The McLaren Mercedes 2004 Formula One Car
This is Gamereviewer's second page of reviews.
Formula One 2004[]
Relevant to PS2.
Now forgive me for being old fashioned but my latest review is going to be the PlayStation 2 exclusive Formula One 2004. So first off this game has many different game modes, such as career, world championship, race weekends, hot seat, this is a multi-player, non split screen race (personally I hate split screen) in which each driver has a set amount of time driving, then for them the AI take over and the other player gets to have his set amount of time, and the final main game mode is plain old split screen mode. Also the game is developed by Studio Liverpool.
So first up is career mode. Well in career mode you start out doing some test driving around different tracks in an unspecified F1 car, which is, actually very, very fast. Then if you complete two out of three test you can do some test driving for Minardi, oh joy! And if you complete all of the three events, without fault then you will be able to actually race for them, well my heart is touched by their kindness (sarcasm). When you have completed the first season in career mode, depending on how you did you will be either have to continue with Minardi, or you will be given letters off the other middle class teams, offering you a contract. After Minardi the next steps would either be Jordan or Jaguar. you can then keep racing and making it all the way up the ranks, until you are up there with the likes of McLaren and Ferrari. Then you will be very ready for the World Championships.
Well next on the chopping block is, dramatic pause, world championships. Well I have completed many world championships in my time of Formula 1 and I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the world championships. My first ever world championship was with McLaren Mercedes, and I was playing as David Coulthard, a personal hero of mine. Well, first of all I did the championship on rookie difficulty, which I must say was perfect for an amateur in the Formula 1 world of racing. To be honest, for me it was very easy as I won every single race, ahh sweet. Next I competed in another championship, on semi-professional difficulty. Well this was middle of the road for me, as I didn't complete the championship with all wins but I still won by a margin of about 20 points. I am currently on a professional level world championship, and this is much better, for example you actually, if you are very experienced, find it a lot harder than all the other difficulties. In qualifying, for me, pole position isn't certain , like it is in the other difficulties. So, if you are an avid F1 fan go for professional.
"THIS GAME TRULY HAS HUNDREDS OF FEATURES"
Well nest is onto the many features. First of all lets start off with race weekends. Personally this is the part of the game that I spend most time playing on. So, if you just want a nice race weekend without having to do a world championship, then this is perfect. You can choose which of 10 different team you want to be and which driver from the team you want to be, there are 20 different drivers in total. Then you choose which of the 18 tracks you want to compete in. You will then be given the options of doing up to 5 different practice sessions before qualifying. Normally most people choose to do a Friday practice and a Saturday practice, or just one of them. then it is onto the qualifying. This game still uses the old method f qualifying where everyone gets, in each of the two qualifying sessions, an out lap, then the most important flying lap, then the in lap which brings you into the pits, on the game you only get two laps then after the main straight it cuts off back to your garage. Next after you have qualified, it is onto the race, the best part. Well the races are very, very good, apart from one thing, so to say the least well it is quite a disappointing thing that it doesn't include damage. No actually that's a lie, it does, just that it all you get is some Japanese dude shouting at you saying "Oh No, you crashed! " and "You have full damage, you must pit now." Oh no, it has been ruined. An almost perfect game right down the toilet because of that. Well here's a tip Studio Liverpool, if that is what you call damage then just leave it out. Please, for the good of us all. onto hot seat, another amazing feature in the game. Well in hot seat, to be quite honest, it is exactly like multi-player, only for people like me who like not to be distracted by the annoying other person playing below you. You take it in turns going round the track for a set amount of time until it is the other persons turn. After your turn has finished the AI take over for you while the other person plays. Generally the AI manage to keep the position you already had, or there abouts. So if you had 6th, you would end up with around 4th to 8th. Personally I think that the AI are quite good but not the best I have ever seen. They have been well thought out but not the main event of the game. They will block you if you try to go past, hence making them good, but if you just wait a moment, until they are trying their own overtaking move, you can just slip up the inside of the both of them. Good for you, but not good for the ratings. Split screen is the most common way of putting multi-player into racing games. As you probably know in split screen mode you play on the top or bottom half of the screen, in this game, and race the other person sitting next to you. They can be identified as they have a neat little triangle over their heads which is visible to all except them.
So onto the gameplay and well it has been thought through. There are 5 different camera views that you can have on the screen while you are driving. These are the drivers view, high up on car camera, close rear camera, far rear camera and the front wing camera, personally I favour the in car or high up on car camera view. When you are driving the feel of the cars, as they glide/scorch, depending on your driving style, around the track the car feel so responsive and accurate. It is also very impressive as the camera positions are not so ridiculous that you feel uncomfortable driving in the position.
The graphics of the game are also very impressive. The cars and tracks have been very well thought out and they have clearly been thought out for a long time by the designers as the grip is on the right side, and it actually makes a difference which side you drive on to get the best grip. Also the grandstands and pit walls, all the way down to the big pit building are very to scale and accurate. The huge grandstands loom over you, just like they do in real life. the pit building has the same effect, and the positions of where the teams are along the pit building is also very accurate. Also the out-of-track objects such as forests and parks, down to the buildings in Monte-Carlo have been added and very expertly positioned. Even if they had accurate references they have done an amazing job of it. Also the detail and finesse of the objects have been finely tuned, all the way down to the surface of the gravel traps and also the most obvious smoothness and accuracy of the cars. Hmm one thing though... the trees are a bit cardboard like... tut tut.
Well this game is very hard to complete, as explained earlier, you have to complete all the world championships on each difficulty and complete a massive career that will surely take you many months or even years. In fact I haven't heard or know anyone that has completed this game, either it is too hard for them, too old or they have just got bored of it. Probably the latter or the second are going to be most likely. So that's my verdict on F1 04.
POSITIVES +
The career mode is amazing.
The career, in fact the whole game will keep you busy for a while.
World Championships have been gorgeously designed.
Soooooooo many features!!!
Graphics are good.
Great driving position.
You wont be completing the game any time soon... wait I've already said that.
NEGATIVES -
In career you start with Minardi... never too good.
Dodgy trees.
Graphics: 90%
Lifespan: 95%
Gameplay: 96%
Features: 97%
Plot: 88%
OVERALL RATING: 93% GOLD AWARD
So a must buy, don't hesitate.
BETTER THAN: Gran Turismo 4 92% (MLC) 90% (GR).
WORSE THAN: Nothing that I've reviewed.
Gamereviewer 18:14, November 16, 2010 (UTC)
Assassin's Creed[]
Relevant to PS3, XBOX 360 and PC.
So my latest review is Assassin's Creed. Here are the plain facts: it’s the first in the Assassin's Creed series, so already I can tell this is a good game as the series has won numerous awards and is pretty much, either owned by or has been heard of by everyone. Well in the game you play as, the main character, Altair, who is an assassin from the twelfth century, the game is based in 1191. He is a distant ancestor of Desmond Miles who is the secondary character in the game. You briefly play as Desmond during the game.
The game is split across 7 memory blocks, which re-enact what happened during Altair’s life. You, in the memories, have to, as an assassin would be expected to do, assassinate. There are 9 assassination targets in the game that you need to, and will assassinate. Firstly, before the assassination, you have to gather information on the target for assassination, like overhearing certain conversations about them, or pick-pocketing for certain information, like letters or maps. After you have this information then you can seek out and eliminate your target.
View points, flags to collect, guards, save citizens and vigilantes are all features in this game, wow this is going to take a while to explain. First up are the view points... Well the view points are high up places in the game and take quite a lot of skill to get to, well some of them do. You can tell whether it is a view point or not as it will have an eagle circling round above it, and also if you climb on a rooftop, then you can just look for the tall buildings, and 9 times out of 10 they are view points. To get down from the viewpoints you synchronise and then jump into a small bale of hay. Hmmmm...... The realism, I should try jumping off a 200 metre high cathedral and land in a small, itchy bit of hay. Well first of all you could aim into the hay, and hit it, plus you would die on impact, I’m not normally this morbid, don’t worry. Next are flags, so a nice little after thought really, just for those of us who want to, after completing the main story, to not have actually completed the game, so the games lifespan is a little longer. Well actually, it will take almost forever to find all the flags. In the whole game there must be getting on for 1000 flags, so a big hit for the lifespan there. Next are the guards, which quite frankly really annoy me. You just walk along and accidentally bump into one and then they try to murder you, well that’s friendly isn’t it. I might be an assassin but I didn’t harm you. So obviously the guards are quite flawed. Of course I am being exceptionally kind here. I suppose their fighting action is very good, but that also annoys me when I just want to quickly kill them after I have nudged them. Well now is what I would consider to be a two in one. Save citizens are very useful when you want to kill a few guards, and gain the trust of your local citizens. These are also mini type things like the collecting of the flags, and I also think that these are very, very cool and a great feature. The second part is vigilantes, that will protect you from and help kill the guards, ha guards, I can’t wait to nudge into you now!!! Well they also can be useful when you get annoyed with the guards, as if they lose your trail for a minute, then you can blend with them, by praying, of all things, and lose the guards forever.
“THE GRAPHICS ARE THE BEST OF THEIR TIME”
The graphics on this game are well, well, well (I could keep going on) ahead of their time. Could a gamer from back in 2007, when this game was released, hope for more graphical perfection? NO; no they couldn’t. So this game features 3 cities which are called, Acre, Damascus and the most famous one, Jerusalem. Each city is split into three eye-wateringly beautiful parts. These are the rich parts, the middle class parts, and the poor parts. Well all the detail and finesse of this game matches pretty much all modern, high class games, and at its time was, by far, the most real game ever.
This game, as explained earlier takes an extremely long time to complete, all with the flags to collect and the view points to complete. This game will take a life time to complete, even with amazingly talented people. So Assassins creed has definitely delivered.
POSITIVES +
Great storyline.
Game has been planned well.
Very good designers.
Features galore.
Eye-watering graphics
It will take forever and a day to complete fully.
NEGATIVES –
Guards are over sensitive.
Unrealistic falling into hay and living.
Graphics: 98%
Lifespan: 96%
Gameplay: 92%
Features: 90%
Plot: 88%
OVERALL RATING: 93% GOLD AWARD
So what are you waiting for? BUY IT!
BETTER THAN: The Simpsons: Hit & Run 82% (GR).
WORSE THAN: Nothing.
Gamereviewer 16:40, November 20, 2010 (UTC)
Letters[]
Relevant to PC (Internet).
Letters is a "fun" free online game that can be found at www.lunchtimers.com. In the game there is a screen of letters that can be moved around to create words, sentences or even paragraphs. This game sounds really boring until you hear the catch, which is that up to 100 users can also see the same screen of letters as you, so that they might need the same letter for there word as you do, and your letter ends up getting stolen. Simple but addictive some say.
This game can have different lengths to it, depending on how forgiving you are, and on the type of gaming genre you prefer. For me this game has an extremely short lifespan, as there is nothing fun to it. All you do is move letters about which, I swear cannot be fun for any more than 10 minutes, unless you wish to become ill. It is also so annoying when someone else takes the letter that you need. I can't bear it.
There are no features, so suggestions will be coming from me. The designers have gone severely wrong on this game as all they have done is made a game with no added detail, and I doubt that there will ever be another one. An idea could be to add badges such as "50 words made" or "one sentence completed". And that would have literally taken them zilch time at all to think up of, it did with me. It is just the small things that could have made this game a great one, such as the idea that I came up with. Well I suppose one feature could be that the game includes colour!!!
"PLEASE, SPARE YOURSELF"
This is the type of game that promotes suicide, but mostly hanging. After playing this game the world will have come to an end, so death is the only release from this lurking thing that is called a game. In fact, this game shouldn't be allowed to have the genre "game", as these games are the ones that give all different games bad names. If you do not hang yourself after playing this game then you will certainly come down with the flu or something, so please avoid it and spare your life.
POSITIVES +
It is free.
NEGATIVES -
You want to hang yourself after playing it.
It's dull.
Eating a brick is easier than this.
It's so short.
People stealing your letters.
No awards.
There is nothing to do on it.
Graphics: 50%
Lifespan: 10%
Gameplay: 18%
Features: 7%
Plot: 25%
OVERALL RATING: 22%
Do not play this game, unless you have a death wish.
BETTER THAN: Absolutely nothing in the world.
WORSE THAN: Absolutely everything in the world.
Gamereviewer 16:39, November 20, 2010 (UTC)