Though many have denied the allegations that Dante’s is a clean rip from the God of War fabric, they are simply foolish. From the array of attacks and button mapping, to the extensive amount of gore and hankering for revenge, Inferno pretty much crams in everything that is akin to Sony’s flagship series. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying it; Inferno is a title which can be as fun as it is flawed, though the game can’t seem to sink its hooks into me.

Switching from a current generation console to the PlayStation 2 may seem to have few merits at first, especially due to the change in picture quality, but after an hour or so after starting up RDR, I actually found myself hooked. In brief, Revolver takes players around the Wild West as they shoot up the meanest bandits and hooligans in order to grab to well-earned booty. The shooting is solid, and the locations are vast with plenty of experimentation to be had. Though Red Dead Redemption will feel like a completely different game, it may still be worth checking out this aged title.

It’s a solid racing title, but requires very delicate hands and a finely tweaked skill of the genre. Though it won’t exactly turn any heads, it’s certainly worth looking into, especially if you are a previous Motorstorm, Pure, or DiRT veteran.

Don’t be shy! Tell us what you are playing and how it’s going, whether it be a new release or dust-collector, let’s spark some conversation.

It will be interesting to hear more new features, closer to the game’s release, and where Black Box will hopefully go from there.

• Avatar System

Since the console’s launch, the PlayStation 3 has only had a dozen or so new avatars added to the ranks of dull and unspecific avatars. Too many times do I scroll down my list to find five people in a row donning the Altair avatar, or I see the occasional toothbrush or plug socket. They may be quirky and unique, but as gamers we want more gaming-orientated avatars. For those unaware, there are already LittleBigPlanet and MAG avatars available in the store at a reasonable £0.20. Ideally, I would like a regular weekly update of new ones, though at present the prospects are dire.

• Cross Game Chat

This feature has been available a long time for Xbox 360 owners, but for those who only own a PlayStation 3, they have to settle for text chat instead, and though efficient, it’s encumber-some during online play. Cross game chat has been hinted at for quite some time, and it’s something Sony will definitely have to implement to stake out against Xbox Live. It’s said that cross game chat will be made available in Sony’s rumoured “Premium Subscription” though nothing is solid as of yet.

• Background Downloads

Unlike the Xbox 360, some PlayStation games will also required constant updates. Some may only clock in at around 20mb, but for the more substantial file sizes, there should be the options to background download the patch. This would allow gamers to simply switch on another game while the update is active. There may be some technical issues that prevent this from becoming a reality, but it’s certainly worth looking into.

• PSP Store Prices

Luckily, I decided not to buy a PSP Go, and the sole reason I am glad for doing so is the audacious asking prices on the majority of PSP titles. Considering a digital copy of the game does not come with a solid case or instruction manual, why does it cost more than a copy found on store shelves? If the PSP Go hadn’t already drained the weight from your wallet, you will be very reluctant in buying games. With this said, there have been numerable sales and price drops, but still, when I can get a solid pre-owned copy of a 1-year old game for £7.99 and I see it on the store for £19.99, it’s not good news.

• Friend Networks

I am a Facebook regular, using the service solely to check out what my mates are up to in the real world. What if Sony were to go ahead and tally up some sort of “Friend Updates” page, available when you log into PSN. This page would list certain information about your pals, such as “X has just earned 17 trophies in Heavy Rain,” “X has just purchased Fat Princess”, or “X has added Prince of Persia to their collection.” This sort of unique feature on the PlayStation Network wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but for huge groups of gaming buddies, it could be a selling point.

The only part of Heavy Rain I am going to comment on is the beginning. You will notice a certain sluggish pacing for the first hour or so, and though this can be off-putting, it’s essential in building player-character relations.

Even though I felt bound to Heavy Rain last night, I simply had to put in a few rounds on these new maps I had been waiting for. UC2 vets will recognise straight away some of the changes this new pack ushers into the game. For starters, there is a matchmaking preference, depending on whether you have the DLC or not. Secondly, apart from the actual add-on content itself, there is a list of trophies, which are superbly tracked via one of the in-game menus. Without giving anything away before my review, all I can say is these maps are definitely worth getting, and have a completely different vibe from the ones already available.

Fans of Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing and the previously mentioned MNR will all feel at home with All Stars Racing. The controls are smooth and the races themselves are intense. Though I have only zipped through a few of the splitscreen and completed some of the Gran Prix cups, I know this one is definitely a keeper, and hopefully there will be prospects of DLC from SEGA in the near future.

• Please tell us your names, and what is it you do at Honeyslug?

Ricky Haggett: I write all the code and tools. And sometimes come up with ideas for games and/or mechanics – though we operate a design meritocracy at Honeyslug..   and although we normally work with a freelance artists, for Kahoots I made all the ‘final’ graphics in Photoshop, once Nat had scanned or photographed the source images.

Nat Marco: I focus on ideas and design, including concepts/mechanics, level design, script writing and lua scripting. As we’re a small team our roles often merge so I can find myself doing anything from recording silly sound effects (like the Kahoots voices!) to plasticine modeling and animation!

Mark Inman: I focus more on the behind the scenes stuff making such as project management, website, finances, and general business affairs side of things. On top of that I occasionally dip my toe in the design side of things and handle a chunk of the internal testing.

Rob Haggett: Hello, I’m Rob and I make the music, SFX and all things noise based for Honeyslug. It’s a weird and wonderful world; it not often I get to make songs about Cardborgs, cannons and Pegbeasts! We laugh a lot!

• We loved Kahoots, it being one of the most popular PSP minis to date. Were you surprised at all by the reception from critics and gamers?

Ricky: Absolutely. We figured there’d be some degree of interest, given that Kahoots Minis was one of the launch titles for what is effectively a new ‘platform’, but yeah, we’ve been blown away by the critical reception, both to the game itself, and its personality – which is very much that of its creators. In particular, Pegbeast is becoming almost unbearably smug at all the love directed at him – we’ve had to threaten him with being sidelined in the next game..

Mark: It’s particularly warming when the feedback is from gamers. Obviously it’s great to have a critical hit on our hands, an 81 average on Metacritic has made it one of the 10 highest scoring PSP titles of 2009, but when I go on one of my vanity sorties around the forums, it’s brilliant to have the same praise thrust upon you by the punters.

• What was the inspiration behind Kahoots? Were there any titles that influenced the gameplay and aesthetic of the game?

Ricky: Actually, the initial inspiration was the game Braid. Without giving too much away, there’s one puzzle in that game where you have to do something vaguely similar to the gameplay in Kahoots and I was so taken by the solution that it set me off thinking ‘what about a whole game where you do this kind of stuff?’. So I spent a weekend making a little prototype in flash (you can see my original pixelart here: http://www.honeyslug.com/what-might-have-been) and showed to the others – in the prototype there were only Kahoots, Cardborgs, Spikes and Bounce Blocks.  We figured it was fun enough to take further, so Nat started thinking about new features..

Aesthetically, it was inspired by a number of things. The game is dedicated to Oliver Postgate and Tony Hart – two massive childhood heroes of mine (both of whom sadly died in the year or leading up to us starting Honeyslug and creating Kahoots). Then there was Nat’s background in plasticine animation, and if I’m honest, seeing the wonderfully homespun look of Little Big Planet and thinking ‘we can do that just with a digital camera!’. Once we set down ‘the rule’ that everything in the game had to be handmade, it became really fun scanning loads of stuff in and just seeing what you could make with it. Pegbeast was born this way – we’d made a trip down to the shops of Kentish Town High Stree – charity, poundstores and our amazingly well stocked haberdashery, and returned with bags of stuff, including a knitted ball I found in Oxfam and a pack of jumbo pegs from Poundland. Nat happened to put these two objects in the scanner together, and when I opened up the bitmap in Photoshop to start cutting them out, lo! The Pegbeast was born!

Nat: Ricky came in one morning with a new game prototype (as he often does!) and after playing it for a while I went away with a pad and pen (I’m old school like that) to design some levels.  This process allows us to determine what features would be cool to include without spending any time coding them.  Once I had a good idea of what would work, I gave Ricky my features wish list, and he added things like reverse blocks and cannons to the core block set.

In terms of aesthetics, Ricky’s already mentioned Postgate and Hart, but I was also very much inspired by the old Dreamworks game The Neverhood.  That game, along with 80s cartoon The Trap Door, were the reason I majored in stop-frame animation at university and have no doubt, influenced Kahoots.  The final characters were derived from Ricky’s original pixel art, but the Cardborg also took some inspiration from cardboard robot costumes.  In retrospect, this was possibly a silly move as, being covered in tinfoil, he wasn’t the easiest of models to animate!  We kept the animation very lo-fi, I did everything from my desk using a digital camera, desk lamp and make shift green screen.  The homespun nature of the game meant our art process was very quick.  If we thought something would look cool in the game, we scanned/shot it and 10 minutes later we could test it out!  That’s actually how the collectable cupcakes ended up in the game!  So far, Kahoots is the only game I’ve worked on where I could eat the art assets – definitely a bonus!

Mark: One of the comparisons a lot of people draw in terms of gameplay is with Lemmings, mainly because you’re dealing with a character in perpetual motion and it’s the environment rather than the protagonist that you have direct control over. It wasn’t something we consciously drew heavily from when creating the game, but it’s certainly a good comparison to have people make given it’s one of the iconic puzzle games of the early 90s. The level design was really dictated more by the game elements at our disposal rather than any external influence (apart from one level I made which tried really hard to look like Donkey Kong – it doesn’t look anything like it, but as a level it works), once Nat and I had come up with somewhere in the region of 70 levels, we did a cull and then ordered the remaining 50 into something approaching a decent difficulty curve. We tried hard to ensure that all gameplay elements had an even footing in terms of player exposure so that there was never a situation where something appeared in early levels and then 30-odd levels later reappeared and the player had to recall how to make that feature work for them.

Rob: A lot of the concept behind the music was to create a series of ‘skits’ which would help guide the player through the game. The guys created Pegbeast for this purpose, so we had a single “rasta-peg” focal point to start creating the songs from! It was pretty much an ‘anything goes’ approach, as long as the skits were short, explanative and fun. Ricky and I spent a while playing around with how Pegbeast would sound and I think we hit the nail on the head – he seems to be more popular than the Kahootz! For the in game music, I tried to create something that was very much fitting to the homegrown feel of Kahoots. I would record lots of noises (bottle hits, tearing up paper, pulling masking tape etc.) to create a soundscape from which I could then compose the theme. I guess my end aim was to create a lo-fi, homely feel musically for the game which hopefully I’ve achieved.

• Roughly, how long did it take to develop Kahoots?

Ricky: we made the initial Flash version for our pals at www.gimme5games.com, which took about a month, and we were just coming to the end of this period when Sony came to see us. The process of porting it to a Minis title took about six weeks – which was expedited considerably by the kind and patient guys at Sony Dev Support, who helped us enormously to get to grips with the PSP so quickly.

• As mentioned before, Kahoots was an obvious success, but does this mean we can expect any future PSP minis from Honeyslug, or more specifically, any more Kahoots?

Ricky: The answer to both questions is the same – we’d love to both release other Minis titles, and work on a new Kahoots game – we have loads of ideas for the sequel! Right now, we’re at that tipping point of deciding how and when to expand our team so we can build on our current success – but we’re a small team, and currently all mad busy working on a DS/PC title, which we hope to announce soon..  I suspect that sometime in late summer, we’ll start formalising our plans for ‘next things’.

Mark: We also realize there are a lot of people missing out on Pegbeast love, so we’re keen to make it available on more platforms. Given the mechanic of the game it seemed an ideal candidate to migrate over to the iPhone and we’re currently in the later stages of development with that version. We’re always looking at as many viable platforms for all our titles, as long as it they are a good fit and not just pumped out onto another platform to the detriment of the game brand.

• One last question, was it your intention to create a title so affordable, and would you advise other minis developers to follow suit?

Ricky: With regard to pricing, my personal marker flags are pub-related: I don’t want our games to be cheaper than a bag of crisps at launch – in particular I think this de facto 59p price point on the Appstore is really damaging to small developers trying to make something non-trivial (like Kahoots), as has been well documented elsewhere. We’ve poured a huge amount of time and love into making Kahoots – so I feel like, if someone doesn’t think it’s worth more than a bag of crisps, they probably aren’t the right kind of customer for us, at least not at launch (I have no problem with games dropping in price naturally over time until they eventually become very cheap / free).

At the other end of the scale, it felt like Kahoots should cost less than a pint of beer. Regardless of having a decent number of hours of gameplay in there, if you’re releasing a new IP – which also happens to have an idiosyncratic style and original gameplay, you definitely need to be hitting that impulse purchase pricepoint – which for me is always ‘ahh.. it’s less than a pint. Why not?’

I guess a big disclaimer here is that we all come from a development background, so we’re no particular experts in marketing – I’m not sure anyone is in this brave new world of of digital media snacking! We’re just trying to find our feet, test out different theories and see what works – so I dunno if I’d give other developers any particularly advice, other than to follow their instincts..

We would like to thank the team at Honeyslug for their time, and hear nothing but good things about their future projects.

As well as one of the boss-level Akrids, the box art also demonstrates LP2‘s use of mechs. Fans of the first game will remember these huge robotic structures that players could control and use to devastating effect.

Lost Planet 2 will be launching worldwide in late May.

Civil war has broken out and there is no government in sight, leaving the rotting carcass of the African state to be gnawed by two factions, the UFLL and the APR. In the centre of the war is a man known simply as The Jackal, an arms dealer fuelling both sides of the war. You’re mission is simple, you have been sent to the central state to take out The Jackal and defuse the war, though finding him will likely require a moral sacrifice, and your task is only made harder when you are infected with Malaria. To gain information and respect, the player will find themselves doing dirty work for either faction, though every story enAside from the many spin-offs such as Instincts and Vengeance, Far Cry has always been thought as a series bound to the PC platform. However, with the standards of console shooters always going up, it was an easy decision for Ubisoft when they launched the direct sequel, Far Cry 2, on Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3. The battlefields have been broadened, but does the series still deliver the same impact it had back in 2004?ds in a location known simply as the Heart of Darkness (a reference to the famous title written by Joseph Conrad.)

The story is flimsy to say the least. There are only a couple of characters players will take a liking to, The Jackal potentially being one of them. The rest of the cast each have minor roles, and as you progress through the game you will realise that they are also expendable. As for the lead character, he/she is a silent protagonist with only a block of text to describe their attributes and background. If Ubisoft would have spent more time developing the lead characters as well as the secondary ones, it could have been a more meaningful and better story.

Far Cry 2 is best described as a Sandbox title played via the first person perspective. You have the freedom to travel the North and South sectors picking up a variety of quests and building a reputation for yourself. However, the number-one element to sandbox gaming is missing in Far Cry 2 due to there not being a single civilian, meaning no shenanigans whatsoever. 99% of NPCs you run into will carry guns, 80% of them with the intention of killing you, which can take getting used to. A small range of NPCs can be chosen as buddies (allies) as mentioned before, with the ability of aiding you on missions or in gunfights.

The mission structures are all very similar, though Far Cry 2 tries to mask this with a broad array of different locations including shanty towns, mountain villages, mines, breweries and so on. Deliveries, sabotages and assassinations is as far as the variety goes, but sometimes buddies will contact you offering side-missions that impact your main goals. Quest givers will always pay you upfront with conflict diamonds, the in-game currency which can only then be spent on weapons and upgrades to them such as accuracy of ammo capacity.

The more missions you accomplish, the more people will fear you, though this is only noticeable in the cease-fire zones. There are a few of these zones spread throughout the in-game world and they will serve as hubs for quests and the much-desirable quick-travel buses. Navigating the open world of Far Cry 2 may be a treat at first, but a few hours down the line and it will become a troublesome chore. This is due to the fact that your only bearing are via a in-hand map and small GPS device, which is only worsened by the extortionate distances quest-givers expect you to travel. A common trend in recent sandbox titles is a pinpoint system that guides you via a drawn path on your mini-map, but this is not evident in Far Cry 2. Aside from the actual tools of navigation, the unpredictable terrain and random militia troops also make travel difficult, which can only be remedied by the several quick-travel stations located throughout the game.

FC2 plays out just like a conventional first person shooter including iron sights and limited sprinting. Your health and ammunition are displayed at the bottom of the screen as well as prompts for picking up items or performing similar actions. Gunplay is effective and the constant changing of terrain can intensify certain situations, though this can also develop into frustration or tedium.

The most favourable feature of Far Cry 2 has to be its authenticity, it’s evident in almost every aspect of both setting and gameplay. Losing too much health, for example, will cause the player to bleed out, forcing them to find cover and patch themselves up to avoid a slow death. These bleed out moments aren’t just a matter of consuming one of your health packs, instead the character will initiate an action such as patting out flames on their body or painstakingly extracting a bullet. When explosions take place in Far Cry 2, any shrubbery, trees or long grass adjacent to the instance will also catch fire and spread, opening a window for several authentic tactical opportunities. If your vehicle takes damage you will be able to repair it by hand, though you can also use battered vehicles as mobile explosives if you bail out just in time. One last note of authenticity worth pointing out within the gameplay is the guns themselves. Those use to playing series such as Medal of Honor, Call of Duty or Battlefield will never come across faults in their weaponry, but this is not so in the harsh wilds of FC2. Taking up a fallen weapon isn’t always the most efficient choice, as they can often jam halfway through a clip, or even backfire on the player, creating one of the most unpredictable first person shooters to date.

To run a sandbox game such as Far Cry 2, there is a tremendous amount of power used, and when coupled with hundreds of wandering enemies and masses of explosions, the graphics aren’t exactly top notch. Some of the textures and shadowing effects are grainy and somewhat ugly in places, though this is balanced by the variety in scenery and the healthy color palette employed by the developers. Character and weapon design is over average, with significant NPCs bearing a unique character design as well as voice work. Character motion is a mixed basket; during combat some of the movements of enemies can look awkward, but during phases such as mission briefings, it feels organic.

It’s the same case for the voice work too. The accents are generally spot-on, but this is betrayed by the lack of appropriate pacing and emotion in the dialogue spoken. The prime example of this is how The Jackal talks to the main character; he speaks way too fast and the flat tone of his voice fails to grace the role of the game’s antagonist. The soundtrack accompanying Far Cry 2 is simply described as African, a blend of drum beats against a backtrack of the wilderness stirring in the distance, adding to the authentic feel.

Far Cry 2 may not be the great accomplishment some may have thought, though it’s a must have for any who are fans of the FPS genre. It can take time to get used to the slow pacing and travel, but patience is steadily rewarded throughout the rest of the game. As mentioned throughout the review, authenticity is FC2’s forte, and this carries over to the online component. Coupled with the in-game map-maker too, there is plenty of content to explore, even for those who have the intention of hammering straight through it. With a few tweaks made, Far Cry could have easily been one of the best titles of 2008, but onlooker must consider the sequel to be the first multiplatform voyage the series has taken.

[starreview tpl=16]