Download Games Roundup
Trino! Dead! greenTech! Ballistic! Ben!
Dead Space Extraction
- PSN - £11.99
The failure of Dead Space Extraction to interest the wussy Wii audience was enough to make a grown man weep into his blog. Apart from being a marvellous on-rails shooter in its own right, it acted as an excellent prequel to one of the best survival horror games of the generation – and promptly sold like halitosis aftershave.
Happily, the arrival of PlayStation Move has given EA the opportunity to grant Extraction a chance to shine in a somewhat more welcoming environment – or that's the plan, anyway. Given away with the limited edition of Dead Space 2 on the PS3, or available in cheaptastic downloadable form on PSN, dismembering spindly-limbed creatures has seldom been more alluring.
As on the Wii, it's savage stuff, forcing you to fend off a relentless onslaught of sub-human Necromorphs as you explore the innards of the Ishimura space station for six grim and grisly hours. If it didn't quite justify shelling out top whack a year or so ago, at this price it would be rude not to pick it up, especially if you were buying the PS3 version anyway.
The only flicker of disappointment is that the developers didn't find it within their hearts (or rather, budget) to produce a truly top-notch conversion. While it certainly looks great upscaled to 720p, there are occasions when the texturing limitations of the Wii original rear their ugly head. Don't tell Digital Foundry, for gawd's sake.
Fortunately, even when such moments occur, it barely detracts from what is one of the best old-school rail shooters out there. Go and bust some heads and sever some spiky limbs in the name of slightly disturbing entertainment.
8/10
greenTech +
- PSN Minis - £3.49
Sometimes all it takes is a single, interesting idea to spark interest in a game. In greenTech +'s case, part of its charm is trying to work out what the hell kind of game it's trying to be.
YoYo Games' screenshots certainly provide no clue whatsoever, and even the initial tutorial is a little sketchy. So, yeah, you're a hurricane, on a mission to blow all the pollution into little cleaning facilities. Right. Roll another fat one.
The total monochrome abstraction of it is beautiful, though, and it feels like a lost Spectrum game. It's a shame, then, that actual playability gets lost somewhere in the mix.
The principle of clustering and directing the flow of pollution is a fine one, but taming the beast is far harder than it ought to be.
If you can master its evil learning curve, then 30 levels of breezy fun await – just be aware that getting through most of them is like playing four games of buzz bar at once with each limb. And we all know how that ends up.
6/10