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Counter Strike: Global Offensive PS3 Review

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Bomb Planted ! Counter Strike is a Marmite game, you'll love it or you'll hate it. Call of Duty players will run to the hills, there's no care package here. Battlefield players will feel more at home with its superb team-play mechanics. Anyone who owns a half decent spec PC will have played Counter Strike, in fact if you’re into games or shooters of any kind you would have seen or played CS. It's the Daddy of all team shooters and for the first time it graces the PlayStation 3. PC fans will be feeling right at home as you can hook up your mouse and keyboard or all you sharpshooters out there can hook up your Move controllers. Even if you’re not online the bots in CS:GO will give you a very good run for your money in the robust single player mode. To be fair it's more of a boot camp for online play but all the same it's great fun. Like the previous games in the series, Global Offensive is an objective based multiplayer first person shooter....

Tony Hawks Pro Skater HD Review

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The classic skateboarding game returns in HD Nearly everyone will remember playing Tony Hawks back in the day on their PS1, the game seems to have faded away in recent times but now it’s back with Tony Hawks HD available from the Playstation Store. Tony Hawks HD is a high definition remake of classic levels that everyone will remember from Tony Hawks 1 and 2. The concept of Tony Hawks is simple, you have an open world play ground in which you must skateboard around and complete various objectives so that you can earn money to improve your attributes and buy new things like skateboards and special tricks. Racking up high scores is one of the main aims and the best way to do this is through combinations of moves. To score points you need to pull off tricks such as grinds, aerials and flip tricks, if you move seamlessly from one trick to another your multiplier is incremented and when your sequence comes to an end your score is multiplied by multiplier allowing for massi...

Anomaly: Warzone Earth Review

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Tower Defense But In Reverse Tower defence style games have seen a surge in popularity since app stores appeared on mobile devices and there have even been tower defence style games on the Playstation Store. But now the tables are turning and we have the first ever Tower offence game where you destroy rather than defend the towers. Alien debris has rained down on earth and your platoon is charged with investigating what has happened. You must fight your way through Baghdad to what appears to be the power source but alien towers are trying to stop you reaching it. Fortunately it’s not just a case of walking through a predetermined path from the start to end. At the start of the level you can see a map of the area and have to plot a route through it, you also get to choose what type of vehicles you will use in the battle (subject to budget constraints.) You need to balance taking the quickest route through the map with taking a route through the map that passe...

Sleeping Dogs Review

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Like GTA but in Hong Kong Sleeping Dogs slipped under my radar until about a week before release when I saw videos and details about it online and I’m glad I did because it’s one of the best open world games I’ve played for a long time. You play as an undercover cop working for a gang in Hong Kong trying to gather evidence that can be used to convict the members whilst also helping out the cops on cases that might otherwise go unsolved. This leads to an interesting scoring system where you have two metrics, one is your cop score which is negatively affected by illegal actions like killing pedestrians, stealing cars and damaging property. The second is your triad score which is positively affected by performing good deeds for your gang like killing rival gang members and generally being a badass. Once you gain enough of these points you can unlock new skills, the cop points allow you to unlock more refined skills like recoil reduction on weapons, slow motion mode or t...

PaPo & Yo Review

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A dark adventure PaPo & Yo is a wonderful but depressing story of a boys imagination as he tries to escape from his abusive and alcoholic farther. Set in vast, beautiful locations you have to manipulate the world to make progress through the level. You do this by interacting with keys and levers dotted around the maps and highlighted in white. Turning the keys and pulling the levers move the buildings allowing access to previously inaccessible areas, the animations as things move are brilliantly done. You also need to make ‘monster’ move through some of the levels with you. You do this by tempting him with fruit lying around the levels, he really prefers frogs though but these turn him into a fire monster who mercilessly throws you around. Once he’s in this state only feeding him a blue fruit can calm him down. Jumping between buildings, platforms and the like is a core part of the game but unfortunately it can be a real pain. Sometimes you can pull off jumps...

Pinball Arcade PS3 and PS Vita Review

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Is it worth picking up this version of the classic game ? Pinball is and old and well known game, free versions are readily available so is it worth shelling out for this game? The gameplay mechanics of the game are simple you use the L1 and R1 or Left and Right buttons on the PS Vita to control the flippers and the right analogue sticks to shake the table (but be careful you don’t trip the tilt detector!) On the Vita you can also use the touchscreen to control the game tapping the front screen for the flippers and the back to nudge the table. The game comes with four tables each with their own challenges and unique layouts.  The “black hole” table is a space themed table with a nice blue colour scheme and a really cool reverse gravity mini table underneath the main one. “Theatre Magic” is a dramatic magician themed table with fast paced music and lots of flashing lights replicating the feel of being at a magic show. The next table is called “Arabian Nights” as...

Eurogamer 2011 - Playstation Vita steals the show as Sony come out swinging

The Eurogamer expo was about one thing for Playstation fans, the Vita. Instead of just a few consoles, Sony opted for a set up that showed everyone attending the show they mean business with the stunning new handheld. If you stuck it out in the queue Sony reps took you in hand to give a 10 min one on one session with the Vita. This was brilliant and very well organized. My game demo was with Little Big Planet, not a huge fan, I was left smiling and joyed at it's charming gameplay. The front and back touch screens were used to genius levels of design and pave the way forward for developers to show what they can do with the Vita. I saw uncharted and it's worth pointing out that from 3 meters away the screen just pops, you can clearly see what's going on. The screen sells the Vita for me, stunning. For the Playstation 3 one game stood out for me and many others, Vale chose to give gamers the first hands on time with the quite incredible Counter Strike Global Offensi...