Recent reviews by Springy

A load of really good games and also Halo 4 is there.

United Offensive does what was expected of an expansion pack in 2004, with gusto.

It successfully recreates the highs of the original Call of Duty across 13 missions split between American, British and Russian campaigns; it expands the armory with new weapons that complement the original, returning ones; it plays with the formula to deliver some nifty tricks and memorable moments.

The original Call of Duty is one of my most beloved games, and one which I've gone back to repeatedly over the last near-to-two decades, but this is the first time I've replayed Gray Matter Interactive's (otherwise best known to me as the developer of Return to Castle Wolfenstein) expansion since it first released. It delivers. If you want more Call of Duty, it certainly delivers.

I had a little trouble getting into Bulletstorm until I learned to let go of years of shooter habits, like using cover and playing the game peering through a red dot sight. This game's unique scoring system is intertwined with game play that is quirky and unconventional; it may look like Gears of War, but it couldn't play its cards any more differently from it.

On the kaleidoscopic alien planet-turned-tropical tourist trap-turned-mutant mosh pit where Bulletstorm takes place, you don't cower behind walls and obsessive-compulsively look down your sights every five seconds; you slide into combat on your backside, kick a baddie head over heels, fire two grenades attached by a chain around his neck (from your two-grenades-attached-by-a-chain gun), electro-whip his friend next to him and push the detonate button for maximum skill points.

The skill points, and the systems built around it, are what make this game so compelling. The combat never gets dull, and never repeats, because the game consistently encourages you to do new things and hands you the tools and environmental dangers to accomplish them. If you're at all jaded by the monotony of modern big-budget shooters, I implore you to give this a try.

The dialogue's pretty funny, too.

I have no justification for liking this. It's laggy. It's got as much plot as a cookbook. All the quest are "go here, press 'E' on the THING, oh but I forgot to mention that the THING is surrounded by BAD DUDES". Its art style reminds me of Pariah, its gameplay of Tabula Rasa. TABULA RASA. There's a real money shop and this game ain't free-to-play. Nobody uses chat. NOBODY.

But at the same time, it's kind of stupid in a good way. Everyone's driving Mad Max-style armoured Dodge Challengers, which rubber-band around the knobbly broken landscape. The BAD DUDES spawn by jumping out of sewer covers like Teenage Ninja Turtles. Every ten minutes a big icon appears on everyone's HUD telling them to go and shoot a giant crystal, and you go and shoot a giant crystal with about eighty other people and the server has a coronary.

Also, with no interest in the tie-in TV show, I enjoy pretending to be enthusiastic when TV actors drop into the game. There's a roadside hangout just outside the starter area that they are just chillin' at. You can do a mission with them and they quip and mention you. Also, there's a promotion running now that gives a player a chance to get their character on the show in SEASON TWO. God knows how that'll work.

When the chips are down and your Blue Man Group buddies are dying all around you, what do you do? Take a knife, dig it into their necks and rip out a computer chip with their brains backed up on it. Duh. Then you stick that chip into whatever piece of equipment you have handy and, hey presto, a talking gun. And backpack. And hat.

Then you put the hat on a computer and it can hack it. Your backpack can make lots of grenades and things for you. Your gun shoots stuff. Wait, no, it already did that. Now it shoots stuff while quipping one-liners. It's an action movie hero gun.

If you're not already swimming in a sea of imagined joy at the thought of all that yet, let me add a little excitement by saying that Rogue Trooper also is an excellent romp through a war-torn planet. It's definitely a console port, but a great console port, one made when developers had mastered the last generation of consoles and had reached the pinnacle of the design possibilities the tech provided for.

NO LIGHTSABERS WTF: 0 out of 10

It's an exceptionally well-realised concept, being a proto-Storm Trooper in the not-quite-yet-an-Empire. You peer out at the world through your white plastic helmet, which employs little laser windscreen wipers when it's raining. You order your three squadmates around - the funny one, the straight one and the psychopath - by pointing at already-highlighted sections of scenery and pressing 'F' authoritatively. You spend at least nine-tenths of the game looking at the same gun.

Oh man, that gun! So good I even remember its sterile name! The DC-15 is a wonderful piece of imaginary equipment. It's a blaster rifle, okay? Now press '3'. Snap, click, slap. Now it's a sniper rifle. Press '4'. Yank, smack, twist. Now it's a grenade launcher. It's got more character than anyone else in the game. It's a LEGO GUN that shoots LASERS. Worth every penny for that alone.