Best PC Games Of 2008

Ten – Dead Space

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Full Review Here

Dead Space felt a little bit clunky on the PC and was undoubtedly designed for consoles first, but while that may have held the game back just a little there’s still no denying that it’s one of the best and scariest third person shooters of this year. Arguably, it’s the game that Doom 3 should have been.

Dead Space is about a rescue and repair team that responds to an emergency broadcast but quickly finds themselves in over their heads. What the team had expected to be a series of purely mechanical failures turns out to be something a lot more sinister.

EA has produced something worth more than the sum of its parts and the game becomes a truly rewarding experience.

Nine – Call of Duty: World at War

Publisher: Activision
Full Review Here

World at War is, it has to be said, not as strong an entry in the series as last year's Modern Warfare and the shift from Infinity Ward back to Treyarch has caused some problems for the franchise. The move to modern times was very well received, so taking things back to World War II was always going to be a risky move.

World at War is a great little game, stringing together the most iconic moments of the war by taking inspiration from the likes of Enemy at the Gates. Couple that with some awesome voice work from high profile celebrities like Kiefer Sutherland and World at War plays more like a Hollywood war movie than any other Call of Duty in a long time.

The combination of questionable presentation and classic gameplay doesn’t work as well as it once did, but nor does it fall totally flat – World at War is still a very enjoyable game.

Eight – Audiosurf

Publisher: Independent
Full Review Here

Audiosurf was one of the highlights of our gaming year and it’s very gratifying to see that the same is true for our readers. Having burst onto the gaming scene quite unexpectedly earlier this year, Audiosurf is the creation of indie developer Dylan Fitterer who ushered this arcade gem onto Steam in early 2008.

Along similar lines to Guitar Hero, Audiosurf is a reflex-based game where players have to collect coloured bricks in a grid, matching similar colours to free up spaces and win points. It sounds complex, but it really isn’t.

What makes Audiosurf stand apart though is the fact that it doesn’t rely wholly on a fairly limited and preset tracklist, like the Guitar Hero games do. Instead, it lets players upload their own music into the game, reading each track and creating a level based on the tempo and melody of that song.

Slow climaxes are represented as dawdling uphill stretches with occasional blobs of colour while pounding finales appear as downhill sprints through huge tunnels, colours flashing before your eyes like the life of a stuntman. As the tunes wax and wane the levels fall and rise, twist, turn and pulse to whatever beat you’ve chosen.

Seven – Crysis: Warhead

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Full Review Here

When the original Crysis was released it was a subject of much debate because, while the game definitely looked good and played OK, the steep hardware requirements meant that the definitive Crysis experience was off-limits for many.

Borrowing an idea from other Electronic Arts partner Valve, Crysis: Warhead tells a parallel story to the original game, following the original plot and timeline but from a different viewpoint. Instead of playing through the eyes of Nomad, players take the role of Psycho – the less restrained Jason-Statham-alike of the original game.

Trapped on the other side of the island to Nomad, Psycho is pursuing objectives of his own as he evades aliens, kills Koreans and tries not to freeze to death in the flash-iced tropical island. It’s all south of FUBAR and all Psycho has is his stiff upper lip and an assault rifle. Warhead though, Crytek showed that it understood how a linear, scripted experience can often be more powerful than an open sandbox one.

Six – Race Driver: GRID

Publisher: Codemasters
Full Review Here

Race Driver: GRID looks like just any other racing game if you take it at face value. It’s got lots of narrow little street races, shiny cars and remarkably high polygon counts and a design which means you can’t really do very well until you’ve learned the tracks like the back of your hand.

GRID is sharper than your first lemon and slicker than the world's biggest water slide, with players zipping up and round the tracks faster than we can come up with witty analogies. The corners are tight, the competition fierce and the in-game physics so realistic that you’re lucky if you aren’t thrown out of your chair if you take a corner too hard.

If you do take a corner too hard then you’d better expect to feel the damage on your car too – the damage models are jaw dropping and you can come up with some truly fantastic crashes if you want to. Or if you’re just an awful driver like me. Either way, you can almost taste the burning metal as the gravel tears away the paint – that, combined with the accessible simulation-cum-arcade gameplay, makes Race Driver: GRID easily better than any other racing game we’ve seen this year.

Five – Far Cry 2

Publisher: Ubisoft
Full Review Here

Far Cry 2 may have got some of you down with some fairly repetitive missions, but it’s hard to deny how much innovation and beauty there is in the game. Ubisoft’s follow-up to the original Far Cry may have no connection to the first game in terms of story or location, but it captures that sense of strategic freedom perfectly.

It casts players as a simple mercenary, one of many operating in the African savannah, all of whom are trying to take down a local gun runner called The Jackal – a man deeply entrenched in the politics of a civil war.

Finding where The Jackal is won’t be easy though – and nor will killing him. At the start of the game you’re already indebted to local factions, pretty much defenceless and coming down with malaria. You need friends, supplies and medicine. You’ll need to wade deep into the local war and earn all these things.

With a smattering of original ideas, such as the cool healing system, and the best flamethrower in the history of gaming, Far Cry 2 definitely deserves to be on this list.

Four – Grand Theft Auto IV PC

Publisher: Rockstar
Full Review Here

Rockstar has made the best Grand Theft Auto game ever this year.

Looking at the game as a whole, GTA IV PC isn’t wholly different from any of the other Grand Theft Auto games. You play a guy, down on his luck and involved with the wrong people, who starts a life of crime in an American city and starts to rise from lowly gangster to feared crimelord. Along the way there are plenty of car crashes and chases, as well as the occasional RPG.

What makes Grand Theft Auto IV PC a little bit different though is that it’s the first game in the series that is really starting to take itself seriously. There glaring neons of Vice City and the rampant attitude of San Andreas have been fairly traded in for muted browns and bleak realism. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s obviously enough people out there who like it.

Three – Mass Effect PC

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Full Review Here

To say that Mass Effect is a story like no other would be a little unfair as the game does tread very similar lines to some previous BioWare games, but the story at least has never been this well told. It’s the future and you.

It’s this ability to put players in ethical grey zones that’s always made BioWare games so very worth playing, whether they cast you as the human son of the God of Murder, the amnesiac Sith-lord who almost wiped out the galaxy or simply just a distinguished solider who gets caught up in the politics of a complex universe.

What makes Mass Effect PC stand out is the sheer quality of the writing, which gives each character an appreciable sense of realism. Saving the galaxy is all very well and good, but it’s the connection you make with your crew that really drives Mass Effect PC forward and earns it a place on this list.

By giving player full real-time control of their players and a tactics overlay that pops up at a button press, Mass Effect can be as action-driven or tactical as you want.

Two – Fallout 3

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Full Review Here

Set in the future, Fallout 3 tells the story of a young person who grows up in a Vault – a vast underground complex that exists to shield a clutch of people from the nuclear war that has raged above and devastated the world. Safely imprisoned underneath the ruins of Washington DC, all is good for you in your microcosm – until your father goes missing and Vault plunges into chaos. You flee to the surface in pursuit of your dad.

As soon as you get outside though, the entire game changes and the training wheels are taken off. You can go anywhere in the Capital Wasteland, revelling in this 50s view of a post apocalyptic future. There are funny-voiced and impossibly technical cyborgs at the corner of every ruined street, looming super mutants and giant scorpions warring against bandits and settlers.

One of the best innovations that’s been bought forward into Fallout 3 though is Random Encounters – that old stalwart from the previous Fallout games which ensures that the game is always going to be slightly different no matter how often or similarly you replay the game. You can never be sure when you might stumble across Uncle Lou or a flock of deathclaws.

Game of the Year – Left 4 Dead

Publisher: Valve, Electronic Arts
Full Review Here

And really, there is a huge amount of talent that’s been poured into Left 4 Dead. We’ve played games with friends, family and people who normally abhor computer games, but the cocktail of violence and teamwork has always gone down smooth and impressed our initially unwilling team mates.

The premise for the game is simple, with the story told more through subtle visual clues than the amazing four minute cutscene that preludes the adventure. An infection has mutated nearly all of the human race, creating a race of savagely fast zombies that are hungry for the flesh of anyone who is left immune. That includes you and your three pals.

Using the same techniques as learned in Team Fortress 2, Valve has created a series of recognisable characters amid the mob of frothing infected. There’s Bill, the war-weary Vietnam veteran, Hell's Angel Francis, college-girl Zoey and office worker Louis in his red tie and designer shoes. Each of them is armed to the teeth and desperate to get away from the infection.

Opposing them are a series of brilliantly balanced opponents; the huge Tank, the shy Witch, the vicious Hunter and Smoker. Oh, and vile bile-spilling Boomer too.

None of these characters stand out nearly as much as the faceless games master behind it all though, the AI Director that sits on the sidelines of each match and moves around key resources and enemies to match the pace of the game. The AI Director is the main source of frustration, elation and fun in the game and hating or loving it is something that the whole team can get involved in – and will do when it throws two tanks in a row at you!

The game isn’t wholly co-operative though and for those who fancy more of a competitive experience there’s the rather awesome Versus mode, which sees two teams of four take it turns to try and run through a map from Co-op mode. The problem of course is that the special infected are now played by the opposing team, who get full reign to terrorise and grief the humans.

The reality is instead that no specific part of Left 4 Dead stands out because the whole game is fantastic. Everything is superbly polished, balanced, designed and made. There’s literally nothing in the game that feels more unfair than it should be. It’s within an inch of gaming perfection – which is probably why it stole almost half of the user vote!

With a fantastic multiplayer, co-operative and singleplayer experience and so much replayability Left 4 Dead is game of the year

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Lara Croft's Tomb Raider : Legend

You already know the story behind this one. But believe me guys.. You start this game and you are stuck to your pcs at each juncture of the game... The game graphics is superb... The stages have been amply designed...

Its slick, enjoyable and packed with pulse-pounding action. Crystal Dynamics has slipped up in a few areas, but – by golly – they’ve got an awful lot right first time.

It all starts with Lara. Some stunning new costumes that will keep teenage boys (lets hope not literally) glued to the screen :) There are signs of last-gen console origins in the model’s rather angular appearance – a characteristic shared by other characters throughout the game – but this has disguised quite effectively by a healthy lashing of new-generation effects. The luminous skin and the dripping water on the clothes and cleavage stick in my mind for some unapparent reason. Lara’s beautifully animated too. From her gymnastic swings to the sultry way she walks into a party, you can see that the girl has real personality and class.


Having made Lara lovable once more, the team then went to work on the movement. Cleverly, the new Lara has taken inspiration from the recent Prince of Persia trilogy, running, leaping, clambering, swinging and scrambling with a genuine fluidity, and with some nice touches that can save you from a long and painful fall just when death seemed certain. In fact, much of the ledge grabbing, pole swinging action in TR: Legend is going to seem pretty familiar to those who played The Sands of Time, while her new rope and grapple works in much the same way as the chain-blade in The Two Thrones.

Next – and this seems pretty obvious – Crystal Dynamics realised that Lara is at her best when she’s doing exactly what it says on the tin: raiding tombs. In other words, we get Lara hopping around in South American and African temples, hidden realms beneath the tourist traps of Cornwall, and icy complexes high in the Himalayas.

The levels are also cunningly engineered to keep you thinking. you’ll also find yourself up to your knees in puzzles.

The platform-jumping and puzzling segments are expertly balanced with quickfire gunfights and a handful of other action sequences. The battles show off an effective targeting system and some reasonable enemy AI, and the way you can integrate acrobatic rolls or target explosive barrels keeps them feeling fresh and dynamic – think Mission Impossible II, not Rambo.

The fights aren’t as exhausting, repetitive or annoyingly difficult as they can be in the Prince of Persia games – you might not have the range of Matrix moves the Prince has seemingly on tap, but at least you don’t groan every time you see a pack of goons.

That goes double for the motorcycle chase sequences. Again, they’re the sort of thing I usually dread, but Crystal Dynamics has filled them with just enough action and crazy stunts to keep them feeling lively, without making them an obtrusive barrier to progress. The bike controls well, the jumps are spectacular, and there are some really nice action hero moments.

So guys what are you waiting for !!! Go check it out...

Do let me know how you liked it.. In my future posts I will post about Tomb Raider : Anniversary and Underworld... So keep visiting my blog :)

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NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED : BEST EVER RACING

Imagine someone you love has an obvious annoying habit – they chew with their mouth open, pick their nose, drink far too much far too soon, have the sort of piercing laugh that strips paint at thirty paces. Do you tell them? Do you just grin and bear it and hope that you’re the only one who notices? Do you try to avoid seeing them when easily wound up?

I’m asking, because the Xbox 360 version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted has an annoying habit, and I think we’d better talk it through before things get said and people get hurt. It drops frames. Despite running on the most powerful gaming console of the present time, it drops frames. There. I’ve said it. The frame rate stalls from time to time – suddenly, and so quickly that you might not notice – but it happens. If you’re the sort of person who wept in anguish when it was revealed that Project Gotham 3 would not run at sixty frames per second, stop reading now. Turn around. This game is not for you.

Feeling more forgiving? Good, because Need for Speed: Most Wanted has charms that more than make up for this little shortcoming. For a start, it’s a looker. In fact, having played three different versions, I can safely say that Most Wanted looks sweet on the PS2, highly desirable on a specced-up PC, and simply drop dead gorgeous on the Xbox 360. Just when we were getting sick of Need for Speed’s obsession with neon lighting and shiny, rain-slicked tarmac, Most Wanted has replaced it with urban grime, industrial squalor, autumn colour and the too-bright sunlight of early dusk.

Instead of trying to recreate real cities, Project Gotham-style, EA has built its own, Rockport – a mass of diverse neighbourhoods, sprawling highways and busy junctions – and it’s packed with character and detail. From the tree-lined suburban byways to the crumbling boardwalks by the ocean side, Rockport is a magnificent creation, and EA has complemented it with beautifully rendered car models and literally blinding lighting effects. If HDR bloom is next year’s lens flare, then thank goodness this game arrived before we all got sick of the cliché.


What’s more, the game plays better than any Need for Speed game has in years. In effect, the game works as a cross between the much loved Hot Pursuit series and the better selling Underground efforts, but while the result could have been a disaster, it’s actually worked superbly. On the one hand, you have Underground 2’s free-roaming city environment, where you can drive around, looking for races and challenge events, shop for parts or new cars, or just explore as you see fit. On the other, you have a tighter structure and a diligent, street-racer hating police force, just like in Hot Pursuit. And the game ties the two together through a cunning plot that has you working your way up a street-racing blacklist. It’s a pretty standard tale of revenge against the guy who stole your reputation and your wheels, but if I tell you that it’s told in cheesy 1996-vintage full-motion-video and I still didn’t hate it, then you’ll realise how effectively it works. Perhaps the babe in the cropped tops and sprayed-on jeans helped; I wouldn’t like to say.

Making your way up the blacklist takes three things: straight wins in races, time-trials and knockout events; a sizable bounty from the local law enforcement; and specific ‘milestones’ that usually involve anti-social activities. It’s lucky that EA put a disclaimer at the start, because I would otherwise believe that it endorsed speeding, the destruction of police cars or public property, and the use of any means necessary to resist arrest, for the simple reason that the game makes it so much fun.

You see, the straight racing is great, and there is always something compelling in the game’s classic race-earn-buy-race car collecting and upgrading formula, but it’s the cops that make Most Wanted what it is. Some milestones explicitly involve engaging them in pursuit, but they’re just as likely to appear when you’re racing or trying to get a ‘high score’ on a speed camera. At first you might just have one on your tail, but as the pursuit wears on and things get broken, more and more officers join the fray. Eventually, the only way to get rid of them is to prang a specially marked “pursuit-breaker”, bringing whole buildings down around their wheels.

To be honest, pursuit can be a pain – you spend ten minutes losing one mass of black-and-whites, when a lone officer spots you and the chase begins anew. At its best, however, it’s hilarious. The police try to block you or join forces to box you in, set up road blocks or try to outmanoeuvre you, and you crash, bang and powerslide your way through. It’s like something out of The Bourne Identity or The Blues Brothers: chase sequences so spectacular that friends and family will actually sit and watch, shrieking “Quick, go that way” or “Aim for the water tower” as you go.

And you have to love the sound. The basic soundtrack is a slightly tiresome mix of screeching metal and trying-too-hard gangster rap, but the music that kicks in during a pursuit is brilliant, while the screeching tires and rumbling engines are plain top-notch. The police radio is the icing on the cake – a running commentary on your efforts, begging for assistance or arrogantly stating they can take you on their own. “Yeah… just try it, copper” you find yourself spouting back.

The handling is solid this time around; not realistic in Gran Turismo terms, but with a certain sense of weight and power to the different varieties of car. Most importantly, there is an awful lot here to do. The basic storyline is good for at least a weekend of fairly solid play, and there is a decent selection of bonus challenge missions to try on top. The game also boasts a decent online mode for the PC, Xbox and 360. Admittedly, I’m disappointed not so see the cops turn up online, but the racing is smooth and enjoyable with one proviso: you should take time to unlock better cars in the single-player game first. Otherwise, you’ll be crawling off the starting line in your stock Fiat Punto while three smug kids race off in their tricked-out Ford GTs and Beamers – a mildly humiliating experience.

Who would have predicted it? Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a surprising turnaround for the series, and a genuinely brilliant game. On the Xbox or PS2, Burnout Revenge still pips it for all-out thrills and general carnage – Most Wanted just doesn’t have the variety or the polish of Criterion’s bumper-pack of arcade racing action – but it does come a very close second. On the PC or 360, meanwhile, it is probably the most straight-up enjoyable racer around. So what if it has the odd technical slip-up? Nobody’s perfect, I guess.

Verdict

It’s great on other formats, but 360 Most Wanted is a revelation. Ignore the odd dropped frame and you’ll find a gorgeous, gritty arcade racer packed with good old-fashioned entertainment.

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PRINCE OF PERSIA : THE TWO THRONES --- ONE OF MY HOT FAVOURITES

The Two Thrones is clearly and unequivocally a huge improvement on its predecessor, The Warrior Within. It’s not a complete repudiation – there are still hints of that game’s gothic stylings and macho posturing – but here, at last, is a sequel that fans of The Sands of Time can embrace. The ghastly metal soundtrack has disappeared, the combat has been toned down, and there is a renewed emphasis on what made the Prince’s first 3D outing great: the sheer joy of his wall-running, pole swinging, chasm leaping acrobatics.

The new setting – the Prince’s home city of Babylon (under occupation from a fiendish unknown force) – is like an enormous playground for the prince’s athletic escapades. Grand palaces full of high balconies and fiendish traps? Check. Dank sewers populated with monsters? Check. Narrow streets packed with poles to swing from and walkways to traverse? Yep, them too. What’s more, the Prince has added to his roster of moves. He can now leap into spaces between two walls and slide down, jab a dagger into a plate to gain a purchase for a second, or use special spring plates to make enormous, diagonal jumps. The result is a game where smart, context-sensitive controls and stunning animation combine to form a beautiful, flowing sequence of runs, leaps and swings that make you feel like Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. or Errol Flynn (or whoever the modern day equivalent might be).

It’s also a game that feels built to mend the faults of its predecessors. The repetitive, drawn out combat that marred The Sands of Time was only made worse by Warrior Within’s combat-heavy design, and finally Ubisoft has done something to make our lives that little bit easier. That thing is the new ‘speed kill’ system. Get into position behind or above a baddie and the screen flashes with a weird blurry, iris-in effect. Press the right buttons in the right sequence at the right time, and you can finish off your enemy before they have a chance to retaliate. Early on, this just seems like a flashy way of avoiding the regular scraps, but believe me: in later stages ‘speed kill’ will become your new best friend. It helps you narrow down otherwise impossible odds, and prevents you getting bogged down in tiresome, run-of-the-mill fights. It’s one of those enhancements that really does alter the flow and pacing of a game for the better.

Pacing was obviously a concern for Ubisoft, as there have been real efforts to spice the action up with chariot-racing interludes, heavily-staged boss battles and sequences which see you in the form of the prince’s demonic alter-ego, the Dark Prince. Now, while we love the “Dukes of Hazzard” slow-mo jumps, the chariot races are spoilt by the tendency of one wrong move to send you back to the start of the section, but the Dark Prince bits are simply ace. Your new form isn’t just faster and stronger than the standard-issue Prince; he comes complete with a cool, God of War-style chain weapon, which comes in handy when dismissing larger groups of baddies and also enables some new acrobatic feats. Of course, the Prince isn’t short of tricks of his own – you can still use the sands to turn back and slow down time, giving you a vital chance to cheat death just as it seems most inevitable.

When all the good stuff comes together – the daring runs high across the rooftops and through the streets of Babylon; the dark prince slicing and dicing his way through guards and monsters; the prince sliding down a chain to deliver a ‘surprise’ to the guard below – it’s time for a deep, cheerful sigh of satisfaction. In a year that’s seen a dearth of decent platformers, The Two Thrones seems a wonderful reminder of just how engaging the genre can be.

Admittedly, there are signs that the prince is showing his age; on the Xbox the prince still looks like a PS2-friendly compromise, and some of the environments lack detailed décor or variety. Yet The Two Thrones produces real moments of wonder and vertiginous majesty. At times the views across Babylon’s rooftops are breathtaking, while the fierce warriors who oppose you, warped and bestialized by the sands of time, are a huge improvement on the more generic foes of the original. Best of all, you have to love the way The Two Thrones takes the disparate strands of Sands of Time and Warrior Within and tries to weave them into one coherent whole, bringing back old flames like The Empress and Farah, while trying to recapture some of the original’s exotic grace.

Sadly, though, there’s still one sigh to come, and it’s a long, bewildered sigh of sheer exhaustion. While the new speed kills help, The Two Thrones still suffers from the same problem that has always blighted the prince: frustration. At several points I’ve had to drop the controller, switch off my console, and walk straight out of the room before something got damaged. I’ve used swearwords that would have made Eddie Murphy in his eighties heyday blush.

It’s not that The Two Thrones is a constantly obstructive game. For the most part, the difficulty level is well judged; with evenly placed save points and sensible check points in-between. When you mistime that jump or throw yourself off a pole in the wrong direction you usually have only a few minutes of gameplay to repeat, and the ‘rewind’ button can pull you out of most minor scrapes. However, when The Two Thrones gets it wrong it gets it really, badly wrong. The game starts throwing regenerating guards and monstrous, sand-stealing hell-hounds at you, and you find yourself repeating the same ten minutes of gameplay over and over again until, by some incredible fluke, you get things right. I don’t call this an enjoyable challenge – I call it a waste of my time. After a while, one option on the Quit/Retry menu gets a whole lot more tempting, and it’s not the one that takes you back for more.

And that’s a shame, because the further you get on, the more enjoyable and involved The Two Thrones gets. Existing fans will want to reach the end of the Prince’s twisting tale, and even newcomers will appreciate how enjoyable the basic game dynamics can be. Those of a temperamental disposition, however, should think again. A racing pulse might be a good thing, but boiling blood’s another matter.

Verdict

The Prince returns to form, but patches of frustration spoil the adventure. Maybe persistence is a great Persian virtue, but you’ll need plenty of it to reach the story’s end.

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TOTAL OVERDOSE : A MUST PLAY PC GAME

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset, Total Overdose is, quite simply, an interactive Robert Rodriguez movie. Of course I’m talking early Robert Rodriguez, as in El Mariachi and Desperado, rather than the woefully disappointing Once Upon a Time in Mexico – and I’m not even going to mention Spy Kids! What I’m talking about here is a Mexican location, a very flimsy storyline and more bullets than you could shake a stick at.

Unlike in GTA, in Total Overdose you play a good guy, well sort of. Actually you play the wayward criminal twin brother of a government agent who was injured in the line of duty while trying to track down the man who double crossed his secret agent father years earlier – phew! Of course even as a good guy you get to cause pretty much every kind of carnage along the way in order to complete your mission.

Another stark difference between Total Overdose and GTA is the combat interface. Whereas even in GTA San Andreas the combat is pretty basic, in Total Overdose the gun fights have all the balletic beauty of a scene from The Matrix. In a hark back to Max Payne, you can, at the touch of a button slow down time while you throw yourself to one side, taking out the bad guys in the process - but it doesn't end there. If you're next to a wall you can run up it and jump off cartwheeling while you unleash a hail of bullets. Learning how to make the most of your acrobatic abilities is the key to walking away from gunfights where you're vastly outnumbered - which is pretty much every gunfight.

But things really get fun when you employ the "Loco Moves". These special powerups give you some awesome abilities for a set period of time and can be invaluable in desperate situations. A couple of my favourites are "Golden Gun" and "El Torro" - the former gives you a one shot, one kill ability which can be very useful when you're surrounded, while the latter turns you into a raging berserker that just mows down enemies. However, my favourite Loco Move has to be "El Mariachi" - in the ultimate homage to Rodriguez, El Mariachi gives you two machine gun equipped guitar cases, allowing you to nail even the toughest enemies with ease.

You can also collect "Rewind" powerups, which let you turn back time if you meet an untimely demise. I'm a big fan of this kind of feature, even if it is clearly lifted straight out of Prince of Persia - it makes tough sections of the game far less frustrating. Being able to Rewind is particularly useful if it's been a while since you've seen a save point!

However, where Total Overdose does lose out to GTA is in the freedom of movement and exploration departments. One of the great things about the GTA series is that you can, if you so desire, spend hours just driving around the streets, running down pedestrians, having shoot outs with the cops, or even just grabbing some fast food. With Total Overdose things are a bit more structured and linear, with missions dumping you in a certain part of the environment and not letting you leave until you've done your duty. Whether this is enough to put off GTA fans is open to debate, but it wasn't enough to stop me enjoying Total Overdose.

Graphically Total Overdose the overall environment is superb, enhanced by great sound effects, dialogue and a thumping Latino soundtrack.

The games and movies that it pays homage to are good ones. It may not have the grand scale of Rockstar's last epic, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in fun and playability.

Total.Overdose is one of those games that sneaks up on you and keeps you playing into the early hours without you even realising it. It's a bit more linear than the GTA games array of weapons, special moves and, most importantly Loco Moves keeps you playing just so you can finish each set piece with a bit more style. If Robert Rodriguez is thinking of making another Mariachi film, perhaps he should play Total Overdose for a while to recapture his original vision - it's a hell of a lot more fun than watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico!

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PC GAME DOWNLOADS

Today while I was browsing various blogs, I came across this blog which gives you free download of pc games... As I am a gaming freak, I felt I should share this with all those enthusiast about gaming.. Do check out this blog and send me your suggestions how you found it...

CLICK HERE:

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