Currently Playing!

First up, this isn’t actually an original feature.  I (kermit) wrote this review last year whilst the game was still relatively new.  However as you may well know (if you’re an XBOX 360 owner with LIVE)  some games on Xbox Live Arcade have gone on sale for a brief period, and one of those games happens to be ‘South Park: LGTDP’

Here is the full list of sale games, as can be found on Major Nelson‘s blog

Personally, I enjoyed South Park a lot.  Truth be told I haven’t played it in a month or 2, and really wish there was some DLC rolled out for it, but it was a great blend of the South Park license mixed with the hit or miss “tower defence” genre, but now that it’s 400 points for a limited time I definitely recommend it to anyone who is a South Park fan.

So…below I give you the review I did (unedited…so some things may be out of date now) a few months back for the game.

Taken from my own blog last year

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Review!

Right, back story…

South Park, one of my favourite shows of all time.  Got into it in 1997 (when I was 11 [woo to lapsed parental supervision]), loved it from the get go, and as I’ve matured so has the show.  As far as TV shows I’ve followed South Park is perhaps the show I’ve seen the most episodes of as I haven’t missed a single ep in it’s (so far) 12 year run, and I don’t intend too.  As far as adult cartoons go, nothing is as good as South Park imo.  The diverse characters, it’s upto date storylines, and style of humour is just exactly what I want.  Family Guy, Futurama, King of the Hill, that show with Bart in etc…they’re all good too, but South Park (in my opinion…before you get mad) tops them all.

So…as you guess, South Park…I’m a massive fan!  and if you know me know me…then you’ll know I’m quite very much so partial to video games.  So…naturally I’ve been interested in South Park video games throughout the span of there being such things.

History!

South Park 64

South Park first entered into the video game scene in 1998 with a First Person Shooter, it was basically just Turok (as seen on N64) but with a South Park makeover.  Critically this game didn’t do well, I can see why that was, but at the time I was 12 years old, still loving South Park, spending most weekends hammering N64 multiplayer games with my high school buddies, so personally I enjoyed this game for what it was, and it was just great to have some sort of video game set in the South Park universe.

Next up for South Park in the video game scene was “Chef’s Luv Shack”.  This was basically a combination of a game show, with some quick mini games chucked in.  It was kind of like a “Buzz!/ Scene It” type video game mixed with “Mario Party”.  Once again this game didn’t do too well critically, but once again, that didn’t stop me jumping on board.  In fact I remember the Friday this came out in the UK, I went to try and buy it at Electronics Boutique (back when we had them in the UK), they declined me due to my age, so…I strolled on over to HMV and luckily I didn’t get I.D’d there.  Personally I really got a lot out of Chef’s Luv Shack, as a single player game you’d be looking at a pretty boring experience, However! Multi-player wise!…this was a hoot!.  The questions in the game were across various topics from general knowledge, completely random crap, and the South Park world, it was great…and just to show how much I played this game in Multi-player, through this game I ended up knowing the answers to a lot of the questions based on the Denver Bronco’s, when I have absolutely no reason to know that information.  It was great how in a 4 player game you wuold 1 time get the chance to choose a ridiculously hard question and then “shaft” a friend over by making him/ her have to answer it…good times ^_^
Another great thing about the game (imo) was the mini-games.  The majority of them were basically copies of arcade classics (such as the Bee shooting game that was based off “Galaga”, and Asses in Space which was based off “Asteroids”), once again, in multiplayer you could have some really good competitive competition going in these mini-games, and if you so happened to fall really behind in terms of points over the rounds, the game would sometimes allow the far behind people to play some solo minigames to help them catch up…to try and keep your games neck and neck.  I’d of loved there to of been another Chef’s Luv Shack type game, and think if a nwe one was made for XBOX live arcade (with the new game developers who work on South Park games), it could be a fun experience…especially given the fact XBLA would pretty much always allow you to have multiplayer games thanks to online gaming

Last up on my trip down memory lane on South Park video games (for games consoles) is “South Park Rally”.  This came out at a time where weapon based cart racing games were becoming a popular genre type.  Mario Kart 64 was notoriously good for Multi-player, and a hit sales-wise, and a lot of game devs wanted to try and get a piece of that popularity pie.  So…take South Park, take inspiration from games of the same type…make game!  Now, I believe once again this game was critically not so successful, however once again my blind love for South Park made me overlook any shortcomings and just totally love the game.  Still though, I stand by the fact that this game wasn’t too bad, it had a good range of tracks and gameplay modes (wasn’t just racing), good use of the South Park license, and a bunch of unlockables to keep you plugging away at the game.  The multi-player was decent too.  Sure the game felt a bit floaty, and a little bit sluggish, and definitely didn’t have the frantic kart racing action down anywhere near as well as Mario Kart 64 (or Diddy Kong Racing), however it did try things a bit different, and compared to some other kart racing games based off tv shows etc, South Park used it’s license really well, which is a key point considering it’s the fans of the show whom would genreally be the day 1 buyers of the game.

Review!

So…onto the game itself.  South Park Let’s Go Tower Defence Play!
First up, if you’re a fan of South Park then you’ll definitely appreciate this games use of the license.  There are several characters to play as (each with varying stats), and each character has had voice casting work done specifically for the game, so you’ll be hearing some original funny material from the characters.  The story (albeit very simple), is amusing, and has a number of good throwbacks to previous characters from throughout the shows history.  There are quite a lot of unlockables too, from playing the game you unlock loads of character bio’s, and specific video clips that once again span the shows history, for example there are clips from the first episode all the way up to things from earlier in 2009.  I literally lol’d at some of the video clips as it had been ages since I’d seen some of the episodes featured and enough time had passed to make things near enough as hilarious as the first time I’d ever seen them.  So…hat’s off to the team who made this for working so close with the shows creators (Matt, Trey, and all others who make the show what it is).  So…if you’re a fan of the show, this game will satisfy your South Park love needs.

Enough about the license though, onto the important bit, the gameplay and game itself!  As the title suggests, this game is a “Tower Defence” game, now…for those with no idea what that means, it’s basically a game where your to protect something from waves of attacks from enemies.  They’re are a number of these on the internet, and it’s likely you’ve played a flash game on your browser at one time or another that has been a tower defence game. When I initially heard that the South Park game coming to XBLA was going to be a tower defence game I was slightly puzzled at the choice of game to make (as they’re not a genre I’d say I follow or have played much of), but this game does an amazing job at being n00b-friendly, in the sense that you can easily pick up and get the jist of the game and how to play from the get go, however the game isn’t overly simple in the fact that you will soon realise that you have to be strategic, you need to build defence weapons based on there effective-ness on the enemies your faced with (cat pee for instance works best on old people), you will also need to try and delay the enemy from getting to your goal too, so carefully planning out a system of walls to divert enemies for as long a time as possible becomes important on the harder difficulties when you need all the time you can get to attack your enemies.  The game has several difficulties though, and the challenge change between difficulties is more than fair (unlike say in Guitar Hero), so you can learn the game from an intial playthrough on easy or normal, then try your experience on hard or insane afterwards.  Finishing the game on the harder difficulties is encouraged if you want to unlock all the hilarious character videos and clips though.  Although personally I think it’s a good thing that the game has a bunch of unlockables, as it promotes replayability.

So…onto multi-player, 1 comparison I will make about this game is that it serves similar as the game “Left 4 Dead” in that you ‘can’ play the game on your own (in which case you alternate between a team of 4 characters and the cpu will attack for you with the characters you’re not using).  As far as CPU goes, it does fine.  However!  It is much more fun to play this game in multi-player, smoe levels are quite broad and require more than 1 person to be doing pretty much all the work in terms of building defences, so if your playing in multiplayer you can talk strategy and share ideas as you play (just like you would do in Left 4 Dead multiplayer).  I played through the game intially by myself, I had a blast with it, and learned the basics of each level and such. Once I had done the story once (which took about 2-3 hours I think), then I went back and played online (both with friends, and with randoms) on the harder difficulties, multiplayer was a great experience , and it’s good enough so that I’d play through this game again if anyone on my friends list invited me too, even though I’ve 100% completed this game now.  In summary though, multi-player is great fun, definitely better than playing in Single player (although single player isn’t unbearable if you must) [note: you can play upto 4 playersmulti-player, both online and offline].  One thing I’m hoping for (which is a likely possibility) is that at some point in the future the developers will release some more levels for the game, and possibly some new story too, I’m sure it’s not too unlikely to wish for, and it will be a great way to fill the void between waiting for South Park to return to TV (in spring 2010).  The multi-player/ unlockables and harder difficulties did provide some good reason to re-play the game, and I probably got in total around 5 hours (at least) out of the game, and like I said…I’d definitely play it in multi-player again, although depending on your views on what you want from a downloadable game (perhaps in terms of play time), whether or not you’ll use multi-player, and how much you like South Park are the varying factors in how good or bad you’ll rate this game.

I’m going to go Kotaku on this review and leave it without a score.  Like I said in the last paragraph, there are a number of variables to how much this game will appeal and deliver to you, so take that into account.  The gameplay itself I found to be fun, and it’s certainly something that is better played than watched (so…I’d reccomend you demo the game via XBOX Live rather than go off YouTube videos).  In terms of South Park games this is definitely the best use of the license so far, and it’s a great start to what will hopefully be a new era of South Park licensed video games, and kudos to the guys at Doublesix for making it, and hopefully they’ll keep hold  of the South Park license and get to do more with it in the future.

Released for: XBOX 360 – as part of XBOX LIVE Arcade  // Cost: 800ms Points

So…screw you guys I’m going hom …well actually to Subway.

Thanks for reading

Kermit

US Boxart

So it’s Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing that gets to be this blog’s first review eh…

Now, I don’t want to make that sound like a bad thing, as this game is actually good, perhaps even great.  That just depends on your fond-ness for the ”Kart racing” genre, and how much you love Sega.

……

I followed this game lightly from it’s initial announcement, as I do with most Sonic games.  I love Sonic, he’s a great character and was a very well respected franchise.  Sure he’s gone down hill a lot in the sense that he hasn’t had a truly epic main game for some time (almost 20 years if you’ve liked nothing since Sonic & Knuckles).  However I’ve stuck by him, like one of those mothers that just doesn’t want to believe there child is an asshole.  I’d make some sort of Dot Cotton/ Nick Cotton reference here but that would go over the head of WAY too many people.
Anyway, as I was saying I kept some tabs on this game from it’s first reveal, getting a tad excited over the prolonged character announcements (especially Shenmue’s Ryo), seeing the trailers shape up, paired with the fact it had been enough time for me since Mario Kart Wii to accept a new Kart Racer game into my rotation of games I’m playing.

  One of the things that put a bit more faith in me for this game’s release was the fact it was coming from “Sumo Digital“.  Sumo are about an hour or so’s drive away from where I am, them being if Sheffield and me being in Preston, although being geographically close doesn’t gain my respect.  The respect I have for them was earned in a big way back in the last console generation when I played the truly amazing OutRun 2SP and OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (and not forgetting the amazing OutRun Online Arcade on XBLA/ PSN).  They also made Sega Superstars Tennis which I picked up about 16months after it’s release for a bargain price and had a lot more fun than I expected to have with.  1 more fondness for Sumo that I have is that a couple of there employee’s post on the GameFaqs message boards, talking to fans about there games and such, makes me feel like they’re still a nice approachable bunch of dudes who are making games that they want to play, rather than just games to make to try and hit sales targets.
  Enough build up though and onto the game itself…

Diddy Kong Racing!

If (like me) you have played a fair few Kart racing games over your gaming years, then you’re probably somewhat qualified to be able to pitch how a game like this should work.  I’ve played a vast majority of these games, the entirity of the Mario Kart series (including both Arcade versions, which is a rare treat I think in the UK), Diddy Kong Racing, Mickeys Speedway USA, Crash Team Racing, Pac-Man World Rally, South Park Rally, Lego Racers, Konami Krazy Racers, as well as Motor Kombat (in MK Armagedon), and those are just off the top of my head examples I can recall right now.  Naturally some games are better than others, some feel like you’re actually skilled for winning races, and some can feel as though luck plays pretty much the lead role in winning.  Thankfully Sonic & Sega leans more on the side of having to be skilled.

If I was to compare gameplay then I’d pretty much say Sonic & Sega plays a lot like Mario Kart Wii, and not just the gameplay (some tracks remind me a lot of Mario Kart Wii tracks too).  The drifting in the game feels a lot like Mario Kart Wii’s, and the fact you can pop wheelies with bike characters for a boost, and do air taunts for boost seems a straight lift from Mario Kart Wii.  I don’t discredit the game for that though, as Mario Kart Wii was a lot of fun, and if you’re going to do some replication when it comes to making a game then you’d be a fool to not replicate the best selling series in that genre.  I don’t really have any flaws to speak of when it comes to the gameplay, it runs smooth, and has been well polished.

Banjo & Avatar's (360 Exclusives)

  The track selection is great, covering worlds from various Sega games (Sonic, Samba De Amigo, Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, and House of the Dead), a bunch of tracks have some quite well hidden shortcuts too which can make some of those races against friends more intense.  One thing that I reall like about the track design though is how some tracks twist and loop in ways I’ve not seen since F-Zero or Extreme G (speaking of which I would love Sega- Amusement Vision and Nintendo to collaborate and do another F-Zero GX game).
  The games character selection is great too, ranging from a number of familiar Sonic games to some obscure ones from Sega’s deep past (Opa Opa and Robo & Modo for example).  Naturally as a long time Sega fan there are a few people missing who I thought would’ve been good in this game, but the ones whom have made the cut cover a lot of ground, and it was nice to see some love for Shenmue and Crazy Taxi in this game.  Apparently the game will receive some DLC too (of which ToeJam & Earl were rumoured), so the roster is still open for more additions at the time of typing this.
 

Samba always delivers for music

One area I have a slight problem with though is the music.  In Sega Superstars Tennis I thought the music was fantastic, it had more of a range across Sega games, sort of similar to what Nintendo offer in Smash Bros.  However in Sonic & Sega ASR the soundtrack only features songs from games the racetracks are based on, this means no music from OutRun (which has an amazing soundtrack) or a lot of other Sega Games seeing as tracks in the game are only based off these games: Sonic, Samba De Amigo, Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, and House of the Dead.  Another issue I have is how the music and level design for the Sonic stages has far too much siding with Sonic Heroes.  The Sonic series has many amazing an memorable songs to choose from, as it does levels to base tracks on, so it seems strange to me that there was so much siding to Sonic Heroes which I’m sure is quite low in general on peoples favourite Sonic’ games list.

  Multiplayer is always welcome in these games, although online has been a bit troublesome in getting into a room on the 360 version which I’ve played, and it’s a shame that you can’t do Grand Prix mode in 2 player (even in local split screen play), but when you’re having some close races with a friend or random who is on an equally skilled level to you then you can have some great back and forth races that make for some great competitive fun.

It’s also a shame that Grand Prix mode (as far as I’ve seen) doesn’t seem to get faster as the difficulty increases, the difficulty increase seems to just cover computer AI characters, but the game feels fast enough and in a good neck and neck race you won’t be thinking of things like that, and I’m still finding that playing through the Grand Prix modes from easy to hard is still compelling to do even though the unlockables work differently in this game.  In a lot of Kart racing games you’d generally win cups to unlock things.  In this game ANY race that you do earns you Sega Miles, based on the length of the race/ event you have done along with your result.  These miles are exchanged in the in-game shop to unlock new characters, new songs, and the later tracks from Grand Prix mode that aren’t available by default.  This is pretty good at extending the lastability of the game though, as it will take you a bit of time to save up enough to purchase everything in the shop.  Another lastability enhancer comes in the form of “mission mode”.  Mission mode essentially has you doing a variety of simple to challenging tasks within tracks.  This can be things as simple as a 1 on 1 race, to things such as collecting Sonic rings, going through monkey ball goals, attacking an enemy, drifting/ boosting as much as possible in a set stretch of track, and so on…  Generally these kind of modes get boring, but in moderation (playing between say 3 or 8 of them at a time) I’ve enjoyed them, they bring enough diversity, bring in some more references to Sega games, and they’re a great way to quickly build up your Sega miles.  You also get ranked on mission mode, so you may get some personal pleasure out of wanting to “AAA” everything.  Lastly if you own this on 360 or PS3 and you’re into achievement/ trophy collecting then the game does well at pacing them out so your progress and time invested is rewarded that way too (plus a lot of the achievements make nice references to other Sega games and such).

Sonic! He's in a car to give the others a chance (so says the game).

 Now, in conclusion to all of the above I don’t want to put a score on this game as score based reviews always come back to bite you in the ass.  If I gave this an 8/ 10 then in 3 years time I review a better kart racing game that’s only an 8/ 10 at that time, then they would seem equally as good on that scale when that may not be the truth.

So…what I will do is I’ll say that if you enjoy kart racers and have abstained yourself from the genre for a year or 2 then this should definitely satisfy you.  If you’re a longtime fan of Sega then this will definitely put some smiles on you’re face.  I bought this on day 1 of release, and I’m definitely getting good value for money from it in terms of fun I’ve had and am still having, plus the time this game has consumed.  Which is what you want from any launch day purchased game.  However if you’re short for cash right now, or have just never been a kart racer fan then you’ll be getting a steal if you pick this up a few months down the line for a cheaper price.  I hope I’ve helped enlighten you reading this on the game somewhat, and hope Sumo Digital get the praise they deserve from SEGA as well as the sales figures to match there hard work put into this.

2nd Opinions?

IGN Review – http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/107/1071555p1.html
Gametrailers Review – http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-sonic-sega/62851