Sunday, 12 September 2010
This week's new games
Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, PC, PS3, Wii & Xbox 360There's an unwritten international law to which console flight simulators adhere: the training mission must eventually be interrupted by a genuine surprise attack, forcing your apprentice flyboy to arm his sidewinders for real. HAWX 2 happily complies, as it does with most other tropes of armchair aviation. Its points of difference include a simplified instrument display, realistic-ish pilot voice chatter and a peppering of takeoffs, landings and the odd mid-air refuelling. You're also asked to do hi-tech spying using the swaying camera of a drone, and fire from circling gunships in a way that never quite lives up to the thrills of Call Of Duty 4 from which it was borrowed. None of these unavoidable diversions is as much fun as just flying your plane, however, lending the whole thing an inescapably tepid feel. HAWX 2 is an inoffensive but essentially mediocre piece of software.Ubisoft, �39.99-�49.99 Monday Night Combat, Xbox 360Like vintage arcade game Smash TV, Monday Night Combat styles itself around an ammunition-laden, futuristic American gameshow, complete with excitable compere and big cash prizes. The object is to defend your "money ball" against assorted waves of robot attackers using one of five character varieties: assault, assassin, tank, sniper or gunner. You can back up your lone warrior with a selection of defensive gun turrets and upgrade not only them, but also yourself and the arena, in the form of jump pads to reach elevated walkways. The blend of third person combat and tower defence works well, and the tactical interaction between your character's skillset, available turrets, the upgrades and the composition of the next wave of robots provides a multi-faceted set of variables to play with. Where it really gets going though is on Xbox Live, with a kickass set of multiplayer modes and inventive scenarios in which to face off.Xbox Live Arcade Download, 1200 Microsoft Points (approx �10.20)Playstation Move, Playstation 3When Nintendo launched the Wii, millions who'd previously had no interest suddenly started playing videogames. Microsoft and Sony continued to appeal to the hardcore, but were unable to shift consoles in anything like the volume Nintendo has. Enter PlayStation Move, a peripheral for PS3, that blends Sony's Eye Camera with something akin to a Wii-remote with a ping-pong ball stuck on top of it. The technology is magnificent, displaying a precision of positioning and movement that the Wii can only dream of. Sadly the games let it down, with Start The Party! supplying a batch of uninspiring mini-games of the swat insect/colour in shapes/whack moles variety. Sports Champions fares slightly better, with Table Tennis flawlessly detecting your bat-control skills and Bocce supplying addictive boules-style hi-jinks. In the absence of a killer app though, this will be a wait-and-see product for most.Start The Party! and Sport Champions, SCEE, �29.99 each; PlayStation Move Controller, Eye Camera and demo disc, �49.99GamesNick Gillettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
