Beast Busters - Arcade

Some beasts need busting, take 3 machine guns.

SNK have a name for themselves in making some of the tougher games out there. In particular, and namely so, the SNK boss syndrome where the last boss (or every boss if you're unlucky) is nightmarishly difficulty, has higher priority over all your attacks and does moves you could never hope to do. However, this is a light gun game they've made called Beast Busters and it's... following the same suit that SNKs bosses do.

Sounds like a nice vacation spot.

Beast Busters is a tough game, there's no two ways about that. Despite it catering for up to 3 players at once, each with their own excessively meaty looking sub-machinegun, it's a nightmare to play and unless you really are watching carefully, you'll end up shooting things you don't need to shoot and getting shot by the things you do need to shoot.

Bedlam, carnage, guns, zombies. I love it.

However, jumping ahead of myself here, Beast Busters takes the idea that a town has suddenly become a ghost town and rather than send in the authorities, it's decided that 3 gun-ho pricks will meander in and take a gander at the situation. Shit goes down, stuff blows up and everything becomes chaos and hell within the first level. Though to be honest, as soon as the first person you met was BLUE and SHOOTING AT YOU, I'd have turned around and walked off if I was still walking at that point. Though that wouldn't make for much of a game.

Should that not be "recently found" ?

Our 3 "heroes" are now stuck deep in enemy territory while trying to figure out what happened, how to escape and basically machinegun, grenade, rocket, flame and electrify everything they can to escape. You get a set of magazines of ammo and have to kill a specifically reoccurring enemy in each level for more to drop in for you to shoot to claim. Most enemies in this game aren't dead however, until they explode, so if they go down, they may get back up and keep attacking. Invariably, this means nearly every enemy must be killed twice.

Most mid-bosses have a pattern and weak point.

The enemies within Beast Busters are a colourful lot at best and not because they're blue skinned. There's some really gruesome looking enemies and monsters, ranging from diseased dogs, to giant birds/eagles/owls (I don't know), mutated piranha, giant head-neck turd bosses (help me please) and even flesh-monster-car creatures that puke rockets at you. Creativity is not in short supply in this game. The problem is that you're likely to run out of credits a long way before you get to see most of the more interesting enemies and bosses.

This is why you should always scrap your car, yourself.

Audio, there's little really to have for music as it's drowned out for the noise of screams and slaughtered monsters and enemies. However the sound effects are loud proud and quite overbearing but you'll manage always to know when you're nearly did thanks to the klaxon sounding "Warning: Now you are about to die" signal. Incidentally you WILL hear that noise a LOT and then "YOU ARE DEAD" being broadcast loudly proudly and spoken to you too as if one method just wasn't enough to hammer home that point where in you died.

Who the fuck writes this?

Even with 3 people playing Beast Busters and unless you're perfectly in psychic synchronisation, you will find yourself heavily overwhelmed within the first few levels and the pressure doesn't let up in the slightest after that. The most annoying part is that the plot maintains that going along the river will be safer and then you're looking at the most enemies and most simultaneously attacking groups you've ever come across within the game, so much for the "easier" route. (Though why it's level 4 at that point and easier was pretty much asking for things to get a lot harder).

Lightning grenades, in case explosions weren't enough.

If you manage to find a means of playing Beast Busters effectively, you're in for a fun ride of highly imaginative enemies and settings, interesting use of transitions between one part of the level and another and a gore fest almost unparallel for the time. But it's still going to be a difficult slog through some of the toughest gun-game sections seen barring Mechanised Attack (Also by SNK...) and with little replay value, brought down by the difficulty, you'll likely play this once or twice and skip it beyond that.

Alien 3: The Gun - Arcade

Thankfully, more monsters than in the film.

It's an odd circumstance when you take a film that doesn't have much in the way of action and try to fit it into the sphere of gaming that is an arcade game. Players are not likely to pump money into what is basically "Space Monster BOO!" and you can expect even less for them to be entertained by it. It needs a challenge, it needs action and it needs to be unfair enough to force people to keep playing but not too unfair that people give up on the grounds that it's just a sink for credits and cash.

If you can't work this out, you're going to lose, fast.

Alien 3, as a film and basis of this game, does not provide the suitable backdrop for the arcade game. So a little (read: LOTS) of artistic license has been used to work this game. For a start, there's more than one alien (hooray!), there's multiple types of aliens and enemies such as robots, tanks, droids, cyborgs and most of this was never in the original film.

There's quite the myriad of monsters, body parts and action here.

Plot wise, you do follow SOME of it. You're two surviving marines from the 2nd film that have remained on the original ship, except it's been overrun and infested with Xenomorphs. Grab gun, infinite basic ammo and some "kill all" grenades and let the acid-blood-bath begin! Or we would if the game was that fun to play. While battling aliens and other enemies, you get to see set pieces from the film, run across the surface of the planet, see the factory installation of Fury 161, run the gauntlet with the other prisoners and then finally battle the "Plot" Alien boss and dunk it in liquid metal before a showdown with the Bishop Android/Man.

"We'll help!" By which they mean 'Get in the way ALL the time'

Your bosses and enemies are Aliens based, apart from the robot ones which seem to be thrown in there at the last minute and take their cues from Revolution X for annoying boss tactics. Including "Not being hurt when the game wants you hurt instead" and the more annoying "Only one part of my body is vulnerable and you're NOT seeing it any time soon" types that can't help but give you a beating before teasing you briefly like a cheap stripper in a backwards club.

Anyone remember this in the film?

The music cannot really be commented upon, as it is barely heard during multiple playthroughs, the balance seems very one-sided towards the sound effects which come through rather 'tinny' and the odd speech sample makes it sound like ALL the voices were done by one person irrespective of whomever is talking, be it player characters or NPCs. Bullets sound far too metallic and aliens have that odd rasping noise synonymous with plenty of other monster games as if it's been taken from "Bad Sound Effects volume 82 - monster edition"

Or that part where the robots ran around shooting people? That in the film either?

But what of the gun? It's a bulky lump but does feel almost like you're holding something worthy of blasting aliens, but doesn't seem to match the damage inflicted upon the monsters within the game. Mainly because each time you down them, there's a chance they get back up but damaged and attack in a different way, then they could be shot AGAIN and wait a little longer in writhing agony but if you get too close (because you're in an on-rails shooter no less) they might lunge yet again. You have to keep hitting them until they're dead. By dead, we mean they've changed colour and stop physically moving. However the gun is large, meaty looking and has two key functions; the trigger for shooting and a button for hurling out instant-death to most enemies and significant damage to bosses.

Grenades and flamethrowers add to your weaponry, sadly not too often enough.

Items and power ups are far and few between. You might be able to find some health, perhaps a few extra grenades and very occasionally a flame thrower that instantly kills whatever it hits, but will never last long enough for you to make significant progress and the delay between trigger pulling and impact is longer than the bullets so you're likely to be slapped about by the aliens anyway for a while you adjust to the delay.

Red vision, or how to make the game harder by doing very little.

That said, there is some replay value in the game, in that there's multiple routes one can take through a few of the levels and trying to get better and better scores is always available for the competitive streak in some people, but the annoyance and unfairness of the aliens and some of the attacks hitting while ignoring the damage you're dealing, will turn many people away from this game.

Infinity Blade 3 (iOS)

Yes, I've been playing it quite a bit

It's an odd game given what it is and what it could have been but for what it IS as a game, Infinity Blade 3 could be a lot worse than it is. The highly touted and greatly promised 3rd game in the Infinity Blade series started off as THE killer app for the iPhone and iPad series, promising stunning graphics, fast gameplay and an in-depth and involving storyline. I'll be taking a look at the 3rd game, as I've not got the other 2 installed to review those ones, just yet.

Drops, rivulets, stunning looking game.

Some liken the game to Punch Out on the NES in terms of gameplay but I suppose you could say that if you say that slapping two slices of bread together and calling it a sandwich while placing those slices of bread next to a burger with lettuce, onions, beef patties, ketchup and ... I really should have had breakfast before writing this one. I lost that metaphor, but either way it's NOT the same game and NOT the same mechanics.

The story so far: Bear with me on this.

STATS AHOY!

Guy goes to avenge father, fights into castle, meets Godking and gets killed. Every 19 years, son of guy goes to castle to meet the same fate. Eventually someone kills the GodKing and takes from him the Infinity Blade, dying words are that "now they'll come for you", while ignoring side quests and bonuses. Which is game 1 in a nutshell.

I live... again...

Game 2 has guy now resurrecting and realising he's a deathless, meaning that if he dies he returns a little while later, turns out it's always been him just slowly resurrecting in the first game. Incidentally, SPOILERS BACK THERE and shut up. Guy then goes to find the Worker of Secrets who is believed to be the one to make a weapon that can kill the deathless. Guy kills lots of deathless, finds the Worker but needs to go back and kill the GodKing again and bring him to the Worker to switch places in the prison. Guy does so, Worker pulls a fast one and reveals that Guy put him there in the first place, now he'll take over the world.

Power Move!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS game, guy (who realises he was another guy beforehand but had a case of explosive amnesia) seeks to find the Worker of Secrets and kill him before he burns the world from space. Yes we really upped the ante in this one, while teaming up with another deathless and seeking for a weapon that will kill the Worker of Secrets, who happens to be immune to his own weapons. Makes sense really, why make a weapon that could be used against you?

He's big, he's ugly, he's going to hurt you a lot if you let him.

With this in mind, cue fights against ninjas, knights, walking tanks, mutants, dragons (yes, BIG ONES at that), various plot based bosses, arenas and online modes with ClashMobs to level up your characters and weapons. Yep, there's a grind fest in this game.

Steals items, sells them back to you, but can sell you unique things too.

The game is nothing but stylish. Set in a possible future with slight steampunk/medieval settings and a touch of magic thrown into the mix, you guide Siris (The Guy) and Isis through multiple gorgeous levels and have them duelling with various enemies to gain levels, which can be used to boost your Health, Attack, Shield/Blocking and Magic powers. Once you progress far enough you'll unlock a gem cutter who can create extra boosts with gems you've collected that can really ramp your weapons and stats up but only if your equipment has the right shaped slot for them, otherwise that +10 mace will have to be swapped out for the +8 cabbage on a rope to use your +2 magic and many, many, higher numbers involved later. Further progression gives you an armourer who will upgrade armour that has been maxed out in exp which can be worn again for more exp.

"...On the third day, ride out to the sun..."

The levelling system is a little odd. You don't gain exp PERSONALLY (though you do) you gain it by the experience gained by the equipment. Weapons, shields, armours and magic rings all have an exp limit, they gain it through the fights you win and for each exp point THEY gain, you gain as a level progression. But once they're maxed out, you have to change weapons (or sooner) to continue levelling up. Once they're maxed out, you can have them upgraded with the armourer and then start over to boost your level even further. For every level up you attain, you get 2 stat points to increase and for every item that maxes out, you get another stat point.

Gotcha!

Sounds complicated but you steadily learn that having maxed out items will not progress you. Each time you beat a level (or have to replay it if you lose to the boss) your "Awakening" increases which means the enemies will get harder. Eventually you'll hit a brick wall if you're not increasing stats and boosting equipment, but you can roll back the difficulties by 1 or 10 levels if you wish, but that means less exp after each fight. It's an odd mechanic but thankfully stops the issue in earlier games where people would not be able to progress because of under-levelled characters.

HA! Easy! Full magic and power move = WIN!

There's side quests too, the mission involving dragons that randomly turn up and cause an epically scripted series of Quick time events, bonus items and missions against key recurring characters that seek "GLORY IN TH FIELD OF COMBAT" or just want to fight you for your weapon, but you can win theirs too, or going toe to toe with your former persona.

Vore fans have problems here, they tend to get eaten whole, a lot.

Combat within the game stems from swiping to strike, tapping to stab (where necessary) and using the buttons at the left, middle and right to either dodge or block depending upon the weapon you hold. Sword and shield has 2 dodges and block but can't block every attack, heavy weapons have 3 blocks (no dodges) but you CAN block every attack if you time it right and dual wielding gives you full dodges no blocks so you can avoid every attack. Survive enough of a flurry of attacks and you'll tire the enemy out which gives you the chance to attack back and score combos, repeat until someone's dead. Super moves and Magic steadily charge through the fight until you use them, magic's ranging from elemental damage, shielding, health restoration and such, while the super move gives you an instant free combo followed by a free flowing combo until the enemy recovers.

Great Parry! Much Skill! Doge!!1!one!

There is a HUGE amount to do in this game, if you like the tactician method of fighting and countering moves and like the grinding, you'll find there's a wealth of things to do in this game. Side quests and missions are a little disappointing in that once you've done them, that's it. Dragons don't return even in the "newgame+" modes and for the truly hardcore there's the Deathless Mode which has other weapons you can't normally find but if you die there, whatever killed you KEEPS your stuff until you go back and beat them!

Siris looking suitably badass here.

Graphically, this is one of the most impressive games I've seen on the iOS systems and really should be a benchmark for future games if it isn't used as an industry standard already. Though you will need to have the latest iOS appliances to get the benefits, i.e. iPhone 4 will not see the extra effects that iPhone 5S can see, likewise between iPad 1 - 3 and beyond. But it's playable, still looks good but not great with older gear. But that's the limitation of hardware and not a fault with the game per se.

The music is stunning, from slow ambient background noises and deep base notes to the faster, more frantic fight music's (of which there are many) culminating in multiple tracks per fight depending upon how damaged the enemy is. For fans of the series, it shows that the makers ChAIR have really pulled out the stops on this title and with regular (read: Daily) bonus online challenges for more cash, chips and loot, there's almost ALWAYS something to come back for and play.

The state of play, missions and bonus quests to be done. Avoid the one at the top...

The downside is that soon it does become repetitive and eventually you WILL run out of things to do, but it's more than likely you'll have had more than enough of the game before you reach that point. I can't really recommend this higher.