets at a travel agency and trade it for some valuable information. You can die at certain points in the game but you’ll never expierence a dead end. You just get stuck until you find the right items or talk with the right people.

Controls: Just click it! The cursor switches between different icons for actions or walking. With right clicking you can combine items or use something.

Graphics: With every next-gen console having a resolution of 720p or higher the graphics are a bit disappointing, they’re not even good for their time. Because the game was very big the programmers had to reduce the animations and graphics and that’s a pitty. The game is built on the same ‘engine’ as Jack’s game (Lure of Temptress) but is four times as big, that’s the reason why the graphics are blurry and the animations are choppy.

Music and sound: The music is horrible in my opinion. On the other hand the voice acting is great. A dialogue with sound is way more interesting than just reading some text.

Overall: Everyone who likes old school gaming should try this. It’s a great game to play when you’re bored or when you have 20 minutes spare time and you don’t know what to do. The biggest weaknesses are the graphics and the bad animations.

Graphics :  5/10

Music and sound:  7/10 (due to the voice acting)

Gameplay:  8/10

Controls:  6/10 (I don’t like clicking, but the controls do their thing)

Overall: 70%

-Svenn

N for the PC is a flash game released in March 2004. So why am I reviewing it?

The answer is because N+, a sort of sequel to the game is coming to the DS and PSP shortly and it has already been released on the Xbox Live Arcade.

N is a game in which you are a ninja and the aim is to complete the level in the time given. You usually have to get a key for the door and then go through the door to complete the level whilst collecting Yellow squares on your way each giving you plus 1 second to complete the level in and avoiding mines, falling from great heights and things that look like they want you dead.

Screenshot:

Controls:

Left and Right arrows to move and Shift to jump. Nothing special. Average controls, but easy to use and work well with the game.

Graphics:

They’re… nothing special, in fact they’re not that good on the flash version and I imagine they’ll be pretty much the same on the PSP and DS, but the Xbox graphics are supposed to be next-gen.

Download Link:

http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n_downloads.html

Ratings:

Gameplay: 9/10 – Very enjoyable.

Graphics: 6/10 – Below Par, but you can’t expect too much for a free flash game. Though they do work with the game.

Controls: 8/10 – Work well enough, nothing fancy, nothing bad.

Overall: 7/10

76%

If you are reading this, then you’ve probably realised that my Gaming Blog has moved from jackreyes.wordpress.com to blog.jackreyes.co.uk

I thought this was a good move seeing as the old blog seemed to be pulling in quite a few visitors. Of course I haven’t posted on here in quite a while, but that’s mostly because I’ve been busy in school.

Now I’m on the 6 week holiday I have had time to get my various websites sorted out. I realised having about 6 free hosts was a waste of time and I bought some paid hosting and this domain.

At the minute you can check out my Game Logo Gallery and soon the Home Page which is currently being created by my friend Gazok.

Anyway, I hope you like the new site and keep checking up for the Reviews I’ll be posting up soon enough.

-Jackreyes

This game, cleverly aka BWii is a sequel to the original Batallion Wars released on Gamecube. Having never played the first game, I didn’t know what to expect. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised, it seems to have a nice campaign along with Wi-Fi play.

I have to say, even though the graphics aren’t revolutionary in comparison to the PS3 or 360… I think they are very impressive for the Wii and I love them. The vehicles and grunts may not look realistic, but I think that is whats so great about Nintendo and the Wii, they can pull off unrealistic and replace it with fun. Because that is what this game is… good fun.

The gameplay is great. The campaigns are well thought out and work really well. The first ones do a good job of teaching you how to play. However after only playing 4 of the campaigns and them still sort of teaching me, I’m a little worried about the length of the game because my save file says 25% completed already.

The controls seem to be pretty good using the wii remote, you press Z to lock on then wii remote to aim and press B to shoot. If instead of B you press A it’ll send the troops you currently have selected attack. The control stick on nunchuk is used for moving player around and C changes the camera view. Moving the nunchuk in a to the side (shaking sort of) will make you perform a combat roll to get out of the line of fire. If you use the D-Pad to select different troops and then hold down A you can become a different soldier type, or even a vehicle.

The WiFi I only tried once and the other guy disconnected. There are 3 different WiFi modes; Co-Op, Skirmish and Assault. I only tried Co-Op but then the other guy basically lost all his troops then disconnected. It seems to be lag-free and work well though. Still uses Friend Codes. You can find mine here. Just comment to tell me you have added me and put your friend code here too.

Ratings:

Graphics: 9/10

Gameplay: 9/10

Control: 8/10

WiFi: 9/10

Overall: 8.5/10

83%

I never got to writing this article until now >.<

I had a date on March 9. It was so dang beautiful. It was the best night of my life! What? You think I had a girlfriend? Noooo!! I bought Super Smash Brothers Brawl and played it for quite a while. The story is well set up, and even if there is absolutely no dialogue, it works amazingly!

The story mode is called the SubSpace Emissary. The story is basically that there’s the SubSpace Emissary, who are destroying parts of the Smash World with special bombs that turn the area into SubSpace. We also have the 2 greedy kings (Bowser and Dedede) beating the crud out of our heroes and turning them into trophies. The story is actually full length this time, and lasts probably 10 hours.

Brawl includes a new an improved group mode, which includes rotation (automatically swaps out players if you’re playing with more than 3 buddies), improved special brawl (bunny ears + large sized character + high gravity + metal), and the removal of the cruddy game variants we didn’t like (coin and bonus).

The game includes a lot more items and characters, such as the long awaited Sonic The Hedgehog, and the unexpected Solid Snake . There are about 34characters total, and will keep you playing for a while until you finally get them all. Some items from melee reappear, as you battle with an improved beam sword, super scope, and fan (it’s only better because you can trap people in your fan’s fury for a while LOL). The bumper (remember from the original SSB?) made a reappearance too. The nice new toys you get to play with are the cracker launcher (sounds a little weird), which shoot fire crackers at an angle that you choose, the smash ball, which summons your character’s special attack, and the Smart Bomb (Star Fox), which makes that huge explosion you see in Star Fox 64.

The vault mode (has collectibles) has a lot of nice features, such as the returning trophy feature, sticker feature (another nice collectible), stage builder (have not tested it yet), and screenshots + replays. I have not really tested much on Vault.

I have a few complaints about Brawl (it doesn’t matter how good a game is. There is always going to be something wrong with it).

1. Final Smashes are cheap and unbalanced. Kirby’s is almost impossible to avoid, and knocks you off the map easily, but Peach’s only makes you fall asleep and doesn’t make you fly off the map.

2. The game doesn’t have a dedicated camera mode. You can only angle the camera when you have paused the game. A lot of videos I see on SSB use the dedicated camera on Melee and angle their shots while the game is not paused. The zoom is not as good anymore (doesn’t zoom in as much as it used to).

3. No language changing

Gameplay: 9/10

Graphics (based on my taste, not compared to those fancy 360 and PS3 games): 10/10

Concept (same as always): 8/10

Controls: 10/10 for 4 different methods

Music: 9.5/10 because it is like a compilation of all the Nintendo stuff

Replay Value: As high as the moon gets.

Overall: 9.5

-sakuramaxx

As with all new PC games Halo 2 comes with hefty specs. Not glasses, requirements that your computer needs to meet to run this game.

It is a Windows Vista  exclusive title that requires at least 1gb of RAM and at least 7gb free hard drive space.

Now onto the actual game.

The graphics… Amazing!

They could hardly be better. Well maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but some of the best graphics I’ve seen in a while.

Gameplay… Brilliant!

You’ve got to love sniping the bad guys in the centre of the forehead. The storyline is reasonable and the campaign is pretty short. But it is still gripping. Great stuff Bungie.

Controls… Fantastic!

Its not too hard to remember the controls for keyboard/mouse and they work great. Though it would probably be even easier / better with a 360 Controller for windows PC’s.

Online… OMG!

This is the section I really wanted to write. The online is so fun, even without a Windows LIVE Gold account you can still play online, you only need a free (silver) account. Capture the Flag has to be the most engaging, fun online game concept ever, and the Halo series puts it to excellent use! (as does Team Fortress 2, review coming soon) There are also other online modes which are just as fun as Capture the Flag. Sniping bad guys in the campaign may be fun but sniping another guy online… this just takes fun to a new level!

Final Scores

Gameplay: 9/10

Graphics: 9/10

Controls: 9/10

Online: 10/10

Overall:

10/10

97%

Jack

Crysis was the first thing in mind when I got a new computer. It’s a great game, but sadly has some big flaws..

The game takes place in year 2020 where a group of American researchers found an amazing discovery. Though, they are taken captive in the Philippine Sea by North Koreans. You, Jake Dunn (Codename Nomad) are equipped with a special suit that can adapt into any situation while on a mission to rescue the researchers. But soon, a war starts against the North Koreans. As you progress through the story, you discover extraterrestrial life and you must defeat them. Throughout the game, you go through many hostile environments, like an alien spacecraft in zero gravity, the Korean jungles, the ice sphere (a frozen version of the jungle), and much more. There are 8 guns in single player mode, and more in multi player. This is what I think of the game:

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics are amazing in this game, and it looks like someone just put the jungles, and everywhere else in a little CD. Problem is, to see those graphics, you need a super powerful computer. It even lags on a 5.9 grade PC, so I recommend playing on Medium graphics. In other words, it’s almost impossible to play on very high graphics without mass frame lag.

Sounds: 7/10

Sound effects were realistic. Every gunshot, every explosion made it feel like I’m in the action. The music was rather boring (most of it is silence with random sounds to make it a little scary, and a couple sound like the stuff you’d find in those war movies like Saving Private Ryan), which gave me the low rating. The dialog is very original, and some of it is a bit humorous.

Gameplay: 9/10

The game is very interactive, as you can pick up almost every object lying around (I like to throw keyboards at Koreans). The AI is smart, and even walking through the grass and making the slightest noise can make the enemies notice you. What adds to the game is the nanosuit. You can use armor mode (the default mode), which uses suit energy as a substitution for health; You have speed mode, which makes you walk faster, and sprint faster at the cost of suit energy; strength mode, which reduces gun recoil, makes you jump higher, and throw stuff further; and cloak mode, which makes you invisible at the cost of energy. The game has a bit of replay value due to how much you can do to the environment, and do objectives in different ways. Some levels have major bugs, which can be frustrating (It took me 6 times to complete a section of a level since the enemies froze and wouldn’t die), and the game is a little shorter than expected (Likely because I am used to 40 hour RPGs). Luckily, it’s going to be a trilogy. There are many attachments to put on your weapons to make them stronger and more accurate than they are. The multiplayer is very good, and I am spending a lot of time on it. It uses an objective style format requiring you to capture objective points to make weapons of mass destruction.

Controls: 9/10

The controls are 10 since this is my first FPS on PC. But I loved the controls. They are the default of most shooters. F to interact with things, WASD format, point and click shooting, and that simple stuff. Only problem is that they never implemented a function to hold your breath. Sometimes you need to snipe enemies in the game.

Overall, this game was very good, and I am hoping that you pick this game up, because it is PC shooter of the year, and it’s better than Halo.

Sakuramaxx.