The inevitable video game drought has come once again. The big spring titles are out of the way and now begins the long run up to the holiday season. Luckily enough though digital downloads are here to save the day. Forget disks and boxes, this is the future, granddad. Login to XBLA or PSN and check out some of these new releases to ear up some of your precious holiday time.
The Punisher: No Mercy
First up is comic book title, The Punisher: No Mercy. An arena-based FPS in a similar vein as Unreal Tournament: fast paced action, lots of power-ups and over the top gore. The main focus is on multiplayer action and has no ties to the 2005 Punisher game or any of the films. There is a single-player mode, however it is made up of four stages and simply involves fighting AI controlled characters with various challenges - such as surviving a certain number of enemy waves, time limits and so on. The single-player also includes graphic novel-style artwork by comic book artist, Mike Deodato. Apart from these few scenes, the only voice acting happens in-game with players spouting generic quips after they’ve either killed someone or been killed by someone else. You can pretty much imagine how the game’s focus, Frank Castle AKA The Punisher, sounds. Essentially the same voice you put on to fool the local delinquents that you’re much ‘harder’ than you actually are.
Running on the tried and tested Unreal Engine the graphics are solid enough, although with some noticeable texture pop-in. Weapons and character models are all fitting of the source material, maps are dark and gritty with some similar settings from the Punisher films. Heads and limbs pop off and blood splatters relentlessly, definitely not for the faint of heart.
However, with a few connection problems and only eight-player games it feels like it just falls short of its full potential. The biggest let down being the difficulty in finding matches. As a PSN-exclusive game lobbies are far from bustling. Consider yourself lucky to find a game with more than five people. This is a huge drawback, though the maps aren’t huge, it still feels a bit empty at times and with the fast paced nature of the game running around looking for people can get a bit tedious.
With these problems this should only be recommended for big fans of the comics, exclusively on the PlayStation store now at £6.29.
Format: PS3 Dev: Zen Studios Pub: Zen Studios Out: 02/07/09 Players: 1, online 2-8
Battlefield 1943
Another FPS now, this time from a recognised franchised and one of the biggest names in the genre. Battlefield is taking you back to 1943. Battlefield 1943 is continuing the series’ conquest mode multiplayer gameplay. No single-player this time - just class-based, vehicular combat and base-capturing action, and it is good. Anyone who has played Battlefield Bad Company should know what to expect here, only this time you have WW2 weapons such as the M1 Garand and the Thompson SMG, and the maps consist of South Pacific Islands, including Iwo Jima.
The gameplay consists of choosing a class - infantryman, rifleman or sniper - selecting a spawn point and then getting straight into the action. The aim is to capture and hold specific points in the map, by hoisting your team’s flag. Holding more bases than the opposing team causes their moral, represented by a bar at the top of the screen, to fall. Whichever teams’ bar depletes first loses. You gain points by capturing bases and killing enemies. Maps facilitate up to 24 players so you might want to jump in a vehicle to aid your speedy conquest, be it a jeep with mounted machine gun, a tank or a fighter plane. The latter of which are notoriously tricky to pilot so you might want to get some practice in before slamming into a cliff.
As with any Battlefield game the core mechanics are perfectly balanced, the classes, the maps - it all feels so right. Something that some multiplayer games might want to take note of. You never feel cheated, and if you lose it is simply because the other team was just better. The game is beautifully simple, yet also lends itself to complex strategy. Once you get to know the maps (which shouldn’t take too long), you’ll begin to think things out instead of just mindlessly running around like a headless chicken.
Battlefield 1943 runs on the Frostbite engine which powered Bad Company and introduced the series to destructible environments which, thankfully, return for this instalment. Buildings blow apart, trees are cut down by gun fire, nowhere is safe. This goes a long way to adding to the immersion of the experience - as soon as you jump in you’ll notice the manic nature of battle. Planes plummet from the sky, jeeps burst into flames, brick walls are torn to shreds. This is truly a battlefield. And at £9.99/1200MSP it is perhaps the best value for money yet seen on PSN/XBLA. The drawbacks being, there are only four maps and only one game mode. You simply boot up the game, go to quick match and that’s it. However, the maps are all exceptional fun and finding a match (for the most part) is quick and easy.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone. If you’re a fan of the previous Battlefield games you will love this. If you’re looking for a team-based multiplayer shooter, this is the best one you can get without a disk. The future is here and it is reasonably priced, who reads the instruction manual these days anyways?
Format: PS3, Xbox 360, PC Dev: EA DICE Pub: EA Out: 09/07/09 Players: online 2-24
Stuart Kent
