Today I shall do a review of a Playstation 3 title called Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days – I bought this for a very cheap price of £9 at Game and this was the Limited Edition title which includes extra on-line maps and items. By Sheer chance I saw the PC version also on sale for £5 but I left this as I really only need it on one format. It is billed as a Shooter but it steers away from the normal FPS type games in that going in all guns blazing will not get you very far. I would like to describe this as a “Hide and shoot” type game as you fight from cover to cover to complete each part of the game.

Plot

The game begins with the originals criminal anti-hero, Kane, arriving in Shanghai to do one last job with his psychotic ex-colleague, Lynch. Both men are deeply dislikeable in their own way, but each has some shred of humanity to keep your interest. Strangely, the game makes the curious choice of having you play as the crazy Lynch instead of the more sympathetic Kane, though our protagonist has calmed down considerably for the sequel). The tale that follows isn’t a whole lot more than an excuse for a long series of shoot-outs, but it’s a reasonably well-written excuse with a couple of genuinely shocking moments.

Game-play

At no pont in the game did I feel i was really part of a story, it consisted of getting to an area and then shooting out various gangs be in the police or the other gangsters. I tried standing up and running forward but soon got gunned down. To aim you have to press the left shoulder button and the right shoulder button shoots. Due to the fact you are using a Game controller, this is not as fast and accurate as say using a Keyboard and mouse.

Multi-player

I tired this for a while and my apparent lack of controlling a FPS using the PS3 game-pad become apparent very fast indeed and I never last very long at all. Maybe if I played long enough, it would become easier but for now, I have not loaded up the multi-player part very often.

Conclusion

If you are looking for the normal type of first person type shooter, then this game is not the one for you, at times you will get frustrated at the puzzles parts were shoot one bullet too many at the wrong time can lead to running out of rounds before the mission ends and thus failing. You are going to be looking for new weapons all the time as the number of rounds is not a lot but there is enough about if you look. Other times in the game you will not be 100% sure were to go and there is the option to pick up gas bottles, throw them and blow them up. My Suggestion is to try the demo if you can or buy it only if the game is very cheap (as I did).

Coming for PC & PS3

The purpose of this post is to examine shopping (in this case for Playstation 3 games) either on-line or in a store and how in my eye’s the brick and mortar stores need to re-think how they operate if they want to keep selling items. If you are shopping for say a TV, then it is nice to walk into a store and see how they look but in the case of software, what you get in the store is the same as you get on-line. I would also love to hear what you do, only ever buy online, rent games, store or whatever.

Buying games – Visiting the Store method

In the world of games software, it seems that the prices can be as random as humanly possible. What is a given is any new title is normally full price and the same everywhere but once a title is considered old – the prices can go from full blown price all the way down to under £10. A good example is BioShock 2 – this was priced as £9.95 in Game while it was £9 in Tesco and in Toy-R-Us it was £24.99. Now unless you have a incredible memory of were you went, what game you seen and for what price, it is easy to walk past a bargain. I saw Kane & Lynch 2 for £9 in game, this was the Limited edition as well (extra items for Multiplayer) and by the time I got back to there, they had sold it.

Of course the plus side with visiting a store is you can pay for the item, take it home then and there and play it straight away, no waiting for delivery of the said item. The other aspect is sometimes they drop the price only in store and in this case you can indeed grab a bargain.

Buying Games – Online method

One of the great things about online is that you can search hundreds of stores in a matter of second to find the best prices and most that I have seen have free delivery. The only downside of this is having to wait a day or so while it gets delivered and the process you would have to go through if the media was faulty for example.

What is a store has both?

In the case of Game they have both physical stores and an on-line site and when I ask the store why there copy of a game is more then the on-line site they just reply back “we do not price match with on-line sites” – this is madness as the site (and company) is the same thing. They also deal in 2nd hand games, trade in’s as they call them. I quite often see a pre-owned game advertised as a higher or not much less then a new game. I understand that when they bought the game from someone – they paid them a price and have to make a profit while at the same time the new packaged game has gone down in price. I would be interested to see if someone actually buys these 2nd had games at the higher price over the new one – which is right next to it on the shelf.

How do I buy mine?

At the moment I am buying games mainly from the stores, I look for a certain price – around the £9 to the £15 mark. I bought Medal of Honor today at a store while grocery shopping for £21 which includes Medal of Honor Frontline – so two games for the price of one. I actually went to buy Litle big planet but forgot where I saw it for £12, they wanted £18, so I left it on the shelf in this case. I was going to buy Lost Planet 2 for £13 but put it back for now.

Steam is the service created by Vale who in turn make games such as Half-Life and TeamFortress (plus many others of course). Recently over at Tom’s Hardware I read a story about Game Stores View Valve’s Steam as the Devil - The basics of the story is that a Major UK Game Retailer in the UK are upset enough by Steam to threaten that they will not carry any product that carry any Steam integration – I am having a guess here that the store in question is Game maybe? I might be wrong, but how about we look at buying a game via a store verus buying the same title over the Steam Service.

How Steam Works

After I bought the Orange Box at funny enough Game for a super low price of £9.99 which is by a large MUCH cheaper then sold on Steam (£16.99), I created a Steam account and installed the game. The service works by the fact whatever machine I installed steam on and log into that account, I can get the games – no need for the DVD any more in fact. Later I bought ‘Left For Dead 2′ and again this was cheaper in the store then via steam – a LOT Cheaper in fact. This was added to my account and now all the games can be played on any number of machines (one at a time of course).

Where does Steam fall over?

If you checked out my previous posts about steam, you will see that if you loose access to your account, you can wave goodbye to your games until you get it sorted out and this can take well over a week to get sorted in fact. This does not happen with normal games, you get a CD key and away you go and you can re-install and play to your hearts content.

Is there a good reason for steam?

Much like the XBOX Live Service, your account and name stick with you, this means you will be called Mauldor (as I am) in HL2 Death Match as well as Team Fortress. You can invite your friends to join you in a game and you can chat in-game. The other thought here is that if you want Black ops, no need to wait till the store opens tomorrow, add it to your list, pay for it and it will soon download.

Should the Store’s be worried?

It depends of the Store’s are worried about Selling PC Based games to be honest – I have no idea if Steam works across the likes of XBOX or Playstation. The floor space given to PC titles in my local Game store is shrinking each week and soon they will be out in the cupboard in the back at this rate. It makes sense for the Store – they are not selling many PC games, they blame pirates and they can shift the much more expensive Console games as well as re-sell them on and so forth. What these stores forget (as most stores have since learned) is that with the power of the Internet I can find the cheapest price on Black Ops for example, have it ordered and delivered the next day. They cannot hold every single PC titles, do I waste my time looking for a game that they do not have?

Sometimes it works

If I am in Town, I *might* pop into the shop to have a look, 90% of the time I walk back out without any games and I honestly feel bad that I am ‘just looking’ when they ask me if they can help. Sometimes I see a Game I want and the price is right, I am only to happy to buy the game – its something I can walk away with and store on my shelf. I still feel distrusted of Steam – a so called secure system manay to loose not only my password but no emails of this happening and it was not like the person went to jail even though I provided his IP and Picture. For me – I shall continue buying at the store I think.

Ever want to just blow up enemies in fun physics puzzles? Look no further than Fragger. Clean, cartoony graphics mixed with gameplay reminiscent of Worms, it’s an excellent, if short, browser game. There are a few minor problems, but if you want to blow off some steam and test your brain at the same time, there’s no better way to blow a lunch break.

Fragger revolves around throwing grenades to kill enemies and manipulate the environment. If you are familiar with grenade throwing in Worms, you will instantly be comfortable with Fragger. Grenades have a several second timer, or explode shortly after coming to a full stop. You can aim in almost any direction, and determine the power through simple mouse movements. There’s no built-in level editor or player-designed levels, and the game has minimal re-playability, as well as a lack of full-scale mayhem, but it is certainly fun!

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community. Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes.

Grab it Here or search for it on Steam.

About the Game

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community.

Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes. Plan your attack using an unlockable arsenal of weapons with countless loadout configurations against a wide variety of aliens. Blaze your way through an overrun, off-world colony, eradicating the alien infestation in environments ranging from the icy planet’s surface, to a subterranean lava-flooded mining facility.

Along with the game get the complete code base for Alien Swarm that features updates to the Source engine as well as the SDK. Alien Swarm adds 3rd person camera, depth of field, improved dynamic shadows and a wide variety of gameplay additions to the Source engine.

• Tactical, 4 player co-op action game with a top-down perspective
• Complete game code and mod tools
• Unlock persistent items by gaining levels
• Over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations
• 4 unique classes and 8 unique characters
• Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats
• 64 achievements
• Tile-based map generation tool
• Powered by Source and Steam

System Requirements

Minimum + Recommended

• • OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
  • Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
  • Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
  • Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
  • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
  • OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
  • Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
  • Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better
  • Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
  • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

You Can get this game from http://www.torchlightgame.com as a demo and if you hurry, you can buy this game for $5 – Bargain.