VX's blog

I've just returned home from a five and a half hour session of Super Smash Bros Brawl.

I think I want a Wii...

I've been playing Wipeout Pulse a lot on my PSP.
If you've played the previous Wipeout games and didn't like the controls, you might want to give Pulse a try.
The controls are tighter and more responsive than ever, you can use either the thumbstick or the d-pad, I recommend the latter.

Campaign mode has you choosing your own path through the game with different race types set out on a hexagonal grid. Allowing you to pick and choose what races you want to do and ignore types you don't.
The campaign has hours of gameplay. I've clocked up over 20 hours (according to the in-game stats pages) and still have plenty of content left to play.

Visually I haven't seen another portable game top Pulse. It runs at a slick 60fps, and I only noticed a little slowdown when there was a lot of explosions going off around me.

Features worth mentioning are Custom Soundtracks, Online Multiplayer, Custom Skins, Custom Grids and Photo Mode (which I used to take screenshots featured below).

All in all Wipeout Pulse is a great racing game, if you like fast arcade racers you'll probably like Pulse.

Pixeljunk Racers is a Puzzle-Racing game for the PS3. Yes that's right you heard me a Puzzle-Racing game.
There are 16 core gameplay modes and each mode has a faster variant mode to unlock.
How the gameplay works is very simple, you pull on either the left or right analogue triggers on the sixaxis controller to control speed, the harder you press down on the trigger the faster you go, and use the d-pad left and right buttons to change lane.

The view of the track is always static and only objects on the track move much like old-school GTA in a way, it can get a little hard keeping track of your car, all the cars in front of you, which lane your in and which lane you need to get too at times, but it's one of those the more you play the better you get at type of games.

The modes vary wildly from weaving through hordes of "Sunday Drivers" overtaking as many cars as possible, "The Munchies" where the aim is to eat the other cars on the track to survive for as long as possible, to the addicting "Sudden Death" mode, where the course is littered with driving bombs that you have to navigate through.

Graphically the game isn't really doing anything special, but I feel the gameplay and art-style go well together.
If you happen to have more than one sixaxis controller all the modes are available in co-op/deathmatch style and up to 8 people can play together. Unfortunately there is no online play, but I don't think it would suit online cause it's more of a party multiplayer game.

Pixeljunk Racers is an addictive little game, if you own a PS3 and fancy something challenging and a little different you should check it out.