Unreal Tournament 3 is one of my favorite games on both the PS3 or the 360 because of a few important reasons. For one thing, the PS3 version still stands as the only console game to allow mouse and keyboard input. This type of control scheme would benefit any real-time strategy (RTS) or first person shooter (FPS) released on a console, but this is still the only game to be released that allows it. It also happens to still be the only console game that has allowed user-created mods (that don’t have to be created in-game) allowing for seemingly limitless possibilities that even if you ran out of mods to install, you could fire up the PC modding tools and craft your own video gaming joy. On top of that, it also happens to be a hell of a lot of fun.

In case you’ve never heard about the Unreal Tournament series, it is a franchise that has been around for several years on the PC and was one of the premier online multiplayer FPS experiences back when that feature was still in its relative infancy along with other earlier games like Quake 3 and Counter-Strike. Since the FPS genre has evolved so much since then and is now overcrowded with copycats and boring rehashes of the same ideas, what does Unreal Tournament 3 bring to the table that makes it (hopefully) worth your gaming dollar?

Well, since I’m on the subject of money, I should mention that since it has been more than a year since the game first released on the PC and PS3 and many months since it’s xbox 360 release, you ought to be able to find the game for relatively cheap nowadays. I’ve heard of people being able to snag this diamond in the rough for 20 dollars and even lower, and although it’s sad that it can sell so low, it just makes it that much harder not to recommend. With the huge patch and “Titan” content pack released for the PS3 and the PC a short while ago, you’d do well to pick it up now.

So anyway, on to what’s in the game. You might be used to FPS games having a memorable single player campaign, but unfortunately UT3 doesn’t do so well in that regard. The single player campaign revolves around an interesting way of playing several specific multiplayer maps with up to 3 other buddies against some amount of enemies with a predetermined set of rules. Along the way, for most of the campaign you are given a world map to choose your next destination, although the choice here is limited and sometimes the path only leads one way. Depending on a few specific choices made on the world map, some maps are either easier or harder, but for the most part you can relax. If the going gets tough you can even quit and continue at an easier difficulty level which also happens not to affect trophies or achievements either unless you’re on the last level of a specific act. There are 5 acts, with the first one consisting of one map and the last consisting of around 7 or 8 compared to the middle ones which contain around 10-20 each.

I mentioned that the campaign had co-op, and rightfully so as it pretty much amounts to you and up to 3 others against some bots that could actually be completely remade in a multiplayer session if you so desired. The cutscenes included to flesh out the campaign somewhat tell a pretty dry story that goes so far as to laughably attempt to explain the reasoning behind respawning in a multiplayer game. The graphics are great, however, so feel free to sit back and enjoy the show. Although the campaign is a pretty poor attempt to include a feature touted by other games, it’s a nice touch and certainly a good way to ease into the game before being pummeled by other more experienced players. The co-op is a great feature that had to be included in a campaign like this anyway and helps to make the quest for the many campaign trophies/achievements much more enjoyable.

Now that the obligatory campaign is out of the way, let’s get on to the meat of UT3, multiplayer. There are two basic ways FPSes do multiplayer nowadays, let’s call them the “Halo” way and the “Call of Duty” way. As opposed to being like a game such as Call of Duty, where you spawn with a set of weapons you asked to spawn with, in UT3 and other games like Halo, you will (usually) spawn with a basic weapon or pistol and have to pick up the better weapons as you play. As you get to know the maps and the weapons, you learn what works best for you, when particular weapons spawn and where they are located. There are several game modes in UT3 including deathmatch/team deathmatch (and one-on-one deathmatch called Duel), capture the flag (with and without vehicles), and warfare which involves the control of nodes on the map in order to expose the opposing team’s base that is destroyed using whatever weapons available. With the recent Titan patch, you also get two new modes called Greed and Betrayal. Finally, each server can choose the existence and amount of bots as well as  mutators including basic handicaps, speed increase/decrease and a new one (again in the new content pack) called Titan.

The weapons are a great mix, and each is comparably deadly to another in the hands of a skilled player, as it should be. I’m pretty certain they are the same as they always used to be in the Unreal Tournament series, although possibly tweaked to perfection over the years. You can use the Flak Cannon pretty much like a shotgun or a grenade launcher depending on the fire mode and the rocket launcher does what you could imagine and you can lock on to enemies if you target them long enough or shoot three at once. There’s a basic pistol that can be dual wielded, a link gun that can both repair vehicles and shoot like a futuristic small machine gun, a chaingun that gives a constant stream of death bullets, and an unfortunately disappointing bio-gun that shoots out globs of radioactive goo. You also have a fun, hard to find mini-nuclear missile launcher that you can manually control and a rocket launcher meant as an anti-vehicle gun. Everything here is pretty much standard for multiplayer games of its kind, although I do feel that this is one particular set of weapons that I have the most fun using over other games.

There are something around 50 maps included in the game, and even more added in the recent content patch. When you play a deathmatch or regular capture the flag map, you’ve got intricate map designs with weapons and powerups placed in strategic locations that will take a long time to remember, but when you do you end up with a superb earned advantage over your opponents. The vehicle-ctf maps and warfare however have many continually-restocking weapon caches that make finding a good weapon a breeze and the strategy is placed at the forefront. The power weapons are placed in strategic locations just like deathmatches. Overall I’d say the map design is top-notch and obviously one of the focuses during development. For a mutliplayer shooter like this, you’d better believe they did this aspect well.

The modes, although seemingly lacking in variety are a blast to play. Deathmatch (and team deathmatch) will always be the same no matter what game you’re playing so there’s that. The basic capture the flag mode is the weak point in my opinion, as continually attempting to walk over to the other flag without the comfort of vehicles gets pretty tiring after awhile. You do have a special, ctf-only weapon called the translocator that can’t be used elsewhere that shoots out a disc that you can teleport to any time you’re not carrying the flag, so if you want some of that action you’ve got to play CTF. CTF with vehicles is another story however. Each side gets the same vehicles on a respawn timer similar to the special weapons and powerups. This mode just seems to have a lot more oomph to it than vanilla CTF. Warfare is great fun although possibly confusing at first. Thankfully, this being my favorite mode, the developers have significantly more maps made for the mode. This is one area that my second favorite mode, VCTF lacks, as the amount of VCTF specific maps is unfortunately quite low.

It’s relatively simple to set up your own game and play, and this is likely the best way to get a good game going. Although there are an OK amount of servers available at any one time (at least on the PS3) it is obvious that this game unfortunately has succumbed to a small population that keeps it going, so the longevity of the game is in question. With the new release of the huge titan content pack, there seem to be alot more people playing. Also, with the addition of trophies and steam achievements, and the length it takes to get the 360 achievements, there will likely be a decent population for the time being. There’s an actual achievement/trophy for getting 200 kills on 50 different days, as well as winning 500 ranked matches so despite taking longer than usual to collect the rewards, it does keep the online community as strong as possible.

Despite the overall greatness of the multiplayer component of the game especially comparing the amount of multiplayer maps to other games, there are a few problems to mention. For one, even if you have a good group of 15 other people in your game which is certainly not unheard of in game i’ve hosted, you lose all of them if you want to change the mode for some variety. This means you either stick with the current group you have or instead create a new game and wait for more people or invite everyone else in if you can. On the 360 this is no problem with the recent players list, but the PS3’s version of that feature doesn’t work even with the new patch, instead the in-game friends list has to suffice and not everyone seems to even know how to use it.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you choose to allow the maximum players to be 16 in a PS3 match, the PS3 tends to have a performance dip as the server gets more full. This is still possible however, even with the warning given that a dedicated server ought to be used for more than 12 people. The real problem though is that after a LOT of great rounds in a row with this many people, the game in my experience has the tendency to crash every so often requiring a restart. This is unfortunate but thankfully only happens after a long period of playing on a non-dedicated server.

Overall I could continue on and on about what makes this game a must-buy, but suffice it to say if you like multiplayer FPSes, this one is one of the best available. The mouse and keyboard support on the PS3 is overwhelmingly great and deserves a purchase right there just for that, putting it pretty much on par with the PC version despite the lower 16 player limit compared to the higher limits of PC, moddable servers. The xbox 360 version is worth a look, but unfortunately may never see the new content that the PS3 and the PC got, although it does have achievements which the PS3 lacked at first. The titan mode is an awesome, free mutator that changes the game significantly when used, the many new maps are more than welcome, and the two new modes offer a unique way to play multiplayer that I haven’t quite gotten into yet but are very intriguing. This game gives you more than enough multiplayer content than anything you could expect at its low price that shouldn’t be hard to find, so when you strangely see it in a bargain bin or heavily marked down for clearance or such because of its age, you should snatch it up. The multiplayer population might not be guaranteed to last forever on the console versions, but that should be even more reason to get it while it’s still fresh, new and exciting. Of all things, with the unique keyboard, mouse and mod support and recent extremely generous free DLC that rivals criterion’s Burnout Paradise offerings, you ought to buy it just to do your part to encourage the practice for other games.

]]> http://tyreview.com/blog/2009/04/03/ps3-360-pc-review-unreal-tournament-3/feed/ 0 http://tyreview.com/blog/2009/04/01/achievement-guide-peggle-xbla/ http://tyreview.com/blog/2009/04/01/achievement-guide-peggle-xbla/#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:01:40 +0000 tyrone http://tyreview.com/blog/?p=73 Here are a few strategies to help you along with your quest for the achievements of Peggle on the 360.

Ace of Adventure (30): In a peg defying feat, score 20 million points in a single play-through of Adventure mode.
Simply play through an adventure mode run and try to get the best score on each map that you can. You shouldn’t have too much trouble as long as you make sure you clear every level the first time, since you get a 100,000 point bonus just for that. Also, getting an ace will net you a huge bonus (an ace is getting a certain amount of points in a level) so make sure to go for trick shots every chance you get. The more free balls you can earn and have left at the end of the level, you get 10,000 points for so go for the purple peg if at all possible for a point boost and try to chain multiple orange and blue pegs in a row. A nice trick near the end of the level is to go for one peg at a time, bouncing the ball off the peg and straight into the bucket to remove another orange peg at no ball cost. One particularly cheesy way to end up winning this achievement even if you get to the last level and have millions of points left to get before you reach 20 million is to watch the videos of the best shot leaderboards. They’re almost all on the last level and they all follow the same strategy. You can get multiple millions of points in just one shot by following the same strategy they use on the leaderboards.

Be Cool (10): Hit the last orange then the last blue to rack up a Cool Clear. (Except Duel)
For this achievement, start out by going for the Peggle Professor achievement and go for one of the “All Pegs Cleared” challenges. Either that or start going through each level in quick play and try to clear all the pegs, slowly working towards Doctor of the Peggle Arts. Don’t go out of your way to get this achievement on every level, but if you do well enough in each level eventually you will come across a situation where you can relatively easily bounce a ball off an orange peg and then straight onto a blue peg. It happens more often than you might think, and if you need help practicing setting up shots to bounce from one peg straight to another, use bjorn unicorn since his power makes this extremely easy.

Catch the Fever (5): Cure your need for fever with an Extreme Fever. (Except Duel)
This achievement is easy. Play the first level on adventure mode and after you hit your last orange peg, you go into extreme fever.

Doctor of the Peggle Arts (30): Clear all pegs and bricks in every level in Quick Play or Adventure mode and gain explodious fame!
This will take a pretty long time to achieve, but I rather enjoy it being here since it gives you a reason to play every level again even after you’ve beaten adventure mode the first time. The game even automatically records you as clearing all pegs on the corresponding challenges if you full clear a stage in adventure or quick play. This will take a long time to achieve but at least I know when I’m working towards it I’m having fun the whole time

Free! Free! Free Ball! (15): Rack up the score or hit the bucket for 3 free balls in one shot.
This achievement will come pretty quickly if you start actively working on it. There’s tons of strategies behind getting as many free balls as possible but I’ll list a couple of the ones I use. First, you may not notice at first but after you hit 25,000 points on the free ball meter on the left side of the screen, you start working towards a second free ball at 75,000 points and then a third at 125,000 or something. So the strategy is to hit the 75,000 mark and then hit the free ball bucket. Whenever trying to raise that point meter, remember that you get more points per peg the more orange pegs are already cleared. So that will help, and plus the purple peg is pretty much there to boost that meter so always try to hit that. You can also attempt to use the hamster and his multiball power to try and get two balls in the bucket on one go after getting 25,000 points but if you can pull that off you’re probably not reading this guide anyways. The other easy way to get this achievement I already mentioned on the first achievement, play the last DNA level. Look at the best shot leaderboards to get the main strategy down, and copy that strategy. It takes a lot of precise timing but the strategy is to get rid of as many pegs on either side of the board, and then line up a shot pointed all the way to the left (or right) This will bounce down and hit the bottom of the DNA strand, opening up a hole at the very bottom if you did it right, then you wait and try and bounce the ball into the hole. It gets slowly sucked up the DNA strand hitting every single peg and if there’s a point boost you get even more points and an easy 3 free extra balls. The third strategy I’ll give is to just always use the magic rabbit, since if the green peg gives you a triple score for two turns, that also triples the free ball meter and can easily make you earn 3 free balls in one shot.

Go ULTRA! (15): Clear all the pegs in a level. It’s pretty extreme, but you look up to it. (Except Duel)
You’ll get this easily trying to work towards some of the other achievements but the strategy is pretty much to take one or two pegs at a time and always try to earn free balls by specifically bouncing balls into the bucket shot after shot.

Party Master (10): Winning a Peg Party is way better than playing with a ball of yarn!
Play peg parties online until you win one, which shouldnt be too hard since the people who play online aren’t mega crazy pros at this game or anything at least in my experience.

Peggle Graduate (20): Complete Adventure Mode and earn your degree from the Peggle Institute.
Just play one round of Adventure mode and you’ll get this easy.

Peggle Professor (25): Complete every level in Challenge Mode and even the Peggle Masters will be impressed.
Here’s the big tough achievement of the game. Thankfully this game’s challenges are nowhere near as challenging as Peggle Nights’ versions. Unfortunately you’re going to have a lot of unimaginative repeats such as clear 30 orange pegs on 5 separate levels, one challenge each level. They are all pretty straightforward, just make sure not to waste too much time with your shots on the ones that ask you to clear 5 levels in a row, just go straight for the orange pegs because it can be frustrating as all hell when you run out of balls on the 5th level and have to do them all over again.

People’s Ovation (10): Win a 4-player Peg Party by a whoppin’ 100,000 points to acquire everlasting coolness.
Just keep playing peg parties and do your best. Use a critter that you are most comfortable with,but if you’re having trouble winning by that many points, try to stick to the owl for his zen shot that always seems to help a lot, the magic rabbit because his triple score will make you unstoppable if it hits during a particularly lucky shot, and if you’re good at pinball, use the lobster when you’re in one of his levels since they’re tailored to make his flippers as effective as possible.

Rock Lobster (15): Win a Xbox LIVE Duel like a crustacean born. ‘Ave you tried ze flippers?
The lobster can be fun to use at times but in my experience he always seems to be at a disadvantage in every level but his own. That’s probably why they made an achievement for him. The unfortunate thing is that not alot of people like to play duels from the time when I’ve tried them out, so you might have a tough time finding an opponent. Just create a player match and do a lobster level and maybe you’ll get lucky and get the flippers early and use them to rack up tons of points flipping the ball back and forth.

Stylish Project (15): Bust out all your Skillz, Bounces, and Slides for 1 million style shot points!
You’ll get this easy as pie, it’s almost ridiculous since you’ll frequently get style bonuses around 50,000 without even trying to get them, which all get added to a total and once you hit 1 million you’re done.

Here are the achievements for Peggle on the 360 along with my impressions.

Sorted Alphabetically:

Ace of Adventure (30): In a peg defying feat, score 20 million points in a single play-through of Adventure mode.
Be Cool (10): Hit the last orange then the last blue to rack up a Cool Clear. (Except Duel)
Catch the Fever (5): Cure your need for fever with an Extreme Fever. (Except Duel)
Doctor of the Peggle Arts (30): Clear all pegs and bricks in every level in Quick Play or Adventure mode and gain explodious fame!
Free! Free! Free Ball! (15): Rack up the score or hit the bucket for 3 free balls in one shot.
Go ULTRA! (15): Clear all the pegs in a level. It’s pretty extreme, but you look up to it. (Except Duel)
Party Master (10): Winning a Peg Party is way better than playing with a ball of yarn!
Peggle Graduate (20): Complete Adventure Mode and earn your degree from the Peggle Institute.
Peggle Professor (25): Complete every level in Challenge Mode and even the Peggle Masters will be impressed.
People’s Ovation (10): Win a 4-player Peg Party by a whoppin’ 100,000 points to acquire everlasting coolness.
Rock Lobster (15): Win a Xbox LIVE Duel like a crustacean born. ‘Ave you tried ze flippers?
Stylish Project (15): Bust out all your Skillz, Bounces, and Slides for 1 million style shot points!

Impressions and achievement review after the jump.

This is a pretty solid selection of achievements. You’ve got your standard easy achievements like beating adventure mode once for Peggle Graduate, slowly earning style points over time for Stylish Project that doesn’t even need extra effort aside from continually playing the game and earning a single extreme fever for Catch the Fever which should take all of 5 minutes with the game. The 3 Free Ball achievement isn’t too hard to get either, if going for aces on all the levels this should come easily in time. Go Ultra isn’t the hardest achievement here, since you have to do this in order to earn other achievements. If you have a really tough time getting an ace on a level (which is OK regardless), you have much more to worry about with these achievements than Go Ultra. Be Cool can be a hard achievement to get at first, but if you’re constantly aiming to ace levels, at some point there should be a situation where there’s one blue and one orange peg left and it shouldn’t be too hard to get a cool clear.

There’s a few “try out the multiplayer” achievements, Party Master and Rock Lobster, that are pretty simple to get as long as you can win a single multiplayer match and obviously help casual players get more out of the game. There’s a harder multiplayer achievement to go for with People’s Ovation that will take a good amount of effort and gives you something to work for while you chill out with some of the most relaxing multiplayer the 360 has to offer.

The hard achievements to be earned here are Ace of Adventure, Doctor of the Peggle Arts and Peggle Professor. Depending on how you feel about achievements, these are either a great addition or a nuisance. I like to think they are a great way to motivate you to keep playing Adventure Mode, Quick Play and Challenge until you earn them and consequently pretty much complete the game.

All in all this is a great mix of easy, medium and hard achievements. Some games have achievements that are too easy to really present a way to fully appreciate or complete the game and others have ones that are too hard to be considered an effective way to fully appreciate a game. Peggle exceptionally succeeds at offering achievements that have a good mix of rewards for both trying every aspect of the game as well as “completing” most aspects of the game.

Good:

+ Extremely polished, faithful port of the successful PC game

+ The controls are as good as you can expect considering the transition from mouse to gamepad. Never need to fight to get a good shot position. Innate ability to lounge in bed while playing is great.

+ Online multiplayer duel mode is a superb addition, making you wonder why it wasn’t offered on the PC

+ Peg Party mode is a blast. 4 player online multiplayer is amazing. The fact that your opponents’ shots don’t affect your score like in duel mode makes it worth the price of admission alone.

+ Challenges and achievements and especially the fact that there’s a specific achievement for completing all challenges make the content soar with added value that I never felt in the original Peggle. If I had trouble with a challenge I could just skip it and never come back to it, but now with the lure of an achievement I want to try that tough challenge for the 50th time

+ Leaderboards provide endless opportunity for peggle diehards to keep playing long after everything is accomplished that the game offers

Bad:

- Despite the controls being as good as you can expect, it still doesn’t compare to the precision of a mouse.

- I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s a way to play an offline peg party which is too bad. 4 player offline would be scrumptious.

- Leaderboards are unfortunately biased towards a few specific maps because of peg position in a few facets of the leaderboards. Even affects adventure mode scoring since the last level in particular must be perfectly tricked out to probably have any chance of getting that high score.

- It would be nice if there was some way it could be arranged that adventure mode plays could be saved at any time, simply because it is tedious to have to go all the way back to the beginning if you feel like trying for an even higher score.

-Multiplayer is great in any shape or form for peggle, and despite the fun of a peg party, you still have to wait for everyone to take a shot and you can’t watch them take their turns after you’re done with yours or anything. A little impersonal and possibly allows for cheap shots to be taken advantage of that you would otherwise be able to decide if you want to play with such a hardcore peggle pro or not.

- Challenges in particular are amazingly frustrating and extremely difficult at times. It sucks when such an otherwise ridiculously fun game can make you so upset that want to throw your controller at the TV

Undecided:

~ Although it costs less, the fact that Peggle Dual Shot for the DS existed even before this released makes me wonder why this couldn’t have been done differently. Both Peggle and Peggle Nights could have been released on the same day, or the whole package could have been 20$, or they could have even added the 11th lightning critter to this version or just something other than the justifiable cheaper price for half a product. At least tell me when Peggle Nights is coming out?

~ Where’s Peggle PS3? Peggle iPhone? Peggle PSP? Peggle toaster? Announce something already! Need more Peggle!

The verdict: Go out and buy this right now, or consider the cheaper PC alternative if you don’t care about multiplayer. Don’t forget it’s coming out sometime for the iPhone and PS3 and is available for the DS right now, so take that into consideration, but if you’ve never played Peggle, you need to start playing yesterday.

Click here to go to the  full review of Peggle XBLA

You bet it does. For the uninitiated, Peggle is a game built around the removal of pegs on a game board affected by gravity. Using your ball shooter at the top of the screen, you point in any allowed direction with a guide arrow that points in the gravity-affected direction the ball will bounce. Every peg the ball touches on its way down to the bottom is highlighted and then removed after the ball hits the bottom of the screen. Points are accumulated for trick shots that are either earned by chance or by strategic aiming, as well as the amount of pegs removed before a given shot hits the bottom of the screen. A cuddly creature, chosen out of a selection of 10 after the adventure mode is completed for the first time, gives you a specific powerup that is gained when one of two special green pegs on any given board. You start with 10 balls, and free balls are obtained by accumulating more than 25,000 points in one ball’s lifespan, as well as if a ball hits the bonus bucket at the bottom. You win a level by clearing all the (usually 20) orange pegs in a level, “ace” a level for earning a specific amount of points in the level and get even more points for clearing every single peg on the screen.

There’s more to the game, but that’s pretty much the basics. If it sounds dull, it certainly isn’t once you give it a go. Some say there’s no skill involved with the game and that it’s mostly based around luck, but they likely haven’t tried to beat any of the challenges the game has or perfect clear any levels. The scoring system is very well structured and high scores are difficult to achieve past a certain amount.

The transition from PC to the 360 included several changes, almost all for the better. The controls are much harder when compared to the precision of using the mouse to aim, but the transition to gamepad is more than acceptable and even preferable when you just want to lie in bed playing a relaxing game with your wireless controller. The joysticks control your aim and slowly accelerate in any given direction, and the movement can be slowed down with the press of a button allowing precise aim for difficult shots.

The 360 version also includes leaderboards for both specific levels, an adventure mode run, and even single shots. This is all great and a wonderful addition but for the simple fact that some levels are simply better suited for points than others if you know how to aim. The last level in particular takes up every top spot for the best shot leaderboards because of the relative ease of scoring points in the multi-millions using a particular trick. This is unfortunate, but leaderboards are a great way to have continued fun after beating every possible inch of the game for those who get that far.

The 360 version also includes online multiplayer for the “duel” mode in previous versions of peggle, which is a wonderful addition to a game that was already extremely easy to recommend to others. A duel is where you and another player take turns on a level, ball by ball, competing for the top obtained score. Huge penalties are included for not hitting orange pegs in this mode so as to keep exploits from being as effective, like trying to score the last shot, earning the fever bonus at the end of the round which can be as high as 50,000 extra points.

In addition to the online duel mode, there is a new multiplayer mode called a peg party for up to 4 players online to separately, on their own game board shot after shot, compete for the top score on a chosen level. Not only is this version of multiplayer in my opinion much more fun and exciting than duel, everyone has equal footing and equal chance to beat their opponents score. There are ranked versions of these modes for the hardcore out there who want to wait for other ranked opponents in order to compete for top rankings, but “player” games with a game browser are also available for those who are just as happy keeping it more casual.

Rounding out the adventure mode (a level-by-level romp through the entire game with pre-selected critters and a combined score at the end) is a quick play mode where you can select any level you already beat in adventure mode and choose your own critter, and a challenge mode. There are 50 challenges in the game, each revolving around some sort of alternate win condition (clear all pegs, clear more than the normal amount of orange pegs) or clearing multiple stages or the like. These can be extremely hard at times and provide for hours worth of additional content and an achievement centers around the completion of all challenges. Very great addition to the content although some of the challenges seem uninspired. You can only have too many challenges that involve clearing a couple more orange pegs than normal before it gets repetitive. Thankfully, you can do any challenge in the game without clearing previous ones, so you can just skip the repetitive ones and come back later.

The one downside to this whole package aside from the lack of some sort of mouse control option that was never expected in the first place is that this is just the original version of Peggle for the PC. Despite the additions, the sequel to Peggle was already released a while ago (Peggle Nights) and none of that content is here. I can understand the decision however, because Peggle Dual Shot recently released on the DS with both versions worth of content and exclusive levels that sells for $30 while this XBLA release is only $10. It still is kind of a bummer, however, since the reasoning behind the cheaper price and staggered ports is likely due to a marketing strategy to make the most profit based on XBLA projected earnings.

All in all, this is a purchase that is more than worth the price of admission and better or equal to anything else the XBLA has to offer. If your choice of platform does not matter to you, however, and online multiplayer is not a factor, you should without a doubt consider buying the PC version at it’s currently heavily discounted price on steam or through retail outlets or the fancy new DS version for some portable peggle on the go. Every version is worth a look, and you wouldn’t regret it. This is casual gaming at its best.

Friend of d6: All Developer medals.
Although I haven’t started working towards this trophy yet, to obtain it, you need to achieve a developer medal on every map/mode combo and challenge that is unlocked by first obtaining a gold trophy, then working towards the score shown at the top of the screen to earn a developer medal. Read the “d6 admires you” description to see a strategy to help you gain points.

Click through to see the rest of the guide.

Friend of Bruce: All levels unlocked.
Simply earn a bronze medal on every level (and challenge) on each mode (except the last) to unlock the last level (and challenge) for each mode and this trophy will unlock.

Brain Surgery: 100 Brains sucked.
Use the brain gun to suck out 100 zombie brains, that then automatically shoot out of the gun to attract other zombies.

d6 Commends You: All Bronze medals.
You’ll see a score at the top right of every mode when you start, that’s the bronze medal points requirement, pass that score and you get a bronze trophy.

d6 Respects You: All Silver medals.
After passing the bronze trophy mark, you’ll hear clapping, then the score at the top right will change to the silver medal mark, earn that score.

d6 Admires You: All Gold medals.
The silver trophy score will change to gold after you pass it. If you need help obtaining gold medals, the basic strategy for getting tons of points is revealed at the end of the tutorial levels. What you do is you slaughter regular zombies for a lot of TNT at the beginning. You should also be getting health at this point so you’ll stay alive. When you’re ready, you run through all the zombies with your torch and light them all up. Then, without using TNT, slaughter the flaming zombies with whatever weapons you can to farm them for TNT type and range upgrades. Once you recieve remote TNT (or proximity if you want to get started on it early) which takes two upgrades, you light all available zombies up again with your torch or flamethrower, drop a TNT, then detonate when they are all within range. This nets the most points because you get 100 points per TNT kill, and all zombies die at once which means you get a 50+ flaming zombie multiplier for every one of those kills. Unfortunately although it might be more fun to kill zombies in another way, this way nets you the most points easily as long as you are staying alive just as much.

Dynami-Te-He: 1000 Zombies blown up.
Use TNT, earn trophy after enough kills.

Extinction: 100,000 Zombies killed.
If you’re going for the gold or developer medals, you’ll get this soon enough. Just have fun killing lots of zombies.

Graduation: Complete Zombie Academy.
Do the tutorials. They’re actually helpful and you get a trophy at the end of them.

Hot To Trot: Last 30 seconds with 50+ zombies on fire.
If you have trouble with this trophy, it may be because flaming zombies DO die over time. So light up more than 50 and if the count starts dropping, light up more and you’ll get it pretty easily.

Murder On The Dance Floor: 1000 Zombies sent dancing.
Just use the dance gun whenever you find it. It’s really quite fun, although it sucks that you lose your torch when you have it so to continue adding to your multiplier you must drop it or use it all up immediately.

Paint The Town Red: Fill the screen with the maximum amount of blood on any level.
If you kill enough zombies in a level, you’ll hit this maximum.

Red Shirt: Kill the away team Zombie.
Can’t remember how I got this, but it came within about 10 minutes of playing the game I believe so you should get it easily too.

Texas Style: 100 Chainsaw Combos.
Use the chainsaw enough and you’ll get this. A chainsaw combo is when you kill enough zombies in a row with the chainsaw, so get a good group of flaming zombies following you and then massacre them for several combos.

Tourist: All Arcade levels unlocked.
This is obtained if you go for the silver trophy but dont touch the challenges, so just get a bronze on every mode/map combo to get this trophy.

Altogether, sorted by value then alphabetical:

Gold:
Friend of d6: All Developer medals.

Silver:
Friend of Bruce: All levels unlocked.

Bronze:
Brain Surgery: 100 Brains sucked.
d6 Commends You: All Bronze medals.
d6 Respects You: All Silver medals.
d6 Admires You: All Gold medals.
Dynami-Te-He: 1000 Zombies blown up.
Extinction: 100,000 Zombies killed.
Graduation: Complete Zombie Academy.
Hot To Trot: Last 30 seconds with 50+ zombies on fire.
Murder On The Dance Floor: 1000 Zombies sent dancing.
Paint The Town Red: Fill the screen with the maximum amount of blood on any level.
Red Shirt: Kill the away team Zombie.
Texas Style: 100 Chainsaw Combos.
Tourist: All Arcade levels unlocked.

Now, onto my impressions after the jump.

The first thing I always notice about trophies is the images used for each one. Although I understand that some developers may not have the resources or time to construct somewhat “meaningless” thumbnails for each trophy, props must be given when it’s done. Unfortunately, here we have just a simple picture of a zombie head with a bronze hat for bronze trophies, a silver hat for the one silver trophy, and a gold hat for the gold. The zombie head is a good drawing, sure, but every bronze trophy has the same image. Take from that what you will.

Now the bronze trophies and lone, silver trophy are quite well done in my opinion. You have a good selection of different criteria for each trophy, and if you’ve followed achievements/trophies for as long as I have, you’ll appreciate the variety shown here. The silver trophy involves unlocking all levels, which is simply a bronze medal on each map/mode combo and all challenges unlocked, which involves a bronze trophy on each preceding challenge. Not to mention, even if you aren’t that impressed with the challenges, the last one is quite the gift, a lawnmower killing spree that is tons of fun. So not only do you get a trophy for unlocking every map, you get quite the great level with the lawnmower stage.

You’ve got a separate bronze trophy for achieving either bronze, silver and gold trophies on every level, which is quite a feat and should be doable over time. You’ve got a complimentary trophy for finishing the optional tutorial levels which is always a nice touch. A couple more complimentary ones that happen just by playing, a few that are given after lots of zombie genocide has commenced (doesnt take too long). All very standard fare and worth applause. Unfortunately, there aren’t any that require  a special situation that might take some effort to set up, but that is more than forgiveable.

Really, this is the type of trophy set I like to see. Something must be mentioned about the gold trophy however. Friend of d6 requires all developer medals, which if I’m not mistaken (I haven’t even recieved a gold medal yet) requires a herculean effort past any gold medal status. This is too bad if it really requires that much skill, but is not that much different from some gold trophies in other games (I’m looking at you, “beat zico” on wipeout HD). So depending on your feelings on this subject this could be right up your alley or a simple disappointment that you may never achieve that one trophy.

But aside from that, I stand by my assertion that this is a great trophy set. Most are self explanatory which is great and despite the gold trophy requiring so much effort, at the very least you can be happy there’s no platinum to speak of that would be unobtainable without some ridiculous gold trophy requiring hours and hours worth of gameplay just to get out of the way. Since that is the case, it is delegated to the same, much lesser problem many 360 games have where you would have just 980 out of 1000 gamerscore on a particular game as opposed to 60% out of 100% on the PSN because you cant get that platinum worth so much more than any bronze, silver or gold.

Click here if you want to check out the trophy guide I created.

Good:

+Varied, original and funny zombies make for a great chuckle even when you get overwhelmed

+Each weapon clearly has strengths and weaknesses that show a lot of depth in game design

+There is a real sense of progression every separate map/mode combo or challenge that involves much tougher enemies as your score progresses along with more enemies on the screen at once and plentiful power weapons

+The effort it takes to achieve a bronze, gold or silver medal on every map/mode combo or challenge means the replay value or content here is immense, not to mention achieving high scores after the medals are achieved

+The mechanic to boost your score involving lighting zombies on fire and killing them with specific weapons has a lot of depth

+Co-op multiplayer is extremely welcome and quite fun.

+The lock on system works well and gets the job done despite its flaws

+The pistol is an effective “always-there” weapon, especially on the last map where it is effective to get a jump on the game by trying to kill the exploding zombies and no alternative weapons are available

Bad:

- The controls need work. In particular, holding the L1 button down the entire game since it is most effective to continually lock on to enemies is tiresome and unnecessary for such an ingrained mechanic

- Despite the pistol’s effectiveness, the mechanic that you can tap the fire button faster to fire the pistol faster feels like an outdated and unnecessary mechanic that actually justifies the use of a third party turbo controller

- While there appear to be balances between the weapons that correspond to their usefulness, such as the bat earning about 15 more points per kill than the chainsaw, the TNT seems to be way too powerful, as you get a full 100 for every zombie killed with TNT. If you don’t follow the strategy of burning zombies then combo killing them with TNT, you earn substantially less points, which I personally see as unfortunate. While the mechanics here are fun to analyze and have lots of depth, the entire TNT mechanic seems to pigeonhole the entire concept of high scores into a game of cat and mouse where the only slaughtering you do with other weapons is to earn TNT, saving every zombie for a TNT blast.

Undecided:

~ The chainsaw doesn’t click as well with me as I’d like. I just have a strong feeling that I’d prefer it if the chainsaw was less strong but didn’t rely on the use of ammo, much like the bat is. Instead, the chainsaw is extremely powerful if you just stand in a corner and hold the fire and lock-on buttons, so the only thing to stop you from doing that is that the chainsaw relies on ammo.

The verdict: An extremely solid game, with a few minor quirks. Pick it up by all means, it is definitely worth the money, but if you know someone who has it, maybe try it with them to see what you think of the controls first.

Click here to go to the detailed analysis, full review

I was excited for this PSN game since I first heard about it in late 2008, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it turned out pretty well as a final product. I have several issues with the game, however, that are frustrating enough at times to disappoint but largely the game stands tall as a fun way to spend some time doing the most fun activity of slaughtering hordes of zombies trying to eat your brains.

There’s not much story behind Burn, Zombie Burn so I won’t get into why the main character, Bruce, is stuck slaughtering zombies for some sort of purpose. It plays mostly like an arcade game, with 6 maps to unlock and 3 modes for each of these maps. The modes are a basic, unlimited “free-play” mode that ends when you lose your three starting lives, a timed mode where some of the powerups dropped are time extensions, and a “protect Daisy” mode where you have to both fight for your own life as well as protect your girlfriend Daisy sitting in a car somewhere on the map. There are also a substantial collection of challenges with specific rules that are fun for a change of pace when you get tired of the three main modes. There is co-op play available for all modes, putting a second character in control of Bruce’s brother Bruno for some sweet co-op action that makes any game much more fun.

Your performance at the end of each map and mode combination is given a score that you see rise throughout your playtime, and a medal (bronze, silver and gold) awarded based on your points earned. There is also trophy support, which is nice to finally see standard in every released PS3 game throughout 2009. The medals are extremely tough to earn, even after hours of learning the structure of the awarded points, giving much replay value and reward when those blasted medals are finally in your hands. Trophies will be discussed more thoroughly in a later post.

The weapons available for zombie genocide in Burn, Zombie Burn! are varied and each are fun to use in their own right. You start with a pistol (and a torch), and can get a chainsaw, lawnmower, baseball or cricket bat, uzi, gatling gun, shotgun, flamethrower, dance gun and brain gun. The chainsaw is amazing to use (until it runs out of ammo quickly), while the bat takes more skill but has one hit charged up shots and unlimited ammo. The uzi is not very powerful but can shoot zombies incessantly while the shotgun can kill 5 or 6 zombies at a time but must be manually shot and leaves you open to flanking attacks much more. The gatling gun is like a suped up uzi that’s extremely powerful and has lots of ammo but the shielded zombies that are usually around once you get access to it are nearly impossible to take out with any ranged weapon, even this beast of a weapon. The lawnmower is like using 4 chainsaws at once, while at the same time stunning any zombie in range while they get slowly sucked into its spinning blades of death. Watch out for the diseased zombies those that take away a little of your health whenever you’re near or the exploders that will hurt you severely. There are health pickups, tnt upgrades, tnt range upgrades, tnt pickups, speed boosts and ammo that all drop from dead zombies, so the arsenal at your disposal is more than sufficient to take out the undead.

The mechanics of the game are also extremely solid. The way the points are calculated is somewhat complicated but I’ll try to do my best. For every zombie you kill, you get a certain amount of points. If you kill a zombie with the baseball bat, you get 50 points. If instead, you kill it with the chainsaw, you get something like 35 points and if you kill it with TNT, you get 100 points. So the way you dispose of the zombies is integral to achieving a high score. This is further multiplied by the amount of burning zombies on the map. Every time you play, you start out with a secondary weapon: the torch. This can later be upgraded to a much more efficient flamethrower with its own drawbacks, but the basic idea is to light zombies on fire, and the amount of zombies lit on fire at the same time is multiplied by the points you get every time you kill a zombie based on what weapon you use for a final score given for every zombie killed. For example, if you have 10 zombies on fire before you kill an eleventh zombie that is not on fire with the bat, you get 50 x 10 = 500 points for that kill. If instead you kill it with TNT, you get 100 x 10 = 1000 points, twice as much as killing it with a bat.

The controls are one of the weak points of an otherwise extremely detailed, passionately crafted zombie killing game. Although the game takes the general appearance of a twin stick shooter a la Super Stardust HD, the controls are awkwardly presented for the sake of a lock-on system that newcomers will rejoice for while the purists reject outright. Rather than allow you to move with the left stick and aim/shoot with the right stick like the aforementioned twin-stick shooters, you instead move with the left stick, strafe with the left trigger if desired, or lock on to the nearest enemy by pressing the L1 button. While this works intelligently and dynamically changes targets based on proximity as you run around the map, you must hold the L1 button while doing so the entire time. The right stick, after already holding down the L1 button, then changes into a mode where you change the locked-on target, and with hundreds of zombies surrounding you, this actually ends up being smooth enough to mimic a twin stick shooter almost entirely. Despite this questionable design decision, the controls are adequate as long as you accept them and, if you can adapt, rarely are you unable to actually accomplish something simply because of the awkward controls. It may even be a saving grace to have the controls the way they are for the sake of newcomers and significant others so that you can play the game with them in co-op mode.

There are a few issues I couldn’t help but notice while playing the game that are more frustrating than game-breaking as is the case with bugs in other games. One of the most frustrating to me is when you are running around with your torch, the game mentions this and it is an important mechanic that non-burning zombies will run away from you because they are afraid of fire. This works for the most part, and when being overwhelmed by freshly spawned zombies you can run straight through them, torch in hand and locked on to every nearest zombie, burning them and saving yourself along the way. However, every other time I do this, I notice I get hit by some errant zombie along my path. Upon closer inspection I realized that if a zombie decides to pre-empt your burning spree by attacking before you are in “scare zombie with torch” range, the animation will finish and you are in danger of being hit. I’m not sure if this is a bug or not, but considering that already burning zombies are a constant, faster threat than new zombies and cant be scared away with fire, I would think it would be okay to simply allow you to run through zombies with your torch with no threat to your health.

My last problem with the game is the way the medals and scoring work. I’m not entirely sure but I believe the TNT with its base score of 100 points per zombie killed is twice the amount of the next highest scoring weapon, the bat. Also, with the way a burning zombie horde with TNT combo works, you can farm regular zombies for TNT, burning zombies for TNT upgrades to get proximity TNT or remote-detonated TNT, and then you’re pretty much set to rack up tons of points by lighting 100 zombies on fire, then dropping a TNT to blow them all up. Since you blow all of the flaming zombies up at the same time, you get a much higher combo multiplier for each zombie than if you use a chainsaw or such and take them out one by one. This is all well and good and makes for a lot of fun, but it is somewhat disappointing to know that every other weapon, no matter how fun it is to use, is delegated to a “keep me alive” status or “TNT farming instrument”, since slaughtering zombies with normal weapons gets you nowhere near the amount of points as TNT combos. With gold medals as high as they are, reaching multiple millions compared to the couple thousand for the bronze medals in each stage, it is an exercise in futility to try and get a high score using anything but TNT combos it seems.

Although it is somewhat unfair to criticize a game for what it didn’t include, I will also mention that the game could be several times more excellent if it included online multiplayer for it’s co-operative mode. It would be great fun to be able to play this game with my friends over the PSN instead of being limited to the people who can come over and visit.

Overall, I am very satisfied with Burn, Zombie Burn! because of the fun factor, replay value, challenge, depth and charm of a game based around zombie massacre. It also screams of being produced by an independent developer that I am more than happy to support for a budget PSN title compared to a heavily licensed, mass market, expensive game by a faceless corporation. It is well worth your money and you would do well to go to your local PSN and buy it right now, especially if you enjoy zombie movies or games because if there’s one thing Burn, Zombie Burn! does perfectly, it’s slaughtering zombies.

Click here to see the quick fix (summary)