Beautiful Katamari

Publisher - Namco Bandai

Developer -Namco, NOW Production

Format – Xbox 360

Playing tennis is dangerous business when you're the King of the Cosmos. Causing black holes with you back swing is a real possibility but thankfully you've a Prince to push your workload on.
Your task - to push around a katamari, a ball like thing that seems to exude a great gravitational field, and recreate all of the planets in the solar system using it. Every planet, except earth, became victim to the Kings careless game so we have a level for each and a few other celestial bodies like the moon.

If you've played katamari before there's nothing new here, a new soundtrack but everything else will feel familiar. Don't let this stop you picking it up, it's still good but seems lacking in comparison to the others in the series. £10 and you won't be a disappointed, it's a new hit of katamari goodness.

For anyone who hasn't, you control the katamari using the two analogue sticks which takes some getting used to but does work well. The only problem is it can start to feel uncomfortable after playing for some time and isn't as good as the playstation controller at this control scheme but it's still the best way they could have done it on the 360 pad.

Each level has a time limit in which you have to get your katamari up to a certain size by and a secondary objective to collect a majority of a certain kind of object, such as food or plants. The size objective is the foremost and if exceeded you'll unlock the next stage. If the size is great enough and you've collected enough of the given type of objects you'll unlock eternal mode for that stage, letting you mosey through the level with no time restrictions. This is useful for collecting cousins and presents which are colourful and unusual new characters who play no different to the Prince, choosing a different is a purely aesthetical choice, and the presents contains trinkets to accessorize them with. They're all nice little add ons which are compelling to collect.

Some stages mix it up by having different objectives like rolling up hot things to make Mars and objects with rings in them to make Saturn.

It doesn't last long but this addition in the katamari damacy series is a nice one if not the best. If you're new to the series pick it up and enjoy it, and if not scour it out anyway just don't expect anything new.

This was a budget title release but pay no more £10/$15 for it. I love this game along with all the other katamari damacy games, it's one of the most cathartic game series out there and is teeming with re-playability but I have one big problem with this one. Downloadable content.

This game has DLC done wrong. Its DLC is of the lock and key variety which means the content is already on the disc that you've paid for but you need to shell out again to gain access to content that's technically already there. The stages are cheap, there are five that cost 80 MS points each, but honestly they aren't great. One or two are fine (Milky Way Constellations and High Calorie Katamari) but overall I'd avoid. If they were new levels added after the game had come out and they didn't play like rushed, poorly thrown together segments then they could be justified.

Even the achievements tell you to download them, you can't collect all the cousins and presents without doing so which is ridiculous and brazen. If they added new cousins fine, as long as the achievements said something like collect all original cousins. It gets to me they expect you to pay for content which is already in my hands and will tell you to do so at every opportunity they can.

In conclusion buy this game on the cheap if you can but avoid the DLC.

Shadow Complex

Developer - Chair Entertainment, Epic Games

Publisher - Microsoft Game Studios

Format – Xbox Live Aracde

Shadow Complex is a rare breed, it's a 2.5-D game. Our protagonist Jason is limited to movement of the X and Y axis whilst everyone else can move in all 3-D dimensions.

At first it seems like little originality is going to found as your girlfriend is kidnapped and you venture forth into a mysterious complex to rescue her. Starting out this seems like a hard feat, armed with the power of a physically fit young man and nothing else. It isn't long before you start finding power ups which range from guns to add ons for a super soldier suit you obtain. If you commit to finding absolutely everything the game has tucked away in hidden rooms and hard to reach gaps you'll be rewarded with an armoury that rivals Iron Mans suit.

As you progress and fill the map experience points are gained, level ups reward you with increased character perks like better aiming and defence. It's possible to speed through this game in a few hours but not on your first play through. A big emphasis, as with most side scrolling room games, is put on power ups and various other boosting collectables. Going out of your way to find them is both rewarding in the game and out of it. Your level will rise quicker and the constantly collecting of things is essentially a series of tiny accomplishments.

One thing this game manages to mostly eliminate is the frustration of having to search every nook and cranny of a room. The flash light has a pretty nifty feature in that if the beam hits an object that you need to bomb or manipulate it'll be highlighted in a colour which is coded to your equipment. Things that are highlighted as green need to have grenades used on them for example.

Arguably this does make hunting a bit too easy on some occasions but there was still plenty of times I found myself stumped as how to reach a tucked away treasure.

Complex costs 1200 Microsoft points and in their attempt to confuse everyone with what is essentially another currency it's hard to get an exact price of what the game actually costs. At the time of me writing this it's about £10 and it's fully worth that. After playing through once there will still to be lots left to discover and collect, this kind of game lends itself to speed runs and some of the achievements even challenge such feats.

On the menu there's an option called the 'proving grounds' which sets you up with progressively harder tasks which teach you how to use all your equipment in different ways. As such it functions both as training and a test of skill, it's a great addition that the game doesn't need but feels more complete having.

This is the kind of game that should be supported and it deserves to be. It looks great and the controls are work great, if you were ever a fan of games like Super Metroid or Metroid Fusion you'll sink into this game and enjoy the familiar territory. And if not, try it anyway. For roughly £10/$15 you're getting a nicely polished game that isn't likely to disappoint. I could have paid up to £20 for Shadow Complex and have felt as happy with my purchase.

Bayonetta

Publisher - Sega
Developer - Platinum Games
Platform - 360/PS3


The Devil May Cry series is well known for its lack of substance in exchange for large splashes of style, but this is a formula that fails to enthral me. My first foray into the Cry franchise was pretty late on at, well as late as I could be, with Devil May Cry 4 (PS3/360 [mine being the 360 version]), and the £7.99 I paid for it would have been better put towards almost anything. I'll take it as a sign from the great above that after finishing just about half the game the disc shuddered to a moody halt with my console demanding the disc to be cleaned like the back of a white van.

Devil May Cry looked pretty, but not pretty enough or well enough to hold my attention for a game that I could complete by pressing the same combat button over and over and jump whenever the terrain required me to.

So why even play Bayonetta never mind write about it after stating how I feel about games that trade weight for flash. Because, as simply as I can put it Bayonetta is the Devil May Cry franchise done right. Extremely right.

Bayonetta at first appears to be nothing more than than flashy façade wearing button masher it presents itself as but it opens out to be so much more.

At first your basic weapons inspire little faith and the game would be much poorer if you didn't unlock more after you start to progress through a few chapters. Every weapon has a different style to the others, and most operate differently depending on how you equip it. You wear two at a time and can quickly swap between two combinations of weapons which you set up on the pause screen. Most of the weapons are radically differently from the guns you start with, after collecting them all it feels like you have an entire fighting games character select screen condensed into your inventory at your beck and call. Your arsenal will eventually include a possessed whip, a katana, rocket launching tonfas and some magic ice skates that let you glide around like a not so PG friendly ice Mario. They vary up and change your fighting style enough that I was compelled to start a re-run straight away to collect what ones I'd missed.

If you enjoy the thrill of rummaging around for extras, and the cheap adrenaline rush of acquiring collectables then no disappointment will be found playing Bayonetta, at least in the field of collecting. There's collectables for health boosting, magic gauge extending, music records (which unlock weapons) and crows whose purpose are pretty much just to be collected for the sake of it.
Bayonettas story is paper thin so much so that you could cut ourself on it if you examine it too closely. You will want to play on though and will be pulled through the game compelled, not to find out what happens, but how. Bar a few select segments of the game, to which I'd like to take an aside to award the achievement of video game sections that make me want to rub powdered glass into my eyes ground from the bottles of the painkillers I needed to finish them, Bayonettas campaign runs smoothly. The bad sections are the driving and piloting sections, they get repetitive very quickly and just drag.

The art and design is beautiful and I just wanted to see more. If I could get the developers to do anything I'd ask that they don't make me fight the same stock angels again, you've shown me what you can do game, give me more not just a taster. Music wise, it's fine. Not enough variety really, you'll hear a rendition of 'Fly Me To The Moon' so many times that even if you don't like it initially your brain will make you, trust me it's just easier that way.

Bayonetta is a repetitive game. It's its nature to be so, but it works as hard as laboratory mouse gnawing through wires connecting electrodes to it's brain to keep your attention from wandering off. And the the most parts it does a fantastic job.

Price verdict - £25/$35

I own the 360 version of this game. There's some loading time which can be reduced by installing the game to your hard drive, and ,thanks to a commenter for pointing this out, you can now do this with the PS3 too which drastically reduces the loading times. This game needs good flow, stuttering into pause screens and out of them does not suit it at all. So if you can go with the version with less loading time.

Edited the Ps3/360 loading times segment thanks to information from a comment.