Downloadable content or DLC as it has been abbreviated to is basically any kind of game or addition to a game that can be downloaded to either a console or PC. Things like bought expansion packs don’t always appear to count towards this for some reason. Not sure how they like to work it but for example Fallout3 can be bought as an expansion for the PC version, but is classed as DLC for the Xbox360 version. Fuck knows but then, who cares either. DLC is nothing new to the market, infact its been out since the days of the Sega Megadrive but its potential has only really been tapped into recently. Microsoft for one appear to be massive advocates of this and its for the simple reason that everything involving microsoft boils down to, Money…

The milking of DLC by microsoft and developers of Xbox games has reached a proportion that can only be described as monumentally disgusting, it is actually sickening to see just how far some greedy fuckers are willing to push things. We can start by tearing microsoft a new one, a new one that will open a gap so wide the aerodynamics of the situation itself is going to improve by several thousand percent. Microsoft likes to make money, then again so do most companies and its not something you can really fault anyone on. But the problem is when they get their greed on, and you may think im talking about the situation where they bend you over a chair and you pray to your god/idol that its not going to hurt. The greed situation in this case is the one where they bend you, and several other people over a chair, and explain simply that it is going to hurt, your going to tear, and bleed, and there is nothing you can do about it. We shall take a case in point to illustrate this.

Geometry Wars: Retro Wars its a fun little game on Xbox live, some nice people made it and they wanted to release it over Xbox live and they said they would be happy to do so for free. Im not sure how this made them money but im sure there was some plan behind it, or they just did it for some good fun and happiness for all involved. Microsoft decided that this would not do, and that the writhing mass that already pays a subscription fee for XboxLIVE has been freeloading for too long and taking the piss by effectively stealing money from Microsoft becuase the subscription is only 5% of what they would actually like to charge. Arguements went backwards and fowards between microsoft and the developer Bizarre Creations. The story ends on a happy note with the game eventually being released for free 400 microsoft points which is the minimum microsoft will charge. $5 or about £3.50 which I take as the score being 1-0 to excessive greed. The customer loses out, and the developer was probably unhappy.

Other rumours along the same lines concern Gears of War developed by Epic again they wanted to release free downloadable content for their games again Microsoft was against this once again (apparently) and there was a big blowout from this was well. Unfortunately this did all occur around 2007 and I did not have an XBox at this point so I just kinda lost intrest after a while because I didn’t have to give two fucks about it.

I have always classed myself as part of the PC gaming master race. I like my FPS games to have a mouse and WASD and I like my menu’s to be point and click. PC gaming as always been fair when it comes to pricing. Hell, most games that are out for Xbox and PC have a difference of about £10 and its ALWAYS the PC version thats cheaper. Call of Duty 4 charged for maps in their multiplayer for XBox, as a PC user I got every single one for free, and it was the same for COD5 as well, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 though they finally saw past the game and the fans and got their greed on, with all content being chargeable for both PC and Xbox.

DLC is basically a new way of taking a £40 game which is already fairly expensive, and turning it into a £50 or £60 game. Ill take the artcle full circle now back to the beginning when I reference Borderlands. The game was still in development and they already had the DLC shit in the planning and programming stages. I think its pretty disgusting nowadays that they are pushing this shit for rediculous prices and they have the money machine ready to roll as soon as the game is out the door. I’ve been spoiled by the MMORPG genre, a genre with a set of companies that thrive on keeping a community happy because long term success is far more important than fast cash. As much as I hate to sound like one of the usual morons from an MMORPG site the subscription cost of an MMO per month really is worth it when compared to console crap. We can use simple maths to work some shit out, and im going to do this with reference to hardcore gamers, and infact im going to use Ballsmasher as an example because he is hardcore in the sense he will play games for half his day lol.

World of warcraft can offer challenges for several hours a day, infact doing some dungeons, raids and PvP can easily keep him happy for lets say 8 hours at a time. Multiply that by say 30 days in the average month and you have 240 hours of gameplay easily, now im going to be a bad writer and take the side of the console advocates. World of warcraft involves 3 games. The orginal and two expansion packs, im going to pretend for this situation that all 3 were bought at the same time, and also pretend that Blizzard/Activision are greedy fucks (the latter actually is at times) and that you don’t get a free month: The net cost is £38.89 (£27.97 for the games and £8.99 for the months fee). The final sum £38.89 divided by 240 hours of gaming works at at £o.16 per hour, and this is with an inflated price overall for your first months entertainment. By month 2 the cost is down to £0.09 an hour and by the end of a year we are left with the following: £155.76 total spent on Warcraft (barring a new expansion)  for 2920 if you play hardcore at 8 hours a day. Total of £0.05 an hour for your enjoyment, if you played an averge of just one hour a day it would work out at about £0.42 an hour max.

Unfortunately im going to be lazy with the console ones and pretend (in favour of consoles) that Azose can manage a single game in a month before finishing it and getting bored, and to be fair some stuff like Guitar Hero will probably not rack up 240 hours of entertainment in a month, and probably not even in its lifetime, even with DLC. Most other games are not going to offer 240 hours of gameplay, so we can go with something like call of duty 4 which can be bought new for £29.99 or £39.99 for game of the year edition for Xbox360 and your month of Xbox live which averages at about £5 making it a total of £35 for the lot and if you can truly accumulate 240 hours of the game  online then you have beaten World of Warcraft in terms of cost per month at first, going on you can technically stay in the lead but I doubt the game could genuinely hold you up as long as an MMORPG.

Technically I could concede defeat, so if you have managed to play Call of Duty 4 for 8 hours a day every day for a year without buying any other game then you have beaten me, the problem there is you missed the point of gaming in general and its pointless for you to own a console. I think its about time the greedy console market started looking at the PC market and seeing what they can do to compete. If games started releasing for cheaper, with a steady stream from reasonably priced DLC which adds a fair amount of content, as well as fixes and patches and functionality to boot, then they can start milking their cows properly, providing a nice stream of income and keeping many people happy, you know instead of just cutting off the udders for a quick fix of milk for a handful of people. Ill leave with a nice closing statement.

10 million people play world of warcraft and they bring in a lot of money. Lets say with all things factored it could be around £5 per person per month. Thats £650,000,000 (Six hundred and fity million) per year, and thats before you factor in things like renaming characters, transfers and all other manner of things they charge for. The great part of most of their additional content based on Microtransactions is that you don’t need it to enjoy the game. If some console company wants to take a potshot at this kind of money, they need to hit about 16million copies sold, and not too many console games surpass that kind of sales, although Nintendo has a good trackrecord with the Wii fitness games and Super Mario. Even with all that on board I bet £650,000,000 a year in subscriptions alone is the kind of thing they all dream about, I mean you can also pretend only 10million people ever tried it and that would fact to another £290million in box sales alone.

So, developers how about you start playing the long game than focusing on greed and immediate gratification?

What I have heard about is Skate 2, specifically I heard about it from a guy in work who also had the good sense to show me a video to gain my interest. In Video one I saw a guy grind a pole, and jump to another pole, I wasn’t massively impressed. The second video showed a guy falling off a ledge and smashing his face into the floor in an incredibly hilarious fashion, my interest was now gained.

Skate 2 is a game that takes the style in a different direction from the Tony Hawks franchise, or at least it takes it in a different direction from what I remember about that particular franchise. Hell I don’t even know if I should be comparing them, but I’m sure some diehard will scream at me if I have it wrong, not that I care. The skating is more “realistic” and freeroam sense. I use realistic in the sense that your not boxed in to an area where you complete some challenges and then piss off to the next box to peddle your wares for no apparent reason. You basically roam around a town and do whatever the fuck you want, there are of course challenges and events which you enter and these require you remain in a specific area, but there are no hidden or manufactured walls keeping you there, you can leave the area and exit the challenge as you please.

The controls are the first feature of the game that I seriously do enjoy (to an extent). The controls are definitely innovative, instead of a button mashing 6 finger fuck fest, you have “flickit” controls that enable most tricks to be done with the use of the right stick. This function applies to a majority of your staple tricks, like kickflips and ollies etc. While this new direction interests me, it also frustrates me as sometimes a degree of difference in your accuracy results in the guy doing something entirely different than what you had planned and possibly to you failing a challenge or something. Other tricks do keep to the button pushing/holding styles of old, but then they have become part and parcel of many of these games now, and I honestly cant suggest much better if I’m honest

Something I found less enjoyable in the game however was the storyline, there were many parts of it which were unrealistic and kinda moronic at times. Certainly the fact that your character has been to jail is one of the odd things, I have no idea why he ended up there although I expect it was to do with soft drugs or some other shit. Not that I have anything against the guy having a colourful background. EA however in their infinite wisdom like to keep from having any kind of high age rating on a game so it can appeal to as much money many customers as possible. So there is a lot of omitted points of swearing in the game. There are a lot of “oh my gods!” and “holy cow!” where something like “Holy shit” or “what the fuck” could have sufficed. Maybe you could say I’m being picky and overly going out of my way to attack the game, but for something billed as “more realistic,” an ex-con who has friends who mind their language incase they offend kids, while simultaneously going out of his way to annoy people in a law enforcement profession in an attempt to “stick it to the man” seems a bit lame. Kinda like removing self sealing freezer bags because people might use them to sell drugs, but ignoring the drug problem itself.

The storyline kinda comes together in dribs and drabs, you skate around causing trouble and fighting the power in the form of “mongocorp” which requires the “mongo” to make them sound stupid and monkey like, because only people like that could be against skateboarding in a public place where injury to the general public is a sure thing. Personally I would have played up the ex-con and just made out he was a serious badass, but then, that might get kids to rebel, and EA might have to face lawsuits from angry Americans who blame everything but their shitty parenting for their fat angry kids. Plus most of Europe is looking for something to blame at the moment as well I guess. So basically you skate around with a gimp who films you all the time as you make your comeback, and who will occasionally point out helpful things to you, like the fact you fell over, or got hit by a car. Its a good thing they added him in, because me being the massive retard I am thought cars were ramps, and falling down was slang for winning the game…

You go from event to event getting up your credit, and making friends, and this in turn opens more events and more friends and so forth. Some friends run the new events, others offer services such as removing clamps from grinding rails or draining pools. There is also a fat black guy who will hassle the security guards in buildings for some fried chicken cash.

I guess in general terms skate 2 isn’t terrible in terms of storyline, there could be none at all, or it could be a cocksmoking shit fest, which isn’t too much lower than it is now, but then I guess the majority of the people playing will probably not care about the history of the character, wether he does this or that or who his friends are. Most of them will just want to skate.

Myself? I don’t fall into either, I fall into the third category. The one that wants to see the main character in a coma, with his video friend having to make the decision whether to turn the life support off, or hang on just another day. My main enjoyment from the games comes from trying to kill the bastard, and although you may not believe this, its the feature I find the best in the game! My main frustration with these previous games was the fact that falling down always pissed you off. It would eat away precious time in Tony Hawks, and in myriads of games falling down has been a sure death (Damn you Super Mario Brothers 3).

Skate 2 (and possibly skate which I have never played) have made this fun, and have taken the sting out of the annoyance, without making it some dumbed down moron fest were you could never fall over. Falling down will give you a score for the hall of meat, fall faster, harder and as awkwardly as possible to rack up the points. Its a fantastic system and one more games should take hold of. You fuck up your trick, fall off a ledge, and spread-eagle yourself while frantically trying to land on an arm and a leg for massive win. Its great, and in a bizarre way it adds to the realism, if only in the sense that when you hit something you scramble to try and sort yourself into some kind of hilarious mess. Its almost the same as in real-life when you fall and kinda scramble to not fall badly, except more awesome.

If I had to make a recommendation about the game, which as a reviewer I guess I’m duty bound to do I would say follow this advice.

* Hardcore Skating/Skating game fan: Purchase
* Skating fan/skater which a vested interest and some spare cash: Purchase
* Interested in the game in some way with a good bit of spare case and no other use: Purchase
* Everyone else: Best to look for something else

The game does have some appeal, but I think its a limited appeal, when I read up about the game myself before buying I found most people talking about it skated, or played these games frequently. There were not a lot of newcomers or “gamers” that seemed to be playing this one, or if they did they were a silent minority. It brings some nice things to the table, but at the same time it doesn’t capture my imagination in any sort of massive sense. It kinda gives me the same vibe most EA games do, “lets find a sport, release a new copy every year with some updated graphics and a new box, and wait for the millions to roll in” It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but has redesigned what I previously knew about the wheel.

With my fanboyism out of the way, i found out about this game via the demo they had up on live a few weeks before release, enjoying it immensely due to my thirst for hack and slash goodness i decided to shell out and grab myself a copy of the full game, bad reviews and “OH GOD ITS SO UNLIKE THE COMIC” cries not tainting the joyous occasion.

The game is very reminiscent of other console hack and slashes like Devil May Cry or God of War, but with a superhero touch, thankfully Raven have deviated enough from the movie to make Wolverine come across as the true bad ass that he is, rather than some spandex wearing gimp with a fetish for long nails, giving this game a real manly sense of brutal maiming and killing (Grrr).

One of the things that i found was great about the game was the ease of controls, everything was fluid and smooth, controlling wolverine is a rewarding experience, for example, who can beat holding in a back button and hitting A to leap toward your target, claws out and rip right through his ribcage? perhaps if you have some sort of anti-violence stance you will

stamp your feet and protest this senseless violence that is plaguing young culture, or you’ll squeal like a 5 year old girl who has just got the latest barbie accessories from Argos, i definitely squealed a little, a manly internal squeal, my favourite of these skills being the berserker skill, wolverines claws light on fire and you proceed to go on an anger filled killing spree, attacking faster, moving faster, and fuck yeah, mashing faces in faster.

Wolverines skills are rough and gory, making dismembering enemies a very enjoyable and exhilarating experience, there is just something about turning yourself into a human drill and driving your way through someones stomach that brings a tear to my perhaps sick and demented eye.
Skills in wolverine are based on rage, this can be replenished by grabbing red orbs that fall on the ground upon enemy death, my only qualm with skills in the game are, well you never really feel the need to use them constantly, most of the time i found myself lunging a target, and press Y (smashing down on his face with my claws) this usually dispatched enemies quick enough, and this works for pretty much the entire game.

Boss battles also suffer from this “same tactic fuck it” mentality, and well, we can’t help it, the developers deemed it OK to make button mashing (akin to God of War) sequences apply to every fucking boss fight in the game bar the last, it made them trivial and nowhere near as epic as they could have been had they mixed it up a little.
Wolverine as some of you may know, also has the ability to regenerate, adamantium frame and all that, now as nice as this is, i think i may have died once during my entire play through on hard, this due to the fact that bouncing around and avoiding things like a dickhead, letting me regenerate quickly, this takes away from the need to avoid things for me “boss hitting me in the face and taking 3/4 of my health? fuck it I’ll regenerate” i wanted hard to be challenging but alas, wolverine is just too hardcore to give me that option.

Plot wise this game has a few references to the movie, others are just added to make the game a bit more interesting, but generally speaking the game focuses more on smashing peoples skulls than trying to engage you in a wonderful tale of bowel dislodging and limb amputation, (as much as I’d like that.) ill avoid releasing any story information for those of you who hate being told what happens in the film like for example the EPIC FIGHT BETWEEN WOLVERINE AND DEADPOOL but i won’t tell you about it because I’m a nice guy.
One of the main reasons i played this game from start to finish and then some, was for the unlock system, now i don’t know about you but unlock systems are my weakness, in Wolverine enemies drop delicious little golden orbs that give you experience, which can then in turn be converted into new skills, upgrades and so forth for wolverine, you level up as you go along too, levels will give you skill points which you can then freely distribute into upgrades for wolverine, examples being his claw damage, skill damage, and other nifty but not overly exciting things (heal on hit etc.) they didn’t make me go WOW FUCK I NEED TO GET THAT RIGHT NOW but they did the trick.

Another addition is mutagens, these can be found throughout the game in fucking annoying but not too hard to find places, these give wolverine bonuses to Regen, extra damage, extra experience and such, these too while not overly exciting, where at the least a tad helpful.
Whilst on the top of collectible things, there are also little wolverine figurines floating around in yes, you guessed it FUCKING ANNOYING places, which upon obtaining two of the same, gives you a mini challenge accessible from the main menu to unlock new costumes for wolverine (original x-men costume etc), in these challenges you are pitted against wolverine in said costume and made fight to the death, if you kill him, you get to roll through the campaign in a yellow faggot suit (which is REALLY unfitting in the campaign, he looks like a rampant pervert prowling for young ladies) i found these challenges a nice distraction but they can be annoying, since the other wolverine regenerates just like you do.

Graphics wise, this game in my opinion is gorgeous, lush jungles, detailed science labs make for a really stunning environment, based on the unreal engine, wolverine is definitely not falling short in the graphics department, all the characters within the game cannot be confused for their movie counterparts, Jackman being the one that stands out (obviously) another unique feature is the visual regeneration on wolverine, if hes been filled with 200 bullets, you can see the holes onscreen, then slowly watch as he heals himself, this was a really nice touch to the game and really shows how tough wolverine really is.
Voice acting is also done by the movie counterparts, gambit I’m in two minds about, his repeated french references to wolverine throughout the game are non-existent in the movie, but sadly I’m a lazy cunt with no intention of googling this matter to find out the cold hard truth, i leave that to you, my glorious readers.

Chances are i missed something along my trail, but a quick roundup anyway:
The game is definitely very fun in that it doesn’t require extreme focus and attention, you can hack and smack your way through the game, occasionally cock-blocked by the odd puzzle but nothing too tough (unless you’re retarded and well….I’m sorry) the game clocks in at about 10-12 hours by my guess, so its a decent length, its flaw being that the game gets very repetitive and boring at some points, but putting down the controller and strolling outside does wonders for ones attention span, i enjoyed the game, i don’t regret picking it up, so if you find it pre-owned or dropped by a few quick i recommend you pick it up, you could do a lot worse.