This Week’s Games
Despite the cute exterior, 505 Games’ Naughty Bear has been compared to Manhunt and has a 16+ age rating. Why all the violence, you ask? It’s because Naughty Bear wasn’t invited to another bear’s birthday party. It’s by the developers behind sleeper hit WET, so it might be worth a look despite the fact it hasn’t been reviewed yet.
Without a movie to tie-in into, Activision’s Transformers: War For Cybertron has turned out somewhat better than the last two Transformers games. Reviews suggest that it pays a great amount of fan-service and that the banter between robots is brilliant. However, it’s also quite short and the AI is dumber than Metal Mickey. I played the online beta for a bit, which plays a bit like Call of Duty with kill streaks, XP and the like. It’s much easier to get a kill though. While we’re on the subject of licensed games, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is out this week too.
It also looks like Activision are slipping Singularity into stores. This was quite hyped up at one point; I guess the end product isn’t as good as anticipated. Demon’s Souls on PlayStation 3 is certainly good though – it shifted way more copies than expected in the US, no doubt helped by the string of 10/10 review scores it gained.
Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of Osbourne House on DS could be a strong seller – the last one did very well for Ubisoft. Sadly I can’t see Metal Slug XX on PSP selling well – despite a cult following, Metal Slug games tend to drop in price very quickly and then end up in the bargain bin.
Next week: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, Tournament of Legends, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Pro Cycling Tour Manager: Tour De France 2010, Dragon Ball Z: Origins 2 and APB on PC.
Actually I’ve been pleasantly surprised, Singularity is pretty damn good. I thought it was going to be dumb but fun, instead it is dumb and quite clever.
It’s a well polished horror shooter with a decent twisty-turny time travel story, that competently combines elements of Bioshock, FEAR, Half-Life 2, plus the Russian style setting of STALKER and Metro 2033. More importantly, it has lots of unique features of its own, such as aging enemies to skeletons, trapping them in bubbles of frozen time, repairing objects by re-aging them. And like Half-Life 2 they keep the gameplay fresh by having the gameplay or setting change constantly. You honestly don’t know what the game will be like in ten minutes time.
It’s released in the UK and Europe now, but not released in the US till next week, so it seems like Activision are trying to do a game equivalent of the Blair Witch Project and have people buy it through word of mouth and reviews from European game websites rather than advertising.
For the sake of the developers Raven I really hope this word of mouth gamble pays off. Their previous game Wolfenstein got more press and advertisments despite being an inferior game.
I think you’re right – I went onto Eurogamer earlier today and was surprised to find an 8/10 review. “First-person shooters are always silly! Well done to Raven for making one that likes being silly”, they said.