JaymesKeller

Just a quick note: This review will be based off the latest version of the game that has been released. With that out of the way, though, it's still not worth the asking price of around £15, or £30 with some small DLC thrown in. From my own experience, I have not been able to reproduce some of the more serious glitches and errors in the game, so for some, it might be enough to like it. As for me..well, what do you think, eejit? I have played a good portion of the THPS games throughout my childhood and teenage years, and I found them addicting, and every now and then, I go back to them to relive the good days. This game, however, makes me feel a little bit miffed. Here's why. Imagine Robomodo stripping out all of the stuff that made the games, like living, interactive environments, create-a-skater, building your own special trick setup, and took it to the bare minimum possible. Now, stop imagining it, it's real, and it's THPS5. Where to start? The glitches notwithstanding, the game feels really bare and more of a beta build of the older games. The controls are really confusing, to add to that. To keep your speed up, you press R2. That was never a thing in the older games, so why now? While I'm on that subject, why change Triangle for being Grind to a slam? You have a good chance of screwing up a combo thanks to the slam. You can make it so you have to double-tap the button, but a better option, would be to bin it entirely. Even worse, when you're doing grind and manual tricks, you can't bail. Now, the graphics. They seem flat and boring, as if 20 years of graphics technology was thrown out just for the sake of saving space. Everything has the cell-shaded look that appears to try to hide how bad it looks. As for content? Where is it? There's around 8 levels of boring, basic parks to play, and even trying to build your own makes you feel like you're being strangled. It's all very restricted and controlled. As for skaters? You have around 12 or so, with no ability to make your own. Well..that's not strictly true, you can make some awful amalgam entity with the limited customise function. All that alone makes it bad, but, let's throw in some of the glitches that I've ran into. You can end up partly buried in the level geometry when you bail in the right conditions. I found out that you can grind on the edges of certain pits even when you cover them with parts of a quarter-pipe in Create-A-Park. Oh yeah, and QP corners, when you bail, seem to have no collision planes at all, so you go through them. So, with all that, do not, under any circumstances, buy this game. It's not worth £60, it's not worth £45, it's not worth £30, it's not even worth £15, £10 or even £5, you would have to pay someone to take this game away. Do you know what I recommend instead? Take your £10, buy a copy of THUG2, and install THUG Pro, a mod for the game. The mod has access to nearly all levels from every game, and even one game that's based off the same engine. Those guys took time and energy to create the ultimate THPS game, but Robomodo got it so wrong, and they're supposed to be pros. Don't buy the game at all, it's a waste of space, and I want Activision to suffer badly because they let it get published.

Animal Crossing seems to have gotten some controversy over not being the same old COD-styled nonsense that everyone seems to hail as the best game ever. I'm generalising a bit, but it's accurate than anything else. First up, the good: It's a welcome break, and it's a game that works to your own pace. There's enough to do, and more importantly, there is no end. You could play forever, getting you and your town into all kinds of entanglements and then getting them back out of it. Plus, it's the only game I know of for the 'cube that allows you to get stung by bees. Now, the bad. The Real Time Clock (RTC) is a bit of a pain in the bum, and the fact that it takes real time to do anything is annoying. Of course, you could time travel, and I don't mean the kind that the TARDIS does. However, that can really mess stuff up if you're not careful. If you're looking for a decent, casual game to break the monotony of the MMS games out there, then it might be worth your time searching for a second-hand copy of the game, or failing that, one of the other titles in the series.

Nations, the free side of the Trackmania Forever game, (I will be using that term to refer to Nations and United combined, as it's more-or-less the same thing, but with different features.) might seem a little bit stripped down, but it's still high-quality and fun to play. It builds on the Nations ESWC game, and it's as simple as anything. Choose a track and just go. Simple, really. It does let itself down with the on-line play restrictions, but given that there's no advertising in the game, what else could they do? All in all, a quick, fun racing game that anyone can pick up and play.

Shootmania seems to be a nice alternative to the brainless FPS games out there, however, I have a few points that seem to let it down a little. First, the lack of being able to modify the FOV. Oh yeah, I'm going all "TotalBiscuit" on this issue. It's annoying, and it gave me pretty serious motion sickness after a quarter of an hour playing it. I can understand their view of restricting variables to make it more about skill than anything else, but skill cannot be applied when you're attempting to avoid the dreaded "Keyboard Pizza". It would score better with me if you could change the FOV into something more comfortable, Nadeo. The next point seems to be the lack of variety. Again, I can understand the need to let people build the game up into what they want, but still, I can't seem to understand the dependency of UGC. Will it all change because it's a beta? Oh yeah, maybe those criticisms may abate as it inches closer to a final release, and I do hope that Nadeo takes it on board, otherwise, there could be trouble ahead for them.