Not really me – but not a millions miles off it either.

I am a terrible gamer. I mean I pick them up OK and can join get the gist within a few minutes, but I lack the attention span required to master difficult button combinations and I allow too long to elapse between gaming sessions, meaning any previous memory or mastery of such combos is generally forgotten in any case.

To make matters worse I am impatient and often can’t be bothered piss-farting around trying to find the hidden door/key/talisman, so much so that I once snapper a copy of God of War in a thousand expensive plastic shards because I kept getting sniped when I forgot how to use cover effectively. When I told TOG this a few days later and he gave me a five word solution to my problem I was extremely shitty – “Just hold the X button” – more for the fact that I was out eighty bucks, (he also told me it was an awesome game, I now can’t bring myself to scrape my pride together and revisit it).

Since then I rent almost everything unless it blows me away and I convince myself I will play it through to the end. Replayability means practically nothing to me though, if a game has a story or is linear once I “clock” it or finish it I am done, side missions and bonus stuff be damned. The only games I used to pick up and come back to were sports games – usually NBA, NHL or Tiger Woods golf, or car games.

Nowadays 90% of my gaming time is spent on First Person Shooters (FPS). The ones I absolutely love use maybe 4 buttons, trigger / reload / change weapon / and perhaps melee. The reason is that I don’t play much any more, my spare time is largely taken by movies, watching sport and sleeping, but occasionally I catch the bug – remind myself I spent $500 on a console gathering dust – and head down to grab some weeklies for a binge. If things go well I often follow this up with another visit to renew the games and play some more, if not it’s another 6 months in the cupboard for the 360 and the Wii.

This time I thought rather than give you the IGN blurb about all the various ins and outs of each game from the perspective of the average fluffy-cheeked late teen I’ll give the counterpoint: the lapsed Gamer’s viewpoint. The pick up and play reviews for those who lack time, patience, skill and yes ability of the younger generation.

So as best I can I will tell you my initial thoughts on the game, including the pluses and minuses and basically how far I got before I either finished it – or simply had a gutful and moved on to something else.

Lego Indiana Jones Trilogy

I decided to start simple and play what is really a kid’s game. I realised that if things got hard early I would likely just chuck all the covers in a bag and head back to the returns slot.

Lego Indy walks you through all three of the classic Indiana Jones movie series, which if you think about it hard enough seem tailor made for video game conversion. The unique thing about the situation is that you go through them all in Lego form, no-one gets killed they get dismantled, nothing is destroyed it is merely disassembled.

You obviously start with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and using a whip in one hand and whatever you pick up along the way in the other. The fun part is that practically everything in the background can be destroyed and that when this happens you pick up little brightly coloured nuts and bolts that provide points. Occasionally these destroyed items yield life and weapons, but almost always a good proportion of each level is simply spent kicking, punching and whipping things and cleaning up the scattered treasure that results.

The best part for a newbie is a feature called adaptive difficulty meaning that the game is just as hard as you are generally able to handle, whether I suited the “average” gamer profile or if it was simply spot on, I often found myself a little stuck but never frustrated enough to throw in the towel or give up. You always managed to look around just long enough to get through the level without getting wound up or annoyed.

You play one of two characters in each level and switch through the pressing of one button – a key skill is learning to press the button just as one guy dies so that you don’t lose too many points – but even if you are too slow you never really die, you lose a few points and respawn a couple seconds later as often as you need to. You are always Indy (natch) and another character that changes depending on the situation. About half way through the game you are one of three characters and interchange between them all; I’m pretty sure the third was Short-Round so it must have been the Temple of Doom.

The only difference in the characters aside from the whip is that the women can jump higher (my arse!) and that Short-Round is small enough to fit into nooks and crannies. Apparently you can then replay the game using more appropriate characters to fully complete the various requirements and bonus bits, but as I said before I clocked the game once and I ain’t going back! Completing all movies in Story Mode got me to basically 50% of the entire achievements being completed so there must be a lot more I didn’t get to…

The game is quite funny at times – there is something about Lego guys running around that is simply amusing. There is literally not one word spoken through the entire game including the numerous cutscenes, murmurs and grunts being the order of the day. Some puzzles got a little repetitive but again not to the point that I reached for eject, you can ride a few things like camels, horses, trucks and at one point a bulldozer and while there is zero Halo-like responsiveness it was a bit of a laugh. In saying that one scene had me on a motorbike where the camera and controls system was so simplistic that holding the line was a test of more random luck than skill – and most definitely the closest I came to shutting down operations.

I dunno, as far as adventure games go this one was quite good. I might have spent 8 or so hours in finishing all the three “movies”. I never got really bored and even though it was a little repetitive at times the fact that you could refer back to the films themselves was a welcome bonus – hint – at the end of The Last Crusade there was a point where there seemed to be no path over a huge gap that couldn’t be jumped, if I hadn’t watched the films I might have spent a while solving that one!

The only downside to playing Indiana Jones is realising that  I am now very old. I was having a chat at work with another staff member who asked if I played video games, when I said not so much but I am at the moment they asked which game… I said Indy and they said “ah the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?”, to which I replied “no the original trilogy”. The 100% serious response?

“Aaaahhhh. Old School eh?”

I’m in my mid 30s and I have never felt so old.

What I loved – What being Indy isn’t enough? The infantile rush that you get re-enacting one of the more immortal cinematic trilogies using Lego dudes.

What I loathed – An ongoing requirement in each level is smashing stuff to find pieces of stuff which must then be built into something used to make progress, usually a ladder or a handle. Only the same button to build is the action button, meaning every couple of seconds Indy stops building to stand up and crack his whip for no reason, funny once… frustrating as hell hundreds of times. Worse still when you control a woman and her action is “Scream”, I learnt very quickly to not let women build stuff – just like real life really.

Final (Casual) Gamer Rating – 8 / 10. Yeah it’s a little kidd-ey, but it’s easy to pick up and play, rarely gets either too hard or too boring – and you get to be Indiana Jones! (Albeit with a head shaped exactly like a gas bottle.) You could do a lot worse.

Dead Space

It all started when a computer nerd watched Event Horizon and said “That’ll do”, only instead of ghosties he used monsters. You play some guy doing the normal First Person Shooter tasks, open this, release that, restart the other… Same as almost every other FPS – You have a helper barking orders periodically, a map is available and you pick up various guns, messages, emails, recordings and of course health that others have helpfully left lying around.

Look, for the record the story means zero to me in these games, I could care less about the devious scientist and the forbidden experiments that caused these freaks of nature, or who betrays you at one point and who is realllly behind it all. I just want to be able to point and shoot – and that’s why I liked Dead Space.

In between all the cut scenes (playing (but not listening) to audio recordings, opening (but not reading) the emails and correspondence left about the place) I got to blow shit up. Monsters and shit like that. I also got to pick up a few different guns along the way and use them – the cool one fires 3 beams that if you aim at the legs effectively kneecap whatever you are gunning for.

There were some pretty effective scares, the usual monster jumps from hole or monster standing behind door as it opens, always with the corresponding loud noise, but it was cool. I got Dead Space because someone sent me a Youtube link called the “Deaths or Dead Space” or something. It was basically 8+ minutes of gory kills, all happening to the main guy – which as a player is you.

Rest assured in my five or six hours I died a few times even though I played on the easy setting.  (I always play the easy setting – I want to finish the game and move on, that is obviously the easiest way). The weapons all have multiple uses, you accumulate 4 weapons, but can use them for several different tasks including levitating stuff, triggering things and slowing time – handy at various points when many things are advancing. I found myself though forgetting which weapon was most effective for what, especially when shit gets real (to quote Bad Boys) or when you haven’t used that sub-weapon in a while. That gave me the shits.

On the pluses the monsters are suitably freaky and can most definitely mess you up good and bloody, there are multiple save points scattered around, and even on easy the difficulty ramped up noticeably after a few hours gameplay.

What I loved – The best feature in Dead Space – and one more games should adopt, is when you press a button and it instantly draws a line to direct you to the next checkpoint. Now you can only go as far as your eye can see which isn’t far, but it sure saves unnecessary backtracking and opening and reopening doors to find out where you need to be. Instantaneous and immensely handy, I found myself using it often just to make sure I was heading the right way.

What I loathed – The usual thing in these games ( remember the same thing happened in F.E.A.R 1 or 2), if you save at the wrong time.

Let’s just say you get through a particularly tight area by the skin of your spacesuit, upon the door closing behind you shielding you from the big groobly your first thought is “I don’t want to go back there again”. You see a welcome Save Point and protect your progress, then walk around the corner to find another groobly that you can’t possibly defeat with your current ammo and health, since backtracking is not an option you are – to coin a phrase – fucked.

That is exactly what happened to me. Yes the logical solution is to have two save slots, the one you use along the way and a fallback point that you update every now and then. I did it early but the fallback was a good two hours gameplay behind where I was – if you’ve read anything I wrote previously you know I’m not starting again from that far back…

So to complete the review the first 5 or 6 hours of Dead Space were pretty cool, but admittedly a little repetitive. One day I will pick it up again, just not while I see Mass Effect, Bioshock 2, et al on the shelf begging me to try them first.

Final (Casual) Gamer Rating – 7.5 / 10. Promising, but let’s face it there are three types of shooter; Great. Fair. And Abysmal Abysmal speaks for itself, Fair means they tried to be a little more tricky than is necessary and Great is K.I.S.S. stuff – think Doom etc. Dead Space could have been great but had a little too much Fair about it for me.

Prince of Persia

Let’s keep this brief.

The best bits of any POP game are the getting around stuff. The movement mechanics are just so amazingly smooth and fluid that no other game really compares. The use of the second character is also well implemented, can’t remember her name. Let’s call her Mandy. Mandy helps you get across large chasms and can essentially be flung a little further to enable you to get further along, she also takes advantage of taking a piggyback ride every chance she gets and let’s face it is obviously gagging for it.

Scaling walls is easy (the key is getting the angle right), climbing, descending and simply jumping all extremely enjoyable and cool. Even just running around seems less of a chore than other games like GTA etc.

Then why can’t they come up with fighting system that is more than Hold Block (then) Mash Buttons – until the big fella falls over?

The theme of the game is to fight evil and restore goodness and life to various areas of some distant land at some distant point either in the future or the past – who cares? It was all quite hippy-ish and tree hugging. You basically show up in one spot – climb, jump, wall-run until you run into something big, black and scary (not Shaq) and hack it to death with your sword or sling Mandy into the fight occasionally while you have a rest.

Then when you’ve done that you consult the Oracle, or Tabernacle, or Barnacle or something (it’s a map alright!) and go to the next spot to do it all again. Very repetitive; but that’s not a bad thing if you enjoy it.

I found myself on the fence, and not just because the Prince is often running up, down or along a fence. Moments in the game highlight how cool certain aspects are, but the fights seemed arbitrary and more something that needed to be deal with in order to get to the next cool bit. The game kept telling me about block and parry combos but they never actually worked, meaning oftentimes I found myself open for an unblockable counter attack from the bad guy. What did work most effectively was the aforementioned mashing-combo, with the block when it was obvious your enemy was loading up. Disappointing really.

I’ve seen a few POP games in the last 10 years, the Sands of Time, The Warrior Within  and I think another, Return of the Jedi? I have played most since the original on PC in my teens and have no idea what this game is. Is it a filler between the more important versions, a cheap port of another consoles game or simply a lazy cash in on a license?

What I loved – Just the dynamics of movement, everything is so fluid and realistic – even as you pull of moves a million gymnasts wouldn’t consider attempting.

What I loathed – The fight systems just seem so far removed even from the Sands of Time game a few years back. I’m only going from memory but that seemed far more advanced and sensible than the mash-mash stuff here.

Final (Casual) Gamer Rating – 6.5 / 10. There was equal parts good and bad in Prince of Persia, which made it infuriating once you realised that by dropping the bulk of the boss fights you could still have had quite a fun open-area platformer somewhere in there.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Wolverine was a pleasant surprise, and everything the mediocre kid-friendly movie wasn’t. Strangely enough I think the target market would be the same in both cases, guys aged 15 – 30 something, but the movie pussed out and went all soft, while the game went entirely the opposite direction and went gore and uber-violence.

I loved the game, was bored by the film. You tell me what worked better.

Now it must be said I am a “3 death guy” with games. If I get killed 3 or more times trying to get through any one spot or section I am generally impatient enough to shut the game down. In God of War I got stuck a few times at a certain spot, chucked a sad and snapped the disc – don’t worry I’m not made of money it was a Bali copy that a friend brought back from a trip – but a couple of mates were a little shirty to find that they wouldn’t have a chance to play God of War because I had a hissy fit.

I also don’t like to think too hard at games, a puzzle or basic problem fine – the old Resident Evil games on Playstation had it about right – but 12 step deals where you have to get everything right in order bore me. I play games to relax, I might watch a movie to or read a book to learn or think. To me a good game is some pretty colours and the opportunity for some mindless violence.

So once again I loved Wolverine.

You play Spiderman… gotcha.

I think the story was similar to the film but in truth I paid 0% attention to it – in the words of Governor Schwarzenegger (the Simpsons Movie one anyway) “I came here to lead, not read”! – all I know is that for half the game you’re fanging around a jungle, the other half through some sort of army facility. In each setting there are millions of faceless minions sporting machetes, guns and as the game progresses spears, extra arms and teleportation abilities.

As Wolverine you don’t need to worry about getting somewhere within a time limit, you don’t need to worry about killing the innocent and you really don’t need to worry too much about dying seeing as you are basically part-Terminator. All you need to worry about is learning the basic combat buttons and then it’s killin’ time.

The early going is basically a training run, you meet some people – kill them – and move onto the next group of soon to be dead guys. When you get a little stuck or disoriented a button called Feral Sense indicates the way forward or at least gives hints as to how you might progress.

What I loved – Lots, Wolvie keeps things simple. The combat system is great and what made the game so enjoyable, you block, parry and attacks comes in two sizes, regular or large… just like coffee. Of course large takes a bit longer and leaves you more exposed to attack by the bad guys, but it deals more damage. More attacks and abilities get added as you progress including special attacks that have you whirling and flying around dealing still more damage.

The enemies seem to increase in ferocity and ability as the game goes along also, so if you don’t improve and add on you can get swiftly outmatched, this is helped by the inclusion of various new skills and abilities called Mutagens, that in video game fashion are left lying around the place for you to pick up to add to your armoury.

The Feral Sense was handy, a lot of the problem solving things actually reminded me a little of the parts of God of War that I did actually play, and the action and cutscenes are especially violent. Limbs are severed and Wolverine uses his metal claws to frequently penetrate the bodies of enemies in various graphic and painful ways.

Every hour or so a bad guy is introduced for you to work out how to kill. These are generally huge cave troll looking things that hurl boulders at you, but as you get further into the game they get bigger and while not really more difficult, the fights last longer as they are more hardy. As these mid sized bosses are quite similar these sections get more repetitive and in reality provide the major weakness in the game, the minions and melee battles are highly enjoyable, going through the same “dodge, leap, slash, dodge – repeat” with the bigger enemies got grating quickly.

And we all know Wolverine isn’t the most patient superhero in the X-Men universe.

I mentioned earlier that as part-Terminator Wolverine can regenerate health quite quickly and if untouched for a few seconds regains full health and is ready to go again, but after lengthy periods of sustained damage he can die. I think I died maybe half a dozen times in completing the game, but it was mainly by missed jumps where the fall kills you instantly, I might’ve died at the hand of an enemy twice.

This doesn’t mean it was all that easy, some of the scenes had up to 10 enemies in the same area all wishing you ill, and the hard part is keeping active enough that they all can’t corner you in one small area and line up to take potshots Bruce Lee attacker style. To help in that regard a nifty locating and leaping system allows you to move swiftly from enemy to enemy, pinpointing key bad guys that should be a priority and simply avoiding others. As with everything though this is not a failsafe approach, some enemies don’t like being jumped on and skewered, and they fight back by either countering your leap or simply spearing you mid leap. Some of the bigger mid-level bosses also casually catch you in flight and toss you to one side where they proceed to stomp on your head.

All in a day’s work for Wolverine.

I got Wolverine for the X-Box 360 on a weekly rental, thinking it might kill an hour or two, I ended up finishing it in 4 or 5 sessions, only one of which was more than a couple of hours. It was addictive in a curious way, easy enough that you don’t get frustrated too often but challenging and enjoyable enough to keep you playing. If you don’t improve your skills and tactics you’ll probably die, but I am not much of a game tactician and I managed to clock the game without myself getting killed too often and never getting tired of playing the game.

What I loathed – Not much really, but it seemed that there may have been two teams working on the game, some cutscenes are immaculate and look simply amazing, right down to Wolfie’s glistening triceps and bristling sideys, others though are choppy and look like two Lego guys conversing. Again aside from the basic visuals the cutscenes mean little to me, but in this case I couldn’t fast forward them and had to sit through them all.

Final (Casual) Gamer Rating – 9 / 10. If you’re like me and want a straightforward game where you get to kill stuff without too much fuss with good looking backdrops you could do a lot worse than checking out Wolverine. I’d much rather this than the lousy movie anyway.