Much like Borderlands – Dead Island supports four player co-op but if you’re anti-social like me then you can play through it on your own and you won’t usually see the other members of your party as you wander the island but they will appear in cutscenes. The island is pretty huge too – I’m about halfway through the story missions and I’ve just left the tropical part of the island to a more urban part of the island and I’m sure there are other areas that will look different again. You can walk/run from place to place but in some places there will also be cars that you can drive making it easy to run down zombies. However the car will deteriorate the more damage you cause by running down walking dead corpses.

You do have access to a bunch of melee weapons and later in the game, guns, but ultimately the melee weapons are best for taking down the undead. To begin with it’s mostly whatever is laying about like pipes, boat paddles and wrenches but eventually you’ll come across diving blades, baseball bats and my personal favourite – the machete. All the weapons have an expiry date based on how often you use it but there are work benches around so you can repair and make modifications to make them like adding electricity to a mace. You don’t have bottomless pockets so you can’t carry all the weapons you want and you will need a strategy to take down the undead.

For instance there is one zombie which is called a thug and it’s one of the few zombie you won’t be able to knock down until it’s dead. It’s got punch like Tyson that will knock you down each time and take off a wad of your health – so a long range weapon like a boat paddle or baseball bat works nicely to start with but once you get a blade you can slice off the sonsabitches arms so he can’t knock you down. However the thug will start trying to headbutt and that’s where a blade like my pal the machete will finish that job but if you don’t have one then a long rang weapon will also suffice.

There are a few other types of zombies that will make your acquaintance. There’s your standard slow walking zombie who will slowly stroll towards you and then when they’re a few feet away from you they’ll pounce like a high school teen on his drunk girlfriend. There’s a zombie that lets out a loud battle cry and then run at you full pace and then repeatedly beat you until you’re a pool of blood. When these guys run at me I like to stand there waiting for them to reach me and then hit the kick button – if you’ve ever seen WWE it’s like when Kevin Nash puts the big boot on a running Rey Mysterio. YouTube it –it’s worth it. You’ll also wage war with some looters in later quests – these guys are called The Rascals and they deserve to be shot for calling themselves that.

I think the quests are great – they are all odd jobs that you would expect to do in the situation of a zombie apocalypse. You will be required to go find supplies for the survivors, another quest sees you getting petrol so you can burn some of the dead zombies and there’s one where’ll need to take a car to a mechanic to get armoured up so you can drive through a wall of cars and get to the town. There are about 40 main story quests and then a bunch of side missions – I’ve been focussing on the story quests but side quests are just as suitable for a zombie apocalypse.

If I could fault Dead Island for anything it’s the poor voice work – I know this is a budge game but it’s just bad. I really didn’t like listening to anyone in this game talk.

But I’m nitpicking – Dead Island surprised me. Had we not been sent a free copy I probably wouldn’t have bought this but I’m glad I have it. I plan on playing until the end not for the story but just to play all the quests. I think everyone will have fun with this game so for me it’s a Recommended.

F.3.A.R is similar but there are definite improvements – the environments for one are a lot more interesting. I’ve wondered the forest in a mech, walked through sewers and even the first Interval is in a prison facility. I haven’t come across a single office building yet like the previous two games – it’s been quite refreshing.

The enemies are also a little more varied – you still face the guys in SWAT gear but there are also enemies that resemble the guys in Condemned 2 which look mutated, are not padded up and use whatever piece of metal they can find on the ground to try to beat you to pulp. This also makes the game a more refreshing experience.

The “scares” are still there – Alma will appear and disappear in a blink of an eye, shadows will play mind games on you and bodies will suddenly come to life to try and take your life. Despite a lot of it being done before it still creeps the hell out of you when you’re playing in the dark and anyone who says it doesn’t is full of shit.

Day 1 Studios (not the original developers) has also implemented a scoring feature – this is because the game was created for co-op play. You are supposed to team up with Paxton Fettel – the main antagonist from F.E.A.R. Paxton’s dead and features many psychic abilities including possessing an enemy’s body and then use their weapons against their team mates and a psychic blast that causes damage. If you choose to play F.3.A.R alone then you can replay the Intervals as Paxton later. But back to the scoring – it works similar to Shadow Complex. Kill someone with a particular weapon 10 times and you’ll get points, find psychic and get 1500 points, do something else and get more points. The player with the most points scores the Favourite Son award and unlocks items.

I think F.3.A.R is probably the best game in the series – it is a lot more fun then the previous games and the co-op adds a new dimension and is actually implemented really well. Even if you choose to play the game single player then you can play through again as Paxton and it’s a completely different game. So I’m going to say it’s highly recommended.

Shadows of the Damned stars Garcia Hotspur, apparently his real name, who is a demon hunter. His girlfriend gets taken to hell by a pen dero named Fleming and Garcia ends up following them down into hell where as you would expect it’s a bit of a mess there. What kind of mess? I don’t really know where to start. How about when the world is surrounded in this evil darkness that slowly kills you – you have to find a Goat head mounted on the wall in order to restore light. Or how about finding a strawberry or eyeball or brain to feed a crying demon baby head on a wall. There’s also this giant demon you fight that after defeating him once – he goes and takes a piss in a fountain that creates the evil darkness. I’m pretty sure he didn’t wash his hands but he did zip up his demon pants thankfully.

You’re armed to the teeth with Jeremy – a skull head with a posh accent that can transform into a pistol called Boner, shotgun and machine gun. He also provides some comic relief and advice on how to survive in hell so he’s worth listening to. If you do get injured then alcohol will cure what ails ya – you’ll find tequila, sake and other items are or you can go to the Absinthe vending machine to stock up.

Shadows of the Damned plays a lot like Resident Evil 4 – it’s in third person over the shoulder that zooms in when you go to aim at enemies. All the weapons have laser-sight so you can aim properly and head shots are a sight to see especially if you get one on the first shot at an enemy. Fortunately you can move while aiming at enemies and there is a melee attack if they get to close. If you have played Resident Evil 4 or 5 then you’ll be right at home with the control scheme and the format of the game. It’s broken up into several acts with about 6 or 7 scenes in the acts. Some are quite lengthy where you have to travel from one side of the city to the next where as others are puzzle based where you have to solve how you’re going to out of a particular situation and others are just boss battles. There are loading times in between but they’re not as lengthy as
Duke Nukem Forever and Akira’s enjoyable music keeps me from getting upset about these.

The soundtrack is fantastic and it must be if I’m bringing it up because I never have in a review before. I am biased because I am a fan of his but it fits so well. It’s not quite a creepy, chilling soundtrack like the Silent Hill games but more of a fun, intense circus type theme to it and it fits perfectly with Shadows of the Damned.

It’s a very immature game but so what – you will have so much fun with Shadows of the Damned and it’s a game that I can’t fault. The gameplay is fun, the story is not meant to deep but it’s interesting none the less and the soundtrack is the icing on the cake. Go buy this game now because it’s Highly Recommended.

Cole still has the lightning powers and can electrify enemies with these abilities. He can heal people on the street or suck the life out of them for his own use. Speaking of the moral choices – there are plenty of opportunities to show how good or bad you are. For example, your pal Zeke hates street performers so he tells you to eliminate these annoyances from the city if you happen to come across them in your travels. This will get you bad points. Alternatively there are a lot of muggings and stopping these from occurring will get you good points. There is activities like this and more happening all the time and there will be moments in the story missions where you’ll have to make a choice as to what side you’re on – much like InFamous 1, these choices will ultimately determine your ending.

The story missions have so far been a lot of fun – the one thing I hated about InFamous 1 was the missions where I had to power up a generator. I thought that was a complete waste of a mission and yet I had do it six or seven times. I understand why you had to do it but come on, a cool guy with super powers should be electrocuting enemies not machines. Fortunately New Marais, the new setting I referred to earlier, is already fully functioning in the electric department. The main storyline in InFamous 2 is that The Beast is coming – this is a superpowered entity that Kessler in InFamous 1 warned Cole about. During the game you’ll get updates on how far The Beast is from New Marais while continuing to clean house and develop your powers while waiting for it to show. As I mentioned earlier – so far the missions have been fun and action-packed. I’ve skated along cables between buildings to hunt down a villain in a car, I’ve stopped a public execution from taking place and

I’ve taken on a few waves of militia while they’ve tried to take down the police.
There are also user-created missions that pop up around New Marais and I think this is an awesome feature. I don’t know if I’d create one but having that option to play something that other users can put into my world is probably something not very new in PC MMO’s but definitely a first in games like InFamous 2 and one I hope other games choose to do. Sucker Punch is even putting in some new missions and this is something that other developers would charge as downloadable content.

So while InFamous 2 at its core is much like InFamous 1 there is definite improvement in all areas. Depending on your reasons for disliking InFamous 1 you might feel the same about InFamous 2 but there is a lot more action, a variety of new abilities and manoeuvres and a lot more fun in InFamous 2 and I’ve probably barely scratched the surface of the game myself. Plus the user generated content makes this a game that you can always come back to and play new missions. So how can I not say that this is highly recommended.