Wonderbook: Book Of Spells
Wand Direction
Before we go any further, it has to be said that Wonderbook: Book Of Spells is not software designed for 30–year-old videogame reviewers with scruffy facial hair and fading hairlines. It’s a rather lovingly put together EyeToy and PlayStation Move combo that promises to bring the magic of Hogwarts to your PS3 just in time for Christmas, featuring words by JK Rowling herself, and tech by the splendid Sony London. So, being said 30 year old, it made sense to let the child of the house have a go. Unfortunately, he’s only 16 months old, so he trampled across the blue Wonderbook accessory, tried to eat the glowing part of the Move controller, laughed at his own face on the TV for about five minutes, then ran into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of dried pasta and emptied it all over the hall while hooting maniacally. Not a great help.
Thankfully, his mum is a diehard Potter aficionado, and we managed to combine our powers of technical knowledge and Hogwarts wizardry to spellbinding effect. The tech is actually really nice; your Move is transformed into a gnarled, wooden wand which can be used to levitate objects or shoot
jets of water across the place in a pretty magical fashion. There are four chapters in Book Of Spells, each comprising multiple incantations, and every one is lavished with detail, artful storytelling and almost faultless tech. Levitating eyeballs and toads, warding off nasty roots, chanting weird spell names… it’s all in here.
The production is fantastic, frankly. This is software designed for young Potter fanatics, probably around eight years old, and it brings a sense of spirit and warmth that’s entirely in keeping with the Rowling universe. It’s easy to sneer at stuff like this, so-called ‘non-games’, but it’s better to think of Wonderbook as a Christmas toy rather than a videogame franchise in and of itself.
Quite where the tech goes after Book Of Spells has been exhausted is anyone’s guess, really. It does feel like a one-off of sorts, a great seasonal product that doesn’t really need any further add-ons despite the promise of next year’s Diggs Nightcrawler, but should Sony choose to, there’s potential for Wonderbook to turn into a nifty little platform of its own. If nothing else, too, it confirms that Move is by far the best motion control device on the market, capable of some real wizardry of its
own. Lovely.
Jon Denton
Zone Of The Enders HD Collection
Jehuty calls for Konami’s remastering department
There’s something deliciously poetic about Konami bundling a new Metal Gear demo with an HD transfer of a videogame that was originally used as a vessel through which to sell a Metal Gear demo. Back in the day, Kojima’s name wasn’t widely enough known for a new IP to be sold off the back of that alone, but the chance to shove Snake around a tanker made the unknown quantity that was Zone Of The Enders that much more appealing.
But with this package bringing together both the glorified tech demo that is the original videogame and its glorious yet underappreciated sequel – both with a fancy new lick of polygonal paint, no less – we can only hope it’s not the demo doing the selling this time around. The slick new anime intro tells you everything you need to know about the videogame, and as much as you’re ever likely to understand about the story too, for that matter. Mech combat is the order of the day, though it’s a fluid and graceful strain that doesn’t really exist outside of anime even to this day.
Whether jetting around the sky spewing laser death at other extremely expensive robotic things or engaging in choreographed melee showdowns with rival Frames, Jehuty’s antics are stylish in extreme. That said, it’s all fairly subdued in the original, with only a couple of mechs on screen at once – it was an early PS2 game, let’s not forget – but the sequel ramps up the intensity within minutes, even if it’s at the expense of frame-rate issues that apparently still haven’t quite been ironed out.
While the original holds up better as a way of establishing the universe than it does on a gameplay level, the second game flips that on its head – it’s a peerless action videogame in its field, though we’d wager there isn’t a single person on the planet who actually know what is going on on a narrative level. But you simply won’t care. The original has done its job of creating a world in which giant robots can fight scores of other giant robots and that’s more than enough for the sequel to survive on its gameplay merits alone.
ZOE may feel like a proof of concept, spliced with Eighties mech anime pulled off an old VHS. But the second videogame both feels and now looks like it could have come out in the last few years. Whether you still harbour fond memories of the franchise or never played it back in the day, Zone Of The Enders is definitely worth another look, and the HD remaster team have done a sterling job. Oh,
and did we mention the Revengeance demo? You’ll want that too.
Luke Albig?s
F1 Race Stars
Mario (Andretti) Kart
You know the old adage: you wait ages for a karting game and then three come along at once. Or something like that, anyway. This year LittleBigPlanet Karting had pole position, Sonic & Sega Racing Transformed is the underdog bringing up the rear and then there’s F1 Race Stars sitting slap-bang in mediocre mid-table.
It’s about as mild a game as they come – even for a karting game – which is a shame when the initial promise of it really does make it quite interesting. Take the new ‘innovative’ features in slipstreaming and KERS boosting, for example. The former – though not unheard of in racing games – is pretty new for karting games and boosts your speed when behind another driver. It’s a form of rubberbanding, sure, but one that you can benefit from too.
KERS, as race fans will likely know, is a fancy doohickey that goes inside a Formula One car for improving acceleration after sharp braking. With that in mind, its inclusion in F1 Race Stars does make a little more sense, as highlighted areas around certain bends enable you to charge up an additional boost of up to three tiers when carefully controlling acceleration.
Then there’s the power-ups themselves, some of which are your usual red shell/green shell guff and others that are a little more… respectful of the subject matter. Like the Safety Car pickup, a blue shell-style power-up that forces the player in first place to a crawl behind the pace car. Or the rain cloud that, as you might expect, covers the tarmac in slick pools of water.
It’s unfortunate that such a reverence of Formula One should be F1 Race Stars downfall, then. The biggest problem is the handling, an element that should be of primary importance in any karting game. Where most let you hop and drift around sharper bends, F1 Race Stars has none of it: if you want to tackle some of the game’s wackier tracks then you’ll either have to ricochet off walls and hope you aren’t slowed too much, or brake yourself and recuperate afterwards. It’s a huge detriment
to the game as a whole, turning what could be an entertaining spin on F1 racing into a frustrating slog.
We like a lot of what F1 Race Stars does – honestly, we do – but if Codemasters wants to keep this interesting idea going it really needs to find out exactly what it wants the game to be. In the end, though, a karting game that is a pain to control is no karting game at all.
Adam Barnes
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