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	DJ Hero 2 ³⁶⁰ PREVIEW: We try out Freestyle's revamped vinyl
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Halo: Reach gets 10 new screenshots | Call of Duty: Black Ops Hardened and Prestige editions confirmed | Halo: Reach announcement revealed | Xbox 360 Slim 250GB hard drives to be sold separately | Ice-T: Hates Medal of Honor, loves Kane & Lynch 2 | Vanquish gets Casual Automatic and God Hard difficulties | Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock songlist thus far | Gears of War 3 'Save/Kill Carmine' shirts now available | OXM subscription is half-price! | Xbox 360 Slim and PS3 Slim do battle | Blacklight: Tango Down nationwide tournament kicks off next month | BioShock 2 gets patched up | Kinect no good for flight games says Ubisoft | Battlefield: Bad Company 2 gets two more maps | What has been the biggest Xbox Live Arcade seller this year? | Xbox Live Arcade overcame slow start this year | Madden NFL 11 Terrell Owens screens revealed | Microsoft defends Kinect price | Halo PC unlocks Halo: Reach item | Transformers: War for Cybertron DLC hits today | Kane & Lynch 2 gets three new trailers | Red Dead Redemption heading to Japan | THQ creating yet another WWE franchise | Lord of the Rings and Smackdown hits Games on Demand | DJ Hero 'increasing DJ equipment sales'

On the site today - News: Halo: Reach gets 10 new screenshots http://bit.ly/agUjBR

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Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 ^XLA

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Review

Happy Tree Friends

6.0

25-Jun-2008 Happy happy joy j... wrong cartoon. Sorry.

Happy Tree Friends looks rubbish. Regardless of whether you've heard the cartoon or not, it's not the kind of game that will get your parents swooning over your 'Box Thingy 60' in the same way a Rez or an Ikaruga can hypnotise those who briefly gaze into its eyes.

The initial reaction when Happy Tree Friends was fired up was "rubbish", "stupid" and "why are you playing this?" It looks bland, boring and slow.

Yet for the person playing it, it's endearing, addictive and surprisingly fun. Happy Tree Friends is a compressed version of Lemmings - guide the Happy Tree Friends through a linear path to the end of the level using ice, fire and explosives. It has the same clever puzzles, linear progression and dark humour.

What undoes all the hard work are fiddly controls, which means they're never quite fast enough or slick enough to deal with the chaotic gameplay, with the screen scrolling a real problem as Happy Tree Friends swoop in and out of view whenever the level is more than a screne high. You get the sense on early levels that they're teetering on the brink and sure enough, as the speed increases and the chaos unfolds, the controls are the first to lose their nerve.

It's a shame because there are some clever ideas here that get lost behind the frantic screen wrestling as you try and figure out what is going on. Happy Tree Friends passable way to pass the time and given the lack of games that have tackled Lemmings style gameplay, it's entertaining enough.

Ryan King