Sorcery
The highly hyped Sorcery encouraged me to wipe the dust off my PS Move dildos and polish my Eyetoy, ready for the first spot of motion-gaming on a Sony machine this year. Could Sorcery entice me into playing with it more often? Initially I thought it might.
Combining both a controller pad to navigate our character and a Move stick to cast spells makes fantastic use of the tech and the game plays like magic. Creating potions to unlock enhancements, using your environment to strengthen spells and beefing it up with giant boss battles is sure to entertain any age group, for a while at least.
Things soon become a tad repetitive and linearity breeds the occasional yawn, but the storyline does enough for time to fly and by the end of it – you'll wonder where it all went. In fact, the main problem with Sorcery is that it doesn't take long to clock – there's no online mode and you probably won't go back to it when the wand is all out of juice. Those cobwebs unfortunately look set to build up again.
Spec-Ops: The Line
This cover-based third person shooter finds roots in the Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's novel that inspired Apocalypse Now. As a result, it educates in the grim nature of war. If you don't take enjoyment from gunning people down, Spec-Ops isn't the game for you. If you do, though, you'll probably think it's rather run of the mill.
Sometimes the fun in lies in going a bit mental and if the game won't allow you to do it, because "someone must take the moral route", things soon get frustrating. The cover system doesn't always respond how you'd like and often leaves players confused and exposed to shrapnel attack.
It isn't just the game's flaws that make it a challenge either, as the AI seems to know your every move and it can be pretty tricky to get by. Admittedly, Spec-Ops offers nothing truly groundbreaking, nor does it fill me with 'good-guy' satisfaction, but it is worth playing. The ending is glorious and, as it's quite a challenge to get there, you'll soon have had your money's worth.
Next page: Starhawk
COMMENTS
I hate to be that guy, but £2k is phenomenally expensive, even for a brand new extremely high spec gaming PC if you build it yourself.
£600 will do for a good gaming PC. I realise that's still a lot of money, but I'm posting in the interests of accuracy, not sanity. My current machine was about £1300 in total, but it'll last me 4-5 years unless I get the itch to be a bit childish and go spunk more cash on it.
Are you guys allergic to giving a game less than 70%? This is another reason why I can't take you seriously on gaming (the Halo reviews aside...). You basically called several games on this list crap, then gave them 70%. And El Reg is hardly alone in doing this,
This is why I prefer the scoring of people like Angry Joe. Dude isn't afraid to mark your game down. If a game is average, it gets 50%, if it's great it gets 70%, and it has to be ball-bustingly brilliant to get 90% or above. Otherwise you can't differentiate between the scoring on the games, and you end up with a bunch of games with the same score that vary wildly in quality.
TL;DR - knock it off. Stop being afraid to give games crap scores if they're crap.
well at least playing games into your 30's has given you some experience on consoles.
Me too... then I got married had two kids and started again :)
