Game Review – Call Of Duty Black Ops

Due to hit the streets in November 2010, Black Ops is a sequel to the award-winning World at War title, bringing back the same excitement CoD players have come to enjoy together along with new features all placed within new settings.

Black Ops takes place during the Cold War era, with players taking the roles of black ops soldiers performing missions in locales like South America, Cuba, the Arctic, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union.

In this sequel, however, players will find themselves involved in much more important roles than they may have experienced in previous Call of Duty titles, as black ops characters get involved in more significant duties than the common soldiers of previous CoD titles may have been.

The game, based on an improved IW engine, offers a multitude of new weapons and gear, like a scoped crossbow that can fire various types of ammo, a customisable, early-model Steyr AUG, and Dragon’s Breath rounds for combat shotguns. The playable character gets a “first person” voice for the first time ever in a Call of Duty game, thus bringing more of a personal feel to the combat experiences of your character.

It has been confirmed by Activision that players will be able to pilot aircraft like the Hind helicopter and SR-71 Blackbird. It is rumoured the dismemberment feature, in which tanks, grenades, artillery fire, and some larger machine guns could rip limbs off of unfortunate enemies, will be present in this release.

Many gamers also believe that Zombies will return. Several multi-player modes (such as four player online co-op) are also scheduled for development.

Although scheduled for publishing by Activision, Black Ops is actually being developed by Treyarch. Unlike times before, it is the only game they are working on at the moment. They are taking advantage of full-performance capture technology similar to that used in the film Avatar. This technology will allow Treyarch to capture an actor’s entire performance, including facial expressions. They have even gone as far as consulting Cold War Special Forces veterans from both the US Army and former Soviet Union to enhance the game’s realism.

Black Ops is scheduled for release on the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii gaming platforms with a separate version also planned for the Nintendo DS.

Plants vs Zombies Game Review

Released on May 5, 2009, Plants vs. Zombies puts the player in the shoes of Crazy Dave and his neighbour in the role of defending their house from a continuous onslaught of zombie attacks. Zombies attack the front yard, back yard, swimming pool, and even the rooftop of the player’s house non-stop, day and night. The only way you can defeat the massive hoard is by planting a variety of offensive and defensive plants and fungi around the house that help fend off these evil, nocturnal creatures.

Hilariously-named weapons like Potato Mines, Peashooters, Hypno-shrooms, and Cabbage-pults provide attack and defence capabilities you and Crazy Dave need to prevent the entire neighbourhood from having its residents’ brains eaten by the zombies.

As a tower defence game, Plants vs Zombies divides the playing field into a number of tracks the zombies use to move towards your house. You use seed packs to sow the plants needed to provide your offense and defence. These seed packs require sunlight either from sunlight-generating plants or natural sunlight offered during the daylight hours. Night-time defence is generally provided by fungi that require less light (i.e., mushrooms).

These random seed packs are designed to make the player work out how to best make use of them to survive. The game offers a few one-shot “power” moves like a lawn mower or pool cleaner to completely obliterate all zombies should they get too close to your house. This feature is only usable once per level. Some levels give the player a random seed pack that requires no sunlight at all.

Just as there are a number of weapons to choose from, there are also a large number of zombie types you will encounter throughout the game, each differing in speed, abilities, and the amount of damage they can sustain. Some zombies will bear armour, while others will be able to jump and fly.

In a previous version, there was a zombie that was inspired by Michael Jackson in his world-famous “Thriller” music video. This “MJ zombie” was able to summon other zombies from the ground. Unfortunately, due to pressure from Michael Jackson’s estate, this feature has recently been removed from the game.

The main game mode is an adventure mode where the player fights off wave after wave of zombies. At each level zombies attack at random intervals, with a special point in which a massive wave of zombies will attack the player “en masse”. The player is warned of this killer onslaught with a meter indicating the approximate time when the zombie assault will occur.

Plants vs. Zombies is available on a multitude of platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. There is even a web version that allows you to play it directly from your web browser. A version for the iPhone/iPod platform (now known as iOS) was released February 2010. The Xbox Live Arcade version is scheduled for September 2010.

Game Review of Zuma’s Revenge

The main objective in Zuma’s Revenge! is to clear sets of rolling balls by matching three or more of the same colour. The player achieves this by controlling overly-energetic if not mildly spastic-looking frog who spits multi-coloured balls. The frog must shoot these balls towards the incoming balls rolling onto the screen. These balls are cleared from the screen when three or more are matched together in a row.

The player can score extra points by shooting through newly-formed gaps between the balls when matches are cleared. Fruit bonuses appear occasionally which can be hit for extra points if the player can manage to shoot a ball between these gaps. The gaps are closed if balls at both ends are the same colour. This can lead to chain reaction ball clearing that result in additional points.

There are plenty of little extras to add to the mix. The fruit bonuses not only give you additional points, they also help slow down the incoming balls. Some of the incoming balls contain various power-ups that can help you clear the current level much easier. A slow power-up exists to make the balls roll much slower than normal. A laser sight helps improve your aim’s accuracy. Tri-shot power-ups give the frog a shotgun-like blast. Laser power-ups let you destroy single ball. Bomb power-ups take out multiple balls in one go. The lightning power-up is probably the best one in the game, as it is capable of eliminating all balls on the screen of one colour.

The incoming balls continue to roll along the game level’s track towards a skull emblem located at the end of the track. If the incoming balls reach the skull emblem, it’s all over for the frog, as the skull will become animated and eat the little bugger. Clearing all the balls before they reach the skull lets you proceed to the next level. In the game’s standard Adventure mode, some big kahuna-looking dude gives you hints along the way each time you complete a level. He also awards you with a checkpoint every five completed stages. If you lose all of your lives, you can restart at the checkpoint instead of from the very beginning.

At the end of each island area, the player confronts a Tiki god as the area’s boss battle. Killing these bosses is corny but hilarious, as they always have something cheesy to say that is bound to make players chuckly. Take the first boss for example. Defeating him will cause him to say, “You broke my tongue like ‘clahhhh!’”. Who would ever have thought that Tiki gods knew how to speak valley girl?

Zuma’s Revenge brings a few new things to the table, like new levels that operate a bit differently from the original. There is a “leaping lilies” stage in which the player must make the frog jump between lily pads in order to reach all the balls on the screen. Other new stages have the frog move along a horizontal or vertical track as opposed to the original stages which kept the frog rotating in one fixed position. After the player clears a certain amount of levels in Adventure mode, he or she is allowed to access the game’s additional modes of play.

Overall, Zuma’s Revenge! will prove to be a hit with Zuma lovers and puzzle game lovers alike. It has great sound, excellent graphics, funny anecdotes, and a pleasant tropical theme. It is silly but not completely mindless.

Zuma’s Revenge! is suited for all audiences and available via download and in stores. It has been released for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.