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What is it with all the whinging about Band Hero? Why bother with such displays of rock snobbery? Anthrax fans don’t waste their time whining about the music of Michael Bublé. Do they? So why is Band Hero getting so much flack?

To me it seems that complaining about Activision producing Band Hero is a bit like complaining about Walkers making Cheese & Onion crisps because you only like Ready Salted. Or it’s like complaining about Ferrari making cars in yellow because you think they only look good in red. The fact is that if you’re moaning about Band Hero then it’s probably because it’s not aimed at you. Read the rest of this entry »

The original Overlord game could never be described as a big success. Even its official Xbox.com description refers to it as a “cult hit”. Making a follow up to such a game is always full of difficulties. You don’t want to alienate loyal fans by removing any of the elements that made the first title a success but you also want to change it enough to make it more attractive to a wider audience.

Triumph Studios haven’t perhaps managed to resolve that dilemma as successfully as I’d hoped but they have succeeded in producing a game that’s worth taking a look at, whether you enjoyed or disliked the previous outing.

Set many years after the first game the original Overlord’s Dark Tower has been destroyed, the big guy himself has gone missing and his minions have been left without a leader. Read the rest of this entry »

The CGUK Replay game for July was Crackdown…

This was the first time I’d played Crackdown as it came out well before I got a 360.

Crackdown is what I’d call a “Ronseal” game. It does exactly what it says on the box. It doesn’t set out to be particularly big or clever, it just wants you to love it because it’s fun.

It’s a game that you can spend as little or as much time with as you like. At no point do you feel forced to complete what would traditionally be considered the “side missions”; the road and rooftop races, the stunt challenges and orb collection. Read the rest of this entry »

Forget all the famous conflicts of the 1980s. The most intense and important battles (at least to my ten-year old self) took place on my bedroom carpet. There, on the tastefully-speckled expanse, spacemen Lego took on the mighty mounted knights from the Castle sets. Policeman mini-figures tried their best to arrest plastic Viking hoards. Terrified Lego City folk were crushed beneath the feet of evil giant-headed Sindy dolls. Of course the deadliest foe, the common enemy of all of Legodom, was the evil sucking tube of death… the nozzle of my mum’s vacuum cleaner. Oh, if only those legendary battles could have been captured in a videogame.

Fast forward twenty or so years to 2009 and Lego Battles for the Nintendo DS attempts to bring childhood play sessions like mine to life in digital form. The game might feature the familiar Travellers Tales branding but rest assured it is not merely another iteration of the series that has taken on Star Wars, Batman and Indiana Jones. Lego Battles is actually an RTS, a real time strategy game, based around some of the familiar classic Lego kits. Read the rest of this entry »

Cranky Gamer’s Replay game for May was the Oblivion Knights of the Nine DLC…

Playing through The Knights of the Nine content was a really interesting experience for me as it meant revisiting a game that I hadn’t played for well over a year.

Now, there are some games that you can just jump right back into but I don’t think Oblivion is one of them. I’d like to think I was a veteran player, having spent over seventy hours on the game, but I’d forgotten so much… like what spells I had access to, what weapons I used to use, where my house (with my stash of equipment) was and…erm… exactly what it was I’d done to upset the guards in every city in the land. Luckily that last problem was more a case of mistaken identity and , in general, the process of acclimatising was made a little easier having just played Fallout 3. Read the rest of this entry »