timesplitters 3 | lego starwars | polarium

saturday was the day to farewell burnout 3, grabbed by the ghoolies, broken sword, demon-stone and baldur’s gate: dark alliance, in favour timesplitters: future perfect, lego starwars for the box, and polarium for ds.

timesplitters is great, lots of fun, lots of comedy. others have found it a bit different, but i seem to identify how it’s alligned with the timesplitters games. haven’t tried the challenges much yet, but they seem to be a lot more difficult than those in ts2. as for the mapmaker, unfortunately not a lot has changed, but the changes that have been made are significant. the best addition is stackable tiles, which when placed on-top of one another, effectively pull out the ceiling or floor, adding vertical space to the map. next is the addition of death and slide tiles which can be handy, but on of the best features is the fact that any tile can now be placed adjacent to any-other, and for so long as there is an opening on both, the tiles will connect, removing the blue and red connection strips from ts2 where only red edged passage-ways could be connected to one another, and ‘adapters’ were needed to change red hallways to blue rooms. the large single rooms have been removed from each tileset, but with the addition of stackable tiles, i don’t really think it’s a big deal. i never really used them much in my ts2 maps anyway. other nice little additions are that certain tiles have been supplied with mirrored versions as-well.
the single player story may be a little short, but i don’t mind it at all, it was a lot of fun, and i’m already re-playing it.

lego starwars is fantastic.
it’s a kid’s game, so the menus are pretty simple and horrible looking, simple too is the gameplay – four buttons and the left analogue stick. A is jump, B is force, X is attack, and Y is change character when you’re facing one of your party. for non force using characters, X is shoot instead of swing your light-saber, and B is special ability such as grapple. it’s such a simple game, but it’s hillarious to see all the old lego pieces like the three pronged flower stems dotted around the map, and the fact that some of the in-game models are actually lego sets that are available to buy! every time something is destroyed, it gets broken up into its individual lego pieces which go bouncing around – and using the force on serveral different things – piles of rubble at times, will cause the pieces to form into things like chairs or benches.
one of the best things about this game is that it’s drop-in/drop-out two player co-op. i absolutely love co-op games, and these days will rarely purchase a console game unless it includes a decent co-op element, or at least is fun if it’s competative. i’m not into the singular experience as far as consoles go. once in a while i like a deeply immersive single-player game such as silent hill 2 or eternal darkness, but most of the time i like at least another person to enjoy the experience, if not three others 🙂 though four player games are rarely if ever co-op.
i never really was impressed much by episodes one and two of the starwars universe, and am not particularly excited about episode three. unfortunately the game coveres this trilogy rather than four, five and six, but it’s fun nonetheless. there are a lot of jokes put into the cutscenes like obi-wan not drawing his light-saber in time, only getting it working once qui-gon has defeated all enemies. the cutscenes are made all the funnier by not having any dialogue whatsoever, just sounds of surprise etc – it reminds me of watching children’s claymation shorts when i was a kid. this kind of irreverent presentation is great – it suits perfectly the fact that you’re playing out these dramatic epic films, but entirely constructed of lego pieces! that being said, some of the environments and larger set-pieces like the dohnut federation ships from episode one are presented in standard graphics instead of the studded lego bricks and pieces, but it can be easily forgiven as there is such a wealth of lego around during the rest of the game.
my one and only gripe so far is that the pod-racing level from episode one was horrible. terrible controls just made it difficult, and as myself and a friend were playing co-op, we ended up having one of us drop out, then take turns trying to get a single craft through the level.

polarium is fantastic – a very addictive puzzle game for the DS. many of the puzzles are easy, but some of them are real head-benders. since saturday i’ve done the first 90, i haven’t at all seen the last ten yet, but so far puzzle 88, the japanese yen symbol has been the hardest. this game is great for giving to people, seeing whether they can do it, and i really do believe it gets your brain working. when you have to close the ds and return to real-life, interrupting the puzzle you still hadn’t figured out, it stays in your head and you continue to try and solve it, excitedly opening it up again when you think you’ve got it!
100 puzzles might not be much, but chibi-r has entered in the new ones available from the nintendo website which i’ll get off him as soon as i can – plus there’s the ability to make your own puzzles.

all in all, i’ve very satisfied with my faming purchases, and won’t miss what i’ve traded one bit, least of all burnout 3, which to me was a bit of fun, but ultimately pointless. i’m very satisfied with the gameplay in burnout 2, and much prefer it over 3. now when pariah comes out, i might just trade halo 2 for it…