In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
The Pursuit Force is back in this second instalment for the PSP and no doubt they are looking forward to unleashing their brand of extreme justice. The Pursuit Force is a group of officers who specialize in high speed chases and cutthroat action. Already promoted after his victory in the first game, you play as a man only known as ‘The Commander’. Some of the goons you put away last time have sprung out of jail and are planning to destroy Capital City so it’s your job to stop them. In the previous title (this is a sequel), you chose missions based on which gang you wanted to pursue – five in all, now they have all been integrated into one continuous storyline.
Basically, the game is broken down into racing cars, boats and hovercrafts as well as tracking down bad guys and stopping them from reaching their destination. It is a racing-action game similar to games like Driver and Grand Theft Auto. The structure of each mission varies, so you will occasionally get out of the car and man a helicopter-mounted machine gun or a sniper rifle and provide cover for team mates.
The more gang members you kill or arrest, the higher your justice meter grows. Once this meter has peaked, you can jump from car to car in slow motion and shoot the bad guys in mid-air, very cool stuff. Leaping into new cars allows you not just to get a potentially less-damaged vehicle, but also lets you steal the weapons from any bad guys that were inside it. The game has changed a lot, however, since its first version was released a few years ago. This time, the controls are finer-tuned in terms of the justice meter, and can use it to restore lost health and repair damage to your vehicle, rather than using it solely for offensive purposes. The gameplay does suffer from one weakness, and that happens in the melee missions. The controls on the PSP are just not deep enough for these mission types, as the right analog stick being used for aiming is nearly required and missed. Instead of having separate controls to look and move, you are forced to shoot in a relatively straight line going forwards. You can push L to stop running and enter an aiming mode, but it is too blocky to be used effectively. One other control problem is the very timely addition of the God of War style context-sensitive button mashing technique. In the first game, to arrest a perp you had to push R. Now, you must push a randomly generated combination of the triangle, circle, square and x buttons. This same effect is occasionally used during chase missions, and in both cases creates a downturn in the game’s momentum, but at least it keeps players on their feet.
Despite all this, there are enough unique missions to keep the game interesting. As a break from the usual ‘Drive fast and catch this bus’ or ‘Drive fast and ram into that truck’, there are some highlights. Early on, you capture one of the criminal masterminds and probe him for information during a cut-scene. You can look forward to loosening his lips by tying him to the hood of a car and scaring the information out of him by bumping into other cars, swerving left and right, scraping against guard rails and driving into oncoming traffic.
The graphics don’t do much to separate the missions, gangs or locations. Each of the five criminal groups has their own gimmick and their cars are designed to look identifiable from normal traffic on the road. However, it’s just a difference of some orange paint and some protruding spikes, I guess if they wanted to blend in they could have avoided the flame motif and weaponry on the outside. You will find yourself driving through the same indoor shopping mall a few times, as you take familiar corners through the downtown core. Frame rates are fast and graphics clean and adequate – nothing too spectacular.
In terms of sound, you will find a lot more detail involved. In a specific cut-scene, the camera pans across a speeding car on the highway creating a distinguished stereoscopic effect. You can hear the engine hum from your left to right speaker. Some of the smaller effects are more subtle but still appreciated. In one mission you are being tailed by a large tank, and as oncoming cars drive past you, they can be heard getting crushed behind you once they have left the screen, almost like a mini surround sound effect. Finally, as this is a portable title, us gamers do have a tendency to revert to our physical surroundings during the boring parts between missions. If you look up a lot from your PSP in the subway like me, the game will sound a few beeps when the next mission is loaded, bringing you back into its virtual world, perhaps not a big breakthrough in gaming, but appreciated.
The game is a long one, so you will be sure of have plenty of time to enjoy the sound effects, voice acting and generic music of Pursuit Force for many hours. Completing missions allows you to customize your stats and improve your reload times or jump distances. Beat missions a second time, and you can set high scores and unlock cheats, movies and concept art. There is also the Challenge mode, which bubbles each mission down to its core chase dynamic and lets you replay it with extra tough stipulations. Try beating them again while weaponless, with a time limit, or without crashing. There are also a slew of multiplayer modes to keep you and three of your friends busy.
In many ways, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice on the PSP is better than its 2006 predecessor. It has a more engaging and deliberate storyline. Your character’s stats are upgradeable, which loosens the difficulty setting. There is the occasional unique task to perform in a mission. And there are some finer touches to the sound design. But overall, the game does feel quite generic and uninspired. BigBig Studios really could have heightened the ironic enjoyment to be found in this game by subverting some of the clichéd missions and characters. Instead, you are left with a game that gets by on conventions already established by the Grand Theft Autos and God of Wars of the game world. It might be mindless fun to kill 20 minutes on the bus, but the experience won’t last for much longer than that.
Graphics: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Replay Value: 4.5/5
