Fighting games and I have a real love-hate relationship. I really enjoy them; right up until a friend comes over, hits the gamepad with their face and ends up winning matches. The other possibility is I practice, unlock every character and refine my skills, only for the game to then become less enjoyable with friends because I can just cream them. There are exceptions to this however, take Mortal Kombat for example, it’s not only fun to master but easy to enjoy and all my friends actually bought it. So Soul Calibur 5, is it any good? Well I should say so, it may be my first real experience with the Soul Calibur series but I know the genre well and it was definitely better than I expected.

Let’s start with the story, well Soul Calibur 5 definitely takes its story quite seriously, more serious than most in fact. Soul Calibur 5, in true fighting game style, leaves little to be desired and despite trying hard is quite cheesy. It’s called 1607 A.D., taking place 17 years after Soul Calibur IV and revolves around a young Patroklos searching for revenge and the two swords Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. Without giving too much away it is rather predictable and not exactly award winning but that really doesn’t matter does it. The story pushes you forward and keeps combat from being nothing but match after match, occasionally letting you duke it out against adversaries you otherwise wouldn’t get to fight. It is interesting at times and despite its flaws, much more enjoyable than many of the dry story modes served up with most fighting games.

Apart from the story mode, there’s all the sorts of offline modes you’d expect; arcade mode, versus mode, a quick battle mode, a training mode and a legendary souls mode. Legendary souls mode is for the more hardcore player and offers a more difficult arcade mode. Quick battle mode presents you with 4 custom characters (I’ll get to that in a minute) to which you can either challenge or swap out for 4 more characters to challenge. Each battle earns you titles, experience to level up and occasionally a fighting style. Of course there’s an online mode and contains all the features you’d expect from a current-gen fighting game; ranked matches, unranked matches and a rather interesting mode called global colesseo. Global colosseo mode places all players who join into a sort of randomly generated tournament where you move up as you win matches, leading to the two best players to duke it out in the finals. I did try this mode and it was very enjoyable but be warned, there are some insane players coming off of previous Soul Calibur games.

The result of playing online with little to no experience.

Character creation, told you I’d get to it, is back and far more creative and approachable than in Soul Calibur IV; and even more so as you unlock items by levelling up your rank. In character creation you are allowed to customise almost every aspect of what your character wears and what colour or pattern that item should have. This aesthetic skin is placed over the fighting style of a chosen character within the game and makes for a great way to individualise yourself from everyone else who chose the same character. Speaking of characters, there are a few new and many old faces to pit against each other. Of course guest character Ezio from Assassin’s Creed is present and has quite a unique fighting style to match his personality and well… career. It’s one of the larger rosters in the series and maintains a balance of unique fighters who each makes use of a very specialised fighting style. I’m surprised they wrung so much balance out of a weapon system that would seem to make combat quite chaotic.

Gameplay is where Soul Calibur has seen its biggest changes and quite a large change to what was considered the staple mechanics of the Soul Calibur series. Critical finishes and its accompanying soul gauge have been removed so there are no more instant kill opportunities in Soul Calibur V. Armour remains destructible but there is no longer a meter to gauge how destroyed a piece of armour is; the only sign your armour is wearing down is when it shatters off of your character should they take too many heavy blows. Additionally, and to allow for a set of super moves, rather than instant kills, there is a new super gauge that as it fills allows you to use ‘brave’ and ‘critical’ edge attacks that deal heavy damage. They work well enough and seem to balance out the style of combat the character uses; so some more damaging but harder to get in and this will correspond with the tank like character Nightmare. 8-Way-Run (I’m sure they could’ve thought of a better name) allows characters to easily side step their adversary with a quick double-tap of either up or down; something that is crucial in this game as blocking is nowhere near as effective as avoiding an attack all together. I should say that this aspect of combat is rather balanced and means that you can either block, a far easier move to execute, but leaves you open to grabs and other moves. Or you can dodge, which is harder to do as the opponent may read your manoeuvre, opening you to attack but also allowing for retaliation if done right. The final mechanic is called ‘just guard’ and if done correctly results in a ‘perfect’ guard, allowing for a considerably shorter time required countering the opponent. All in all the combat is quite balanced and seems to favour all styles of combat while not making any specific character overbalanced or open to exploit. There are a few characters who are still able to spam a move and create annoying situations though I am yet to play a fighting game where that isn’t the case to some extent.

Yoshimitsu using a critical edge.

Speaking of gameplay, the A.I can be quite brutal at times, something you’d expect from a fighting game, but can also be a bit dim-witted at the easier settings. That’s easy to get around and a quick change of the difficulty will fetch a more suited experience. There is one strange occurrence however, and seems to occur in modes like quick battle where different levels of character difficulty are meshed into one mode. What seems to happen is you’ll choose an adversary who seems relatively easy for the first round and about half way into another round when all of a sudden their difficulty kicks up 10 levels and you get creamed. The other aspect of A.I that might frustrate those new to the series, and without at least some modest level of skill, you might find the last stages of story mode to be surprisingly difficult when all previous matches were far less challenging. None of these A.I faults are game wrecking but can be annoying at times.

The one clear improvement over any other iteration in the series is obviously visuals. Soul Calibur V is a very pretty fighter and makes every effort to squeeze all the detail it can into its characters and levels. To work wonders with the visuals is a fitting and enjoyable sound track as well as smooth framerates, something vital to any tournament level fighter. Soul Calibur V is definitely one of the better looking fighters and makes up for what it lacks in some of the characters voices.

Soul Calibur is an enjoyable game, a great online fighter and will look good for a time to come. Its gameplay isn’t exactly new and employs many of the same characters the series has carried over since the first iteration. It’s definitely an evolution of the series rather than a revolution and despite being the same Soul Calibur we’ve come to expect, it does it rather well. The few hiccups it has are easily outweighed by its strengths and while it may not be my favourite fighter ever, it is far from my least.

We must always be wary of what lies underneath cute exteriors. Just because something is cute and cuddly doesn’t mean it isn’t hardcore and can rip the lashes right out of your eyelids. That pretty much sums up the experience of Fortune Summoners. It’s a game which at first seems right at home in typical JRPG cuteness with basic gameplay, but is every part as deceiving as the sum of its cuteness. The cuteness of the visuals is only a mere facade. What lies beneath is a challenging little gem from the developers at Lizsoft, and was published by Carpe Fulgur. Carpe Fulgur, an indie JRPG publisher, previously attracted the attention of western audiences with their RPG hit Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale.

Fortune Summoners is a hybrid of side-scrolling finesse and RPG action which provides both frenetic fun for the player and a challenging RPG which won’t hold your hand for long. Most of the game is spent journeying across the wilderness fighting monsters and exploring dungeons for loot and Elemental Stones. What are Elemental Stones you may ask? Well, the game’s tagline is based around Elemental Stones which are imbued with the power of an Elemental Spirit, like fire, water, earth and wind. These Elemental Stones grant the user the ability to use “magic”. The story is set in the land of Scotsholm where centuries have passed since the creation of the first Elemental Stones. Elemental Stones are now mass produced and are commonly used amongst all the people of Scotsholm.

In the game, you play as a young girl named Arche Plumfield who has moved with her parents into a new town called Tonkiness. Here, Arche attends Minase-Ratis Magic School. However, she lacks an Elemental Stone and so cannot participate in class. Yet she is quite skilled with a blunt sword which becomes of greater use in battles. So she sets off on a quest to find an Elemental Stone with her newfound friends: Stella Mayberk (a fire mage with a pompous attitude), Sana Poanet (a kind-hearted white mage) and Chiffon an innocent bunny-like creature with wind powers. What follows is a great adventure.

Gameplay-wise Fortune Summoners falls into two specific genres, namely JRPGs and side-scrollers combining the two into an effective combination, with some added puzzle elements. Basically, you utilise three basic characters in the game. You actively control one character whilst the remaining two are CPU controlled. Arche bears the brunt of physical attacks and uses her sword to mow down enemies in a flurry of combos that can be initiated with either your controller, or keyboard. This is really up to your preference. As you level Arche and the other girls up; so to are their skills and abilities levelled up. As you progress you unlock more combos for Arche to slash through with at enemies. Sana fulfils the role of healer within the party and can also provide water-based and ice-based attacks as an offensive counter-measure effective against both ground and air units. Stella on the other hand is more of an offensive mage than Sana and can take on a greater number of enemies than her, as Sana is more typically the support character in the arrangement. Battles in Fortune Summoners are fast paced and all over the place. You can jump from platform to platform in typical side-scrolling tradition dodging and thwarting the attacks of enemies whilst also dealing damage.

The RPG elements come into play when having to utilise more potent attacks as is the case with magic-based attacks like elemental fire attacks and ice-based shards which Sana can shoot from the sky. Managing your party’s mana and levelling them up accordingly, and not messing up are vitally important in Fortune Summoners. In Arche’s case, using the right combo can help to defeat the right enemy at the right time whilst not letting the two mages take damage. You have to constantly work out what move needs to be made carefully. This is part of Fortune Summoner’s RPG appeal which works well with the side-scrolling combat. Typically the game gives you access to the standard RPG menu where equipment can be equipped, new weapons can be chosen and magic spells can be chosen as preferences for the mages. From there, you can set out how you want to deal with combat situations which can vary from dungeon to dungeon depending on the enemy type you encounter. Enemies can range from simple slimes, to bats, to skeletons and even dragons. Add to this, a variety of intriguing puzzles in each dungeon and you have quite the variety. Puzzles are challenging in their own way as they usually require that the player use all of the abilities of party members to solve the conundrum set before them.

Aesthetically, the game clearly draws you in with cute sprite-based character models and bright colourful backgrounds which belie the true RPG nature of the game. The visuals work well and help to disguise the initial simplicity one presumes of Fortune Summoners. The sprites themselves are rendered exquisitely in up-scaled HD resolutions. The music is also very infectious, and when battles are at the ready the Final Fantasy-esque music of bygone days can be heard pumping in the background. But the game does have some faults which do need to be noted.

In the game, the controls can be clumsy at times with Arche and company having delayed reactions, and movement in turn becomes uncoordinated as enemies swoop and dash through your attacks. Movement issues extend to simple things like jumping which is a super human feat for all the girls in the party. All the girls can somehow jump up a cliff with a Superman-esque single-bound. In turn, this makes some of the platforming sections even more challenging and you’ll have to be prepared to die in combat as you can easily fall to your death without intending to. Other simple movements like dashing with characters were problematic on gamepads, with most attempts resulting in a change of the selected character. This I found to be infuriating when in the middle of dungeon and whilst attempting to dash along the platforms you mistakenly change characters, and fall to your death.

Inclusively, Fortune Summoners severely lacks save points in dungeons which whilst hardcore for some may be infuriatingly rage-inducing for others. I thought that the game lacked a major amount of incentive for dungeon crawling as loot was sparse in the huge dungeons, and poison traps were left in their wake. Battles became problematic as well. The AI for your party members in the game tends to be simplistic. As a result, you have to constantly change between characters when you may favour one character over another. But this could be more an issue with the level of difficulty than anything.

Overall, Fortune Summoners is a good title. The game itself has a fair amount of flaws, but simultaneously has some very positive points which might attract many JRPG and RPG fans. The game is indeed challenging and is well worth the suggested price. However, I can’t help thinking that Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is a far better game selling at roughly the same price, and does something more original than Fortune Summoners. Yet if you’re looking for a side-scrolling RPG fix then you can’t go wrong with Fortune Summoners.

‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ is a simple and short game, in fact, the most complicated part of the game is the title itself. If that puts you off however, let me assure you that despite its simplicity this game is a whole bunch of fun.

The Cat that Got the Milk is a charming, almost puzzle-like game where the player directs a small object as it moves from the left of the screen to the right. Moving the cat (I guess it’s a cat) up or down prevents it from moving towards the right; letting go of either direction means it continues on its incessant journey to the right. As the cat moves, it’s the player’s job to direct and avoid any objects in its way; any collisions will mean a return to the beginning of the current stage. And that’s it really, well Ok, some of the obstacles move and some are quite difficult, requiring a bit of patience, but that’s about it.

Now I’m sure you’re all familiar with how addictive simplistic gameplay can be, take Peggle for example, and ‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ doesn’t fail to deliver, making sure to keep you playing until you’ve finished every stage. That’s not always a good thing when some of these zombie state games can go on for hours and hours; happily though, The Cat that Got the Milk (I keep wanting to say ‘that got the hat’) his actually short and sweet. To compliment this, the game uses abstract art to represent the level and obstacles that need navigating and create a very pretty looking game in the process. Just look at the screenshots and tell me you aren’t attracted by the looks of it. If anything the game is even more aesthetically pleasing when viewed as you play it, though the encouraging and enjoyable audio track certainly helps.

Heed my advice; The Cat that Got the Milk will test your reactions. Not your speed or reflexes but the way you would normally play a game of this nature will almost certainly cause quite a few collisions. If you’re not exactly sure what I mean, play it and you’ll begin to understand. It requires a quick yet more relaxed sense of play and as a jumped up (and easily frustrated) individual I found the change of play style enjoyable.

All that’s left to say is download and enjoy it, here’s the link, have fun.

SOL Exodus is here, Freelancer fans it’s time to rejoice… well I mean there’ll probably be a sequel to look forward in the future, and that’ll be cool right. SOL Exodus says it’s a current-gen ode to past greats like Wing Commander and the aforementioned Freelancer, but who really believes what it says on the can. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair, SOL Exodus does promise, well at least the developers promise that, SOL Exodus:

SOL: Exodus is the first downloadable, 3D space-action game that leverages the power of modern graphics technology to deliver epic space battles featuring enormous capital ships, hordes of spacecraft, and beautifully rendered planetary battlegrounds in an action-packed, cinematic presentation reminiscent of TV shows and movies.

So I’ll give it a fair chance and compare the game’s presentation to its supposed promise.

Well the first part mentions that SOL Exodus is the first game to offer beautifully rendered visuals and modern graphics. I assume then that Seamless Entertainment (that’s the developer) hasn’t heard of X3 because well, I’m sorry to tell you this but they use modern graphical effects too and are a lot better at it. The game’s textures aren’t half bad but are nothing to write home about. The rest of the game’s aesthetics are quite good for an indie game but not quite good enough to warrant such a rave write-up about them. The biggest problem by far is that this attempt to do such detailed graphics, as an indie team, means that the rest of the game suffers.

To SOL Exodus’s credit (it’s kind of annoying to use caps lock for ‘SOL’ every time), it does make a genuine attempt to be cinematic and action-packed. If this was 2002 then it would most certainly be exactly that; however, this is 2012 and SOL Exodus really doesn’t cut the mustard. The cinematics are full of simplistic scenes and cheesy one-liners, it just feels like an old game and the story doesn’t really help. The story tells the tale of a Commander trying to save humanity; sounds very Master Chief or Commander Shepard-like doesn’t it? Well the problem is it’s all very generic and has no defining detail to separate it from every other space game ever invented. You’re supposed to be saving humanity with the aid of an A.I. I can’t remember, so I’m going to call her Cortana, and as Commander What’s-His-Name you use your fighter craft to defend against and thwart the efforts of COD (a concept I’m sure Azhar will approve of). COD is a fanatical religious group and I know COD stands for something but well, I don’t really remember that either. It’s all quite forgettable and I just don’t feel like I want to save this version of humanity. Religious fanatics (who I’m going to call the Chaos Space Marines rather than COD) are too overused and only really work if done well and let’s just say these particular Chaos Space Marines aren’t exactly winning SOL Exodus any prizes.

Gameplay wise, SOL Exodus isn’t as action-packed as I was lead to believe, this seems to be a trend now. There’s nothing wrong with the controls and the whole shooting-enemy-fighters mechanic seems solid and polished enough, but that’s again as far as it goes. The game doesn’t distinguish it in any way, it’s just fly to ship; shoot ship; change target; shoot next ship; rinse and repeat. There’s almost no variety in weaponry and the upgrade system is very limited offering only to give you a couple extra missiles or hull integrity for each point invested. It seems like Seamless Entertainment tried too hard to get what they thought an arcade space shooter should be like and forgot to make a game we’d love and enjoy instead. There is a hacking component to combat against the larger enemy ships where you can disable or change the target of their own arsenal or things like engines. The problem is it isn’t fleshed out enough and seems tacked on rather than integrated into the entire experience.

There is one aspect to SOL Exodus that remains completely faithful to the statement made by the developers, it is downloadable. Unfortunately, and in a year so full of AAA titles that they’re literally leaking out of my ear, I really can’t suggest such a generic indie game to anyone. Don’t get me wrong, there are some upcoming indie games to blow the pants off many AAA’s, like Torchlight 2 for example, but this is certainly not one of them. I don’t like to be mean about any game, that’s Azhar’s job, but I certainly can’t say anything nice about SOL Exodus either.

A side note to this is the hacking mechanic of SOL Exodus is called torchlight, and well as I heard torchlight I kinda wanted to play that and not play this. I wonder, is it fate?

I knew this day was coming.

I’ve been around long enough so it was just a matter of time, but finally I have something that allows me to rid myself of the reputation I’ve accrued, of being too soft on the games I review.

This then, is Blackwater.

They’re calling it an action FPS, designed for use with Microsoft’s motion-sensing Kinect technology.

What it actually is, however, is a steaming pile of turd.

Blackwater is an on-rails shooter that’s kind of like the Virtua Cop and Time Crisis games of old, but designed for Kinect so there is no fancy and cool-looking gun controller in your hand. You are the controller.

To that extent, the classification of the game as an action FPS is perhaps extremely suitable since this game will give you more of a workout than anything else. But you don’t want a workout, do you? You didn’t buy this game because you thought it was the new Zumba Fitness, you bought it because you wanted to kill things while pretending you have a gun in your hand.

Actually, that you bought it at all would make you something of an idiot or just a hopeless optimist at the very least.

The fact is, the lack of a controller means that most of the action feels about as contrived as it is, and all the game succeeds in doing is making you tired without really entertaining you, like something Zumba-esque would.

Don’t have a Kinect, or just don’t enjoy jumping around? No problem, the game supports a controller as well, but good luck hitting a thing with the shoddy control system that seems to almost punish you for not getting up and off your lazy ass to play the thing using motion controls.

I needn’t say this because the pictures are enough, but the game also looks atrocious. On-rails shooters have never broken records with graphical fidelity, but at the very least give us something that looks like it wasn’t made before Quake 2. The levels and textures are bland, uninspired and telling of a game that was made for the wrong reasons.

The game’s story tells of an elite group of mercenaries who call themselves Blackwater (a ‘private security’ group that actually does exist in real life — yes, this game is based on real-life mercs but that’s about the only cool thing you’ll find here) that are attempting to protect aid workers from a villainous warlord, or something like that…

To be honest, if you manage to follow the story at all then you deserve some kind of medal, or perhaps an Achievement, because for the life of me I tried but I couldn’t hear any of the dialogue thanks to the spoken audio being far softer than the rest of the game’s sounds, and the fact that each piece of story happens for five seconds at the start of each mission.

Missions themselves are spread out over stages, with multiple paths through each stage and pretty much nothing about the game changing throughout.

There are some collectibles to be found, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

To call this game bad would be an understatement.

It fails as any form of entertainment.

You won’t enjoy the gunplay because it’s contrived, lifeless and highly inaccurate on Kinect, and if you switch to a controller you might as well use your love handles to control your shots because that way you at least might accidentally hit something. You won’t enjoy the visuals because you saw them before in 1998 and most of it is brown and ugly anyway. You won’t enjoy the audio on offer because half the time there isn’t any, and when there is you’re too busy trying to hit something to concentrate on enjoying it. You won’t enjoy the story because there pretty much isn’t one that can be understood. And finally, the AI never does a thing other than standing and aiming at you. So no fulfillment there.

If you really must play this game, let it be because you’re tired of using things like Wii Fit and Zumba Fitness and want another way to work out, perhaps to the sounds of gunshots and explosions.

If I had to rate this game as a fitness title, I might have been a bit more lenient but nobody is going to look at the cover for this game and think: “Ooh, here’s a great way to shed a few kilograms.”

Nobody.

And that’s exactly who I would recommend this game for.

I get that it’s not a triple-A title, but really there are so many other games developed by entirely unknown studios, that are wholly better as an experience than this (I would know, because I’m playing a few of them right now), and actually cost a bit less to boot. This game wants to charge you close to triple-A prices for an abysmal experience, and that’s just not on.

Better on Kinect? Yeah, no.

Essentially, the game runs on combo system so depending on the amount of dust-related items you dispose of your score will be reflected as such. This also involves completing the level you’re on in as quick a time as possible because you are graded according to your completed time and your combo score. If you mess up and die your combo counter is restarted and you resume from a checkpoint within the level, similar to the checkpoint setup you get in Sonic. If you accumulate enough combo points and get a high enough score you can initiate an area effect special which rids an area of dirt with immense sweeping power.

There are four characters to pick from: a male janitor with a broom, a female janitor with a broom, a beret wearing female janitor equipped with feather dusters and an elderly male janitor who uses a vacuum cleaner. The game offers you a range of different levels to overcome, with a few starting levels to get the dust ball rolling. They are of course all different difficulties. Completing a level with a perfect score will unlock new ones, and so on and so forth.

Levels consist of vast ramps, inclines and obstacles to overcome with a persistence of spikes, falling rubbish bags, sludge, leaves and enemies whose dirty ways you have to combat. But since you are an acrobatic janitor no feat is unattainable. Simply you have to slide down dust covered slopes of sludge and leafy matter sweeping as you go along, doing flips over obstacles and hitting dust boys, dirt ninjas and sludge shooters. You can traverse ceilings, walls and inclines with simple slides and the use of speed and momentum.

Your character of choice can dash, jump, follow through with light and heavy sweep attacks. Also, your character’s special attack obliterates enemies within your radius. So accumulating enough bonus combo points and doing it in record speed means you can dish out loads of extensive damage upon your foes. Many of the levels whilst requiring enough speed to complete the challenge may also require exploration throughout for bonuses. With over 50 levels of varying difficulty you have to be conscious of where you leap and dash off of because you might miss something, or kill your character in the process.

Multiplayer in Dustforce increases the replay value of the game immensely. You and a friend can join in a local co-op and challenge other players online. If you don’t have a friend nearby you can also play against another player on a ” 1 vs. 1″ basis which is quite challenging. In these modes, you can play as either the janitors or a selection of enemies from the game. The janitors have to clean up a level in record time. Those playing as the enemy characters have to dirty the level to combat the sweeping of the janitors. This provides a great challenge for players.

Visually, the game is simple and has a bright colourful scheme throughout which livens up the platforming and combat sections tremendously. Character animations and physics within the game are impeccably well crafted. However, I cannot help thinking that the controls at times can be a bit tricky to get the hang of. The issue being that sometimes response times with the controls can be less than satisfactory on a keyboard. This issue was somewhat alleviated by using a controller which I feel should be recommended for the game. This is due to it’s sidecrolling platformer nature and general ‘arcade’ feel. Otherwise, the game flows quite well and with the help of a punchy upbeat electronic soundtrack the game is a overall fun experience.

If you enjoy platforming games then Dustforce is a sure recommendation for the avid fan. As an indie game it really shines with it’s great flow and fluidity in it’s gameplay design. But by the same token the controls may be a bit unresponsive at times when a challenge becomes complicated. But the nature of the game itself is trial and error. So expect to die a lot as you try to get that perfect score. Dustforce itself is a great game and is good value for money. Yet it’s not the best platformer available on Steam.

If there is one thing I absolutely cannot stand it’s when a studio takes a name from a popular and revered franchise, and butchers it with a cheap, uninspired spin-off title. A lot of this was seen on Sony’s previous handheld, the PSP, but so were some truly outstanding titles that made their console counterparts proud. Titles such as God of War: Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, Final Fantasy: Crisis Core and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker are some examples of portable games that delivered the same, if not better, experiences than the console games that made them famous. So when Sony announced Uncharted: Golden Abyss for the PS Vita, a burning question was asked. Could the PS Vita launch title match the cinematic, explosive and incredible experiences had on a PS3. In short, absolutely. But not only has Bend Studio provided a faithful Uncharted portable experience, they have also introduced features that Naughty Dog should seriously considered putting into their titles as well.

Before anything else though, let’s talk about story. The story has always been an outstanding feature in the Uncharted series, and Golden Abyss is no exception. Golden Abyss acts as a prequel to the entire Uncharted series, introducing us to Drake before his adventures during Drake’s Fortune. Drake has been brought in as a historical advisor by an old friend, namely Jason Dante. Drake and Dante are in search of none other than a forgotten treasure (this is Uncharted after all), which involves uncovering the dark secret behind a 400 year old Spanish massacre and picking up the murderous trail of their attackers. Not long into the game, Drake is introduced to Marisa Chase, the daughter of an archeologist who went missing a few months before, attempting to uncover the exact same secrets. On top of all this, a retired General is hot on the trail of the treasure too, in search of the forgotten riches in order to fuel is rebellion in Central America. It reeks of classic Uncharted lore, and is absolutely spot on with the rest of the series.

Since this game acts as a prequel, some might be worried that part of the incredible chemistry between characters may have been lost. While it’s true that every character is new, save for Drake and a certain someone that fans will immediately recognise, each new face brings tons of personality to the table. Marisa acts as this entry’s love interest, and while that may make her sound immediately generic and boring, her interactions with Drake are far from it. She has some particularly stand out moments, especially when it comes to the more emotional and tear jerking parts of the story. The General is as vicious as you’d expect, and there is certainly no shortage of wise cracks coming from Drake’s mouth and every turn. Uncharted is known for its memorable and developed characters, and Bend Studio did not take any shortcuts here. The script is as strong as always, and it’s fantastic to see so much of it in a portable game. Nolan North does yet another excellent job with Drake, and the new actors on the block really keep up with the pace.

At first, I was a bit worried about the story though. A few hours in, I could already see most of the twists unraveling before they actually did, and without the same scale of cinematic moments, it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay interested beyond the fantastic gameplay. However, as is with every other Uncharted, the story fails to disappoint in the end. Even before I had reached about halfway through this roughly 10 hour campaign (yes, 10 hours on a portable), I was fully engrossed in the story. There were many moments where I actually thought I was reaching the climax of the tale, only to be slapped with another twist and even more game time. Having an entirely new developing cast also helped keep my interest intact, as learning of Chase’s past and the General’s failed revolution added to the already explosive story that was unfolding.

And this is where Bend’s first real innovation really shone. In order to fully detail every character and event happening around you, Bend came up with something that I only realised was missing now. In previous Uncharted title, you hunted treasures in each Chapter for Trophies. Now, you hunt them for back story. Throughout the game, there are various different treasures that you’ll come across, from simple gems to pick up to photographs you have to replicate. Each treasure and discovery has a place within the narrative, making it really worth your while to stop and look for these items. While the journal does tell you which chapter they are located in, this does not make them easier to find. Locating charcoal rubbings and items to investigate can be difficult, and even the regular glinting treasures are more of a challenge to see against Golden Abyss’s extraordinary backdrop.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss is absolutely jaw dropping for a portable title. In fact, it’s probably better than a few console games. With stunning jungle scenery that breaks into a gorgeous sunset into the background, to dark underground caverns with a soft lighting, the visuals are truly top notch. The is probably why I became so engrossed in this title immediately. Gone is the massive visual gap between portable and console gaming. Uncharted: Golden Abyss truly shows that console level gaming is indeed possible on the move. While Drake may not have the same amount of unique animations that he did in Uncharted 3, there is no doubt they you’ll as quickly forget about it as soon as you see how smooth the entire game is. Taking slow trips down rivers in the jungles are truly standout moments, however there are some small issues that did catch my attention.

Most noticeable is the occasional drop in framerate during intense fire fights. I say occasional because while they may have only cropped up three or four time during the campaign, they were noticeable enough to bother me. Thankfully the rest of the game runs smoothly, and with more emphasis on climbing and exploration, you’ll probably forgive the 10 second slowdown after an hour of seamless navigation. Another thing is fire. Yes, fire. For some reason, the fire effects in Golden Abyss seem somewhat out of place. While everything around it screams with artistic delight and eye-popping detail, fires look pixelated and old for this day and age. It’s not really that serious, but it just seems a bit odd that Bend could pull off crystal clear running water and a beautiful sunset in real time, and then fail on the occasional fire here and there. Other than that, prepare yourself to be as lost as Drake becomes in the jungles of Central America, and marvel at what a launch title can already squeeze out of the PS Vita.

But what would an Uncharted game be with outstanding gameplay? Thankfully, Golden Abyss retains the same level of quality gameplay you’d expect, and Bend Studios have adapted many things to suit the Vita’s expansive control elements. As you would expect, you’re going to do a lot of climbing, a lot of shooting, and even more running. If you’ve played Uncharted before, then you’ll feel right at home straight away, as Golden Abyss plays and handles just as you’d expect it too. Drake retains the same style of running and climbing, and still knows how to wield a weapon effectively. Weapons come in all shapes and sizes, and most of the series signature weapons make an appearance. With dual thumbsticks, shooting from cover is a breeze, and it honestly feels like you’re playing with a controller from the get go. What is really amazing are the things that you can’t do with a normal controller.

Obviously, I’m referring to the Vita’s various other control elements, namely touch and accelerometer controls. Melee combat is where touch controls probably shine the brightest. Just as in previous title, you’re often going to get up and close with most enemies, meaning that a few swift punches are more effective than blind shooting. Just as on a console, one button is dedicated to these offensive moves, but you could also just touch the swing to take the next swing. In each encounter though, you’ll be forced to use the touch screen near the end in order to bring down the final blow, making each brawl exciting and dynamic. Touch also becomes an option with climb, and serves to make it even easier than it already is at some points. If you don’t feel like hitting X every time you want to jump for a ledge, then why not just touch it with your finger? Better yet, why don’t you draw a climbing path for Drake and watch him tackle it in the exact way you wanted? All of this is possible, and extremely responsive. I never once found Drake jumping for a ledge that I didn’t select, even when it looked like my finger had hit three different ledges simultaneously.

Close calls also require more interaction this time around, with you having to quickly swipe your fingers across the screen every time Drake gets brave and nearly falls to his death. This makes his daredevil (yet impressive) climbing sections all the more interactive, and even more enthralling than on consoles. Gunplay has also been given its fair share of touch screen love. Picking up weapons now takes place on the touch screen, with a gun icon popping up every time you walk over a weapon. Throwing grenades is the best it has ever been in the series, allowing you to get pinpoint accuracy with your finger tips. If you’re not up for throwing with your fingers however, you can still blindly throw grenades with the hit of a button. Probably the best adaption is the ability to fine tune your targeting using the Vita’s accelerometer. While using the thumbsticks is still as responsive as you’d expect, making small adjustments to your aiming by tilting your device is so responsive, that you’ll probably wonder how you ever lived without it. This is probably most noticeable when using snipers, where running your fingers down the rear touch pad allows you to fine tune your zoom level while lining up your shot to perfection.

With such an emphasis on exploration, Bend also made sure that exploring new items was as entertaining as it possibly could be. You’ll come across various charcoal rubbings, that require you to rub the rear touch pad as if you were rubbing down the item itself, and you’ll often have to clean artifacts found in order to study them further. While it is a great way to show off just how well the Vita’s more “gimmicky” features can be used, they offer no real challenge, and after a while the novelty wears thin. Most of the puzzle you under take involve touch, but they too are often also far too easy. Solving combination locks and statue based puzzles are as fun as they sound, but having Chase tell you every time if you’re right or wrong leads to it becoming a hit or miss chore. Thankfully, later on in the game, the puzzles start increasing in difficulty and enjoyment, and feel more familiar to what the series is famous for.

Drake also has a camera this time around, and it really is puzzling why this feature wasn’t thought of before. In your journal, you’re given various photography challenges that require you to take a photo of a certain piece of scenery, from a certain distance, with a certain amount of zoom. The camera’s zoom is also controlled with the rear touch pad, while titling the Vita makes fine adjustments to where you’re looking while zoomed. Completing these challenges require a 100% replica to what you’re given, and while this is not always that difficult, it is entertaining and rewarding. Whipping out your camera and taking a photo of literally anything at any moment is also possible, storing each image on your memory card. The Vita’s camera is also utilised at one point, in an extremely inventive way, but I feel that explaining it would destroy the effect it had on me. Needless to say, I grinned when I figured out what to do, and it truly showed Bend really thought of every way to use the Vita they possibly could. Most importantly, most of the features are completely optional and not forced, meaning that you can play Uncharted the way you’re used to, if you wish.

When you consider Uncharted: Golden Abyss as a launch title, then the real work that Bend put in starts to show. As one of the first games on the system, Golden Abyss could prove to be one of the best the device will ever receive, as topping this near flawless experience will be a feat. I like to compare Golden Abyss to the first Uncharted, purely because I think Bend can take this game to all new heights. If you consider Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, it still stands as one of the best PS3 out there, and it’s sequels only improved on the formula. If Bend can keep that pattern up with their portable series, and keep it from feeling like spin-offs, then buying a Vita may become a requirement for Uncharted fans.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss is easily the best launch title Sony could’ve hoped for. Firstly, it shows off excellently that experiences on a console can be replicated, and even beaten, on a portable scale. Secondly, it is a real show of how impressive the Vita really is, and sets the bar for developers currently making games for it. It shows how to utilise all of the Vita’s elements perfectly, as well as add to a tried and tested formula. While there are some issues that exist, most of them are minor, and I have no doubt that Bend will easily improve them if they plan to make a sequel for the Vita. I remember buying a PSP just to play Final Fantasy: Crisis Core. I could easily say the same with the Vita and Uncharted: Golden Abyss. If you’re an Uncharted fan, and you’re not planning on buying a PS Vita for this game, then you’re absolutely insane.

If you had to dig inside the head of your typical Sega fanboy and remove every memory of Sonic in all of the games that were released featuring the speedy blue hedgehog, you would get something of a better idea of exactly what Sonic Generations is attempting to achieve.

The game is more of a celebration than anything, of the last twenty years of Sonic games — at least, the good ones — but with a fresh high-definition coat of paint slapped on. It is an amalgamation of the core concepts of both the 2D-platformer worlds of the classic games, and the 3D-platformer worlds of later entries into the series.

This game is basically a mash-up of all things Sonic, and as such is a must-buy for every fan of the Sonic series who ever dared to appreciate blazing rapidly through levels as a little blue, humanoid animal.

But what about the rest of the world?

As with most of the recent entries in the Sonic series of games, Sonic Generations does in fact have some story behind it; Sonic is cheerfully celebrating his birthday with friends but it all goes to shit as an inter-dimensional rift opens up and swallows everything whole. Sonic later awakens missing his friends and must seek them out by racing through and restoring various familiar levels that featured in previous titles.

That’s not all though and as an added twist, the inter-dimensional rift happened to also swallow a different version of Sonic, effectively meaning that there are two versions of the blue hedgehog from, let’s call them parallel universes, that must seek out their friends and then save them from the clutches of– we’ll get to that in a bit.

The two Sonic characters, Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic as they’re known in the game, have very distinct play styles that both centre around excessive speed, but diversify in execution.

Classic Sonic keeps things traditionally 2D with all levels strictly side-scrolling, and pretty much as you would remember them from way back when, be it the enemies, the rings, the powerups or the methods of navigation. It’s all very much an ode to the old. For some reason this Sonic is also shorter, slightly lighter, and for the most part a mute.

Modern Sonic is stylistically similar to recent entries in the Sonic series in that his levels are 3D for the most part with you running ‘into the camera’ as it were, but there are also parts where you end up side-scrolling through the level as well. Definitely the more interesting of the two even if a bit more frustrating to play, Modern Sonic’s levels will go from 3D to 2D and back again, with the lock-on controls and jump pads that you know from the modern forays. Modern Sonic is also taller, a darker shade of blue, and able to communicate with actual speech.

The game world consists of what could only be described as an extra-dimensional limbo of sorts where various levels from the previous Sonic games are featured as areas that must be restored, first by travelling through and completing the initial stage — basically the level in its entirety — and then through various challenges that range from using one of Sonic’s powers to achieving a certain goal within some time limit.

Completing each of the initial stages will save one of your friends and unlock the challenges for that area. Upon completing one of those challenges, a key will be unlocked for you to collect. For every three keys you collect, you unlock a story-related boss fight that unlocks new stages for you, and the cycle repeats.

There are also various miscellaneous boss battles not related to the game’s story that you may play through.

Since there are two Sonics this time around, each stage has two Acts associated with it, forcing you to switch between Sonics in order to clear every challenge for that stage. While this does mean that you would effectively have to complete each challenge twice, the actual challenges for each Sonic differ in their execution and the levels themselves are varied enough that you end up actually looking forward to doing so in any case.

Apart from that, there is a tonne of unlocks available for either version of Sonic that includes but is not limited to artwork, music and various power-ups, some that allow you to call in friends to help you out in stages.

There is a lot of ‘game’ to be found in this game, and a fan of Sonic series would be quite at home with this title. For the rest of us, it would depend on how much you enjoy arcade-like platformers.

Don’t get me wrong when I call it arcade-like. There are many, many hours to be lost in this game, completing all the challenges and unlocking everything, but Sonic Generations is most certainly not going to win any awards for story-telling or cinematics. I mean, inter-dimensional rifts that bring together two different kinds of Sonic that must then work together to save both dimensions from an evil time and space traversing enemy that threatens to destroy all of space-time? It’s almost laughable.

See, this is basically Sega finally keeling over and giving in to the rage from Sonic fanboys who have longed for a return to the ways of the classic games in the series, but at the same time offering up a means of showing said fanboys that the classic can be mixed with the modern in a way that works for all.

Whether they actually managed to achieve that depends on how much of a fanboy you are, but all for intents and purposes it certainly seems as though they have, with seamless integration of both perspectives in all the modern stages, and enough of the classic stages to keep the rest happy anyway.

The game also looks great. As it should, being a title released for the current generation of consoles. Be it the classic or modern levels, everything looks pretty and aesthetically delightful, with crisp textures and excellent character animation abound. The contrast between the classic and modern versions of each character and level is also a neat touch that really shows off the polish of the game.

The music is suitable to the arcade nature of the game, with many tracks being very upbeat and ‘happy’ for lack of a better word. It’s a Sonic title, so you expect as much.

There is an online component of the game, but it is limited to ranked scoreboards and speed-runs, and as such it still keeps things strictly singleplayer but allows you to compete with friends for times as well.

Sega have really pulled no punches with this game, and offered up a title that really cannot fail at pleasing everyone. It’s not the perfect Sonic game by any means, but it’s pretty much the best of the series for a very long time.

It’s equal parts challenging as it is entertaining, and a proper throwback to the days of old where running through Green Hill was all you needed to enjoy yourself. Sonic has finally got a game that everyone should play. And it’s about damn time.

Tower defence has been made popular by its many mapped iterations within Warcraft 3. Since then, a horde of clones and wannabes has moved in to make a quick buck off of that success, subsequently creating a tower defence genre in itself. From mods, to maps to games in their entirety, I have always been a fan of the tower defence genre. That being said, it’s one of those genres I don’t get to spend a whole of time rummaging playing. As such, I usually find myself playing the first couple stages of any tower defence I come across, then, and if it’s a decidedly addictive waste of a few weeks, well I keep playing.

Unstoppable Gorg is a tower defence genre that pays homage to the 1950’s and all the wacky black & white sci-fi that ensued from that period. The theme is executed well and employs old school aesthetics to drive it home. The 1950’s styled audio track is a charming attempt that suits the brightly styled visuals really well. I must point out that the audio track is used a little too often, though it never quite managed to get on my nerves. The cinematics between each stage is done as a black & white news report, the kind you’d expect from the period. I especially enjoyed all of the special effects I would imagine occurred, like the clear use of models held up by string for ships and space stations. Gorg himself, the alien overlord set on destroying all of humanity, makes the odd appearance and I’ve laughed a couple times at the whole presentation, and believe you me, a chuckle a day keeps the nerd at play.

So it looks and feels good, but in a genre defined by a singular game mechanic, that of tower defence, Unstoppable Gorg needs to do this well for me to bother with the purchase. In this regard I’m happy to report, Unstoppable Gorg’s claim to be revolutionary as a tower defence game is done very well and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I feel I should explain what makes Unstoppable Gorg so revolutionary. Rather than be another standard, run of the mill tower defence, Unstoppable Gorg, rather brilliantly, has added the ability to place your towers (or in this case satellites) on specific points within the orbits around the space stations you’re protecting. Once the towers are placed on these points, you are able to freely rotate those orbits and so reposition your towers to best suit the changing routes of the attackers. Moreover, each tower is able to continue shooting while being repositioned, thereby allowing the player to keep towers continuously focused on specific enemies. Finally, the enemy attackers are able to attack your towers and so towers need to be switched and repaired, or need to move to avoid fire altogether. It’s not overly complex but the ability to rotate your orbits, and so move your towers, puts a demand not only your strategic ability but your quick thinking tactical side. Because of this, and rather enjoyably, Unstoppable Gorg has a relentless pace at times, an enjoyable change from the usually slow approach to standard tower defence games.

On top of the revolving orbit style of play, Unstoppable Gorg gives the ability to place other support styled towers that aid by collecting research points and additional cash. Research points allow the player to upgrade towers before the start of play, upgrades that can make quite a difference if used correctly. The other enjoyable addition is set challenges within each stage of play. Completing challenges, like don’t let your home space station take damage, grants you with the opportunity to better any stage you’ve already attempted as well as unlocking new challenge levels that will test you even more. This adds to an essential aspect of any tower defence, replayability.

All in all, Unstoppable Gorg is a thoroughly enjoyable tower defence that has become one of my favourites alongside the likes of Plants V.S. Zombies and Defense Grid. If you’re looking for a tower defence game, Unstoppable Gorg is it. There are a couple that are just as good as Unstoppable Gorg, but none of those have the charm or quite frankly, the awesome 1950’s theme to them. Emperor Gorg is like one of those evil bad guys from Power Rangers and he wants to destroy you, so buy the game and show him what’s what.

For a long time now, the world has waited patiently for a portable device that was able to take the experiences you encounter on a console and put them in your pocket. A portable device that could deliver stunning graphics, intuitive and on-par gameplay, multimedia entertainment and more. Sony’s first PSP may have paved the way for portable gaming around the world, and while the PS Vita may not be a redefinition regarding how we play portably, it is certainly the closest thing you’re going to get to console gaming outside of your home. However, a few business decisions and the ever growing competition could prove fatal to Sony’s flagship handheld, regardless of the quality it brings to the table.

When I first booted up the PS Vita, I was excited and ready to be introduced to a new form of portable play. I owned a PSP, but never really got into it as it was unable to give me the same experiences that I was able to get playing a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. So, I was excited, but skeptical at the same time, and after a few hours I was a bit worried as well. I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy my PS Vita more than my PC which was just a few meters away. It was console gaming on the move, but I wasn’t “on the move”, so the appeal nearly vanished. But Sony didn’t design the PS Vita to contend with consoles. It designed it to provide an optimal portable gaming experience, and after taking it along over a weekend away, I saw Sony’s hard work in action.

To say that the Playstation Vita is a console in your pocket is probably the most accurate description I can give the device. The device is fairly big, meaning that a snug fit in your back pocket may not be an option, but tossing it in a backpack or jacket pocket is still on the cards. Considering the times, this is not essentially such a big deal, especially since our pockets are usually filled with our big smartphones and IPods anyway. The big size allowed Sony to squeeze in more features and control options at the sacrifice of size, which was a smart move on their part.

Probably the biggest new control option is the inclusion of two comfortable thumbsticks over the bizarre single one on the PSP. Having two thumbsticks opens up more possibilities for games on the PS Vita, and takes a a huge leap forward in feeling more like a console on the move rather than a hardware spin-off. The casing is made entire out of plastic, though it feels thick and hard, so it could probably survive a drop or two. Just don’t go throwing the thing at walls and expecting it to bounce back. Sony sadly stuck with the glossy finish for the product, meaning that your new device will go from a pristine, shiny new console to a fingerprint littered mess in only a few minutes out of the box. The gloss gives the product a premium look out of the box, but it’s baffling that Sony didn’t choose a matte finish instead. It’s a device that is going to be touched and fiddled with a lot, surely that should’ve warranted a bit more thought into a gloss-free design?

Besides the utterly blind gloss decision, the rest of the Vita is actually very well designed. Buttons click down in a manner that feels more like a mouse click rather than a traditional controller press, but the change is welcomed. The buttons are smaller, but you’ll never find yourself hitting more buttons than you wish. Thumbsticks don’t click down and aren’t the same size as their controller counterparts, but their rubber surface makes them easy to use and control, even after extended hours of play. I found myself occasionally having to re-adjust my grip every now and then, especially when prompted to use the rear touch panel, but other than that the PS Vita is comfortable and practical to use and hold, which is a real accomplishment considering its size.

However, the really outstanding feature of the Vita has to be its stunning display. Sporting a 5′ OLED display, the Playstation Vita’s screen is a vast improvement over the PSP, and it’s not hard becoming engrossed in your game with a screen as gorgeous as this. Colours are vivid and deep, and while it my not be HD, it certainly gets close. However, there is still a major issue with glare. Step outside into the sunlight with your Vita, and it practically becomes unplayable. I even struggled sometimes on an overcast day, especially when playing games with a dark setting. This issue can be fought to an extent by notching up the brightness, but then you’ll be faced with an alarming battery life drop. On the standard brightness, the Vita’s battery lasts an impressive 5-6 hours, which is astonishing considering the hardware and graphical capabilities on the device.

Then comes Vita’s more “gimmicky” features. I say “gimmicky” mainly because that is exactly what I thought of them when first shown off at E3. The front and rear touch panels may seem like a cheap gimmick employed by Sony to raise the price for more real reasons, but they actually come into play very well with the device. It may not be explicitly apparent when you first boot up the device and everything you do involves touch, but after a bit of time with Welcome Park and especially Uncharted: Golden Abyss, it is apparent that these two features could form another layer of gameplay. For instance, in Uncharted, when Drake nearly misses a jump, the touch screen comes into play rather than Drake miraculously making the catch by himself. The rear touch pad is used to make charcoal rubbings and clean objects, making you feel as though you actually hold the object in your hands. The built-in accelerometer also aids with aiming and sniping, and even the camera is utilised in some interesting ways. If all developers utilise the Vita’s hardware in a similar way, then the features cease being gimmicks and rather add an interesting layer to your gameplay.

The Vita also does a great job of introducing you to all these and more new features using an application called Welcome Park. Basically, instead of just prompting text bubbles to pop up and tell you about each new feature, Welcome Park designs some mildly entertaining minigames that utilise each new feature that the Vita has to offer. Games that involve touching numbers in order, peeling away numbered tiles, solving tile puzzles that use a picture you took with the camera and more all help you understand the Vita’s already easy to use features, and even rewards you with Trophies for doing so. Sadly, the rest of the UI isn’t as friendly with you.

With the PS Vita, Sony decided to ditch the sleek XMB design that they have used in the past in favour of a more smartphone looking UI. Applications all have their own bubbles that require touch, and each application can be minimised and “peeled away” when not in use. While the multitasking aspect is appreciated, the whole look and feel of the UI feels like a step back. Rather than just redesigning the XMB design to work with touch and controls, the new UI can only be operated with touch. App bubbles don’t look that nice, and while you can rearrange them in order you want, there is no way to sort them into folders or delete icons that aren’t in use. Deleting an icon deletes the program, so what you’re stuck with is an ever growing list of bubble icons, which is even more aggravating when you take into account that each new game you play will come with its own icon. It’s cumbersome, annoying and not practical at all.

But despite all of this, the biggest problem that Sony might face from the Vita is the price needed to actually get one up and running. It was a slightly underhanded move for Sony to come out and say at E3 that their console was going for $249 for the WiFi option, and only $299 for the 3G/WiFi version. It didn’t sound that bad at all at the time, though Sony failed to mention that you’d need to spend more in actuality. I’m mainly speaking of the Vita’s memory cards here. Since there is no internal memory, a memory card is essential and not an optional accessory for the Vita. Now, this wouldn’t be such an issue of Sony didn’t make the things so obscenely expensive. I mean, R500.00 for a 16GB memory card? It’s ridiculous, and it could end up meaning a lot less sales for Sony.

To put it more into perspective, let me break it down. Say you’re looking for just the WiFi version, and you’d like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and an 8GB memory card. That bundle itself already costs around R3300.00, which is already more expensive than a 320GB Playstation 3 bundle with Uncharted 3 by R300.00. If you want to compare it to direct competition, the Nintendo 3DS only comes in at around R1799.00, which is over R1000.00 less. With this type of pricing, Sony is going to struggle to make initial sales when the device first drops around the rest of the world, as most people are probably going to wait for the inevitable price cuts, regardless of the fact that this is an amazing product.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to test out certain features such as the Playstation Store and Remote Play with the Vita yet, as some features will only make their debut when the device makes its global release on February 22nd. However, from the week I have spent so far with the Vita, I am beyond impressed. It will only truly hit you how amazing this device is when you get to try it out for yourself. Although Sony might need to focus on the market and prices in order to garner a more widespread appeal, the fact remains that the Playstation Vita is the most powerful, smart and impressive solution to portable gaming yet. If you love your console, gaming on the move, and won’t settle for anything but the best, then the Playstation Vita is exactly the product you should be purchasing.

Cave Story Plus is an updated version of the original Cave Story released in 2004 and developed by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya over a four year period. The culmination of his effort resulted in a sidescrolling platform adventure following in the footsteps of Metroid, Castlevania and Mega Man.

The premise might at first glance seem outdated but its execution turns the game into one of the most endearing indie games of all time. It is very simple. The story of Cave Story follows the adventures of Quote a young robot who becomes stranded in the cavernous interior of a floating island. Suffering from amnesia Quote awakens with no memories and through explorations of the interior discovers the nefarious acts of a mad doctor named the Doctor. He forces the denizens of the cave (the Mimigas) to fight for him in order to conquer the world, and in turn Quote fights back.

That’s the basic gist of Cave Story’s story and it doesn’t become more complex than that. On the visual front, the game is a vastly different experience to many indie games out there. The game embraces a classic 2D aesthetic reminiscent of classic sidescrolling platforming games. Cave Story’s colour scheme is bright and colourful. The character sprites are brilliantly animated and expressive. In this new version, the game has improved visuals displaying higher definition quality graphics and support for higher resolutions. The beauty of the update is that you can switch between the original visuals and the new visuals.

The gameplay of Cave Story is where the game really shines. The level types change across the game with water based levels, levels with huge spikes and various obstacles, and even grass meadows where friendly cuddly enemies greet you. You can manoeuvre Quote through the various environments, dodge enemies from left to right whilst jumping from platform to platform. You collect power-ups which can be used to upgrade your available weapons from a simple peashooter of a gun to a massive bazooka that deals area damage to enemies.

Cave Story incorporates many RPG elements with an inventory, upgradeable weapons and the fact that you can collect Life Capsules which upgrade your HP bar. Also, if you collect yellow triangles Quote can utilise more powerful forms. Character interactions are also an important part of Cave Story’s gameplay design where decisions affect the storyline’s development. So in the game’s finale there are different possibilities for the ending.

The game is quite challenging and it’s easy to see that the game prides itself on not being a walk in the park, or acid trip coloured wonderland. One careless mistake may leave your health bar greatly diminished. But checkpoints all across the game add balance to Cave Story’s overall gameplay dynamic. The game cleverly combines the best of 2D sidescrolling games and being developed by one man is a testament to what good game development is about.

The soundtrack is still as great as ever and harkens back to the NES, SNES and Sega Genesis with MIDI gloriousness. The score fits the retro design of the game to a tee. Cave Story comes together as a whole package, and is considered by many to be one of the premier games that started the movement towards the popularisation of indie games.

Now the game is available for purchase on Steam and deserves a great deal more attention. The greatest plus is that you’re purchasing both the original Cave Story and the enhanced version with updated HD visuals, and higher resolutions. Cave Story Plus is a true indie gem and an unappreciated game. I suggest you give it a try.

EA once again bangs its head against an excruciatingly painful wall as it continues to try and restore the Need for Speed franchise to its PS2-era glory but that doesn’t mean Need for Speed: The Run is particularly bad. No, it’s just a disappointment and a letdown so let’s break it down to find out why.

If you’re reading this then you either really like my writing (which I highly doubt) or you’re here out of blind curiosity (which is entirely plausible) and you’ll more than likely be wondering why this review is exactly two months late. Well, it was going to be a month and 3 weeks late but I like round numbers and I only received The Run several weeks after it released by which point I was only a couple of weeks post-op after having major surgery so I was not in fighting form to tackle this review. Yes, pity me. Suffice to say, I’m back to maximum strength and am keen to put The Run behind me. So without further ado, Autobots roll out.

Normally I wouldn’t nitpick at the story of a racer because well, that’s like dissecting a porn star’s acting performance but The Run has it coming because of the sheer emphasis thrown on it. The game bills its single-player campaign as thrilling and action-packed. They even got Michael Bay to direct a TV commercial for the game to show just how Hollywood the whole thing was. Ultimately The Run, which is not only the name of the game but also its single-player campaign, is a bitter disappointment.

You play as Jack Rourke, a down on his luck fellow who’s run into some trouble with the mob or something and gets offered a lifeline by a contact called Sara who fronts the quarter of a million entrance fee to participate in The Run – a cross-country race from San Francisco to New York with a $250 million windfall. It’s reminiscent of the old Cannonball Baker races and comparable to the high-profile Gumball 3000. Jack has a talent for racing and so must put this to use in the race of his life. It’s not a bad premise but it never moves anywhere beyond that. For the entire hullabaloo about the single-player they could have at least thrown in a few plot twists that we’d have seen coming from a hundred miles away.

You start The Run somewhere around 200^th place and must make your way to the front of the pack by the time you hit New York with certain targets that need to be met at various cities such as reaching Chicago in 50^th. That’s really about the size of it, there are a few scripted sequences once you hit the cities but it doesn’t amount to anything that can be called a plot.

That said, this scripted, cinematic approach does yield some great sections of gameplay such as one race where you’re fighting off a rival racer on a closed off road when parts of the mountain you’re driving down start getting blown up and you have to swerve and dodge falling debris; or when you have to outrun the mob in Chicago. They are both high-octane sequences that typify what The Run should have been all about but bits like these are few and far between and for the most part you’ll just go from one section to another and it all begins to feel a bit too similar. Mercifully, this feeling never becomes too overwhelming because of the game’s staged layout.

There are 10 stages, each with several sections but what sets each apart is that the terrain, roads and environment are noticeably different in each.  The icy roads of Colorado are very different to the flat plains of the Midwest which are even more different to the twisting mountain lanes of Yosemite National Park.

The stages are made of sections which are all one of three types of races. You’ll either have to do a standard sprint where you need to gain a certain number of positions or you’ll have to make up time in a time-trial. The third is a battle against one, two or three opponents and this is occasionally the game’s attempt at a boss fight of sorts.

Often while a battle race is loading you’ll be given a quick bio on your opponent. You’ve never met them in the game, never seen them in a cutscene but are simply told a bit about them and must immediately regard them as important. These ‘bosses’ are no more difficult to beat than any other opponent in a battle and you could do just as well without the background information. In fact, not a single one of the bio’s should give you any reason to go out of your way to beat that driver or run them off the road. Never once does it say, “This driver plans to use the prize money to build a palace for him and his 200 teen sex slaves.”

Also, Jack himself is the first actual protagonist in a Need for Speed title but he may as well be the faceless set of hands we’re used to seeing grip the steering wheel because his only real purpose seems to be for the QTE’s.  That said, he still has more character than Desmond Miles despite having the shifty eyes of someone suffering from Anatidaephobia. Black Box even went through the trouble of roping in some Sports Illustrated models to play two of the ‘bosses’ who even get their own cutscene where they bend provocatively over their cars’ engine bays but they look awful and move as sensually as Cavie’s Hawke blow-up doll (Sorry Jes, you were going to find out anyway).

That said, the game still has that intense action-packed feel to it. The way the other racers are constantly at your heels or in your face and how you are always kept on your toes makes for an exhilarating experience and it’s a good thing that you can get through the game before lunch – with the single-player campaign clocking in at around 3 hours – because things start to feel a little hum drum by the two hour mark. You get tired of the same type of race sections over and over with no marked increase in difficulty since the AI never really ramps up.

Despite this, The Run is challenging, even on Normal difficulty because you are given minimal margin for error in some respects. Part of it is honest to goodness old-fashioned challenging gameplay but a lot of it is down to sloppy game design and hateful AI. It’s a good thing then that you can choose to restart from the last checkpoint up to 10 ten times in a race. For example, if you don’t brake properly or slow down dramatically on certain bends, you will oversteer and no matter what you do to correct you will run off the road and plunge 200ft to Jack’s death. There are also some frightfully narrow gaps in some of the traffic you need to race through.

Let’s be thorough here and run through everything. Cops will be coming at you and swerve to form ad-hoc road blocks which you must then slow down significantly to avoid. You can be directly behind an opponent trying to draft them and they will pull off to the side only for you to be met with a truck hurtling towards you and no time to do anything about it. The game is also sloppily designed in so many ways. You will often round a fast bend and meet head on with a car that came literally out of nowhere. Traffic also pops up out of nowhere sometimes and there are times when there are cars on both sides of the road and the gap between them is so impossible that you’d be better off trying to  flip your car on its side and drive through the gap like that. The game also has a bad habit of putting traffic right on the other side of a hill crest so speeding over a hill like any self-respecting racer rewards you with a spectacular front-on-roof collision and a restart from the last checkpoint.

All of these issues mean that you cannot play The Run flat out and drifting around every corner the way you should be able to. Instead you have to use heavy-braking and caution over hills as if this were Forza 4. The only difference is that we play Forza for that sort of realistic driving whereas we play NFS for fun arcade driving. The Run’s gameplay is tending a bit too much toward simulator and I can’t fathom out why that is. All that this means is that The Run does more to frustrate and annoy than challenge you.

What about those blasted QTE’s? There aren’t many, for which I’m eternally grateful but they aren’t terrible (although QTE’s should be buried and forgotten). Instead they just feel forced as if they needed something to fill those gaps in the game. It doesn’t help that they serve virtually no purpose seeing as how there is no story to speak of and therefore they amount to nothing more than ‘shit that happens to Jack when he enters a city’.

Let’s talk cars. There are a lot of them in The Run but not a lot of them are available for the campaign. There’s a lot of variety and everything from classic rally cars to imports to hyper cars and just about everything that matters in between. They even have the original Golf GTi. A nice touch is that each car has a handling rating ranging from ‘Easy’ to ‘Difficult’ which is helpful if you’re about to race on say, the icy roads of Colorado where handling is key. During various races there are petrol stations that you can pull into to change cars if you so wish. You can also tune your car which in this game is considered to be choosing the paint colour and maybe one of three or four body kits. I don’t recommend making a stop for pure aesthetics though because pit stops like these will cause you to drop a few places or lose time.

Most of the cars are only available in the challenge series or online (provided you’ve unlocked them). Besides the respective performance tiers, there are three classes of car in The Run: stock, NFS Edition which is a tuned version in NFS livery and Signature Edition which is basically the ultimate version of the car with some stupid name to go with it like Eleanor. Each car feels very different and the handling differences are markedly noticeable. Special mention must go to the Lamborghini Aventador for being completely absent from the standard game. I was sorely looking forward to giving it the beans only to discover that it is only available if you pre-ordered the game or got the collector’s edition or something. I’d understand a special version of a car being a pre-order bonus or something but to do that with a car like the Aventador is simply wrong #dickmove.

I have to say though, The Run definitely makes good use of Frostbite 2 and the game looks great, which demonstrates just how versatile the engine is but surely it could look better. There’s a stark lack of attention to detail on most of the cars and even the environments should look better. Most of it is backdrop so surely it should actually look photo-realistic. I’m not even going to get srated on how hideous some of the cutscenes are for a game that’s been made with Frostbite 2, especially considering that they used facial capture technology. Most of the cars do look great though and crashes are a spectacle to behold. There are however several recurring glitches such as cars in traffic flipping over or disappearing when you reset and the frame-rate chugging when things get hectic on-screen in multiplayer.

The Run works on your typical XP system in which you earn points to level up and subsequently unlock items etc but the way you gain XP is strange. You start off with the basics i.e. gaining XP for overtaking, winning and near misses but have to unlock the ability to gain XP for taking down cops or driving through a roadblock or even just drifting round a bend. It’s a system that makes little sense in this form and is just one of many idiosyncrasies within The Run’s game design.

As for the online multiplayer, it’s much like the single-player in that it has so much potential but is let down by poor execution. Instead of choosing a specific course to race on, you choose from playlists which each have specific theme to them such as muscle cars in the Yosemite national park or sports cars in the city at night. These playlists comprise a series of races which form a race session. Once you’ve chosen playlist, you players can vote to determine other variables such as which class of car must be used etc. New playlists can be unlocked by completing various multiplayer objectives. After you’ve tailored your game magical bonus wheel appears and will spin until it eventually slows and stops on a reward which will go to the winner. This is often a rare car or buckets of XP so there’s plenty of incentive to win.

You can also create a playgroup for you and your buddies which opens you up to unique objectives which will require you to work together in races. A great feature is that you don’t have to wait in a lobby for a game to be created, you can jump straight into a race session and probably won’t finish top since you’ll be placed at the back of the pack but it sure beats the hell out of waiting and some XP earned is better than no XP earned. The issue with this seemingly good multiplayer is that it’s very limited and there’s probably not enough variety to keep you coming back. There are also a few control hiccups that only occur in multiplayer and usually result in you being unable to use your nitrous or brake properly and of course the aforementioned chugging frame-rate.

The challenge series is perhaps the best part of The Run’s single-player and comprises a number of sections each made up of five challenges. There’s a lot of variety here and if you play through the entire thing, you’ll have traversed the full breadth of The Run’s inventory of cars. This is part of what makes it so great, each challenge has certain parameters for example you can only use Nissan’s or Tier 2 muscle cars etc. Unfortunately, the challenge series suffers from the same gameplay issues as the rest of the single-player minus the QTE’s.

The Autolog just keeps getting better and in addition to everything it all already had going for it, it now recommends specific sections of The Run or the challenge series for you to do if a friend has just bested your time and you can receive real-time feeds to show what your fastest friend’s split-time was at that specific checkpoint in a race. You’ll be treated to a more detailed breakdown after the race along with what I assume is supposed to be the sound of screeching tires but sounds more like your car turning transforming into a giant robot. I hate that sound.

If you’re a PC gamer, and I know many of you are, then you should probably avoid The Run because all indications suggest it’s a very poor port. Like most games these days, it was designed for console and so it’s fine there but generally the PC version isn’t too bad, with this game it evidently is. There’s some sort of mic issue when playing online so that you can hear everything from any opponent’s open mic. WTF does not even begin to describe something like that. The QTE’s also don’t properly show the keys that need to be pressed and there seem to be a special set of bugs saved just for the PC version which are particularly annoying. There have also been reports of issues with the controls when using a keyboard that you don’t get if you have a game pad or steering wheel.

Ultimately, The Run had great premise but poor execution in nearly every aspect. The gameplay was lacking, the hyped-up campaign was nothing special and the multiplayer isn’t likely to win many fans. It’s riddled with the stench of lazy or plainly stupid game design in areas and they didn’t let me drive my Aventador.

Yes, this review is quite late, but I have an explanation. As many of you may know, I took a trip around China in December and discovered something unbelievable. Internet is even harder to come by there than it is here. It’s a true story, as well as having no Facebook or YouTube while abroad. Gaming news flew over my head, and so did a number of other important things. One of those things was in fact a code for RAAM’s Shadow, the latest expansion for Gears of War 3 that adds some more multiplayer characters, weapons, and, above all, a campaign which serves as a prequel to the entire series. While RAAM’s Shadow doesn’t put you in control of Delta squad once again, there are still more Locust to shoot, more Hammer strikes to rain down and…chocolate guns?

It’s just days after Emergence Day, also known as E-Day, has shocked and ravaged the world of Sera, as thousand of Locust rose from underground and began the mindless slaughter of all humans nearby. Evacuations have begun, and the city of Llima is next on the Locust hit list. Luckily, Zeta squad is present, overseeing the last of the evacuation transports leave and ensuring the safety of as many survivors as possible. You take control of Michael Barrick, a former Stranded with oppressive views on the COG and their governing body, who none the less fights alongside them for survival alone. Those of you who read the Gears of War comics should immediately recognise him, as well as Lt. Minh Young Kim from Gears of War 1, who appears way before General RAAM stuck his massive sword into his squishy bits. Along for the ride as well are Tai Kaliso, who made a short but meaningful appearance in Gears of War 2, and Alicia Valera, a newcomer to the series. The main, and biggest flaw with this entire DLC starts right here with Zeta squad unfortunately.

Unlike Delta squad, Zeta just doesn’t have the same type of chemistry. Granted, they only have around fours hours to show off their relationship as opposed to three whole games, but their dialouge and conversations often feel repetitive and generic, and occasionally bordering on bizarre. Kim and Barrick argue back and forth about the values of the COG, with Barrick taking the usual tone of “The COG just hurt their own”, and Kim coming back with “All for the greater good” type banter. Barrick does occasionally has some shinning moments, especially near the end where certain characters make return appearances. Tai is by far the most annoying of the lot, spitting out philosophical riddles one after another, often prompting Kim to translate it for the rest of the squad. It’s annoying, and really doesn’t add to anything that is going on. Thankfully, that’s mostly what’s wrong with RAAM’S Shadow, meaning that there’s still tons that’s done right.

The action begins almost immediately, and you’re quickly thrust into an explosive set piece that has you fighting on the back foot straight away. Set pieces and executed just as meticulously as every other entry, meaning that the memorable fire fights you’ve come to love get brand new additions. E-Holes make a prominent resurgence, bringing back a nostalgic feeling from the first game. Grenades hold more importance, and the feeling when you realise that you have none left with still three emergence holes left is a real rush. With no Lambent in sight, you’re back to fighting the classic, and better, Locust horde. What is quite surprising, and definitely welcomed, is the addition of more slower paced, tension filled sections that play more on anxiety and fear, just as the first game did with Wretches. These portions are some of the best the series has to offer, and having countless Wretches storm is truly terrifying, as it should be.

Across the long five chapters, Zeta will make it’s way through the progressively worsening Llima City, which is a nice change of scenery from what you’ve come to expect from Gears of War. Many building are still standing and mostly untouched, giving you the chance to explore and marvel at some of Sera’s greatest architecture. From a bank vault to a deserted high school, each of RAAM’s Shadow’s environments feel fresh and real, and not simply a copy/ paste effort with different encounters. The Kryll storm that takes place above is also dynamic, as darkness creeps closer and closer with each chapter, adding to the tension and giving a real glimpse into the final days of Llima.

Speaking of Kryll, they finally make a return in RAAM’s Shadow, along with the fearless Locust General RAAM. Probably the biggest selling point of this DLC was the ability to play as the feared General, and slaughtering COG soldiers is a real change of pace, and a hell of a lot of fun. While playing as RAAM, you’ll rarely have to worry about anything. A shield of living, moving Kryll will swarm around you, protecting you from everything expect explosions and fire. Point your finger at a poor, helpless COG, and your Kryll swarm will attack, devouring anything you wish. Along with that, RAAM also wields a massive blade, which you are able to swipe or rush with. Oh, and don’t forget about executions, especially RAAM’s. It’s brutal, gory and exactly what you’d expect from the most feared Locust ever. They only real disappointment with these sections is that they’re way too easy. Granted, the whole purpose of controlling RAAM was to experience just how powerful the General really was, but moving slowly from section to section, slaughtering waves of COG just feels like a short dose of horde mode rather than a campaign segment. Regardless, the sequences are fun, but don’t be to surprised if the novelty wears thin quickly.

Coupled with this are some odd logical issues that present themselves constantly throughout the campaign. While these little oddities won’t really bother most people, real Gears fans will surely pick up on them, and certainly raise an eyebrow while thinking, “Wait, wasn’t that only afterwards”. For instance, the Locust are all equipped with Hammerburst rifles, which only made their appearance in Gears of War 2. RAAM has to dodge COG armed with Oneshot’s, which only debuted in Gears of War 3. How do RAAM’s Kryll not die in the sunlight, especially after using a spotlight was the only way to disperse them at the end of Gears of War. These examples and a few more did catch my attention, but they never wrecked the experience for me, though those looking for an authentic Gears of War 1 type feel will be disappointed. It’s understandable that Epic Games chose to include all the weapons, because taking down a Kantus would not be the same with a Oneshot.

On top of all this single-player goodness, you are also able to tackle the entire campaign with friends in 4-player co-op. Chocolate gun skins now infiltrate your armory, as well as six additional characters for you to lay siege with, including RAAM, the Elite Kantus and Kim. There is really no excuse for any Gears fan to miss out on this package. Priced at 1200 MSP, you’ll feel that you’re money has been well spent, with an explosive campaign that is essentially more Gears of War time. And there is nothing wrong with that at all.

It’s a bad day gone worse for John Rochard, the leader of a team of asteroid miners working for Skyrig Corporation. Their mission, to mine and extract turbinium, a kind of space diesel and well, it’s not going so great for John’s particular team. They’ve been having a dry run and the entire complex seems to be slowly breaking down; so you can imagine their excitement when they discover some kind of ruin while digging. As is the nature with discovering mysterious ruins however, things start to decline when space pirates and one or two other adversaries show up to claim said ruin for themselves. Thus starts John’s search for his team and adventure to put a stop to his “bad day”.

Rochard is a side scrolling platformer which tasks the player with manoeuvring John from one side of an area to another. This is made entirely more complex by a variety of brilliantly designed physics based puzzles. You’ll soon find yourself navigating an assortment of physics altering objects and obstacles. Some of these things include using your trusty G-Lifer to move and launch objects, basically Rochard’s version of Half-Life 2’s grav-gun; a device that allows John to swap from normal gravity to low gravity at the player’s whim; different types of force fields, each blocking specific things; areas of upside-down gravity; as well as a whole bucket load of very enjoyable gaming devices. More than that and what makes Rochard so enjoyable is the variety to the approaches the player can make to overcome each obstacle. I usually find myself slightly disappointed with puzzle mechanics when there is only one, very clearly defined, way of getting through a section and Rochard’s indifference to this makes it so enjoyable.

Speaking of all the puzzles and design gone into Rochard, I was honestly surprised at how well done the mechanics were executed and it is definitely something above and beyond what you’d expect from the usual indie game. It’s a well polished game and the difficulty curve is almost perfect; making sure to get increasingly difficult but never frustrating you. Moreover, the game makes sure to introduce new challenges and obstacles just when you think you’ve seen all it has to offer. Something I also found enjoyable was the placement of collectible treasures that gave that extra test to any who wished to tackle collecting them.

When it comes to aesthetics, you’d imagine an indie game would fall flat in this aspect, but in fact, Rochard isn’t too shabby at all. Its visuals are what you’d expect from Team Fortress 2 as a side scrolling game and the music, when there is any, fits the current area and game overall. If anything, the production values, despite a slightly weak story, keeps the game rolling along at a great pace. And if you’re willing to forgive a story that isn’t exactly breaking any records or winning medals, but that at least makes an effort, you’ll be in for a cracker of a game. This is especially the case when John will utter odd country American phrases like “If a frog had wings it wouldn’t keep bumping its ass” or the game will try introducing a little humour to the situation. It’s not overdone and while occasionally a little cheesy, it works to keep you enjoying the gameplay and connected to John’s plight.

When all is said and done, Rochard is a great indie title to consider purchasing. If anything, its low price on Steam and PSN should seal the deal. There’s a demo available to all, try it out, it’s a hoot.

Grotesque Tactics 2: Dungeons & Donuts is a satirical turn-based RPG from developer Headup Games. The game parodies the RPG genre with all its frills and steel plated armour. Any game is fair play from the popular Pokemon series to the Baldur’s Gate series, to the Diablo series, to nearly every conceivable dungeon crawler that has sufficient tropes on display.

The story follows that the game’s fantasy world is in grave danger and it is up to the main protagonist Drake, who suffers from hero’s amnesia, to form a guild and take on enemy forces. He meets a range of characters along his journey beginning with the introduction of the Holy Avatar guild led by the charismatic Holy Avatar, and followed by his dedicated maidens. From then on, you begin to explore the vast network of dungeons and meet new party members along the way.

Gameplay in Grotesque Tactics 2 is very basic and derivative of the genre. The battle system can be likened to games in the Might & Magic series, King’s Bounty series interspersed with dungeon crawling elements. Essentially, you move your characters along a grid-like system of spaces, like a chessboard, and can choose to attack enemies with magic or physical attacks. As such, characters in your party can travel along a select number of spaces. From there, you can initiate either an attack with a character, or even assume a defensive postion if your reach is limited.

Depending on where you position party members within the grid the amount of damage you inflict is relative. So if you attack an enemy from behind, such as a Blob or goblin, damage inflicted will be relatively higher than if you attacked from the front. Characters have both a normal attack available and a special attack which costs mana, and upgrading your talent trees becomes useful in powering up attacks. The same can be said of spells and magic in general. Critically, you have to be careful with the choices and decisions you make because if your strategy is at all faulty you’ll suffer against higher level monsters and enemies. Picking roles for your characters such as a designated attacker, healer and defender are all an essential part of how you define a good party in Grotesque Tactics 2. Yet, this type of battle system has been done to death and Grotesque Tactics 2 does nothing new with combat. It ends up feeling like a rehash of a rehash and after a while the game becomes boring, and repetitive.

Aesthetically, the game’s visuals are somewhat dated and feel lack lustre when compared to other Indie RPGs on the market. The game does indeed have a definitive visual style which is appropriate for the humorous undertone present in the game. But a limited number of stock animations in character models tarnish the overall package.

In terms of sound design, the game has a forgettable soundtrack. However, excellent voice acting especially within the main cast of characters brings to life the somewhat likable characters and doesn’t dull the total experience.

Subsequently, this doesn’t save Grotesque Tactics 2 from being an average RPG title which whilst funny in parts isn’t fully realised. The game at times feels directionless and doesn’t have enough depth. I understand it’s not a serious title. Nevertheless, for the price I was expecting a funnier game. Sadly it doesn’t fit the bill.

Nuclear Dawn is a game that came out in September, and can be seen as a “new generation” of the natural selection type of game. Nuclear Dawn started out in 2006 as a mod for Counter Strike: Source, and is now coming to us in a commercial form (available on Steam!)

This game really is a very good blend of the RTS and FPS genres into a fairly good game (It’s had many patches since the beta with bug fixes). To me the aiming system feels a bit sluggish, I can’t put my finger on why, but the side to side movement is quite slow and you end up either having a really high sensitivity or half breaking your mouse from belting it across the mouse pad. Since the beta there are now tutorials on how everything in the game works, but unfortunately it is a single player game only. On a multiplayer level though, it is quite win.

The story of Nuclear Dawn does not go to great lengths to be original. It is basically a post apocalyptic war between two factions, the Consortium and the Empire (basically Russians vs. Americans… familiar?) The Consortium is the blue team and the Empire the red. It is set in the late 21st century, and the world has been nuked in a big way, my guess is by massive nukes (hence the title), with the two factions fighting over certain points. There is only one type of game mode available at the moment, with two teams of sixteen, with the objectives of controlling the resource points and to help the commander get the energy he needs to construct additional buildings (the RTS side of it). You win by taking out the opposing team’s bunker.

I like its layout, the menu is smooth and it’s easy to find a server. Once you’re in game, you can choose from one of 4 classes available to you. Each class has its own weapons and perks, and come with different packs that you can equip. You get your Heavy-Gunning exo; the stealth operatives that can go invisible, Assault with visors that can see the invisible and Support with heal and repair kits. Each class then has certain kits available to choose from, for example the stealth operative can choose to be either a sniper (this is too much fun, invising and only coming out when you pop a guy in the face) or carry a knife, so you can stab some poor unsuspecting soul in the back. Support can choose to be medics, engineers, or even have flamethrowers. Assault can arm himself with a standard SMG, or some noob tubes and shotguns, or even a sniper rifle. Exo’s can pick between a comically large chain gun and some Bad-Ass siege rocket launchers to take down enemy buildings. The longer you play the more chance you have of getting upgrades and additional weapon options as your commander finishes researching upgrades back at base.

Each class has its own ups and downs, and it never feels that one class is overpowered. The Stealth troopers are like the spy in TF2 or anything that can go invis really, they can get very annoying, especially if they knows what they’re doing. There is a very annoying exploit where EMP grenades (used by engineers) could be used to shut down the enemy spawn point for quite long periods of time, and you couldn’t respawn back into the game (very annoying I might add), however this could also be your commander’s fault in the first place for bad base management. However if they do get it right, games go very, very badly.

There are 6 different post apocalyptic locations to choose from, once again not too original with the locations, such as London or New York, or an Asian subway. There is a snow military base (probably my favourite map) and a Middle Eastern ruined city of some kind. There is enough detail to get by; although you can feel that the emphasis is on the game play and not the prettiness of it all. There are definitely choke points where you can defend, and plenty of places to snipe in every map. There is always a central point where most of the fighting tends to happen, as controlling and maintaining this point generally wins you the game.

Once or twice however, I have been fortunate enough to play the commander aspect of Nuclear Dawn, and it is definitely equally as fun overseeing the battle from the safety of a bunker. He can dish out orders as he has an aerial view of the battlefield, and can construct buildings to help his team, like additional spawn points, gun turrets, supply points, armouries for upgrades and all the usual. Once these buildings are up you can research new structures and weapons to help your team.

However, there is a big emphasis on the commander. It’s like any game where you get “that guy”, the noob who doesn’t know WHAT he is doing. If your commander is bad, you generally don’t do very well in the game. If you get a commander that’s on the ball, you get a whole different ballgame, and the difference is very notable.

My only problem is there is quite a learning curve before you actually know what’s going on. Without interactive tutorials, you just kind of jump in and hope for the best, and it took me a while to figure out what the hell was going on. The first time I played a commander it was a total disaster, and there were many people who were not pleased with me in the slightest. However I think this learning curve is why there are so few servers that are populated.

Nuclear Dawn is a very team-work orientated game, and if you get a good team and a good commander it can be a lot of fun, although I don’t feel it is a game that everyone will enjoy. As a genre blending game, you pretty much are not going to get any better out on the gaming market, so if that is your cup of tea, than Nuclear Dawn is for you!

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken must be the most misleading videogame title in gaming history. I went into the game expecting more or less a substandard casual game involving chickens, and some simple puzzle challenges. Boy was I wrong and Hardboiled Chicken proved to be quite the hardcore game indeed. The game owes a lot to a previous generation of side-scrolling cinematic platformers like Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, and best describes how Hardboiled Chicken flows as a game. You can jump over obstacles and display mastery of puzzle elements, but at Hardboiled Chicken’s (the name of the main character as well) heart is sidescrolling gun carnage a bit more refined then Contra, and similar to Earthworm Jim in terms of execution. Yet Hardboiled Chicken offers a vast armoury of guns to have your way with then Earthworm Jim, and where Earthworm Jim was less of a serious game Hardboiled Chicken comes across as quite the serious tale, despite its namesake.

Hardboiled Chicken, the main character of the game, is a war torn soldier formerly brainwashed into committed service by a Penguin dictator, named Putzki. After realising the errors of his ways as a mindless killing chicken machine he decides to rebel against the Penguin dictatorship. Hardboiled chooses to follow the road of redemption and journeys on a quest to rectify the sins he carried out as a soldier of the dictator. Putzki dominates the land of Albatropolis with an iron feathered fist and it’s up to Hardboiled Chicken, jetpack and Uzi in wing, to take a stand. The story is pretty basic and the narrative is carried well throughout the entire game.

The game has been promoted as a cinematic platformer and plays fluidly with smooth character animations and a fresh 2D design, which with its comic book style and large platforming vistas fulfills the label faithfully. Much like Rayman Origins, Hardboiled Chicken has a hand drawn aesthetic, with comic panel inspired backgrounds and cell-shaded character designs that is appropriate for the buff aviary of Arnie-types that appear as your fowl enemies. The style frames the cartoonish violence, blood, chicken gizzards, gun fights and general sneakiness of the stealth sections perfectly. On the visual level, stage designs are clear and simple, and the use of shade and lighting improves the stealth sections and perpetuates a persistent consistency of action throughout.

Definitive breaks occur between all platforming sections and the shooting frenzy, with clever puzzle designs that involve the use of in-game ingenuity. After completing missions, you’re rewarded with music video sequences with HD animated videos that together with the awesome soundtrack, which I’ll mention in a second, propels the story of Hardboiled’s vengeance through the game. It effectively fuels the momentum necessary for Hardboiled’s story to matter within the game.

Him simply being a chicken and mass murdering penguin foot soldiers doesn’t equate to a ‘serious’ in-depth story. But how the game explores a host of side stories like the Budgie commandoes (the rebels) through interaction with the characters is intriguing, and adds to the driving story of the game. Hardboiled takes on his sins head-on fighting off initial impressions of the game’s title. Hardboiled himself can be likened to the majority of B-Grade action heroes and adds tinges of humour to the overtly serious and at times dark game, and with its graphic novel style marries all the elements well. The soundtrack coupled with the game’s dynamic range of gameplay options is drawn together efficiently with a definitive vision from the team at Ratloop Asia.

Hardboiled Chicken has both co-op and singleplayer experiences. My main gameplay experience was the singleplayer campaign with fifteen chapters. The game is a mash-up of sidescrolling shooting (alla Contra), classic platforming elements similar to Sonic, Earthworm Jim and Castlevania with a dosage of stealthiness from Metal Gear Solid (but on a very basic level). The action itself is fast paced and you’re always on the move confronting enemies, shooting at them, initiating stealthy kills by ducking into shadowy areas and pouncing on an unsuspecting bird. You have a large armoury of pistols, machine guns, shotguns, grenades and a strange long range grenade known as the Brain Bug. From the guns available, you are able to select a weapon appropriate to the enemy type you encounter like a heavy armed brutish penguin, a missile launcher wielding bird of prey and a quick footed foot soldier, and it’s your decision in how to approach enemies.

Either you can be upfront and slap them around with your melee attack, shooting a few shotgun rounds in their faces, or if you prefer the sneaky route you can use the Brain Bug (a mind controlling bug grenade) to control the mind of one of the enemy soldiers. In the end, taking out a whole infantry with one of their own. Brain Bugs also become useful when solving puzzles, particularly ones involving timing, and become the answer in the direst of in-game situations. The sidescrolling platform sections for the most part are fluid, but at times can be come cumbersome and difficult to manoeuvre throughout and don’t provide enough of a challenge, and cover. Especially, when confronted by the might of Putzki’s, the penguin dictator’s, army.

The puzzles’ difficulty in-game are ever changing and are not progressive in evolution and vary constantly with a deranged sequence of hard puzzles, then easy puzzles, followed by more easy puzzles. Puzzle solving in Hardboiled Chicken can become a chore in itself and the challenges themselves become redundant after awhile. The ‘Jetpaction’ sections whereby Hardboiled is equipped with a nuclear-powered jetpack are fun extras and help to break up the monotony that may set in after playing nearly 15 chapters of the solo campaign. Perhaps, that’s why there is also a co-op campaign for other prospective players to join in order to alleviate such issues. But even an indie game should be able to stand on its own merit as a well defined single player experience.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken contains some of these pacing issues with a solid soundtrack that highlights relatively important points within the game’s narrative, which is very simple yet endearing, and is produced by indie band New World Revolution. New World Revolution’s electronica infused rock edge adds substance to the otherwise dull plot line of the game. This, however, only distracts from the obvious flaws in the gameplay design which, and I reiterate, becomes a tiring affair when you’re heading into the final stretch of the game’s solo campaign. Yet as a co-op experience such issues might be for naught.

The game is a solid sidescrolling shooting game, and when the platforming sections work they work well. Most of the time, it’s a balance between cumbersomely designed levels and on the other hand fun gun play. In the end, the game is average throughout and if truth be told there are far better indie games out there. Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a hit and miss experience at the end of the day.

November has been one crazy month for gamers around the world. Massive titles such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Uncharted 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 top sales around the world, and by this time many people are gearing down and settling in to all the awesome games they have bought in the past few weeks. However, Ubisoft decided to pull a bold move. A very bold move in fact. Rayman Origins is the latest Rayman game in a long time, and many found it curious that Ubisoft decided to release it in such a heavyweight month. Thankfully, and even more surprisingly, Rayman Origins manages to outdo most of the titles this month, delivering one of the most memorable and charming experiences of 2011, and one of the best platforming titles ever created. From the gorgeous visuals to the hilarious characters, Rayman Origins is an adventure that every gamer should experience, and is the best revival the Rayman series could possibly hope for.

Firstly, you shouldn’t be bothered about any story in Rayman Origins. The action begins just as fast as the game loads up, giving you a brief glimpse as to why Rayman and his friends decide to risk their lives in order to save some small adorable pink beings. In short, this game doesn’t mean to focus on a narrative, and never really tries at any point. Ubisoft realised that the main focus was to be on the platforming action, and decided to focus completely on this aspect instead of trying to bring across a half-thought of story to keep the game interesting. This choice has proved to be one of the best Ubisoft could’ve possibly made, as the amazing platforming grabs you and doesn’t let go for hours on end. Rayman Origins knows what it is, and never tries to imitate anything else in order to garner mainstream appeal.

Platforming mainly focuses and is built on the principle of fast and fluid player momentum. Landscapes shift and crumble, creating seamless pathways that seem to appear out of nowhere, but always aid in your hasty motion from left to right. The level design is truly amazing, with each new section feeling different to the last, throwing deadly enemies, traps and hazards in your way in order to slow your progress. Thankfully, all of these hindrances can be dealt with a variety of abilities that are bestowed upon you in each new unique area, allowing you to punch, glide, shrink and slide your way through levels. All of these abilities are kept for good once acquired, meaning that you can visit previous levels and tackle them in all news ways with your newly found skills. A simple yet elegant control scheme ensures that you are able to get the most out of Rayman with ease, and the fact that the controls are so amazingly responsive to all your actions really does help with the fluid nature of the game.

Having such tight controls is a good thing to, considering how challenging Rayman Origins can become. The difficulty curve is gradual though, and you can actually sense how your skills are adequately tested as you become better and better at navigating levels. The difficulty never spikes, and hardships in certain areas always come down to mistakes on your part. The game is completely fair with you, never dealing out heaps of frustrating deaths, but rather another chance to correct your ill timed button press or over extended glide. The game is also forgiving in a way, with checkpoints spread generously around levels, and an unlimited supply of lives, meaning that your exploration and progression is never hampered by a limited pool of Rayman lives. This may sound a lot like there is no difficulty at all, and that levels are simply trial and error exercises, however that would be completely false. There is a difficulty, areas will challenge and test you, but the difference is that the difficulty always comes down to skill, and never feels forced or artificial.

While you race through all the different and bizarre locals, you’ll be forced to free adorable pink creatures called Electoons, which makes up your main objective throughout the entire game. Each level has various Electoons that are available for collection, but each requires something different. Merely completing a level will reward you with one crate of Electoons, while there are additional crates in hidden rooms scattered around each level. While tearing through each fantasy land, Rayman can also collect Lums (this game’s version of coins), and the total number collected at the end of each area will also determine if you get extra Electoons or not. Once an area has been completed, you can revisit it in order to engage a speed run, which tests how fast you can race through each area. Hit a fast enough time, and be rewarded with additional Electoons. Why should you care about Electoons? Well, they determine your progression through the game, however you’ll never feel as though your play style is not catered for either. If you don’t care to stop every once in a while and look for secret rooms, then the game never punishes you for that choice. However, most of the game’s addictive nature spawns from the obsessive compulsive desire to fully complete each area, especially when rewarding bonus levels are up for grabs.

This bonus levels appear once in each new area. Each bonus level demands a certain number of Electoons in order to be made available, so scouring each level thoroughly not only adds to the experience, but will also allow you to enjoy some of the best platforming sections this game has to offer. In these bonus levels, you are tasked with catching a chest that seems to have wised up to Rayman’s violent nature when it comes to cracking open other chests. The chest will speed away from you, leaving you to take up pursuit through crumbling, changing and often perilous locales, which punish even the slightest of errors, whether it be an over long glide, missing a sinking platform and even path choices. These levels are extremely exhilarating, mainly due to their fantastic design. Terrain crumbles and falls into place perfectly, making these speed runs feel seamlessly elegant as you race perfectly through them, They also don’t take trial and error runs in order to memorise the entire area, as the movement and transitions feel so natural and challenging at the same time. You’ll most definitely gasp for breath at the end of the level, as each close call, each sudden change in terrain and all your previous failures will most certainly come crashing down on you all at once, leaving you with a indescribable feeling after you smash the chest into tiny little bits, and reveal the reward inside.

This type of objective variation is not only restricted to bonus levels thought, and throughout the main areas you will experience varying degrees of platforming and side-scrolling action. One of these variations comes in the form of levels where you hop onto the back of a giant mosquito, and shoot your way through levels like a vintage shoot-em-up, showered with all the Rayman charm. The mosquito is able to shoot and suck up enemies, and these levels progress from slow starts to almost maddeningly fast sections, where a keen eye and lightning reflexes are required. The other variation comes in the form of fantastically realised boss fights. Boss fights are used sparingly, with only a handful of disastrously gorgeous monsters daring to go head to head with Rayman. Each encounter is different to the last, and the challenging aspect of the game is prominently shown off here. Whether it be a giant chicken like creature that attacks you in the air, or a grotesque sea worm leaps out of the water to attack, each boss fight feels unique, and retains its own variation of Rayman charm. However, none of these imaginative locals or horrid monsters would be possible without Rayman Origins most outstanding quality.

Rayman Origins is the best looking game released this year. There, I said it, and I will surely be disputed on this, but the fact remains that no other single game has thrust me as deep into its world like Rayman Origins has. This game’s visuals can be considered a work of incredible art, and having each and every image hand drawn really shows how each artist was able to impose their own type of flair on the Rayman world. Colours burst out of every crevice, and the Glade of Dreams does a fantastic job of truly expressing the odd, exciting and bizarre world that Rayman and his friends reside in. Each locale has a different theme, and it is amazing to see how each transfers from one to the next. At first you’ll be running through a lush jungle, filled with oddly coloured foliage and shallow rivers. Next thing you know, you’ll be in a horrid realisation of an evil kitchen, with red and gold lava pouring out of pots like volcanoes, with the environment slowly changing into a winter stricken mountain range, with ice cubes encasing cold lums, and surfaces littered with snow, making platforming all the more challenging. Animations are also superbly done, bringing each and every thing in the Glade of Dreams to life. Animations breathe life into all the creatures you will encounter, and seeing how enemies react just before you end them is always a pleasure to behold. You can really tell that the artists and animators were having a ton of fun when creating this world, and their passion for their art really shows, creating the most gorgeous and engrossing visual experience you’re mostly likely to ever come across.

One thing that shouldn’t be left out though is the sound. Rayman Origins soundtrack is outstanding, giving each location its own unique theme song that is both fitting and enjoyable to listen to. The sounds of the Glade will most certainly put a smile on your face, and it was sometimes better to just slow things down and take in the beautiful surroundings while a fitting soundtrack played in the background. Sound effects also deserve a mention, as a lot of work was put into making sure that every little creature made its own unique noise. In particular, a large didgeridoo worm that forms the ground in an Australian styled area is one example, with each of his bodily sections producing a different sound when stepped on. It was almost more fun to quickly run across his body and listen to the melody than it was to complete the level. This is only one example on how sound plays a huge role in Rayman Origins, and there are certainly a lot more out there for you to experience.

But what would these experiences be if you couldn’t share them with a friend? Well, don’t stress too much, because Rayman Origins also comes kitted out with a simple drop in/drop out co-op system that enables up to four people to enjoy the mayhem on a console. There is no online multiplayer, but I feel that this was a better move, as the experience of playing with friends is more enhanced when you can sit down with four other people in the same room and revel at your hilarious deaths, rewarding triumphs, and abundance of gaming memories. With four people in the mix, Rayman Origins also becomes a little more challenging. Hearts are now distributed evenly among teammates, and death comes more than often, especially when you realise how mean some of your friends can be. One moment you can be soaring through a level, and next thing you know, one of your partners can decide to give you a nice slap across the face, sending your character down into a pit of death. These types of multiplayer moments can only be compared to the amount of multiplayer fun in Portal 2, but thankfully the whole game can be played with friends, instead of just a handful of sections.

Sadly, Rayman Origins is bound to fly under a lot of people’s radars. With all the other massive titles that have been released, the seemingly childish nature of the game and a lack of “core gaming appeal”, it is sad that many people will not even glance over at the box, which is unfortunate considering how perfect this game really is. Rayman Origins decides what it wants to accomplish early and sticks with it, never getting confused as to what it wants to do, and what it should do. In a world of colourless war shooters, Rayman Origins shows that even the most vibrant, colourful and innocent titles can still be regarded as some of the best games out there. It breathes life into platforming once more, and introduces an art style that can rival even the top dogs, despite its 2D orientation. Rayman Origins is one of the most memorable experience in 2011, and is a game that can only be considered as art. Rayman is back, and I am overjoyed to have gone through the Glade of Dreams with him.

The Saints Row series has always given players one amazing thing: the opportunity to be the crazy they really want to be in the world. I don’t suppose a “see what I did there?” comment would be wholly appropriate at this moment. But honestly, Saints Row: The Third has realised this concept in a highly crackpotted fashion. Previously, comparisons were always made with the Saints Row series and the world famous Grand Theft Auto franchise, and in all honesty they did bare similarities even though I personally feel Saints Row 2 was the best game of its kind, but right now it’s clearly obvious that both franchises have moved in completely opposite directions. Rockstar’s game opts for a more grounded realistic experience while Saints Row puts on a party hat and goes bonkers. I guess now the comparisons can finally end. However, it must be said that some may prefer Saints Row 2′s somewhat shaky grip on reality as opposed to The Third’s demented defilement of realism, but if you enjoyed the previous game you will no doubt love this one. The Saints are back, and it’s a glorious return.

After having defeated all of their rivals at the end of Saints Row 2, the Third Street Saints are now icons, having turned their street gang into a media empire. With no one to stand against them, they’ve grown cocky and complacent, and Johnny Gat resents the fact that with all the endorsements and sell outs to the media, they’ve strayed from their roots. But when the mighty Saints attempt to rob a bank, their everyday routine takes a crazy turn when the bank tellers fight back, and suddenly they’re caught in a huge battle. Circumstances that follow lead to the dethroning of the Saints, forcing them out of Stilwater, the iconic setting of the previous games, and putting them into the new city of Steelport. There are three local gangs already settled in at this new place, but the Saints don’t settle for anything but first place. The plot then follows the traditional formula of the series, which is to chaotically take over the city, rebuild your gang into its glorified empire, and wipe out all of your fierce rivals.

Once the introduction is over, you’ll get to customise your character as per usual, except this time the customisation options have gone over-the-top. Giving the players a wide variety of customization available to tailor the game to their liking has always been a staple of the series, but now it has received quite an expansion. No two characters will look the same, and whether you want to create some freak that resembles the Fantastic Four’s Silver Surfer, or some alien-looking female with mutant over-sized assets, you’re free to run wild. With a long list of apparel (woops, too much Skyrim there), taunts and approvals to choose from as well, coupled together with your personality choice and even a slider bar for sex appeal of all things, there’s definitely no restriction in who you want your character to be, or what you want your character to look like, whether male or female. It’s just easy to fall in love with a game that lets you decide what your boundaries are rather than having them pre-determined.

Saints Row: The Third has evolved in many ways compared to its predecessor, but at the heart it still plays similarly. However, the developers have gone out of their way to make things easily accessible, convenient and simplified, so as to make the playing experience the most enjoyable. The game’s mission structure is controlled through the use of your cell phone, which gives you access to the map, your allies and your upgrades, and also to all missions including side missions, with the exception of the game’s sandbox activities like the mini games from Saints Row 2, and even to the transfer of your hourly income. Yes, there’s no driving all the way to the other side of the map just to activate a mission, as wherever you are, you just whip out your phone and choose which one you want to do. And there are no annoying visits to banks to collect cash (I’m looking at you Assassin’s Creed), as all it takes is a simple menu option. The reason I’m going on about this is to express both The Third’s strength as well as its shortcomings – its convenience unfortunately gets dragged down by some inconvenience.

Before getting into that nasty business, let me talk about the gameplay in all of its exciting elements. The core gameplay hasn’t changed, and that’s not a bad thing. There is a larger focus on human shields and a more brutal, QTE-styled creative melee combat system, but nothing majorly new. However, in truth I felt disappointed that there is only one combat style, whereas in Saints Row 2 you could unlock a rival gang’s fighting style each time you took them down, and equip these styles any time you felt for a change by visiting a plastic surgeon. But that aside, there’s a lot more content this time around. All guns are upgradable on multiple levels, there are plenty of upgrades to buy for your character, more customisation options for your gang and lots more to do in the world by means of side missions, purchasing property and fighting rival gangs. Just like Saints Row 2, you’ll still be beating up whoever gets in your way, earning Respect, pimping up your cars, which now handle much better, with nitros and kneecappers and taking over. Everything that you could have loved from Saints Row 2 is back here and its better. The missions are over the top, crazy and later on contain so many highlights that it’s hard to pick out the best one. Despite the game’s really whacked up, juvenile and strangely entertaining sense of humour, it still even manages to be serious at times when the need arises for it. And that’s an achievement, considering farts in a jar and giant dildo bats are actual weapons.

There was a mention of Respect above, and I bring this up because the system has actually received quite an overhaul. Previously, the Respect system was more of a hindrance to doing the main quest, as it required you to do the side missions to earn enough Respect points to continue on with the main story, regardless of whether you controlled half the city or not. Now, while the side missions were really fun, it wasn’t a logical system and it forced you to do these side activities repeatedly which eventually ended their appeal. However, in The Third, Respect is now basically your level, and the higher it is the more upgrades become available for you to purchase with cash at any time using your cell phone. Most of the side activities from Saints Row 2 have returned, with quite a few new ones added in, including some hilarious and memorable ones like a Japanese murder show, one that requires you to drive at high speeds with an enraged tiger in your passenger seat and one that was clearly inspired by Tron. They’re now weaved into the main story, and once you do them they become available to do in the game world as a means of earning cash and respect. There are many upgrades to buy, and the positive aspect is that they’re all things you want to get and they make the game a lot more enjoyable.

Perhaps the only criticism I can lay on the upgrades is that they don’t drastically change the way the game is played, in fact they hardly influence it at all. What they do, however, is make your life a lot easier, make you stronger and allow you to have more fun. The reason is that most of the upgrades simply do things like make you take longer to die, increase your ammo and combat effectiveness, make notoriety with police and rival gangs fade faster, and make your gang more useful in a fight. They don’t add new things to the gameplay. It’s admirable that there is so much of content in the game, and it really doesn’t take long to grind out cash to buy even the more expensive ugprades, which is a good thing. But it’s a bit of a letdown that gameplay remains largely unaffected, with nothing new being added. At least in Saints Row 2, aside from unlocking additional fighting styles, you could also reduce gang presence as you took over, and each melee weapon had their own finishing moves. Curiously, that isn’t the case here, but fortunately there is a great variety of entertaining weaponry and the upgrades you can get seriously make the game a lot more fun, which I guess is what counts. Plus, you’re constantly rewarded with cash and respect for just playing the game and doing what you want, which always shows fantastic game design, and it can become an addictive experience in itself.

Steelport really is your playground, and as always the game goes out of its way to make things a blast for you. There’s just so much to love in The Third, and the playing experience is just such a comfortable and entertaining one. Saints Row is just a game that truly understands its players’ need to have fun. Find yourself having a five-star notoriety count and you’re tired of getting chased down by persistent cops or gang leaders? Simply enter any building you own and all notoriety disappears, if you’re too impatient to wait for it to fade. Having trouble in the air because your helicopter or plane is about to blow? No problem, just bail and enjoy the skydiving mini game as your parachute automatically equips and is ready for you to use. Did you take a liking to that awesome car you just modded out with body kits, decals and nitros? Don’t worry, if it gets destroyed or if you lose it somewhere, you can simply go back to any mechanic shop or any safe house to retrieve it, as well as any other car you’ve stored in there. Are you annoyed at the fact that you’ve landed in the ocean with the shores being a million miles away? Just hit a button and you warp to shore in a matter of seconds. Saints Row just proves that it’s ever ready to sacrifice realism if it means the player can have the most fun, and I can’t stress this enough. Like any other gamer, I enjoy realistic games and simulators. But there’s a fine line, and I have a simple gaming equation to illustrate it. It goes like this: the more realism you put in, often the more fun you take out. And it works the other way as well. Obviously it’s not true in all cases.

However, there are some puzzling issues with the game that makes it contradict itself in some areas. For a game that only wants players to have the most amount of fun, and tries so hard to make the playing experience frustration free and awesome, The Third surprisingly manages to make some very amateur mistakes that can lead to frustration and inconvenience. The worst part is that the flaws are all little irritations that could have easily been fixed, and they’re really not major. For examples, enemies can sometimes get stuck in walls, you can often get surrounded by small armies and attacked from everywhere, and you can still take damage while you’re doing a finishing move or interrogating someone, which is irritating. Then there is the fact that enemies can have hack accuracy and hit you from miles away, but fortunately you take really long to die and regenerate health quickly, and you can improve this as well as lessen damage taken with upgrades. Then there is the fact that fire causes your character to spaz out and flail uselessly around, which isn’t helpful when you’re trying to get to cover and some maniac with a flamethrower is harassing you. These are just little annoyances that inconvenience the sheer amount of fun you’re going to have, which is disappointing. Probably the only real big flaw with Saints Row: The Third is that because you’re often tasked with taking out so many enemies, missions can get repetitive, but fortunately you have plenty of activities to do, you can mess around and the game’s unique set pieces and story missions are a blast and will stick in your memory.

Despite these flaws, though, I couldn’t stop playing The Third. It’s truly a great and empowering experience, and it’s hellishly addictive. I am a massive fan of Saints Row 2, in fact it’s my favourite sandbox game and one of my all time favourite games, but you really don’t need to be a fan of this series to love this game. The Third just expertly continues the series’ trademark of making you feel like a real boss. Even when all chaos breaks loose and things go to hell, you’re still in control and no one keeps you down or messes with you. I will admit that I do miss the psychopathic villain you were in Saints Row 2 whose redeeming quality was his honour towards his gang, but The Third doesn’t disappoint in making your character downright crazy and unstoppable. In fact, all of the game’s characters are strangely likable, and the story is thoroughly entertaining throughout, even when it’s going nutty, blatantly ripping off something or even being generic. There are even some story choices to make in the main campaign that result in different rewards and plot outcomes, but it’s not significant so much as it is rewarding you in different ways, which is not a bad idea. But there are two endings, and you’ll get to see them both once you finish the game and load your save. The game’s uniqueness, great sense of humour and bizarre set pieces all make for an experience you’re unlikely to forget.

The main campaign will take you a very long time to complete if you don’t only chase after story missions, and it’s up to you how long you’re going to let this experience last. But one thing I admire about The Third is that the game never feels like a drag. It’s always exciting or it’s always fun, or both. You just know you’re going to be in for a good time when you start the game up. And once you’re done with the main campaign, you can play some multiplayer. You’ll need an online pass to access these features, but without one you can still play Whored mode single player. This mode sees you select a character and, armed with a giant purple dildo bat, take on the whores in a fight to the death, with you having to survive waves of these women after your brains on a platter. You can play it both online with buddies as well as LAN, so it’s easy to jump in and have fun. Then you’re able to play the campaign with online co-op, and there’s no need to explain to you how chaotic and fun that can be. It’s your call whether you decide that having a buddy around makes the campaign more entertaining, but luckily all rewards carry over to your single-player campaign which can make you a happy panda.

With its graphics, The Third may not be at the top, but it’s certainly a good-looking game that’s pleasant to the eyes. Steelport succeeds in being a fun playground and a visually pleasing world, but it’s not exactly a vibrant one brimming with life. You won’t feel that the city is so much alive as it is yours to jerk around in, and I suppose whether that’s a negative thing or not is up to you, the player. However, the game is complimented by its great visual style, themes and its fantastic soundtrack that often ends up making missions feel so epic – especially that final mission. Voice acting is top notch once again, and as always your own character will make the experience for you with his or her amazing voice work and mad personality. Unfortunately, I noticed a few pop-in issues that mostly occurred while driving speedily, and I had one or two instances of slow down at most, but it went away pretty quickly and there was honestly nothing that damaged the experience for me. In the end, The Third doesn’t disappoint or seriously impress you with its visuals, because they’re all-round solid, but it definitely will with its voice acting and soundtrack, which give this game and its story the flair it needs to keep you playing.

In conclusion, Saints Row: The Third is what it set out to be. That is, unrestricted, insane, over-the-top, hilarious fun. It admirably managed to achieve what it aimed to, and it gives players exactly what they want – a damn good time. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself or the player very seriously, and this ultimately ends up being its strength. In being entertaining, Saints Row: The Third is brilliant.

Ten years is a long time. A very, very long time. If I think back to my life ten years ago, I mainly see a kid who had not even a hundredth of the worries I have now, nearly no commitments and only a Xbox to keep myself entertained. The first Xbox was also my first console that I had ever owned, and it moulded me into the gaming machine that I am today. Although, there was one game in particular that changed my entire perspective on gaming. A game that finally flipped a switch in my brain, turning me from the occasional gamer into a person that could not think of a world without a controller in my hands and a headset around my neck. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved, and it blew my mind.

Halo: Combat Evolved not only changed me as a gamer, but also ushered the world into a new era. A strong, story driven campaign was at the helm, which introduced us to iconic characters such as Master Chief 117, a sassy and sarcastic A.I known as Cortana, a highly intelligent alien race known as The Covenant, and a homicidal robot known as 343 Guilty Spark (Yes, before the homicidal robot know as GLaDOS). Halo: CE also showed the world that consoles were now a force to be reckoned with, and that the platform could compete with PC’s when it came to one fundamental principle: Online Gaming. Halo: CE was one of the first titles to truly showcase how a console could be used for competitive online gaming, and paved the way online console era. So how exactly can a title, released 10 years later, successfully showcase what made Halo: CE so groundbreaking all those years ago? Simply put, Halo: CE Anniversary once again shows the world why Halo: CE was and still is one of the best first-person shooter titles ever created.

The story puts you in control of an iconic soldier, namely Master Chief 117, who is awoken from cryo-sleep on a ship named The Pillar of Autumn. Shortly after, you meet the A.I Cortana, the ship is attacked by aliens known as The Covenant, and you’re all forced to crash land on a mysterious space installation known as Halo. This massive installation is the first of its kind discovered by humans, so it becomes your mission to find out what it’s purpose is. It doesn’t take long before you realise that the installation is holding a vicious alien race known as The Flood, and after it has been released it is your job to save the universe from certain doom. Yes, not the most original story ever created, yet it somehow still manages to captivate and grab you, introducing you once again to the expansive world that Halo takes place in.

On top of that, new terminals have been added in for you to find, which fill in some interesting back-story and prospects for future titles through highly entertaining animated shorts. The dialogue that takes place between Master Chief and Cortana also helps kick off the relationship that will eventually form through the series, and it is interesting to see just how their relationship develops during the dangerous encounters they endure. Additionally, you are still able to experience the entire campaign with a friend via split-screen or online. However, there is not drop-in/drop-out support, and there is no matchmaking system for finding a partner online.

Visually, Halo: CE Anniversary might not be the most beautiful game on the market, but 343 have really worked hard to give it one of the best HD treatments possible. In all honesty, Halo: Reach still has a better visual experience, but the look and feel of the traditional Halo universe is expertly brought forward. The most noticeable improvement has to be the lighting, with corridors lighting up in an ambient purple shade, and the sun beating down on the lush Halo installation. Character details have been beefed up considerably, with the interior of Covenant ships undergoing nearly a complete transformation. Animations can still feel stiff and a bit awkward though, and the lip-sync is a bit distracting at most times.

A nice touch is the ability to change from the remastered visuals to the classic, 2001 visuals with the simply hit of the back button. Just don’t do it while in a firefight, as the transition may take a second or two, which could mean having plasma grenade thrown at your forehead without you being able to react. It is often nice to play with the classic visuals, and reflect on how far the gaming industry has come in only ten years. It is also interesting to see how well the classic visuals hold up today, which is mostly due to the fantastic art design at the time. The original, brilliant Halo soundtrack is also present, and is available in its original flavour, or the new, remastered version. Either way, your ears are going to thank you.

Apart from the visual overhaul, nothing else has actually changed, with 343 leaving everything else that made Halo: CE such a memorable experience intact. While this will please most fans (as we hate having our memories messed with), it also highlights a few issues that plagued the title then, and make a more profound impact this time around. Firstly is the A.I. Occasionally, the A.I is downright daft, standing still and not reacting to your approach, and often just soaking up your bullets like sunshine. Granted, this is more of a rare occurrence, though it is very noticeable. Thankfully, Elites and Jackals still make formidable foes, and a large number of Grunts can still be a force to be reckoned with, especially with a Plasma Grenade in the mix. Hunters are a lot less deadly than in later Halo entries, and are more of a pest than a challenge.

Another issue is level design in certain sections of the game. Finding your way around indoor bunkers and corridors can sometimes become increasingly frustrating, especially when there is back tracking involved. This is partly due to the fact that there is often no variation to the corridors that follow on from each other, which can cause some confusion when you are forced to find your way out of a building. These issues highlight how game and level design has progressed over the years, but the fact that they only cause minor hindrances and small frustrations shows just how well Halo: CE was initially designed. Oh, and if you’re hoping that 343 overlooked the infamously overpowered pistol, then you can jump for joy, as the original pistol is represented in all its overpowered glory, allowing you to take down hordes of enemies and feel like a badass while doing so.

Now before you think 343 just overhauled the visual aspects of the game and shipped it, there are a few things that make this Anniversary addition more than a minor improvement. Skulls have been added, giving you more ways to tweak your Halo experience. From less ammo drops to exploding confetti Grunt heads, all the classics are there, and buried within Halo for you to find. Achievements are also present, much to the delight of achievement whores around the world (Like Cavie). These small changes are sure to please Halo fans, but the real changes come in the form of Kinect support and Stereoscopic 3D.

Kinect integration only goes as far as voice commands, allowing you to reload, toss grenades, edit settings and switch visual modes all with your voice. It certainly becomes handy when you want to change the brightness of the game without pausing, but beyond that it falls short or anything significant. Commands to reload or throw grenades are met with slight delays in game, meaning that you’ll never get a pinpoint grenade toss by just shouting at your TV. However, you are able to activate a very interesting feature call Analyze, which will turn your entire view into a blue blur, allowing you to highlight and analyze any item in the game, unlocking it’s entry in the encyclopaedia. Those without a Kinect will have to find their Halo information fix elsewhere, however. 3D is also an added novelty, and after playing a good portion of the campaign in 3D I can honestly say that it truly transforms Halo into a gorgeous experience. It won’t convince you to buy a brand new 3D TV, but if you are lucky enough to own one, you are in for a visual treat.

Halo: CE Anniversary also sports a competitive multiplayer mode, however you may be disappointed to find that this is not the multiplayer suite that shipped with Combat Evolved. The multiplayer suite is integrated with the Halo: Reach architecture, and doesn’t allow classic visuals to accompany the frantic fun that many remember. Having the multiplayer integrated with Reach means that you can play online with other Reach players, provided they have the Anniversary map pack. This map pack is available for download off the Xbox Live market, and people who buy Anniversary will receive a code to redeem the maps for their Reach copy, creating a perfectly seamless experience. Anniversary only has six maps however, taking five from the original thirteen from Combat Evolved, as well as one PC exclusive map. Each map has been given a bit of a face lift, with some maps now sporting expansive outside views as opposed to opaque glass. The engine here is the same as Reach, so your multiplayer experience should feel extremely familiar. Match types are exactly the same, and classes and abilities all make their appearances. However, there is an Anniversary match modifier, which will take things back to the good old days, meaning no jet packs, enhanced sprint or armour locks. Retro weapons will also replace all of Reach’s upgraded gear.

Firefight also creeps in, though there is only one map to take your stand in. The map takes its cues from the second level in the campaign, and also features some A.I. controlled ODST troopers that will do their best to help you. Forge and Theatre mode also manage to find some space in the package, bringing all the map editing fun you know and love from previous titles. Theatre mode allows you to capture any and every moment of your multiplayer experiences, from epic kills to downright hilarious deaths. It’s nothing really to brag about, but there is no doubt that many are happy for the inclusion of these community favourite features.

With a lower price than most games on the market, and a truly expert remastering, there is really no reason to miss out on the best Halo experience you could possibly have the second time around. If you own an Xbox 360, you should own Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Just like the original before it, Halo explodes onto Microsoft’s console, delivering one of the most engrossing shooter experiences to date, and telling a story that will go down in gaming folklore. Halo: CE Anniversary is an ode to one of the greatest games ever made, and it really deserves your attention.

You control a square, you must navigate said square, while avoiding obstacles, to the end of 3D courses. The end.

…wait what?
Yes, I’m serious, that was the review. What, not long enough? No information about the gameplay or whether it’s worth your time you say? Am I some sort of review critic all of a sudden?

First of all EDGE is, as explained before, a puzzle game that requires you to move your square from one end of a 3D course to the opposite end. The game play mechanics believe it or not, actually makes this tedious task fun. Yes, and in fact, it’s downright challenging. Pathways will collapse as you ‘roll’ over them, your square can ‘roll’ up and down edges making for some rather unique puzzle situations; walls will move to bash your block off the course and there are even teleporters! The cherry on top is that the Steam version of the game, the one you’ll end up getting, includes extended versions of each stage. These extended versions are far more challenging and mind wracking than their regular counterparts.
Each course has a grading system that is based upon how quickly you finished the course. Obviously better times can be achieved by people who can think ‘outside of the box’. Kudos if you got that. The grading system seems to have the ability to drive a person to prove their puzzle solving finesse. A grading of ‘B+’ is simply won’t do for an intrepid geometric puzzle solver.

Other than the challenging puzzles and the grading system, I must say, my most favorite aspect to this game is the music; it’s full of 8-bit glory! There are even a couple of wub-wub (dubstep) tracks for certain courses. Solving puzzles to ‘wub-wub’ is definitely an experience. Seriously, have you tried to dance to wub-wub? It’s near impossible not to look stricken or ill. It gets no better when trying to finish a geometric puzzle in the best time possible.

I know this week’s review is short, but there isn’t much more I could say about EDGE other than it’s a solid puzzle game with great music. Anyone who loves a good puzzle game, some ‘wub-wub’ and geometry should definitely pick up a copy.

Oh and just before I go, next week I’ll be having a look at ‘Dungeon Defenders’ so stay tuned for that.

Yeah, I know, this review is a little late… Okay, okay, so it’s a lot late. I actually do have a couple reasons for that, just so you know. Firstly, way too many great titles have been released recently and if I had published this review then, well it’d be like parking a Toyota next to a Ferrari. This review would make more sense to publish now, well ideally even later on when all the major titles have been bought and this review might get some attention. That said, there are already a bucket load of reviews out there already for this collection and if you prefer an inferior read (*cough* someone has a superiority complex *cough*) by all means read them. In fact, if all this review does is remind you that this collection exists and that you’ve already decided to buy it then great.

The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection is well worth the purchase and I guarantee it’ll make a great addition to your collection. And I don’t mean it’ll make a great addition in comparison to that lame game you bought that one time. I mean it’ll still be great sitting next to Skyrim, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, Arkham City, Battlefield 3 or MW3. Do you see what I mean by how many good games there are? The other reason for the delayed review was academic work. Academic work is the arch nemesis of most of eGamer’s staff this time of the year and I’m no different. Varsity work involved two massive research projects that completely kicked my ass for the past couple weeks. I’ve barely had time to breathe, never mind writing a decent review for a set of games I really enjoyed. Hey, I said I had two reasons, I didn’t say anything about them being two good reasons.

So, formalities aside, and for any of you out there with a little money to spare, the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection is a collection of two equally innovative and great but vastly differing gaming experiences. Judging by how long each review is, I think I’m going to have to split them up. It just wouldn’t do them justice to scrunch them up into a page each. Similarly, there’s no way I expect you to read potentially 6 pages worth of review in one go. If you’re only interested in one of the games then this plan will suit you. If you aren’t, well you’re broke anyway so you can wait a day. So that we’re all clear, the Ico half of this review will be up tomorrow. Now, Shadow of the Colossus:

Shadow of the Colossus is a hard game to talk about, it’s one of those games suited to a video review rather than a written one. It’s a very simplistic premise and relies on a few, but relatively deep, mechanics instead of having a whole lot of variety going on. You can see my problem then, say too much and suddenly there’s less reason to play it. Don’t mistake its simplicity for a lack of quality or effort though; Shadow of the Colossus is an awesome gaming experience. First things first, I had never played Shadow of the Colossus before this review, though like everyone else in the universe, I had heard nothing but endless praise for the game. Most of the reviews and comments I haven’t forgotten commended its visuals, unique concept, innovative gameplay and just the sheer magnitude of the colossi. Is colossi the plural for colossus, yeah I guess it is. Anyway, and as you can imagine, I was eager to give the game a bash.

As I played the game, I couldn’t help but recall the comments made about it and compared many of them to what I was experiencing. The first thing that came to mind was the supposed grandeur that was its visuals. As an HD remake from the PS2 era, the game’s visuals obviously won’t compare to its modern contemporaries. Even with its updated textures and higher resolutions, the raw graphics certainly aren’t going to make anyone’s jaw drop. Where the game will make your jaw drop is in the aesthetics, the beauty within the game. It may sound cheesy but every sensual element of the game looks right and fits so well together, soundtrack included. It portrays a certain grand scale, like something you’d see if you were to imagine a desolate Skyrim or Lord of the Rings landscape.

There are huge sprawling backdrops, some great lighting effects, shadows that compliment that devoid of life feeling and a nature that has retaken a formerly civilised land. The colossi are even better; they’re impressively detailed, covered in vegetation as well as just being bewilderingly huge beasts of burden. The audio is perfectly complimentary and I found it sharp and sudden, the sound effects were especially accurate and presented every step, gallop, crunch and roar. Although there was the occasional glitch where the accompanying music is concerned, where it would suddenly vanish for no apparent reason and replay without provocation, when it was there, it set an epic and eerie tone that made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

The next thing I remembered was that Shadow of the Colossus was supposed to be innovative. This being a ‘Team Ico’ game, I’m not at all surprised it’s different and just as equally unsurprised that I enjoyed it a whole lot. So what’s the point of the game and what are these colossus things I’m harping on about? Well just encase you’re unaware, and I doubt you’re without some knowledge of the game, but the colossi are huge encumbered beasts and are the incarnate of idols found in a sacred temple. The protagonist finds himself in the temple where he has been given the task of slaying the colossi if he is to see his tragically dead lover revived. A benevolent being, capable of reviving his lover, has requested the defeat of the colossi in return for reuniting him with said love. I say protagonist but I’m not entirely sure as the colossi seem to be innocent and undeserving of their imminently fatal destiny. They attack only out of defence and die purely so you may revive another.

Perhaps you are the antagonist of the story and this is a mission of greed. It’s all very smartly left to the player’s imagination and as you slay each colossus, you’ll keep questioning just why you’re here and why so many colossi deserve to die to save a single person. It’s all very simplistic in its delivery and maybe I’m reading way too much into this. I’d like to think it was all done on purpose and I enjoyed it that way. So, that’s a tick for being innovative then.

Speaking of which, all this colossus slaying isn’t as easy as you might imagine it to be. The game is actually quite challenging at times and some of the later colossi will require long to-and-fro battles. The point is to stun or manoeuvre yourself so that you can climb onto each colossus long enough to attack its critical spots, thereby killing it. The mechanics and gameplay are simple enough to understand but require quite a bit of finesse to master. The need for finesse comes from my one criticism of the game, its controls are fiddly, generally inappropriate and just don’t fit the rest of the refined experience. The process of fighting and eventually defeating each colossus can be quite complex despite the premise driving it and the wonky controls will be a test of frustration. It’s by no means Dark Souls frustrating or difficult but at the same time, the game won’t throw you any favours.

I don’t mind having to actively grip when jumping and moving about the colossus, but when I have to fight the controls as well as the colossus only to be thrown off and have to climb it all over again, I get understandably annoyed. Don’t get me wrong, the game is certainly worth the frustration and easy to forgive, I just wish the improvements made to this HD upgrade had been extended to the controls. My other issue with the controls is moving around on your horsey. I’d prefer it to be simpler and more intuitive when in reality it’s a bit of chore to get anywhere. Having to constantly tap a button to keep any sort of momentum is more a pain than an experience and the game certainly could’ve learnt from Red Dead Redemption’s attempt at horse riding.

Don’t let all that criticism scare you off though. Shadow of the Colossus is a great game and seeing that first colossus shows just how far ahead it was in terms of scale on the PS2. God of War had the Titans, huge creatures of magnitude and grand proportion. But even the Titans were particularly free of interaction beyond slashing the occasional giant hand. Hell, even in Skyrim nothing is that big. That said, Shadow of the Colossus is extremely satisfying and despite how epic taking down a colossus feels, it’s also accompanied by a genuinely off putting feeling. This much quality derived emotion from one game is a sure fire sign that it’s worth a play. On top of that, and with timed scoring and trophies (a new addition to the game), you’re given just the right amount of challenge and it’ll encourage that much more exploring.

A few weeks ago it was decided that I would be the lucky one who got to review The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, herein known only as Skyrim. At first it seemed like the natural order of things since I am the most awesome gamer around and– “holy shit, I have to review Skyrim!”…

It was that slightly delayed but nevertheless glass-shattering revelation that had me quite honestly shaking in my non-existent, metaphorical boots.

The question that immediately shot to my mind faster than the time it took Kim Kardashian to get her latest marriage annulled was, put simply: “How exactly does one review a game like Skyrim?!”

Let’s look at a few of the defining features of a role-playing game like Skyrim: The game lasts many hundreds of hours, potentially, and you could in fact never play every single part of the game no matter how hard you tried because there was always that one thing in that one dungeon that you missed or didn’t even realise was there the first five times you passed it. Even then, you might never have even come across that dungeon because you just didn’t expect it to be in such a remote and frankly silly place.

To add insult to what is clearly (possibly) gamer injury, thanks to many little twists of fate I got the game almost a week after the release date when some had already spent upwards of forty hours running through the game.

But then I put my disc into my console and started up the game and it was very soon into playing it that I realised one simple thing about a game like Skyrim: You don’t “play” a game like this. You get lost in it.

Being the fifth game in a long-standing series has a few benefits which are easily noticed, implicitly or otherwise, while playing through the game.

For one, the developers are now very comfortable with the engine that they are working on, even more so since it shares development ties with that of the company’s other flagship series, Fallout. The Creation engine that powers Skyrim is very much a new engine, but plays in a way that is very familiar to any gamers that have played Oblivion, or even Fallout 3.

The only difference is that it’s a better engine in every way, from being absolutely breathtakingly beautiful in terms of visuals and attention to detail, to being far less glitch-a-minute and more refined overall. Sure, there is the odd glitch to be found in the game but the number of occurrences is far less than any previous Bethesda title. Friends of mine who have played the game reported almost no glitching at all, while I only encountered one in my many hours of the game so far. Bethesda have clearly been improving that underlying technology, and their improvements have been noted.

The second benefit of a long-standing series is that the story and lore of the game is already crafted and exists in an almost parallel universe of dungeons, divines, daedra and dragons. The developers are comfortable with their universe and the story they are working with in this game shows it well. Not just the actual main quest, mind you. I speak of the overall story aspects of the game, the way each quest ties into the next or how a certain part of the lore can be traced back to a previous game. Everything is coherent and clear to the player, even more so for players of previous games.

I for one spent many hundreds of hours lost in Cyrodiil after finally picking up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion a few years ago, and to read aspects of lore while playing through Skyrim that tie in to my actions or the actions of others in the previous game, was quite rewarding for me.

One of the best reasons to play Skyrim is simply to get lost in another world.

The prologue starts out with you on a wagon headed to a nearby keep, with the only explanation for your character on that wagon being that you were caught trying to sneak into the border of Skyrim. Some story then occurs and a dragon appears, causing mayhem and destruction but ultimately allowing you to escape the keep and find your freedom in the nearby forest.

That’s it.

From there, you may opt to follow the person who helped you to escape the keep and continue the main quest for the game, or you can flip him the bird and simply do as you bloody well please.

And there is a lot to do in this game.

The sheer amount of locations in this game is just downright scary, and nobody holds your hand and tells you what to do here. There is no Captain Price barking orders at you, if you wish to head to the nearest town and kick a chicken, you’re more than welcome to. If you’d like to jump into a nearby cave that you passed on your way to that town, you’re more than welcome to. The possibilities and options are seemingly endless.

And Skyrim has redefined the term “non-linear”.

There is a main quest and it exists for all of a few hours if you focus it, but that’s just so little of the game and really serves only as an introductory piece to the world of Skyrim and a means to unlock a few achievements. You could very well spend two hundred hours playing through this game and never touch the main quest. Ever.

Sure a few questions might go unanswered, such as why you’re able to absorb the souls of dragons and what you do with them, but you could just figure that out while crawling through your next dungeon or something…

In Skyrim, you are ‘Dovahkiin’, which directly translates to Bad-Ass-Mother-Fucker ‘Dragonborn’. More specifically, your character is the only Dovahkiin alive, as far as anyone knows.

In the Nordic region of Skyrim, Dovahkiin are held in high regard and revered for their abilities, which can be summarised as absorbing the life force of dragons and speaking their language. The former involves first killing dragons, who have made a re-appearance in The Elder Scrolls world, for some reason that is explained later in the main quest’s story if you choose to follow it. The latter is what will become part of the meat of your gameplay experience, which is basically learning ‘Words of Power’ that enable you to do ‘Shouts’ or ‘Thu’ums’ as the locals call it.

Shouts, which come in three levels depending on how many of the ‘Words of Power’ you have learned for a specific Shout, turn your typical Oblivion-like character into something truly amazing and a force to be reckoned with. The language of the dragons can be spoken by a Dovahkiin and when you do, depending on which Shout you have selected, you can do crazy things like sprint-boosting forward a certain distance or throwing your voice to distract enemies or breathing fire or summoning blizzards and lightning storms. You could slow down time for a better edge in battles or, and I don’t even joke, simply Shout someone dead.

“Fus Roh Dah”… more like For The Win!

Together with Shouts comes the ability to wield anything on either hand. Yes, dual-wielding. It’s kind of a big deal in Skyrim too, and as a result you may wield anything from spells to swords to axes to daggers on either hand, in any combination you would like. Or you could go for a more traditional two-handed weapon or bow. Much like in Oblivion, you are what you play and what you play is entirely up to you.

If you’d like to dual-wield a sword and an axe, you may do so. The same for a fire spell and a one-handed sword, or a typical sword and shield combo. Or do something radical and wield two spells, different ones if you’d like different effects or two of the same for an ‘overcharge’ which increases its effect. It’s really only up to you to decide, as you battle the various opponents to your character in the game.

The battles themselves are easier this time around, with the just the right kind of frantic feel to all of it. Fights with dragons are always memorable, especially when they drop into a town you’re visiting and the guards join in the fight.

To aid things, Skyrim provides a ‘Favourites’ menu which you may call up at any time that pauses the game and offers you a selection of items you’ve favourited from your inventory and magic menu, which really makes things a lot more streamlined and easier, mid-battle.

The entire user interface has undergone a redesign and it would seem that Skyrim aims more for simplicity instead of the convoluted complication of previous games.

At the press of a button, four menu options pop up for you to choose from by simply moving your analogue button (the mouse for PC users) in the relevant direction.

Going left takes you to your magic menu which shows the various schools of magic together with any spells you’ve learned, and your Shouts, as well as lists your Favourites if you’ve favourited any spells. You will also find an Active Effects tab that tells you what buffs and debuffs are currently active for your character.

Going right takes you to your inventory menu which lists whatever you have stored, be it weapons, apparel, potions, books, ingredients, keys and so on. The Favourites section is also here, for your favourited weapons or potions. Your inventory is limited to a certain number so unfortunately, you cannot pick up everything you see. You may view whatever is in your inventory in full 3D, by rotating it using the analogues. This is necessary for some quests.

Going down takes you to your map, which shows the entire Skyrim more or less in 3D, allowing you to navigate and browse through the areas you’ve discovered (in white), the areas you know of but have not yet discovered (in black) and the various areas that you’ve cleared (marked with a diamond). You may also set custom waypoints as necessary and, of course, fast travel, something you’ll be doing a lot of in this game.

Going up takes you to your skills menu, which is incredibly pretty to look at and contains various skills and skill trees in the form of constellations with each star representing a perk for that skill tree. Perks can be considered little self-rewarded abilities for focusing on that skill and are very handy to have. They don’t each have their own special game-changing trait as with Fallout 3′s perks, but to get to the more powerful ones, you’ll need a few less amazing ones. To that extent you might feel like you’ve got an unnecessary perk or two simply because you wanted the next perk in that skill tree. While it doesn’t work against the game, it’s still worth mentioning, even if it’s a constant issue across many RPGs with the skill tree system. At least Skyrim makes it worth your while by offering up some really impressive high-tier perks.

Levelling up in Skyrim depends solely on what you do as the player, and you gain a little experience towards your character’s level each time you level up a certain skill, be it One-handed or Sneak or even Smithing or Alchemy. Gaining a character level is no longer the chore it was in Oblivion and here, you simply go into your skills menu and choose which of three attributes to increase, be it Magicka, Health or Stamina, and then you get a perk point which you may spend on whatever you’d like, assuming you meet the level requirements for your chosen perk’s root skill. For example, a high-tier One-handed perk might have the requirement of level 70 in One-handed and whatever previous perks it is connected to.

Magicka, Health and Stamina increase by ten points as per your choosing, each time you level up. Magicka is pretty much mana and is used to power spells, the bread and butter attribute for any mage then. Health keeps you alive and should be focused, especially if you’re a tank. Stamina allows you to sprint (a new, much-needed inclusion in the game) as well as perform power attacks with weapons. The regeneration rate of each attribute also goes up each time you invest points, with an added bonus of slightly increased inventory storage space each time you increase Stamina.

Hitting Start while in the game will not only pause it but also offer a few other menus for you to peruse, namely Quests, Stats and Game, the latter of which involves your usual affair of saving, loading and exiting the game, something most of you will never select, once you start up the game.

The Quests menu lists your various open quests as well as those that have been completed, and allows you to set markers for any you have open. Chances are, while playing through Skyrim, depending on how much you interact with people, you could have many, many quests open. The sheer number of quests in this game will have you sitting back, nervously sweating while you figure out where to start and what to do next. The quests themselves are of typical Bethesda style and will involve anything from many hours of questing to a few minutes depending on what you have in your inventory. The latter are very few and far between though, meaning most quests, certainly the legitimate quests that aren’t listed under ‘Miscellaneous’ will consume at least a few hours of your life in order to complete. They also send you all over the map, further increasing the likelihood of you stumbling upon more quests if you’ve never been to that place before.

The Stats menu stores all relevant statistics for your player, such as their battle preferences, their exploration through the game and of course, their crimes. It’s mostly just for boasting or perhaps clarity, or to keep track of how many more locks and pockets they need to pick in order to unlock that achievement, as is the case with me.

There is no Character menu this time around, something that I found a little upsetting because I’d like to be able to just stare at my character for a while in a menu. It’s a minor gripe but I thought it was worth a mention.

One of the biggest criticisms of Oblivion, indeed one of its only criticisms, was that the characters in the game looked like pudgy muppets. Worse still, all of them had more or less the same voice. And in a game of this proportion, where there are easily thousands of NPCs around, that is impossible to ignore and becomes a pain to have to endure. Thankfully, Bethesda have been doing their homework and now characters actually look and sound legit, regardless of their race. More so than that, the more exotic races have been given features that compliment them. No longer will you see a Khajiit and an Imperial standing next to each other, and not know the difference once their backs are turned. This time around, you’ll see the Khajiit’s tail wagging around, for example. Don’t let it catch you checking out its ass though, because it will also claw you to death with its unique race-specific claws for unarmed combat.

Little things like that go a long way to benefiting the experience, in Skyrim. More so when you consider that each race is well-defined within the context of the game and each race has a part to play in some of the various over-arching stories that you will partake in, during your time with Skyrim. You may once again choose any race you desire, as well, each with its own unique elements, such as a certain spell or increased levels in a certain skill. As far as lore goes, pretty much every relevant race from Oblivion has made its return, which means we are still awaiting the inclusion of dwarves as a playable race.

Depending on your race, you will also be treated slightly differently in the various towns and settlements, during your interactions with NPCs, though this isn’t constant and some scripted dialogue still plays out regardless of your race, meaning an otherwise friendly NPC could still say something (story-related) that is derogatory about dark elves to your dark elf while you stand there, awkwardly, going: “… Uhm. Lol?” Of course, it’s another minor niggle and easily overlooked. Also, the validity of a dark elf actually saying “Lol?” might be brought into question.

There are also inclusions of certain other “species” or races, dragons notwithstanding. These include but aren’t limited to, giants, who herd mammoths, both of which are easily stronger than you on earlier levels and should not be messed with, Falmer, who are basically snow elves that hid away many years ago due to story-relevant reasons and were corrupted over time, and werewolves, who need no real explanation. Each of these can be found in a location of the game that is sensible and suitable. Dragons themselves are found in specific locations in the game, but are also randomly generated as you play.

Apart from the main quest of Skyrim which has mainly to do with dragons, Shouts and all of that, there are various other questlines in the game that also constitute story elements. In fact, each and every time I made a reference to “story” in this review, I’ve been speaking of not just the main quest but also any other questline you might opt to follow. And really, the main quest is just another questline for the game, albeit one that centres around you and your reasons for being there.

The various other questlines include the old Mages Guild, this time known as the College of Winterhold, the old Warriors Guild which is now known as the Companions Guild, a home for warriors that has a few secrets to reveal to the world, the Thieves Guild, now in ruins after many years of neglect and abuse of power, and the Dark Brotherhood, the home of murderers and all things vile yet remarkably alluring, all making their return from Oblivion, for you to quest through once again.

Each of those questlines takes up around the same amount of time as the main questline, for further emphasis on how complimentary the main questline is. Some them are actually more interesting as well, and depending on your chosen set of skills to focus, more beneficial to your character.

There are also a few other questlines in the game, the most predominate of which is that of the Civil War in Skyrim between the Imperials and the rebel Stormcloaks. Each has a reason for fighting and the game offers you the choice of who to side with in easily one of the most incredible, emotionally taxing and world shaping quests to ever grace a game without actually being what the whole point of the game is about in the first place. It’s just another of those questlines that you’re free to do if and when you please.

It seems all of the emphasis in Skyrim has been placed on story, with almost every character you interact with having some quest for you at some point in the game. To that extent, every other aspect of the game serves to compliment the story.

Therein lies the justification of the streamlined user interface, for example, and the easier method of levelling up, this time around. Even the game itself starts up simply by showing the Bethesda logo and then the main menu, with no two minutes of middleware to sit through each time you start up, like every other game out there. It’s refreshing and serves to benefit the experience entirely.

More importantly, it emphasises the fact that Skyrim is not a game you play on a weekend and then forget about. No, Skyrim is a game you play and don’t stop playing. Ever. The Radiant questline which literally never stops generating quests for you, will make sure of that.

There is too much of game in Skyrim for it to be simply considered an equal amongst other “games”. Getting lost in this world is an unparalleled experience, one that has without a doubt been perfected by Bethesda.

Even after many hours with the game, I struggle to find a legitimate criticism for the title. It seems to win on every possible level of a role playing game, in fact it redefines the term entirely.

This is a role playing experience.

And really, if you haven’t played it already, you really, really do need to. For once, the ‘triple A review syndrome’ is justified, and this is really the pinnacle of Bethesda’s work, their magnum opus if you will.

Playing Skyrim is like preparing for a cataclysmic event. You get your affairs in order, wish your family well, have sex for the last time, and ask someone to safeguard your pets. And then you start playing Skyrim and the world as you know it, ends. It ceases to exist. All else fades away and what you’re left with is your new life, that of the Dovahkiin. And coming out of it forever changes you, if you ever do.

Play Skyrim. It’s the best true RPG I’ve ever played. And this from a BioWare fanboy…

I’ve always adored the Assassin’s Creed franchise for its painstakingly recreated, historically accurate environments, and the way it weaves its tales into the fabric of history. This, coupled with excellent gameplay, some outstanding narratives and an intriguing overarching plot provides an experience unlike any other for me.

I suppose we need to attack that rather large elephant in the room before we go anywhere. With Brotherhood still very fresh in everyone’s mind and Ubisoft giving themselves only a year to come up with a new game, it was always obvious that Revelations was not going to make leaps and bounds, but I refuse to say that it’s the same game. That’s been the response of many other critics, but in my opinion, Revelations is a different game and makes enough improvements to the combat and free-running to make it feel different. Revelations also improves on several features and adds a few of its own which may not all work out, but it’s still enough progression to get by.

The change of setting to Constantinople, the change in the way Ezio’s story is told, the different approach to the way missions are structured and presented are all factors which tweak the overall experience. There’s no doubt that Revelations is held back by the fact that Ubisoft opted to make it in only one year, but it never suffers greatly as a result. Sure, it could have been better, probably a contender for game of the year, but as it stands, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is only a great game.

It is noticeably better than Brotherhood with the tweaks that have been made and the minor improvements here and there, but Ubisoft has really shot itself in the foot by announcing the ‘yearly release of an AC game’ thing. Revelations is still a great game though, despite effectively running on the same engines that drove Assassin’s Creed II, but I guess that’s just testament to how phenomenal that game was. There are clear limitations with the timeframe and subsequent technology that Ubisoft has to work with, but it never impedes the game greatly. If I had to sum Revelations up in a sentence I’d say the following: it’s a great game, with slightly better gameplay than its predecessor, but it could have been better and, as an overall experience, is probably not the best game in the series.

It’s not exactly great technique to tell you my ultimate thoughts of the game before we get to the end of the review but I feel that this was necessary because of the doubt hanging around Revelations. You should probably  give our Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood review a read as well since the two games are largely similar. Right, moving on.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the fourth in the series and our third game in control of Ezio Auditore but if anything, this is his best outing as a character. I’ve always loved the character of Ezio not only because he’s an absolute badass, but also because there’s a lot of substance to him and Revelations really puts you on a more introspective, emotional journey with him and you can really see how he has developed as a character from the brash, arrogant youth to the wise Master Assassin.

There are monologues in which he writes letters to his sister where players will get a much deeper understanding of his thoughts and motivations. This sets you up quite nicely for the ending which really is well executed from Ezio’s perspective.

In Revelations, Ezio is done looking for revenge. He has struck at the heart of the Templars in Rome and is now looking for answers. He journeys to Masyaf in search of Altair’s library, which is said to not only hold the answers Ezio seeks but also the Apple of Eden that was hidden after the events of Assassin’s Creed. Upon arrival, he is greeted by an army of Templars, but obviously triumphs only to discover that 5 keys are required to unlock the library.

Long story short, the keys are in Constantinople (Istanbul) and it is here that Ezio must journey to in order to retrieve the keys before the Templars.

The story effectively breaks into two parallel veins. One has Ezio searching for the keys while the other sees him aiding the Ottoman monarchy, Prince Suleiman in particular, to free the city of the vengeful Byzantines who just happen to be in collusion with the Templars. There are overlaps and the two eventually meld together, but it’s a good way of varying the missions. The two have very different missions and every mission is a little bit different, but you never feel like you’re moving from one objective to another. Building on the tone set by AC II and Brotherhood, Revelations simply flows seamlessly and you’re always clearly aware of why you’re doing what you’re doing and what purpose it serves in the greater scheme of things.

There’s your usual spread of stealth missions, tails, protection missions, fetch-quests, assassinations and so on, but there are some standouts such as a few that employ classic Prince of Persia puzzle-solving and swift platforming. There’s one where you have to distract people by playing the lute and even a mission where you tail a florist to find where he’s getting his tulips from, because Ezio doesn’t want to wait for the flowers.

Added to that, there are side missions which offer much of the same variety of guild missions and saving citizens, but this time around there’s a bit more variety.  For example, I went to save a citizen and did not find him locked in battle with a group of soldiers, but rather laying against a wall with severe wounds, and the objective was to rescue his wife and daughter from a mad man and, in return, he would join the Brotherhood out of gratitude. Also, all the random little things such as races now serve a greater purpose in that by winning, the loser will join your Brotherhood. We’ll get back to the Assassin Recruits system later. Another little touch that adds to the experience and makes a small but welcome difference is that mission-givers no longer wait statically for you to take note of them. Instead they will behave like normal people going about their business until you disturb them.

The guilds return but Courtesans are now replaced by Romani (gypsies!) although they provide the same function of serving as a distraction. Each guild has side missions for you to perform and there’s some good variety here. In addition to that, the guilds also have their own set of challenges for Ezio to complete and are great for all you trophy-whoring/achievement-mongering completionists out there.

As you would expect, Revelations recreates the city and atmosphere of Constantinople under the Ottomans perfectly. It’s a more intimate city than Rome and feels more vibrant but that’s probably because it hasn’t been raped by a psychopath. Often referred to as the crossroads of the world, the global influence is clearly apparent in the characters you’ll meet as well as the new toys Ezio uses.

The hook-blade, for example, is an excellent addition and makes platforming easier, simpler and much faster. Walls can now be scaled in roughly half the time and zip-lines make traversing the vast expanses of the city a lot quicker. It also lends itself to some sweet little tricks in combat which has also been revised.  Combat is now faster and ramped up enemy AI makes it marginally more challenging although the game stays true to the AC ethos of being rather easy. As started in Brotherhood, the combat system favours those who strike first and the days of waiting to counter are long over.

Ezio is far more brutal in his manner of attack and can easily be launched into a flurry of quick-kills which can be done by simple tapping the ‘attack’ button after killing an enemy. This makes it easy to decimate a whole group of enemies swiftly. You can also use secondary weapons voluntarily now by tapping triangle or ‘Y’ button after attacking.

One thing I picked up on and was impressed by is that Ezio’s movement is different to what it was in Brotherhood. Make no mistake, he’s still a mean motherfucker who will slit your throat faster than you can say “assassino”, and he still traverses rooftops with the careless abandon of a boy, but you can see his age in the way he moves and reacts and that was just something special for me, which showed considered progression but not the type that annoys players (I’m looking at you, GTA V with your need to refuel cars).

Another great addition that the Turks give to Ezio’s arsenal of skills is bomb-making. Do you remember in Brotherhood when you collected all that random stuff from chests and corpses? The terracotta pots, phosphorous and God knows what else. It was unbelievably pointless and the only thing you could do with all those arbitrary items was sell them off so why not give us coin in the first place? Well, all those useless items now have purpose.

At some point in the game, Ezio is shown how to make bombs and it opens up a whole new aspect of gameplay to players. All those random items are now bomb supplies and can be used to craft bombs at bomb-crafting tables which are conveniently dotted around the city. I’ve been accused of being a terrorist (which is why I love the bomb-making feature so much) on many occasions and I think the implication being made here about Turkish people is clear.

Anyway, there are three types of bombs, namely Tactical, Diversion and Lethal. Each has its own set of ingredients that can be used. You get different casings for different uses, a variety of gunpowder depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and a wide variety of effects for each type. For example, you can use a terracotta pot, British gunpowder and Datura to create a bomb that sends out a toxic gas, spreads out over a wide area and explodes on impact. You can carry up to five of each type of bomb and have the option to test your bombs out so experimentation is easy and does not waste your resources. It also helps to gauge how useful that custom design would be and precisely what its effects would be.

Recruiting assassins is more important than ever and given more purpose. You recruit assassins in much the same way as Brotherhood except for the greater variation in the manner through which you acquire your recruits. As before, you can only recruit in an area after relinquishing it from Templar control by seizing the Templar den. What makes this illogical is that the entirety of Rome was under Templar control in Brotherhood so the mechanic made sense but in Revelations, Constantinople is under Ottoman rule and yet Templars seems to control the city.

Nonetheless, by seizing the Templar den you convert it into an Assassin’s den and you can then assign a recruit as the head of that den. As before, you need to level your recruits up and can do this by sending them on missions across Europe. These are much the same as before except now each mission diminishes the Templar control in that specific city. Your recruits can also gain XP every time you call upon them to dispatch of enemies. The trade-off is that if you send a group of inexperienced rookies or too few assassins up against a group of tough enemies, they will likely die. This balances the system out rather well while adding some great depth.

Should one of your dens come under attack and they (frequently) will, you will have to venture over to it and take charge of defending the den. Enter Den Defence. A tower-defense-style side-mission where Ezio commands his assassins and must place them strategically on the ground and rooftops to protect the den. Each rooftop needs to be assigned a leader and from thereon you can choose from a variety of assassins such as riflemen or archers to be positioned on the rooftops or ground.  You can also set up various defences such as barricades. You must then survive a series of attacks from the Templars. Each successful Den Defence unlocks new types of assassins and defences which can be used. Den Defence has the potential to offer a nice change of pace in gameplay but is instead too tedious and drags you away from what you want to do far too often. Initially, it’s also far too easy to just decimate enemies with a never ending series of canon strikes. It’s a good idea but really doesn’t work very well and becomes more of a pestering buzz in your ear than a welcome distraction. Mercifully, you can eventually train an assassin to protect a den so that you don’t have to.

Now, about those keys I mentioned. The five keys are hidden throughout the city of Constantinople, much like the Assassin’s seals in AC II. Each key that you uncover is embedded with a memory of Altair’s. You play through each memory and not only get to see what happened in the wake of Assassin’s Creed’s ending but also get to know Altair much better as a human being. If you’ve played Assassin’s Creed (why wouldn’t you have?) then you will really appreciate these sequences and even from a noob’s perspective, they’ll be intriguing, engaging and very well-done. They’ve also given him a more Middle-Eastern accent which suits the character far better.

I suppose we need to strike a bit of a balance here by talking about Desmond. I can tell you’re just thrilled. After doing a bit of recon, I discovered that, like myself, not many people like Desmond Miles as a character. In fact, many would rather see him die in a hole filled with upturned hidden-blades and otters than have him as the protagonist for an entire game. Now, this is not his fault. It’s Ubisoft who made him a shallow, aimless character devoid of any personality. There’s a considerable attempt to rectify this in Revelations though, as you’ll see later.

You have to pity Desmond just a little though. After the crazy ending of Brotherhood, Desmond’s mind is at risk and if it weren’t for the being plugged back into the Animus, he’d be a vegetable which really wouldn’t be the greatest tragedy to the world. Basically, his mind is fragmented. Nonetheless, his mind has been put into a sort of safe-mode called the Black Room and this manifests itself as Animus Island. There, Desmond meets someone (I’m not saying who) and learns that he must gain closure on his ancestor’s memories to repair his subconscious. Premise for game found.

If you’re still here, give yourself a pat on the back, take a toilet break and maybe have some cup-kittens (though not at the same time, hopefully). Back already? Good, we’ve still got some ground to cover.

As usual, there are some collectibles which serve a certain purpose. There are pages from Ottoman Grand Vizier Ishak Pasha’s memoirs which when collected unlock Pasha’s armour. This is perhaps the best armour the series has ever had, next to Altair’s armour in AC II, and is effectively indestructible. There are also Animus data fragments which are dotted around the game and every few that you collect unlocks a Desmond sequences which is then playable on Animus Island.

These sequences are strictly optional but have clearly been designed to fill in a bit of Desmond’s backstory so that we understand him better. They do well to teach us about Desmond but do little to actually develop him as a character since this can only be done by showing the character in the real world and how they interact with people and such. There are 5 sequences and by the end of them, you’ll know a lot more about Desmond but I don’t think you’ll be anywhere near familiarising with him and he definitely doesn’t develop any more of a personality.

The sequences are decent at best. They are first-person puzzle-solving levels with simple mechanics and a strange close-to-the ground perspective. They are full of geometric environments made up of various blocks and I’d imagine it’s a lot like how the world would have looked if you were on acid during the 80’s. They require some basic sense of timing and logical thinking but that’s not the point of them really. The sequences are meant to be dead easy so that you focus on the Desmond monologue that plays while you’re going through each sequence but they could have at least made it a bit more challenging.

The monologues give us a lot of insight into Desmond’s childhood and what it was like to grow up in a  society of Assassin’s but do little to further him as character. The fact that they’re voiced by Nolan North doesn’t help because despite his talent, the monologues sound like he was reading from a script in a recording room. Then I pictured Nathan Drake from Uncharted standing in a recording room. And then I pictured Sully there with him. And then I pictured them laughing with each other about how pathetic Desmond is. Suffice to say, things got very weird, very fast within the confines of my head.

The economic system of restoring shops and buildings for revenue returns in Revelations and while I enjoy the system, it doesn’t seem to fit in Constantinople. I’m not too aware of the situation in Constantinople during the early 1500’s but I’m pretty sure the Ottoman Empire was a thriving civilisation. You see, in Brotherhood, Ezio took it upon himself to restore the city of Rome which had been debilitated and raped by the Borgia. In Revelations it doesn’t quite make sense since the city of Constantinople is under Ottoman rule and should be seen to by them and not some foreigner.

The visuals are great, as usual. The environments still look amazing but could be better and you can see the game, with its larger-than Rome environment, puts strain on the engines that are still in use from AC II. The framerate can stutter when things get a bit hectic on-screen and this puts a damper on the overall visual quality of the game. That said, this doesn’t happen often and when it does it’s noticeable, but the game doesn’t exactly turn into an interactive stop-motion animation.

I adored the multiplayer component of AC: Brotherhood. It was fresh, exciting and entertaining. Despite being somewhat limited, it was one of the best multiplayer’s I’d ever played. This is perhaps the only part of the game where Revelations truly makes leaps and bounds.

Not only are there more modes now with the inclusion of Artefact Assault (Capture the Flag), Deathmatch and some more story-orientated quests, but the multiplayer now also has its own story beyond the simple premise of it being a facility designed to train new Templars. By levelling up and progressing through the multiplayer ranks, you will learn more about Abstergo. You can now customise your characters with unique looks and can even determine how your character kills and stuns in-game. The interface has also been improved greatly while matchmaking has been fine-tuned so that you don’t get put against a group of pros in your first Deatmatch.

I was greatly surprised by Brotherhood’s multiplayer and I barely gave Revelations’ multiplayer a thought until I launched it and it is damn good. It is perhaps the best multiplayer mode I’ve ever played. Every match feels different and fresh, all the modes are entertaining and customisation is just awesome. There’s a similar selection of classes to choose from in Revelations and they’re rather well balanced. All those short-comings and issues that Brotherhood’s multiplayer had have mercifully been remedied. The Revelations multiplayer is honestly just phenomenal and is well worth playing.

The story in Revelations is a bit of a mixed bag since it is essentially three stories interwoven, albeit Ezio’s is obviously the lion’s share. Let’s go chronologically here. Altair’s story is portrayed quite nicely and it’s quite a treat when you do get to play through it in those brief sequences. Ezio’s story is very well told, with an outstanding narrative that drives you on. The characters are all well-defined and fleshed-out while Ezio himself shows clear development. Desmond’s story is rushed, little gets explained and it sort of skips pieces of information that you think might have helped make things a little more legible but then it makes up very, very little of the game so it’s not so bad.

I’m an Assassin’s Creed fan, and I have been since the first game. I know the full story of the series thus far but even that wasn’t enough to fully grasp what happens during Desmond’s part of the story. It’s a mindfuck of epic proportions and takes about 72 seconds to properly process what you just witnessed. The same goes doubly for his ending. This part of the game can be extremely confusing to newcomers and you’ll hate them for their absolute disregard for the concept of explanation.

Now, given that we’re dealing with three protagonists here, there are effectively three endings which expectedly tie into each other. Altair’s ending is emotional and very well done. It also ties excellently into Ezio’s ending which is simply exquisite. It is the perfect ending for the ultimate assassin and rounds off his swansong very nicely.

With closure brought to both these characters, Desmond can finally sort his shit out and fix himself but his ending is rather rushed with little explanation. Although I suspect that this is because Ubisoft didn’t fully understand what was going on so they sort of just imply things and rush through it in the hopes that you don’t notice the dozens of things which make little to no sense. I think I finally understand the happenings of Desmond’s ending now, after much meditation. In fact, even the parts that do make sense are a bit rushed for no apparent reason. There’s one part right at the end that really should have meant more but because they rushed through it, it barely registers. Luckily, some of the answers that have lingered from AC II and Brotherhood are finally answered but they are the broader questions. The ones that need to be answered to complete this game’s primary purpose of setting us up for Assassin’s Creed 3.

The main story of AC: Revelations will take you roughly 15 hours which is a decent length but paltry by Assassin’s Creed standards. Throw in all those side-missions and extra do-dads and you’re looking at something closer to 30 hours.

Before we conclude, I’d like to personally thank all of you who stuck through till the end. I know it was excruciatingly long, but a game like this deserves a thorough analysis.

In conclusion, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is perhaps not the best game in the series as an overall experience, and while Brotherhood trumped AC II with a ‘bigger is better’ mentality, Revelations could only go so much bigger. Revelations is definitely better than Brotherhood when it comes to gameplay, but in the end it’s not by much. There are small tweaks to combat and free-running that make the feel marginally different and a revised approach to missions and side-missions enhances this feeling, but if you scratch away at the box art you can still see ‘…otherhood’ written underneath. It doesn’t get to a point where you just want to put the controller down because you feel like it’s the same thing all over again, and the game is still great, but it could have been much better and that saddens me.

I don’t know how much longer Ubisoft can keep going with this ‘one a year’ strategy but if Revelations is anything to go on, they are going to be royally screwed pretty soon. The only reason Revelations is still so good is because Assassin’s Creed games are so unique and offer an experience unlike any other, so you’ve only really had this experience twice before (Assassin’s Creed was a very different game).

That is perhaps Revelations’ saving grace, the fact that the series is just so unique that you hardly notice its stark similarity to Brotherhood. Nonetheless, it is a great game and does improve on its predecessor in every way if only by small margins.

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time was deemed by many as the closest a game has come to a Pixar movie. That’s high praise for a series that has always been developed with kids in mind and with the ethos of being as fun as possible. However, Ratchet and Clank has always been about more than that. The games always offer a good spread of gameplay variety with some interesting characters, a good amount of above-average humour and a story that, at the very least, makes sense. Above and beyond this, Ratchet games have always had fantastic visuals thanks to a quirky art style, some great character and level design and a healthy bit of polish.

These can all be summed up as that endearing quality that Ratchet and Clank games have always had as a direct result of the effort that Insomniac puts into the games. The games have that Pixar appeal in that they are perfect for the target market of young kids but can be appreciated just as much by older gamers. I picked up Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction back when I first got my PS3 and there have been few games since that I replayed more times. It is really just that good, it’s plain and simple, good fun. With some kickass weapons thrown in but we’ll get back to that a bit later.

In essence, everything that I’ve mentioned above about the series, everything that makes Ratchet and Clank games so damn good and unbelievably entertaining is absent from All 4 One. There are still glimpses of what made the series great but it’s buried under a seething mountain of poor game design and failed mechanics. Let me say right now that while there are some redeeming qualities to All 4 One’s co-op, I despise the system employed here and believe that it is one of the game’s major trappings.

So Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One picks up the story several years after A Crack in Time and sees Ratchet and Clank contemplating retirement and going back to a simple life. Captain Qwark is now President and Dr Nefarious is out of the picture. Through a series of events, the four are captured by a mysterious ship called the Ephemeris which is later discovered to be collecting the most dangerous creatures in the universe. This motley group then takes it upon themselves to put an end to this by stopping the ship and enigmatic new villain known only as The Master, who happens to be controlling the entire operation.

The whole game takes place on planet Magnus, which should immediately be setting off warning bells since Ratchet games have also had players hopping around from planet to planet. Rest assured, the planet has been designed with a healthy variety of locales ranging from arctic to urban, docks, forest and even rock platforms suspended in mid-air. There are a total of 9 locations with around 4 or 5 levels each. This may sound alright but the levels tend to become repetitive and while you don’t necessarily backtrack, each location’s levels begin to feel generic after you pass the second level.

The entire game feels like it should be half as short and despite a rather well conceived story and pretty good ending, you’ll grow tired of having to do the same thing in every level over and over again. Just when you think that some respite might be offered by a new locale, the monotony sets in all over again. That is not to say that the game is devoid of any gameplay variety but it tends to employ the same set of gameplay elements to break up that monotony and certainly has nowhere near the same level of variety as previous games in the series. All 4 One clocks in at about 10-12 hours which is pretty long for a game of its kind and given what you have to work with in All 4 One, it should really be about two-thirds shorter and might have done better as a game on PSN.

The gameplay is decently fun but marred by the same few co-op mechanics spammed throughout the game. The controls have never been fluid and instinctive but All 4 One goes out of its way to make them clunky and almost cumbersome, especially since the right analogue is used to quick-select weapons and it can be a pain to navigate through the weapons menu in this fashion. In combat the controls are fine but they feel too obtuse during the puzzle-solving sections.

There’s an adequate spread of enemies with various attacks that need to be dealt with in various ways but there are very few types of gameplay to break up the running and gunning sections and most of them are just the same few co-op puzzles although there are some agreeable sequences involving jetpacks, jet skis, turrets and grind rails respectively.

What isn’t in any kind of shortage is the armoury available to players. This has always been a highlight of Ratchet and Clank games and for all its flaws, All 4 One doesn’t disappoint. Besides your usual assortment of weapons there are some real standouts such as Mr Zurkon which is no stranger to the series but is still awesome because it is basically a little robot that acts as your own personal bodyguard. Then there are other, more over-the-top, arms such as the Critterstrike which turns enemies into pigs, the flamethrower and freeze-ray. Each weapon is upgradeable, as in previous games and this is perhaps the only element of the game which is better than in previous games. Unfortunately, there are quite a few duds amongst the selection which really serve no meaningful purpose, they’re generally not even good for a laugh as with weapons such as the Groovinator in previous games.

There’s also the option to upgrade armour and there are little critters all over the planet which can be collected. Collect enough critters and you can play a critter mini-game. Each time you do this, you’ll unlock another piece of the Ryno armour, the game’s ultimate in battle-ready fashion.

Now we get to the co-op, the whole point of this game and one of the many things that brings it way down. There are good facets of it such as that simultaneously attacking enemies with the same weapon disposes of them quicker and can result in an Overload Attack, which is basically a finisher move. There’s also an interesting feel to it not only because of the character dynamic that Insomniac has created, but also the fact that you’re both fighting alongside and against your pals. You’ll be competing against each other for bolts and glory with a score that gets tallied up at the end of each level.

There are even some character-specific weapons such as the Doppelbanger for Ratchet and Cloaker for Dr Nefarious. The two are very different weapons (I’ll let you deduce from the names what they do) but each character only has one truly unique weapon. All the other character-specific weapons may look different but they do much the same thing.

The worst part about the co-op is the lack of variety. Despite their quirky personalities, each character plays very much the same with the same weapons, same moves and the same upgrades. There are only a few types of co-op mechanics that Insomniac seems to have been able to come up with yet they are mercilessly copy-pasted all over planet Magnus and tend to get not only repetitive but also boring. I’d seen all there was to the co-op after an hour and the rest was all just more of the same but in different environments.

Due to the multiplayer nature of the game, you can practically never die and there is effectively no difficulty curve but that’s not the worst of it. You are stuck with a fixed-position camera which is more often than not in the worst position possible.

As usual, the game looks pretty amazing with the visual style really standing out, especially in the hyper-realism that everyone seems to be gearing for these days. Its vibrant bright-palette and unusual yet diverse character design is excellently realised and the game looks very good. However, it tends to lag a bit and textures are sometimes a bit rough when you get too close in.

Some common issues that have cropped up are that the sound suddenly cuts out, the camera gets stuck and the weapons vendor shows a false bolt-credit value making it impossible to purchase upgrades.

Insomniac is usually a by-word for quality but this is really a hit-and-miss for the developer that did such wonderful things with Resistance 3 earlier this year. Ironically, Resistance 3 was way too short – maybe now we know where that extra time went.

As a whole, All 4 One feels watered down. The pure Ratchet and Clank experience being diluted by mediocrity and an apparent lack of effort or focus. It’s as if every issue was simply brushed aside by saying, “The co-op will distract them so that they won’t even notice that.” That didn’t really work out too well. There’s less gameplay variety, no differentiation amongst the four characters and each section has the same levels copy-pasted repeatedly. The weapons should even have more variety given that we’re dealing with four characters not just one anymore.

At times you’ll glimpse bits and pieces of what used to make Ratchet and Clank a great series but is feels so much more juvenile and watered-down. The whole experience is lacking and the series’ trademark charm can only carry this title so far before it stumbles and drowns in its own pool of less than mediocre crap.

Dead Rising 2: Off The Record presented me with a rather interesting dilemma when I played it. It’s a difficult game to actually critically evaluate, because it presents a sort of Catch-22 situation. See, if you’ve already played Dead Rising 2, then there’s just hardly any reason to play this game at all, because aside from the new sandbox game mode, there’s nothing really new here that can capture your attention. However, if you haven’t played the last game, and you’ve been interested in this franchise, then I have to issue a word of warning because the story mode is significantly less interesting and engaging this time around, but the sandbox mode is something that Dead Rising 2 lacked. The idea was to re-imagine the last game with the original game’s lead, Frank West, taking Dead Rising 2′s Chuck Greene’s place, and experiencing the story over again in a gigantic “what if” scenario, but sadly for someone like me who has played the last game, this is hugely problematic in many ways.

I honestly lost all drive to play the story mode barely five minutes after starting it. While the opening Terror Is Reality game is different to Dead Rising 2′s, and Frank West’s trademark camera makes a return, the game is literally almost exactly the same to the last game’s story. The only difference is that dialogue changes, events have been altered somewhat to make room for Frank, and there is no daughter to get Zombrex for, but rather Frank is infected and needs it for himself. In the previous game, Chuck’s motivations could come down to him wanting to save his daughter, but in this game, Frank is self-serving and honestly it’s not at all engaging to have someone like him as the lead, especially since we’ve experienced this exact same plot before with a better lead protagonist and a more interesting plot. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to be playing the exact same again except with a weaker story. I’ve already played this. It was called Dead Rising 2, and it was arguably better.

Keeping true to the idea of changing as little as possible, Dead Rising: Off The Record barely adds anything new to the game. You’re still going to be trapped in a tedious grind-fest until you level up to be strong enough to not die easily. You’re still going to endlessly kill zombies, scour the lands for weapons to combine so that you can level up faster, and choose whether to do the storyline within the time limit or just do what you feel like doing. If I had not played Dead Rising 2, this would keep me hooked, but it just doesn’t. I wasn’t having much fun playing this game, because I’ve done the exact same thing before for many hours. I don’t know how much more I can stress this. I’ve already reviewed Dead Rising 2, pretty in-depth. And I can’t treat this as a separate game, because firstly it is actually a sequel and secondly I can’t just throw aside my experience with Dead Rising 2. A sequel is supposed to be better than its predecessor, it’s not meant to retain the same flaws as the previous game, include a near identical but weaker single-player campaign, and only feature some slightly better gameplay elements.

The one thing about Dead Rising is that it caters for a very select audience. Not everyone can enjoy this game, and it’s really not a game for everyone. Either you’re going to have fun with this game, or be completely bored playing it. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a game being for certain groups of people only, but there is definitely a lot wrong with the fact that there is virtually no reason to play this if you’ve played the last game. There’s still fun to be had here, granted, but it feels like a downloadable extension rather than a full-on sequel. Maybe fans of the series will appreciate Frank West and his camera, which allows you take as many pictures as you want, with you being rewarded with varying amounts of experience points depending on how good your snapshots are, but his arrival takes away any emotional investment you would have had back in Dead Rising 2, negatively impacting the story as a whole, and there’s just no reason to see the story all over again with minor changes here and there. I feel like a broken record repeating that multiple times over, but I feel restricted overall in what I can actually talk about with this game, because honestly there’s just so little to actually talk about.

Therein lies the big problem. There is just not much to say about this game that hasn’t already been said at the time of Dead Rising 2. I’ve realised I haven’t actually said much about the game or gameplay, but I really feel as if I’ve said all there is to say, and I have discussed this game in my review of Dead Rising 2. I could tell you about the new Sandbox mode, that it’s actually a half-decent mode that allows you to freely roam Fortune City at your own leisure and do whatever you want, but it really should have been available back with the last game. It gets boring fast, probably after a few minutes if you’ve already had your time with this series, thanks to having nothing of value to do in the sandbox other than killing zombies, and doing challenges that involve killing zombies. Also because, as always, the combat system is just as shallow as it gets. Nothing new has been added, so expect to dispatch the zombie army by rapidly pressing a single button, or holding it down for a power attack, for hours on end. I could tell you about the game’s one new area, called Uranus Zone, which is an amusement park of sorts, but it’s a small addition in an otherwise identical world. If you know the world of Dead Rising 2, then you know this one because barely anything has changed, not even the locations of secrets.

You may be thinking, if it’s the same game with some better gameplay options, why am I rating it significantly lower than Dead Rising 2? The answer to that good question would be because I’ve played Dead Rising 2. This experience is worse the second time around, especially because the story is significantly less engaging, the gameplay is dreadfully boring before I’ve even played Off The Record for longer than five minutes, and I have no incentive to do this over again. That doesn’t mean I’m the wrong person for this game, it just means that this isn’t a good sequel. If you’re a newcomer to this series, then at best I can say that this game is mediocre, but your choice of which to get should come down to whether you want a better story or whether you want the freedom to just kill zombies and do what you want. If you want my opinion, I’d say avoid this series entirely, but if you’re really interested in it, then you’d honestly be better off with Dead Rising 2 because as I’ve said many times now, there is a better story at the expense of the Sandbox mode, and not much has been added to Off The Record to make it worth playing. This is not how a sequel should be made, and this is not worth it. Not to me.

But the biggest reason, overall, as to why I’m rating it much lower is because the second time around the game’s flaws become much more noticeable. This time around, if you’ve played the last game, you aren’t focused on zombie-slaying or discovering the game’s secrets, and you aren’t getting distracted by the feeling of everything being new. Not only have the exact same flaws from the previous game remained unchanged, but this time around you’ll notice them more. You still move at snail’s pace, which is contradictory to the attached time limit you have to complete every objective, the combat is still painfully shallow, you’ll still get stunned, knocked back, grabbed on and surrounded by zombies when you’re trying to get somewhere, there are frequent loading screens scattered all over the game like before, progression is still extremely slow, the AI is still as bad as it was before and you’ll still find mountains of useless weaponry when your good ones break. And of course, the save system is the same, which means prepare to rage and cry if an undeserved or silly death causes a lot of your time to be wasted. There’s so little that’s new that everything that was there before has just become worse.

The graphics haven’t really changed much either, highlighting the game’s dire need to remain unchanged. They weren’t bad at all the first time around, and it’s still impressive how many zombies can fit on the screen at once. But as always, Dead Rising has been one for quantity over quality in this department. The graphics are still decent, but now they’re just that little bit less impressive since they haven’t really been improved at all. Everything about this game just seems to scream mediocrity, and Off The Record has shown the title’s remarkable lack of ambition. That, or it was just a quick bit of business to capitalise on Dead Rising 2. Either way you look at it, this just isn’t the way sequels should be made, and it’s not what I expect to hand over my money for. The only value that can be found in this game is if you’re a newcomer to the series, and even then you aren’t guaranteed to enjoy this game because of it being for a select audience in the first place. The only way to know if this is the game for you is if you play it, but even if you enjoyed Dead Rising 2, I’d strongly advise against this.

Dead Rising 2: Off The Record serves to show the title’s remarkable lack of ambition. It’s the exact same thing all over again, except with a new sandbox mode and a weaker story. The game barely provides you with any incentive to play it if you’ve already played the previous one, and this is just not how sequels should be made. Off The Record is redundant, and it just doesn’t feel worth it.

The FIFA Manager series as a whole can best be described as an odd duck. Unlike its cousin, the FIFA Soccer franchise, FIFA Manager is not the top dog amongst its competition. Instead, it is often overshadowed by the more refined, more focused Football Manager.

Why mention this? Well, the contrast is curious and probably a bit humorous. Not only that but I do believe that the latest addition to the series manages to narrow that gap a little more. Part of the odd duck label is also the fact that there’s an amount of wasted effort and things that just don’t make all that much sense. More of that later though.

FIFA Manager 12 tries to capture the essence of being a club manager. It makes every effort to replicate the dynamic nature of being a manager and certainly offers players all the intricacies of the job. In that regard, it does very well. Players can control every aspect of the club and team from financing and budgets to transfers, marketing, sponsorship deals, training regimes and more.

You really won’t feel anything missing from the experience when you compare it with what the likes of Mourinho and Ferguson have to do to earn their pay check.

Perhaps the party-piece of this game is that nothing is static, save for the fact that you will always be managing things in a text-based fashion. Just about everything can be altered and changed to suit you. You can really make the game whatever you want it to be.

If you just want to handle transfers, training and direct players during a match then you can choose to leave everything else up to the assistant manager. Alternatively, if you have a penchant for pocket-protectors then you could shun all of the above and opt to take the reins of the club’s finances, marketing and sponsorship deals. It’s a great mechanic to help newcomers ease into the series because if you have to deal with everything from the start, it can overwhelm you like a tidal wave.

Over and above this, you can even choose what path you’d like to take. You could start a new team and build them up or start the game with a choice of 3 mid-table teams in a league of your choice and battle to take them to the top. Those in it for an easy ride can just pick a team of their choosing and take things from there. A nice little side option is the choice to simultaneously manage a national team.

This offers a nice change-up from managing a club since a national team gives you a limited range of players and its success really depends on your managerial skills and how well you can work with the players at your disposal. Those who choose to start up with their own new team also get to have control over the club’s stadium and renovations.

In terms of bookwork, players can reallocate the club’s budget, to a degree. They also have the ability to handle marketing of the club and merchandise sales as well as setting up and attracting new sponsors. You can even launch campaigns to build support for the club.

With regard to the squad, the game goes pretty deep but mercifully knows where to stop. You can do all the standard stuff such as transfers, assigning various players’ roles and determining the general training regime but also drawing up training programs for individual players. You’ll also have to control players’ egos and manage them from a human aspect from time to time.

There’s also the expected things such as having to deal with the press although this gets a touch laborious after you’ve seen the same set of options for the 20^th time. It’s not bad and the press interaction is sometimes interesting, especially the realistically journalistic questions that get asked but the range of answers is very narrow and once repetition sets in, it becomes a bit of a joke.

New to the game though is the option to manage sports facilities such as player lodges, training camps and high-performance centres. This adds another layer of depth to the overall experience and works rather well. All aspects of the game work rather well actually. Transfers are realistic and never really frustrate. It’s easy enough to acquire players within your budget and even to sell players off. Other clubs will even offer players to you if they need the money and some players will request to join your team.

The only element of the game that really disappoints is the match gameplay. It’s not so bad if you choose to manage the match in a text-based manner but the option to view a 3D simulation of the match is irresistible. It disappointed me majorly because of the lacklustre visuals. What I was looking at was akin to something I’d seen back on PS2. Admittedly, this is not a game-breaking issue but in this day and age, surely EA Sports could do a bit better with the 3D simulations given the visual heights that FIFA 12 has soared to. I’m not asking for an Impact Engine or anything of the sort but just something that at least matches the quality that the rest of the game exudes.

Beyond that, matches are a delight with responsive controls for you as the manager from which you can control players like your own life-sized marionettes. Instructing them when to make runs, pass etc. You can also change various elements of the team’s tactics on the fly during a match. This makes it quick and effortless to get your team into a defensive position to hold onto a lead or go all out for one final thrash at goal. The best part about the system is its responsiveness which may be a tad unrealistic but is something that can be forgiven because you want the team to surge forward when you tell them to not in 5 minutes time.

What’s great about this game is that it allows you to do everything you’d expect to and want to do. Not only that but it does it very, very well.

Of course licensing goes a long way to helping FIFA Manager 12 achieve that ultra-realism with over 25 licensed leagues and in excess of 40, 000 players. Even the soundtrack is surprisingly epic even if you’re just doing some admin work or going through e-mails. In other words, it’s not the aneurysm-inducing vomit-fest that is FIFA 12’s OST. That’s a good thing, in case you were ever in any doubt.

FIFA Manager 12 is not without its faults though. The menus can initially be very unfriendly and difficult to navigate and it might take you a bit of time to find all the features and figure out how to perform certain functions but this never becomes a frustration. The sheer volume of information, even if you opt to streamline your experience, can be overwhelming at times and takes some time to get used. Once you get the lay of the land and explore all the menus, things are rather simple and straightforward. This is helped by the clean and functional desktop-style layout of everything with the option to add widgets which allow you to keep track of the latest news, league stats and more.

The game seems to know just how much info it’s hurling at you though because there is the option to print data out so as to keep track of everything. This is also an indication of the time you need to invest in FIFA Manager 12 to accomplish anything.

One nice touch that has been added is a feature whereby you can set up a match between any two teams and then watch the 3D simulation. This is great if you want to see what might happen when Liverpool play Chelsea in the league this week or maybe what might happen when City face United in the return fixture. You’re stuck with those God-awful visuals but it’s still one of those nice-to-haves nonetheless.

There’s also a degree of misdirected effort that makes me think of GTA IV with its options to watch TV in-game and other features that have no place in a video game. For example, you can use your managerial earnings to buy paraphernalia for yourself such as cars, toys and other trinkets that have no effect on the game whatsoever. You also have the option to put your manager avatar in a relationship or even give them a family. This will result in you having to deal with family matters. I didn’t know FIFA Manager 12 came with a free demo of the Sims. Sarcasm aside, this feature feels completely sundry and not only makes no sense in the game but also detracts from the overall experience. Like everything else though, you can choose to turn it off. They really took it a bit too far though, I mean you can go on holiday for God’s sake! If I wanted to do any of that, I’d just play the Sims or maybe walk away from the PC.

Beyond that, I really cannot fault FIFA Manager 12 for much. Anything that might cause problems or be regarded as an issue can be changed due to the dynamic nature of the game and the level to which you can customise your experience. That said, every element of the game, save for that stupid relationship/family thing, is well executed and does a fantastic job of not only replicating reality but also the experience.

Another year, another Call of Duty. The saying is becoming old, people are slowly losing interest, and the flame wars rage on in the distance. This year was extra special, with Battlefield 3 entering the building, and many hoping that it would de-throne the champion. I’m hesitant to say that Modern Warfare 3 enters as the underdog, especially with all the sceptics and haters circling around it. Thankfully, all of this seems to be like water on a duck’s back, as Modern Warfare 3 shows gamers across the world why it is one of the best-selling games of all time, and why millions and millions of people flock to stores for their copy annually. Modern Warfare 3 delivers a surprisingly compelling campaign, a more robust multiplayer, and an extremely addictive Spec Ops mode. This is one of the finest entries the franchise has ever seen.

Modern Warfare 3 continues directly after Modern Warfare 2, once again putting you hot on the trail of Russian terrorist Makarov, as he attempts to continue manipulating the world into World War 3. You will once again take control of various soldiers that play crucial roles in vital battles around the world. Price and Soap take it upon themselves to bring Makarov to justice, while simultaneously being wanted by the government they once served. At the same time, a soldier named Frost is working hard on the front lines, busy defending threats in New York, Paris, Hamburg and more. It is not entirely original, in fact it’s not original at all, but thankfully it’s easy to follow. Modern Warfare 2′s story was such a muddled mess that it is actually refreshing to have a story that focuses more on the action packed set pieces, rather than concern itself with an overcomplicated story that it is simply not able to pull off. The game provides satisfying closure to many loose ends, however it was utterly infuriating that the culmination of three titles ended in an overly extended quick time event.

Having returning characters such as Soap and Price also gives you a bit of an emotional attachment to the characters, which is good since Modern Warfare’s story mainly deals with loss and the costs of war. Civilians will be slaughtered in front of you, you’ll watch helplessly as prisoners are executed and friends will be lost along the way. It is not the most emotionally engaging campaign you will experience, but I was surprised at how much I cared for the other characters this time around. Set pieces are what make the cinematic experience come to life, and Modern Warfare is chock-full with these. With the exception of the boring fake stealth missions, each and every set piece excites you again and again, regardless of the fact that you may have experienced most of them before. Gunning enemies down with the power of an AC-130 and piloting a near indestructible drone reminds you why it is sometimes better to go all out, rather than attempting to deliver a completely realistic experience.

Modern Warfare 3 also takes you to various contrasting locales, putting you on the deck of a submarine in New York one second, and in the wild of Africa the next. European cities have been faithfully recreated, and it brought a smile to my face to see entire suburbs realistically represented, especially since I have visited most of them myself. You’ll also get a sense of familiarity as you walk down the streets of Paris, especially if you recently played Battlefield 3, since both look almost identical. Sadly, Modern Warfare 3 isn’t able to pull off the same amount of detail that its competitor does. While Infinity Ward have certainly pushed the engine to its limit, it still doesn’t stand up to many games on the market. Animations are kept to a minimum, textures are often muddy, and water and fire effects are not up to par. Hopefully, the next Call of Duty entry will use a much needed new engine, as the age is certainly starting to show. There is a silver lining though, as the game runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second across all platforms, and is extremely well optimised for the PC. Sound design is also a bit of a hit or miss situation, with some weapons sounding as powerful as they should, while silenced weapons still sound like massive pea shooters.

When you’re finished with the six hour campaign, there is still tons of content to sort though, which should push the life span of this title well past even next year’s possible entry. First is the return of the highly addictive Spec Ops mode, which first thrilled us back in Modern Warfare 2. The same principles are at work here, offering 2-players a chance to tackle some short but explosive missions that make up alternative conflicts within the story. You may take the role of Russian soldiers in certain conflicts, giving you a different view of the battlefield and even coming face to face with some campaign figures. What is new, however, is the addition of a persistent levelling system within Spec Ops, which is completely separate to your Multiplayer rank. As you level up, you’ll unlock weapons, killstreaks and perks to use in Spec Ops newest and easily most addictive mode: Survival.

Think of Survival as the Zombies mode from Treyarch’s Call of Duty entries, just without the undead creatures of the night. Survival mode will allow you to hop into any of the available multiplayer maps, and face endless waves of soldiers, helicopters, dogs and ever-annoying juggernauts. While you mow down the hordes of increasingly difficult troops, you’ll earn cash to spend on weapon purchase, upgrades, killstreaks, perks and more. You’ll also receive multipliers for killing enemies quickly, as well as round specific challenges such as rampages and headshots in order to earn a little more money. Around the map you’ll find three hotspots where you are able to purchase weapons, equipment and killstreaks with money earned. However, there is a catch.

You are only able to purchase items you have unlocked from levelling up in the Spec Ops mode, giving you an incentive to play round after round. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean you’ll be restricted to pistols in your first few rounds, as you are able to pick up weapons dropped by fallen enemies and use their own ordinance against them. On PC, I did encounter a frequent glitch where the game would momentarily freeze for both players, however voice chat still functioned properly, meaning the issue was not network related. It also is a bit disappointing that Spec Ops is restricted to two players only, meaning that the four player frantic fun you can experience in Black Ops’ Zombie mode cannot be found here.

It’s no secret that the strongest aspect of a Call of Duty title is its intense and highly rewarding competitive multiplayer component. Modern Warfare 3 is no exception to this standard. However, don’t expect anything really drastically different, as Infinity Ward have stuck closely to the winning formula, tweaking smaller novelties here and there. If you disliked the fast, frantic, claustrophobic atmosphere of previous Call of Duty multiplayers, then Modern Warfare 3 is not going to change your perspective at all. The easiest way to describe it is as a safe card, with all the regular match types reappearing, the same style of cramped and small maps, and a similar rewarding levelling system. That’s not to say that there haven’t been any changes at all. First up would have to be a new match type called Kill Confirmed, which forces players to not only kill opposing team members, but also pick up floating dog tags in order to confirm the kill and score for the team. This mode is supposed to encourage more teamwork than your average team deathmatch, and occasionally leads to exciting matches that aren’t always about the total number of kills. Another new mode is Team Defender, which is similar to Capture the Flag, only this time your objective to hold onto the flag for as long as possible while racking up points. Again, not an entirely revolutionary idea, but it is a welcomed addition.

The ranking system hasn’t been given an entirely new overhaul, but has rather been adjusted to suit your unique style of play. Currency is out and pure XP is back, meaning that levelling up unlocks new weapons, perks, equipment and more for you to use in your custom classes. Use a weapon more often, and you’ll unlock scopes, sight dots, skins and attachments, as well as new weapon specific perks such as Kick, which reduces recoil. Sounds fairly familiar at this stage, right? Well, the real change comes in the form of the remodelled Killstreak system, which not only brings with it even more destructive ways to bring death on your opponents, but also allows you to play the way you want to. Killstreaks have been remodelled into three Strike Packages, namely Assault, Support and Specialist.

Assault is kind of a default setting, with all the regular killstreak rewards making an appearance, alongside some fancy new ones such as the new effective, yet highly annoying, booby trap like ballistic launcher which rains death onto anyone who gets close enough. The Support package will reward you with packages that help your team as a whole, such a crate full of ballistic vests. On top of that, people who use Support packages will not have to worry about deaths, as their streak counter will not reset when they respawn. The Specialist Package is an all or nothing deal, with the ability to equip up to three additional perks as you rack up kills. This package is at the expense of having no Killstreak rewards and the possibility of losing all your additional perks upon death.The Specialist Package is truly for elite players who don’t depend on Killstreak rewards for their name to be top of the log.

These small changes help alter the flow of the ranking system, and to make you think about what role you want to play. Obviously, it does not impact that match in the same way that Battlefield 3′s classes do, but it certainly does have an effect. Facing an entire opposing team wearing ballistic vest will make a massive difference to the outcome, so it does add another layer to strategic play, especially when it comes to serious competitive play. On that note, Modern Warfare 3 also supports dedicated servers, which was omitted in Modern Warfare 2, much to the outrage of the PC community. Another service which should be used in conjunction with Modern Warfare 3 is Call of Duty Elite, which will capture stats, advise you on weapon choices based on your ability, show hot spots on maps and more. The service is currently available for free, though paying subscribers will receive extra perks. Unfortunately, PC players will have to wait for this service to become available to them, as Activision has yet to deem the PC platform “safe enough” for Elite’s use.

I started Modern Warfare 3 as a sceptic. The flair had faded, the draw had disappeared, and I was not at all excited. I finished surprised, enthralled and excited for the many multiplayer months to come. Modern Warfare 3′s campaign has to be one of the most engrossing experiences seen in a Call of Duty game for a while, as it finishes the story of Soap, Price, Makarov, and more, while providing explosive and exciting set pieces. The story is not without its faults though, and is not the most riveting tale you’ll ever experience. Spec Ops has received a fantastic addition, as Survival mode provides hours upon hours of limitless fun for you and a friend. Multiplayer may have not received the same type of TLC, but it does introduce clever tweaks in order to make the experience feel different, and not as if it’s an entire rehash. Modern Warfare 3 is dynamic, explosive, exciting, addictive and engrossing, and it definitely deserves a spot on your shelf.

Have you ever played a game where once you were done playing, you left it on just because you enjoyed listening to the soundtrack?

That’s what I am doing right now, as I work on this review.

Mercury Hg — from here on in, simply Mercury because I find saying ‘Mercury Hg’ to be an exercise in redundancy — is the latest Indie title to come out of the Eiconic stable, and it doesn’t really do very much wrong.

At just 400 Magical Sexy Points over the Xbox 360′s Live Marketplace, it’s also really cheap.

The game falls square into the puzzle genre, presenting you with a simple blob of liquefied mercury and tasking you with navigating a series of levels, each comprising the obligatory increased difficulty over the previous one, by shifting the entire level in various directions using the analogue sticks on your controller.

All of these levels are basically hovering in free space with some crazy background in the, uhm, background and as a result, in some levels it is possible to lose some of your mercury as it falls over the borders of the level. This is pretty much the only way you can fail a level, and also a brilliant exercise in Physics (with Chemistry).

While navigating levels you may also opt to collect little atom-looking objects for bonus points and at the end of the level you are awarded experience points molecules for nailing any of the four targets for each map, namely completing the map within a specific time limit, retaining the full amount of mercury that you started with, collecting all of the atoms in the level and achieving more than a certain high score, overall.

For each of those targets, you are awarded a single molecule that totals to four per level and once you reach a milestone of molecules awarded (25, 50, 75 and so on), you unlock the next tier of levels, cleverly designed according to the periodic table of elements. “Now we’re doing science!”

This ingenious method of awarding players depending on what they do in the level, creates something that keeps the really dedicated coming back for more as they attempt to achieve all four targets for every level, while still rewarding those who simply wish to play through decently challenging levels. And there a lot of levels in this little game…

The game even goes one further and, like many other games on Xbox 360 LIVE Arcade, offers leaderboards that rank players according to their high score for each level as well as the time taken to complete the level.

If you’re a pathological completionist (read as: Achievement whore) like myself, then you’re going to find yourself spending hours trying not only to achieve a higher score for each level, but also a faster time.

Did I mention that this is an arcade game?

The game itself is pretty trippy, with colourful vibrant levels and music that makes you want to get up and dance along, or at least tap your feet to. It might get a bit nauseating a la Mirror’s Edge, especially when you’re frantically tilting the level trying to keep your little blob of mercury from falling off, while colours flash everywhere in tune with the music that is blaring on in the background, but that’s about the only criticism I could possibly have, and even then it’s not really much of a criticism.

If you’re not a fan of the music in the game, you can simply play your own off your hard drive.

The game’s menus are presented with an adequate quality, although they are a bit bland compared to the game itself. Possibly a design choice, to emphasize levels.

The only real flaw that the game seems to have is the tendency for some levels to suffer mass slowdown, with a certain level slowing down to a crawl upon loading. While it’s still entirely playable, it does get a bit annoying. But you can simply quit out to the menus and go back in and the level will work just fine. It’s a weird little bug that presents itself at seemingly random times but doesn’t stay long enough to be a game-breaking issue.

There really is no other criticism about this game. For an indie arcade title, it’s pretty great at what it does and though I was initially apprehensive over trying out the game, I must admit that I was very pleasantly surprised at what I played.

For 400MSP and a quick 170MB download, you won’t get much better than this game. There’s even DLC for it, once you’re done with the game’s many levels.

If you enjoy a challenging arcade title that you can play while you take breaks from the bigger titles, you really need to try this. Even more so if you’re a fan of science and all things geeky, like myself.

The team at Naughty Dog are an exceptional talent. They’ve definitely proven by now that they’re the best in the business at what they do. And if you’ve played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and enjoyed it, then you will know what I’m talking about and probably won’t need me to tell you why you should get this game. So I’m just going to come out and say it right here. Uncharted 3 is one of the best games of the year, one of the best PlayStation 3 games ever made and one of the best games, of its kind, of all time. But then again, I don’t think those who love this series expected anything less. It just shows the level of expectation that people had for the third game in the Uncharted series, and what a daunting challenge the developers had to try and outdo their last game. In my opinion, they’ve done exactly that.

There’s isn’t much I’m going to be saying about the game’s story. The reason is that, as always, Uncharted is a game that needs to be experienced fully to appreciate it the most. It succeeds in giving you everything you could want in an action game, and once the credits roll, it has played its entire hand. It’s a once-off blast of pure cinematic and quality entertainment, but unlike a blockbuster movie, there are a bunch of awesome multiplayer modes to keep you hooked once you’ve finished the campaign. That said, Uncharted 3 is a different story to its predecessors. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still exploration, a lost treasure to find and all the staples that you’d expect from it, but it’s a more personal story. At times it’s even a darker one. You’ll not only get a very different perception of and see a very different side to Nathan Drake, but of all the characters you’ve grown to love over the last two games. And once you sit down to engage with it, you won’t be able to let go until the end.

To outline the plot, Uncharted 3 sees our favourite hero Nathan Drake and his mentor, Victor Sullivan, travelling around the world in search of the legendary lost city, the Iram of the Pillars. Unlike the story formula of the previous games which involved betrayals and twists, Uncharted 3 takes on a more personal tone, focusing on the relationship between Nathan and Sully, and the motivations, flaws and triumphs of each of these characters. With a game like this, there are bound to be some predictable things here and there, but for the most part Uncharted 3′s strength is in its unpredictability. There’s no telling where the game will take you next, and in what situation it will put you in, and this makes the plot extremely interesting as you get taken to many different locations and settings around the world. Of course, you’ll meet up with all of the familiar faces from the series along the way, and as always the game manages to weave them into the plot pretty naturally without it seeming forced or for the sake of it at all. As expected, the voice acting is absolutely top notch, with the characters sounding and interacting with each other as naturally as if they were completely real. Enough credit can’t be given to the cast for breathing life into these characters, and it’s a big part of what makes this series special.

Uncharted 3, at its core and at the heart of its gameplay, is the same as its predecessors. But what’s to complain about that? It’s the winning formula that made this franchise globally famous and adored in the first place, so deviating from that wouldn’t be the best thing for the series as long as Naughty Dog can continue to deliver at the standard they’ve set for themselves, which they have done as far as I’m concerned. However, there are some changes and improvements to the game, particularly with the melee combat system, and the developers have done their due duty by fixing the few problems that the last game had. The combat system still works the same way, in that square is used for strikes, triangle for counter and circle for grapple, but it’s now filled with context sensitive elements and is much more useful and fun. The game introduces you to the new system in its opening sequence, which is a barroom brawl, and there’s just an awesome level of satisfaction to see Drake interact with the environment naturally during combat, such as by picking up objects and smashing enemies’ faces in with them or pushing enemies up against a wall and bullying them. And it never gets old to wrench the pin out of an enemy’s grenade and watch them uselessly tangle with it until they explode.

The stealth sections have been improved, and they feel more natural. Sure, if you screw up you’re still going to get seen and alert all enemies, but in this case there’s always an advantage in picking a few off silently before dealing with the rest. Other new features include the ability to throw grenades back at enemies, and the vertical combat sections, which see enemies trying to take you out while you’re climbing up a wall, resulting in tense shootouts. The only problem really is that sometimes the game can be unfair to you, and you can often end up dying cheaply if you’re not careful, but fortunately there’s no frustration in this because there are no loading times and in all likelihood the last checkpoint was a few seconds ago. All things considered, it’s the same game at heart, but Naughty Dog have just gone out of their way to perfect every last detail, and it shows in every moment. The pacing, the story progression, the seamless passing from one exciting moment to the next – all of it, Uncharted 3 never misses a step, and the game never ceases to amaze you. Again, the game’s formula and mechanics are the same, but they’ve been refined and made better by how incredible the game design and pacing is, and there’s so much more to this game than just pressing a few buttons on a controller. This is the pinnacle of the Uncharted series, the perfect goal Naughty Dog dreamed to achieve when they began this series. Hell, this is probably what the entire action adventure genre one day dreamed to achieve.

However, there is one vital difference that I can see between Uncharted 3 and its predecessor. In Among Thieves, the game was a constant stream of action until you hit an utterly epic moment. While Drake’s Deception is the same on many occasions, after its build up and towards the end it reaches a point where the game is a constant stream of epic moments until you hit a jaw-dropping sequence that my adjectives will do no good at describing. Moments that not only are probably unmatched in this genre, but moments that define what entertainment is all about, and will remind you why you started playing video games in the first place. These are moments that players have been waiting for since the first game in the series, because we all knew what our expectations were, and we know the characters and universe that Naughty Dog has created, so there’s no doubt that we have a level of connection with these characters and this series that the developers can exploit in all of the great ways you could want. There’s one moment later on in the game that I probably won’t be forgetting for a long time, and it will undoubtedly go down as one of my greatest moments in gaming ever. And the kicker is that there is not a single piece of action in that moment, all of the excitement and chaotic action precedes it.

In all honesty, I wasn’t looking forward to writing about the graphics and sound work in my review. I know that sounds extremely confusing, so let me elaborate. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is masterful with its graphics and presentation. I didn’t know, and still don’t know, how to describe its incredible technical and graphical achievements. Anything I say here is just not going to do it justice. But I can say that the odd, minor visual glitch here and there does absolutely nothing to take away from the phenomenal detail, sheer scope and out-of-this-world visuals of the game, which are polished to perfection. It’s truly something else, and all I can say is that you just have to experience it. If this game isn’t considered to be perfect with its visuals and graphics, then I don’t know what game can say it’s worthy of that merit. The team at Naughty Dog has outdone themselves, and nothing compliments the incredible cinematic experience more than the amazing sound track. And when you have a cast that shines with their chemistry and talent in a way that brings this game to life and makes it one of the most special adventures of this generation, you just can’t ask for anything else. Uncharted 3 is beautiful and brilliant.

After you finish the single player, which is about the same length as the previous two games, there’s the exciting multiplayer that has been vamped up to a level that makes it an entirely different ballgame. There are a wide variety of competitive and cooperative game modes, with even the ability to play LAN and split-screen with two different PSN profiles available. You have a fully customisable profile and player character, Uncharted TV which constantly streams game footage and trailers for you to watch, and community interaction features such as Facebook integration and a place to upload and share match replays. As far as game modes go, there are your standard team deathmatch, free for all and capture the flag modes, your typical Uncharted online modes, there is hardcore (more health, no perks) and three team deathmatch (2v2v2), which are both awesome. Then you get co-op arena, which has you surviving against waves of enemies, and co-op adventure, which sees you teaming up online with two other players in story-based missions. I haven’t even mentioned all of the modes, but it just needs to be said that the multiplayer has something in it for everyone, and you can lose hours to it with ease.

The main thing that makes the multiplayer a blast in my opinion, is that every single match you play feels different. It’s fresh every time. Aside from the fantastic and dynamic level design, and the gameplay of Uncharted, there are a number of elements that increase the variety and depth of the multiplayer. You get Boosters which are basically like perks, and they can do things like make you climb faster. You get a Kickback feature, where if you achieve medals in a match you can activate it to immediately get an advantage, such as getting an RPG or a temporary buff. There are also Power Plays now, which give a helping hand, such as increased damage, to teams that are getting dominated, making them feel like they have a competitive chance. There’s constant progression, in the sense that you’re always earning experience to rank up, money to buy new gear and treasure to earn special items. And of course, there’s still a large collection of weapons, gun modifications and character skins to unlock, for both the Hero and Villain team. And the cherry on top is that you have developers like Naughty Dog at the helm of it, who listen to their fan feedback and continuously improve and support the multiplayer, which means that there are more than enough reasons to keep coming back for more.

Now, if all that I’ve already said about the game hasn’t yet justified its score and the praise that I’ve given it, then allow me to do so now. I’d like to ask you to please read and take in the following:

A perfect score is a very rare award. It’s more of a benchmark than an actual rating. A game with this rating has close to nothing wrong with it and is simply outstanding in everything it does. Most games that get this rating can be considered art, genre defining or truly incredible in every sense of the word.

That’s how I describe the perfect rating. And in the end, I’ve given Uncharted 3 a perfect score for a handful of reasons.  As far as I can see, Uncharted 3 can be considered as the benchmark for all future action adventure games like it. This game has close to nothing really wrong with it, and it’s certainly outstanding in everything it does. To deny that this game is art would be insulting. Without a doubt it defines the action adventure genre. And finally, the obvious is that it’s incredible. Naughty Dog has made a phenomenal effort to polish this game to perfection, and every little detail can be appreciated. And not even considering the rating description, I feel that I can’t compare Uncharted 3 to anything, because quite frankly no other similar action adventure game right now can do what this game does any better. This game is simply in a class of its own, and as such it’s fully deserving of this score.

This makes Uncharted 3 the fourth game I’ve given a perfect rating to, and I really don’t take this award lightly. As I’ve often said, nothing and no game is truly perfect, but if you’re going to use that logic to say that a game can then never achieve the highest possible rating, then honestly I disagree. In a game like this, where its flaws are so minor and so easy to look over, and in no way take anything away from the overall experience, which is an absolutely outstanding one, then what should be stopping me from giving it the highest honour that it deserves? And of course, to be Captain Obvious, if a game can be given the lowest score, then surely it should be able to achieve the highest. In my time I’ve been called many things, such as a jaded cynic, a pessimist, a whiner and even someone who is way too negative and critical, to name a few, but despite those names (which I have a good laugh at) I’m someone who believes in giving credit where it’s due and sticking to honesty as much as I possibly can. I don’t sugarcoat, I just say it how it is and speak from my experience – or at least, I try my best to. And in this case, I have meant every word of praise. There are naturally going to be people who both agree with and disagree with me, but whatever the case may be, just play the game yourself and get your own opinion of it, as it’s the best thing to do. I’ve given you mine, with as much objectivity as I could manage.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a masterful third entry into a franchise that gives you every reason to want to own a PlayStation 3. Its near flawless cinematic action and presentation make it one of the best games of the year, one of the best PS3 games ever made and one of the best action games of all time. Without any moment’s hesitation, I can say that this is what entertainment is all about.

In an age where videogames need to constantly adapt year-over-year to survive, we’re plagued with a slight problem. It’s called WRC 2. Now, the thing about WRC 2 is that it’s not a bad game — in fact it’s actually really fun — the problem is the lack of change.

WRC 2 hasn’t enhanced gameplay-wise over last year’s 2010 version, which was a breath of fresh air as a fast-paced rally racer — in my eyes at least. In WRC 2, it feels as if you’re driving the same cars on the same tracks, because the majority of the tracks haven’t changed. While playing it’s easy to recall the tracks from the previous version, and it feels like Déjà-Vu. You don’t know that it’s a new game, but it’s understandable as the game is based on the real tracks used in the WRC.

But, that’s only in the campaign called Road to WRC — which features updated drivers and teams for the 2011 year.

Fortunately, Black Bean and Milestone has enhanced the other aspects of WRC 2, in the sense that there’s new modes which include Super Special Stages and Class B cars (which are older racers from the 1980′s). And while the original game did have Class B cars, you needed to purchase this or get a code for it. This time round, it has been included into the game.

Playing with 1980′s racers feels great, and the best part is that these racers come with new and enhanced tracks. If anything, WRC 2 is worth the play merely to get your hands on these features. But, as I mentioned, Class B was an add-on to WRC 2010 and this game could easily be an add-on in its entirety.

While you may feel that this is coming across all very negative, it’s not really.

WRC 2 is more of a purist’s game. It’s for those that love speed and thrill. Those that love smashing into trees because you’re going too fast. That’s me. I like that, I like this game. But I’m upset with the lack of changes.

In the racing aspect of the game, I don’t like how you cannot see your racing view of the car during the countdown before the race. Basically, you’re moving around your car and the second the clock hits “GO GO GO” you’re trying to find the correct view. And when you’re swapping the remote with friends in singleplayer (because Hot Seat isn’t helping the campaign), this becomes problematic. Essentially you need to find the view before the first corner, and this can be tough, depending on the race surface.

And you do need to focus. That’s for sure. The game feels somewhat tougher than it was last year, where the control of the cars feel a little bit less responsive. Not to mention, handbrake isn’t as great as it was before. But, don’t worry, there’s an added feature called “Rewind”. And, as you guessed, this feature let’s you rewind whenever you need to. It doesn’t let you rewind too much, but just enough to counter-steer that corner.

What I do love, however, is the racing views. There’s more than that found in a traditional racing game. The interior views rock, where you can also view the bonnet, an arcade style, and outside. Again, this is the same as last year, so nothing has really changed.

Visually, the enhancements are evident, for the car. As for the environment, things still seem unproductive and careless. And the same can be said for the interior of the car, which is disappointing because one should play the game from the interior.

However, despite the problems with graphics mentioned above, the cars have been taken care of — and you can spot this immediately. The way that dirt appropriates its way onto the car, how rain will start the windscreen wipers — it’s all adding to the effect. The graphics for the car are amazing, and bring everything to life, until you get inside.

As for the stages — when they aren’t being repetitive — you’ll have fun.

The Super Special Stages are interior-based events which are built for rally. They are unique and very tight for racing. These stages will test your skills and how much you know about the game. Overall, they add some great diversity to the game.

As for the Class B cars, these are the 1980 power racers. The original racers which put rally on the map. While the cars are great, and powerful, the mode lacks the iconic Lancia’s and Audi’s. However, this will probably be available in lovable DLC.

Mentioned above, I said that there’s speed and thrill. And this is undeniable. WRC 2 is quick from the get go. There’s no waiting to get involved. Once you start, you’re thrown into the deep-end where tight corners and slippery surfaces challenge you.

In WRC 2, surfaces play a big part in what’s happening. The car will handle differently on the various surfaces thrown your way, where if you’re technical enough, you can modify your car to handle these surfaces. WRC 2, when compared to WRC 2010, has bettered with car modification and adaption for the various surfaces. However, this is a technical aspect which many of us would skip, so it feels somewhat pointless. WRC feels as if it would like to be a Simulation game rather than an Arcade rally title that everyone can enjoy, which is upsetting in a way. Setting up a car for rally is tedious and tough, so thank goodness there are presets available.

The modes for the game are the same as last year, you can do the campaign — Road to WRC — or single player, or multiplayer. There’s also a learning centre for newbies, which comprises of different events and obstacles for you to undergo. This will teach you how to drive on different surfaces and how to take corners with the shoddy handbrake.

You will find the same style campaign as last year, where you drive, unlock and buy cars, build a reputation and find sponsors. Nothing has changed in this aspect. But, rightly so, because, how can it really change? That’s what rally is about, isn’t it?

And because it’s rally, you’re racing by yourself on a track. This can feel a bit lonely, but because of the speed and arcade feeling of the game, you don’t actually have time to focus on other racers. In WRC 2, each corner is a mission to get through — it requires thinking, especially if there’s a bump, or if the driving surface changes.

Lastly, I think it’s fair to say that I’m in two minds about the game. I love it but I don’t understand it. It feels as if the changes could be an add-on, and not really a new game. Similarities between the 2010 and 2011 title seem to be the plague of the game, but the enhancements seem to build love for the game. On first play the game felt the same, and that’s the problem. But, the 1980′s vehicles and new city stages seem to make up for this.

Rarely does a game merge action oriented game design with the utter befuddlement of a bible story. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron fulfils this brief to the tee. The developers at Ignition Tokyo took the biblical triumph of Enoch, and with a culminated effort, transcended into a heavenly balance of Devil May Cry combo slashing galore tinged with unusual Japanese storytelling. All of this is paired down by a visually abstract approach which differentiates El Shaddai from the host of generic titles out at the moment.

The game charts the journey of Enoch (a devout priest) to claim victory over an army of fallen angels each falling prey to the seven deadly sins, in one way or another. The terms of your quest mean that Enoch is bestowed with the dangerous mission of having to seal away seven of the sin-bearing fallen angels by command of God (who communicates with your angelic guardian Lucifel clad in black, via a cellphone). In turn, Enoch has to traverse a tower with seven different levels each pertaining to one of the seven fallen angels, and their associated minions. Things get biblical from then on out and each level of the tower becomes progressively more difficult and challenging.

It’s your godly-appointed duty to overcome the unholy obstacles set before you through a maze of side-scrolling platform sections (like Castelvania and Metroid), intermixed with third-person combat (similar to Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and God of War) and a diverse sequence of puzzle challenges incorporated into third-person and side-scrolling sections of the game. All of which, are challenging and unique meaning that the gameplay experience isn’t only one track and that El Shaddai may require a couple of playthroughs to get the most out of the game, and with challenging bosses and enemies El Shaddai is not a game to be scoffed at. Yet by no means is it of the level of Dark Souls. However, in order to become proficient in combat well-timed responses and knowledge of the different weapons will help when moving from encounter to encounter. This is because the game varies its combat vastly. How so you may ask?

Intentionally, El Shaddai has a simplified button scheme that makes learning the ropes efficiently easier with the game providing tutorials and hints prior to upcoming battles, as well as in the middle of a challenging rumble. Combat is at the centre of El Shaddai’s design and is well executed. The combat system is simple yet complex with one button designated to attacks, another to jumping, one to guarding and finally a button can be used for purfication. The complexity is subtly showcased through the inclusion of the trigger buttons, with one trigger allowing Enoch to purify enemies and the other trigger resulting in the initiation of special attacks, and guarding from enemy attacks. Purification is an interesting tactic that is made available to you after beating an enemy to a pulp; where you have a moment to snatch away an enemy’s weapon and purify it into a holy weapon. Purification can also be initiated by bashing the purification button when necessary.

All the weapons available to you battle are only a snatch away, and un-purified weapons equipped by the mass armies of the fallen angels are easily noticeable with their glowing red auras indicating that they are corrupted, and not purified. After a weapon has been purified by Enoch it transitions into a white glow which increases the potency of your attacks, and when strung together with well timed combos the amount of juggling you can achieve is insane. The combo system in El Shaddai is an eloquent sight to behold and with a great sense of finesse brings to the fore the effortlessness and ease in using the combat mechanics. At first, they appear simple. But with time, and obtaining a variety of weapons, battling becomes a whole different beast.

There are three primary weapons in El Shaddai. The first is the Arch which is a curved blade resembling an elongated scimitar blended with a scythe. The weapon is excellent for slashing enemies and untoward bosses. The weapon endows Enoch with the ability to float in the air for brief periods of time when double jumping. The second weapon bestowed upon Enoch is the Gale a ring-like weapon that shoots quick-shot projectiles rapidly at enemies. The third weapon is called the Veil and is a shield-like weapon that can transform into a pair of gauntlets offering strong offensive and defensive power.

Comparatively the Gale is much faster than the other two weapons, but a weapon like the Veil is stronger oppositional to enemies who may require brute force to take out. On the other hand, the Arch gives greater dexterity in breaching through enemy defences and bringing combat into the realm of air slashing and juggling. Each weapon has specific benefits and changing your weaponry depends on the context of the battle and the number of enemies. In some instances, when overwhelmed by enemies as the sheer number of their hordes increases Enoch can summon Uriel, an archangel, to help him out by commencing Overboost mode in the heat of battle.

This mode is achieved by collecting red energy from fallen enemies and increases the damage inflicted by Enoch’s attacks, and equips him with a unique angelic attack. This is particularly helpful when trying to take down a nasty boss with a huge health meter. Maintaining combo chains will further power this mode and can increase the amounts of damage you inflict. With the variety of weapons combos never truly dull from repetition as specials and angelic attacks livens things up quite a bit. Also, you can’t assume the role of an all-out tank because Enoch is susceptible to enemy attacks destroying his armour (which can be repaired by collecting white heart power-ups) and a good defence is as necessary as a good offense.

El Shaddai is not just about battling. The combat is broken up by well conceived platforming sequences that are stylistically different with unique challenges. The artistry of the level design affects the gameplay experience with a variety of environmental changes and effects which alter the flow of the game. For example, in one level you have to manipulate Enoch along gusts of wind whilst jumping from platform to platform in an effort to not fall to your death. The constant stylistic challenges give El Shaddai gameplay diversity.

Visually, the game is vibrant and is far removed from its biblical origins with unique attention to character and level design. The atmosphere of the game is influenced by the abstract choice of the colour palette. As a result, the game is surreal in its playability with expansive vistas seemingly crafted from an artist’s paint brush. With stylistic changes throughout El Shaddai it truly deserves more attention in the market.

The artistic direction and amazingly executed gameplay make El Shaddai a noteworthy example of good game design choices. The game is supported by an amazing score and impeccable sound design, with many of the voices behind the characters fitting their roles well. Overall the game exudes quality in all of its elements. With slick combat, a deep storyline and interesting characters El Shaddai is a well crafted game.

So, the war finally begins as many people wait in anticipation to see who will emerge as top dog between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 later next month. EA’s latest FPS entry enters stores first, providing an exquisite looking game that truly immerses you into the heated fictional battles that you are forced to plunge into. Sadly, the presentation is by far the only real strong point in Battlefield 3′s single-player campaign, with a cliché story and 2 dimensional characters that rarely make you care for them. Thankfully, the multiplayer does more than justify a purchase, delivering one of the most addictive and compelling forms of competitive multiplayer to date. The sheer number of unlockables will keep you coming back for months, making Battlefield 3 one of the best shooter titles to ever grace gamers.

Let’s get what Battlefield 3 is not, out of the way first. Battlefield 3 is not a definitive single-player experience. If EA and DICE were in anyway attempting to out do Call of Duty in this category, all they did was catch up. Think of it as a similarly action-packed campaign as Bad Company 2, without the humorous dialogue and bad ass attitude of Prescott and his squad mates. Battlefield 3 opens up promisingly, with you taking control of a soldier named James Blackburn. After a very cinematic opening sequence, the story takes an inevitable plunge for the worst, as the tired mechanic of re-visiting past missions and flashbacks becomes the name of the game. This mechanic of storytelling is made even more cliché when you take into account that the exact same thing was used in Black Ops, making Battlefield 3′s campaign immediately familiar and dull.

The story includes all the usual clichés that you’d expect, including nuclear devices, war-torn nations, greedy dictators and, of course, Russians. I mean really, is there honestly no one else to blame in war-themed shooters besides Russians anymore? The plot is predictable and rarely keeps you on the edge of your seat, meaning that the 6 hour campaign becomes more of a slog rather that a thrill packed experience. Some stand-out moments appear here and there (flying wingman on a jet is certainly one of them), but overall the campaign feels as though it was developed by another studio altogether. All the freedom, vehicles and destruction present in the multiplayer is missing from the campaign, with the game rarely giving you opportunities to plan your attacks, use rocket launchers to destroy walls, and even limits your vehicle helming to one short tank based mission. In place of this, DICE threw in some oddly present Quicktime events, which do nothing but slow the pace down and suck all the realism out of this incredible realistic combat atmosphere. Quicktime events litter each and every level, but thankfully they don’t go on for long and are rarely difficult, meaning that you shouldn’t really experience the same one twice.

Having these odd occurrences in the campaign also removes you from any immersion Battlefield 3 has put you under, which is a shame since the Frostbite 2 engine does an incredible job of bringing the best out of your console and PC. On consoles, you might not notice a massive difference when you compare Battlefield 3 to Bad Company 2, but the subtle differences do their best to make this one of the best looking games ever released. Dust floats in the air, with particles clouding your vision, while the sun beats down on a war-torn street in Iran. Smoke trails left by RPGs slowly fade away, while an earthquake rippling through a combat-filled street, bringing buildings tumbling down in an avalanche of concrete, is truly something of a marvel. If you have the option to get Battlefield 3 on the PC, then you should certainly go for it. Everything on the PC is phenomenal, bringing the battlefield right into your home. The way the rain beats down on a darkened aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean will leave you breathless, as the waves crash against the mighty ship, spraying water all over a deck lit up by beacons on the jets. The 30 frames per second is a bit disappointing on the consoles, especially when compared to a high-end PC, but if you’ve been playing previous Battlefield games on your preferred console, then you’ll hardly know the difference.

The Frostbite 2 engine is not without its flaws though. Often you’ll see legs and arms clipping through walls, and on some occasions AI enemies will remain standing after they die. On the PS3, there was the odd texture-pop in here and there, but these are small issues and nothing that is game breaking. You’ll still feel an indescribable rush as you free-fall down to your objective below, or fend off a seemingly endless wave of insurgents in a damp alley corner of a deserted city. Sound design also deserves a pat on the back, with each weapon sounding as powerful as possible. There were sections where I simply stuck to my shotgun, purely because of the sound it made when fired. The amount of power behind each shot made me smile every time, and gave me the exact right feeling that one should get when firing a 12-gauge shotgun.

However, the Frostbite 2 engine only really shows its true colours when you enter what Battlefield is known for; its multiplayer. Following on from the pedigree established in Battlefield 2, Battlefield 3 features 9 expansive, open and immaculately detailed warzones for you to lay siege in. What’s most interesting is the amount of contrasts that DICE were able to draw when designing these maps. From the beach assaults of Kharig Island, to the claustrophobic corridors of Operation Metro, Battlefield 3 always offers you multiple routes and directions for you and your squad to co-ordinate your assault. Smoke rises from the battlefield, jets engage in dogfights above you, while helicopters provide air support for you and your teammates. While online, you’ll really feel as though you’ve been sucked into a real life conflict, and that your contribution is just as important as everyone else’s. Destruction is more encouraged in multiplayer, meaning that if a wall stands between you and your objective, you should feel no hesitation to whip out an RPG and make yourself an entrance.

Battlefield 3′s multiplayer comes in all sorts of flavours to satisfy every type of shooter fan. Fans of traditional Battlefield multiplayer will welcome back the Rush and Conquest modes that have been made famous over the years. Rush involves a team attempting to attack M-COM stations, which need to be armed with explosives to be destroyed this time round, while another team attempts to defend the stations until the attacking team’s “tickets” (respawns) expire. When both stations are destroyed, a new portion of the map is opened up, meaning you may not even see the entire map during your first few matches. Conquest unlocks the entire map from the beginning, and places 5 rally points (3 on consoles) for team members to capture. Capturing a rally point decreases the opposing teams “tickets”, with the first team reaching 0 losing. These modes don’t present anything new, but are by far the most exhilarating. Team Deathmatch has wormed its way in, taking place on smaller versions of the 9 maps, while a Hardcore mode makes death more frequent and easier. Rush and Conquest modes are extremely team focused, and choosing one of the four classes will directly influence the role you are expected to play. Console owners may be disappointed to find that their online battlefields are a bit smaller than those on PC, as well as the distance between spawn points being much less. This is due to the fact that Battlefield 3 online supports up to 24-player multiplayer on consoles, as opposed to the 64 on PC.

Battlefield 3 offers up the familiar four classes for you to chose from and effectively make your mark on the battle. Assault soldiers are the medics on the field, deploying health packs and reviving fallen teammates while also being great soldiers for frontline battles. Engineers will do best sticking to nearby friendly vehicles, with their trusty blowtorch being the first aid to anything mechanical, and their RPGs being another main offensive against enemy armour. Support players wield heavy machine guns in order to put down serious suppressive fire, as well as being able to equip mortars for some long range attacks. Recon soldiers are the snipers of the Battlefield world, being able to take out targets from extreme distances and spot and mark other enemies for other teammates to deal with. Winning matches will require you to work hand in hand with your teammates, which means lone wolves will not get far before being tactically taken apart. Thankfully, you are rewarded for every single contribution towards your team, whether it be repairing a tank or arming the objective. Players with the highest score don’t always have the most kills, and often you can go for minutes of gameplay without firing a bullet but still scoring major points. This makes Battlefield 3′s multiplayer a very distinct experience, and one that should not be compared to Call of Duty in any way, due to the stark differences that they possess.

The addictive nature of the multiplayer comes in the form of the hundreds of upgrades that you are able to acquire. Use a certain weapon, and unlock weapon specific upgrades such as sights and grenade launcher attachments. Use a certain class for a while and you’ll be rewarded with class specific upgrades such as a remote control robot that can arm objectives, mobile spawn points, mortars, Javelin missiles and more. Sticking to one class has its clear advantages, but spreading yourself evenly between all four classes will make you much more adaptable for the battle at hand. Lastly, you have universal upgrades that you acquire through basic levelling up which include various weapons, suits and cameos, class specialisations and more. The sheer amount of upgrades will keep you playing for many months to come, as there always seems to be that one unlock that is just within your reach. The drive to just play one more game can often get the better of you, and before you know it you would have spent half the day playing. Trust me, it happens faster than you know.

Battlefield 3 also has a host of exciting vehicles and map specific weapons that just sit there and invite you to do something with them. From jets to helicopters, mortars to anti-air placements, speed boats to Abram’s tanks, and many, many more, Battlefield 3 offers more than one way to skin an enemy soldier. The best part about these vehicles is all the interesting and inventive ways in which you can use them. For example, you could use an armoured personnel carrier to rush the enemy lines, abandon it and use it as a mobile spawn point. Helicopters can provide some fantastic ground support, while jets can make flying runs for devastating carnage. Each vehicle comes with its own set of upgrades as well, with the full functionality for each vehicle only being fully unlocked after some TLC with your favourite mode of transport. Sadly, getting to grips with some of the flight controls can be a bit of a mission on the PC, and the absence of a dedicated training ground for flying means that you could potentially spend a few matches just learning how to bank effectively in your Thunderbolt.

If you were expecting anything drastically different to Bad Company 2′s multiplayer, then you might be a bit disappointed. Even though Battlefield 3 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Battlefield 2, it feels like a refinement of Bad Company 2′s multiplayer more than anything else. That’s not to say that there aren’t any differences though. Bullets now have a maximum distance they can travel before falling victim to gravity, meaning snipers aiming for a long range kill will need to take this height change into consideration. Stabbing a player no longer means an instant kill, with two swift knife strikes now being required, unless you sneak up behind your prey for a surprise attack. M-COM points can no longer be destroyed by rocket launchers and grenades, with an explosive needing to be armed in order for the station to be destroyed. Even with these and more changes, veterans of Battlefield’s multiplayer will ease into this in no time at all, though newcomers may need a few hours or so of practice before they become something more than sniper fodder.

On top of this, there are some thrilling Co-op missions that you are able to take up with a friend online. These co-operative missions are a lot more challenging than the single-player campaign missions, and will require some keen teamwork between you and your partner. Voice communication is definitely a must, as Dean and I quickly learnt on our first attempt. All in all, there are only six missions that will offer around another 2 hours and terrorist killing fun, which is a bit sad considering how fun they are. Some multiplayer unlocks can only be obtained through experience earned in Co-op, meaning you may have to revisit some of them just to unlock certain weapons and gadgets. Enemies also seem to have super-human intelligence in Co-op, being able to immediately pick you out in a squad of AI teammates, and always knowing where to shoot at you.

The Battlelog system is in charge of everything you do in Battlefield on PC. After launching the game through Origin (which is not such a bad program), your browser will open up and you’ll be automatically logged into Battlelog. From here, you are able to launch the campaign, multiplayer and co-op. as well as check numerous stats such as overall accuracy, time spent as each class, XP needed for the next upgrade and more. The Battlelog system creates a very sleek and helpful hub for everything Battlefield, and so far I have yet to experience any problems with it. It’s not as flashy as Call of Duty’s Elite service, but then again you don’t have to pay anything for Battlelog. The ease of access is also amazing. By simply dragging a friend’s name to a server, you automatically invite them to your game, and the server filter will let you fine tune nearly everything. It’s also nice to see that the console versions of Battlefield 3 have a server browser included, making matchmaking all the more easy.

Battlefield is certainly a game you should have in your collection right now, but don’t expect it to be the game changer that some thought it would be. In terms of campaign and story, it rests on the same level as your regular Call of Duty, which is odd considering that this was the section of the game that DICE aimed to outclass the CoD franchise. In terms of multiplayer, I’ll reiterate what I’ve been saying for a while now. You cannot compare the two at all. Both offer different multiplayer experiences, so comparing them would make no sense. That said, Battlefield 3′s explosive multiplayer more than justifies a purchase, and will keep you coming back to the immaculately detailed virtual warzones for many months to come. Put away those dusty copies of Battlefield 2, because Battlefield 3 is here, and it’s better than ever.

Ah, my youth, sweet and innocent youth. The last Ace Combat game I played was on the PS1 and well… well even in my ignorant youth, where pretty much every game was good to me, Ace Combat was still about as average a game as you could get. It wasn’t so bad as to make me feel guilty for playing it (don’t you hate that sick feeling you get when you play really bad games?), but not good enough to make me want to invite my mates over to play it. The problem is quite simply that flight combat games have always lacked the needed variety to make them great games.

A lack of variety isn’t any specific game’s fault, but instead the nature of the genre is to blame. Jet fighter games have always had to struggle with variety, or lack thereof. Even the very modern Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, Assault Horizon’s competition, has had the same issues to tackle. Not so much in the first game, but in the sequel where everything was about the same, where the only room for improvement was polish and more aircraft. In racing games, the feel of each individual car, the speed, the physics and handling; it’s all readily noticeable and giving challenge through each individual track and type of race is what helps this out. With jet fighting games, and as is the nature with flight in principle, jets give just about the same sense of feel and pace. The only difference between aircraft is the armaments, purpose and perhaps durability and that’s about it. Fortunately for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, Project Aces, its developer, has got a few tricks up their sleeves.

Close-Range Assault (CRA) is the name of the game and boy does it make a difference. The first time you’ll encounter this new mechanic is in the opening sequence of the game where you’re thrust straight into air-to-air combat. Dog fights, under the guise of the very official ‘Dog Fight Mode’ (DFM), is where you engage and are engaged with other jet fighters in close quarter, high octane combat. Imagine firing off a missile only to be engaged in DFM by a plane to the rear, you counter-roll and evade, then close in and strip away at the bastards paint and his life with a seriously effective machine gun. You’re able to do all sorts of physics shattering manoeuvres and they’re all very satisfying. Watching your multi-targeting special weapon, what a mouth full, take out not only the opponent you’re dog fighting but four or more of his mates is just awesome. Assault Horizon has high ambitions and aims to achieve that sense and feel for every mode of play. There are other combat situations and at times you’re tasked with using the same style of combat to bomb strategic targets while fending off a swarm of enemy fighters. It’s a great idea and it seriously improves upon the previous formula of firing off missiles at dots on the HUD or radar. I’m almost sure the next H.A.W.X game will be sporting some form of dog fighting.

If that wasn’t enough, Assault Horizon has another trick to pull out of its sleeve. That is the variety and number of differing combat situations as well as types of aircraft. There are missions that task you with bombing runs, Apache gunship shoot outs against a plethora of RPG and tank ridden cities and a whole lot more. Project Aces has really tried to give each and every mission a unique feeling; even landing a damaged plane on one account. It’s not difficult and doesn’t task you too much, but it gives you more than simple combat heavy fighter missions and that’s all we really want.

On the story side of things, Assault Horizon gives the type of narrative you’d expect from a Black Hawk Down film and takes itself very seriously. In that regard, it does a great job of describing and showing the wars it portrays and narrates. It’s far more down to earth and situation orientated than the grand, world changing, and hugely over the top war stories told in its FPS counterparts like: MW, Battlefield and Medal of Honour. Like I said before, the game starts by throwing you straight into a massive showdown and multiple elaborate dog fights above a city. Luckily the controls are intuitive and you don’t miss or even consider a joy stick. It’s a sign of improvement because many flight games, even arcade ones, required the controllability of a joystick where it was quite clearly superior.

All in all, I’m impressed they’ve put so much effort into the setting of the game. This is especially true in a game where you wouldn’t expect that to be the case. That said though, I honestly have no idea what the story is about. Why are the Russians and NATO working together? Why do they start fighting half way into the story? It’s got a whole do-or-die plot and plays the one group rising to power with super weapons card. It’s all a bit of grandeur and smells of a Japanese anime plot; though I suppose that makes sense given the developers. The problem is, it’s just not that appealing, motivating or connected. It tries to be emotional and tell a story of struggle, overcoming adversity and avenging the death of fellow soldiers, but I struggled to care. Just too little was given into who these characters are, what their motivations are, who they are and why we should care. Yet despite these obviously necessary components for any character driven story, the narrative still focuses on a couple pilots and it all becomes a bit too convoluted and samey.

Thinking about it though, the lack of narrative sense is actually perfect for a flight combat game. That is, given the fact that jet fighter games have never made much logical sense. Your fighter carries an absurd amount of weaponry ordinance and pulls off just about every impossibly physics defying dog fight it could throw at you. I don’t know if you know this, but in reality, pilots prefer to stay as far from the enemy as possible. They’d just as rather take out their target from a huge distance off and remain unseen than engage in stupidly dangerous dog fights. All in all though, that total disregard for realism and embrace of everything Hollywood is what makes it enjoyable. Dog fights are fun and keep the gameplay from feeling stale quite well. I’m so glad Ace Combat decided f#$k that, we’re dog fighting… everything. Taking on The Shark, your Russian nemesis that has stopped you on a number of encounters, and dog fighting him through endless cinematic manoeuvres is hugely appealing, even if slightly scripted. The mechanics aren’t perfect, they definitely need some refinement and a sequel to build on what’s here already will work brilliantly. There’s a lot of potential wasted in the lack of polish and I can see a gem of a game in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.

With all the effort gone into the gameplay, whether successful or not, you’d expect an equal amount of effort having gone into the visuals. Visually however, Assault Horizon stumbles when I expected it to soar (pun intended). They do the job quite well for the jet fighter stages and all of the aircraft look beautiful. But, and I know you knew a ‘but’ was coming, the helicopter stages don’t fair quite as well. The problem is that the textures are quite washed out and look stretched as well as having an unappealing blurry look to them. It makes discerning, and even just seeing what you’re shooting at, quite difficult. This is an especial nuisance when there multiple soldiers on roof tops and roads that you’re meant to shoot at but can’t really see. It’s easy to solve it of course, I just point my Gatling gun in the general direction and luckily its hugely impressive firepower does the job for me. That’s great and all, but I’d like to have some sort of challenge and idea of what I’m shooting at. The Apache gunship stages are much easier because everything is highlighted and have clear target reticules painted on them. That removes some of the issue but it’s just not that pleasing for me to look at. I wished they had just put the effort in. I understand that the engine needs to be able to hand fast streaming textures and huge distances for the jet fighting and bombing stages; but that doesn’t mean it should bias everything else. At certain times, the Apache gunship stages are the most fun, which is a shame given the below par look and feel of the experience.

At the end of the day, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is about the entire package and in that sense, it delivers. It’s not perfect but it offers a perfectly decent multiplayer with team-on-team goals and the ability to retry and attempt each mission in different craft as a nice bonus. If you’re a fan of jet fighters or air combat games, this is just about the best I have played, not that that’s saying much. For everyone else, it’s a half decent game and would make a decent edition to any library. It’s just a shame it has to compete with so many great games this season.

Batman: Arkham City feels like a game that I’ve had to wait forever for, but by that same token it’s the game I’ve always dreamed of having, being the obsessive Dark Knight fan that I am. Before getting into inevitable detail, however, I must express that it feels difficult to talk about a game so rich with ambition and brilliance, and sum it all up into one review. But that aside, I personally realised one distinctive difference between Arkham City, and 2009′s Arkham Asylum – granted, both are extraordinary games, but when I think back to the last game, I realise that what the majority of people talk about most and love most about the game were the unforgettable Scarecrow moments. With Arkham City, I find myself excitedly talking about many parts and little to big stand-out moments spread across a grand stage that is the Batman universe, and it feels much more dynamic and deep this time around. Does that make this a better game than its predecessor? Maybe, maybe not, but it definitely makes it a much bigger one, and there’s more than enough here to convince you that this is one of 2011′s stand-out titles.

Rocksteady seem to consistently find ways, by means of both story concepts and contexts, to exploit the very best out of the Batman universe. The game takes place one year after Arkham Asylum, where Quincy Sharp is now the mayor of Gotham City and, with the help of Dr. Hugo Strange, has moved all of the scum from Blackgate Prison and the inmates from Arkham Asylum into the heart of Gotham, converting it into a quarantined zone titled Arkham City. Strange runs the place, and that spells all kinds of trouble, which leads Batman to enter it and investigate, fearing that things will escalate out of control. There exists a three-way war between Joker, Penguin and Two-Face, all who are fighting to be top dog in Arkham City, except that Joker is suffering from the potentially fatal side effects of the Titan formula – and hides it. This makes for a grand opening to the game and introduction to the story, and once again Batman is in for another night in hell, as he races against time to fight against the city’s most dangerous criminals, and put a stop to Strange’s plan for Arkham City, which will commence once the night reaches its end. Codenamed “Protocol 10″, Batman must discover the true nature of Strange’s goal and figure out how to prevent it before time runs out, and Gotham is plunged into chaos.

From beginning to shocking end, Arkham City is an engrossing thrill-ride that stays constantly at a high. Sure it has a few stumbles on the way, and towards the end, and occasionally throughout, some aspects of the story get dealt with too quickly, and of the handful of boss fights, most are completely forgettable, but that doesn’t take anything away from what Rocksteady has achieved. It’s simply brilliant how well the studio has drawn from the source material in their game, in their own way too, and how much they’ve actually managed to include in this game without making anything seem like it was thrown in for the sake of it. The game makes astounding use of its concepts and villains, and brings the Dark Knight, his world and its classic comic book characters to life in a way you could never have believed possible for a video game. It’s the stuff comic fanatics’ dreams are made of, and I can say that with ease as I myself, as mentioned before, am a huge fan of Batman. It’s almost unreal to believe that, twice now, Rocksteady has achieved what was previously thought impossible, creating a licensed game that is as good, if not better, than any action game currently on the market. The narrative is great, the pacing is excellent and, all-round, this is a tale that is worthy of being part of the DC universe.

Rocksteady have not gone for reinvention here, but rather refinement and supreme expansion. A much greater emphasis has been put on free-roaming and exploration, but Arkham City isn’t exactly a full-on open world setting, its instead a much bigger version of Arkham Asylum. You’re free to do what you want in the large open environment, but you’ll also take on missions and explore the interiors of buildings you can enter. For exploration, Batman’s grapple hook and flight ability have taken the spotlight, creating a fantastically flowing system that is exhilarating, precise and expertly executed. The grapple hook automatically targets the optimal building or ledge according to the direction of your camera, and it’s pleasantly surprising how accurate it is, although inevitably sometimes when you’re in a hurry you can grapple onto the wrong thing, but getting back on track is simple and easy. You’re able to freely glide like before, except this time you’re faster and you’re able to plummet down from above at high speeds and keep yourself in-flight without touching the ground, using an acquired grapple hook extension, which can keep you entertained for long periods of time. The system also fits the theme of the game, which is making you feel more like Batman than ever before, and you really do feel awesome each time you descend from the skies and attack a group of ill-prepared enemies.

The combat has been vamped up and polished, making it better than ever. The same system of strike, counter, stun and dive is still here, except the added ability to counter multiple enemies at once and use assigned hotkeys to seamlessly integrate your gadgets into combat is awesome. Even better is that you’ll be able to react to all kinds of enemy attacks, including, for example, thrown objects which you can counter and knife attacks that you can dodge and counter with the required combat upgrades. Again, you’ll truly feel like Batman, and it’s a thing of beauty and sadistic pleasure to watch the Dark Knight take down his enemies and break bones in perfect flow. There are more special combos to unlock, a few extra moves, a wide variety of animations, and a higher pace to the combat, although it’s the same at heart, just better. You’re really required to be alert, especially when special enemies start entering combat – the ones who carry guns, stun rods, knives, shields and such. You’ll need to be aware of how to beat them and constantly mix up your attacks and be on the move in order to win. But really, how better could the feeling of being Batman be captured than by the fact that you’ll feel in perfect control and as though you’re at the advantage when you’re outnumbered and surrounded by a small army? That’s the feeling you’ll have playing as the Dark Knight, especially now that you can drop smoke bombs when under fire and use a wide variety of gadgets to bring enemies down.

The predator sections are back in full force, and they’re the star of the show again. Nothing beats stalking your enemies and picking them off one by one as you watch your prey become increasingly afraid and reach a point where they’re cowering in fright and shooting at shadows. And it’s so much better this time around, with more variety in gadgets, such as the disruptor which disables enemy weaponry, smarter enemies and more options for takedowns, including from vents, through walls and from above. It was especially cool as well to see Batman use his Batclaw to aid him in a ledge takedown where the enemy was a little bit out of reach. You’re also able to stealthily take out your foes in the open world, which is both fun and rewarding. Like before, you’ll die in seconds against bullets, so you need to be smart and fast, and make good use of Detective Mode to set your sights on vantage points, enemy locations and objects of interest. Of course, just like before, while it makes things easier to keep Detective Mode on, it ruins a lot of the experience because you’ll miss out on a lot of the fantastic visuals, so it’s best to keep it on for brief periods of time, when needed. And you will need it, because while the game is not that challenging on easy and normal difficulties, hard and New Game+ will definitely give you an enjoyable challenge without being too hard or too easy, which is great.

The city is littered with interesting things to see and do, and the game is almost overflowing with content. There are thugs everywhere to fight or prey on, the entire city to explore, side missions to take on and, through them, cool secrets to uncover and, of course, encounters with many villains by means of the main quest, exploration and side missions. Additionally, there are over 400 Riddler challenges to complete, although like before you’ll need to backtrack for trophies when you don’t have the right gadgets to get them. Still, being able to set waypoints on your map and mark trophies you’ve discovered, but can’t get, is a great help. All of this is not even taking into account the dozens of Challenge Maps, fully playable with Catwoman and Robin too, if you have the codes, as well as the New Game+ feature, which is unlocked after finishing the game. As if the main campaign doesn’t make you feel enough like Batman, New Game+ makes a few tweaks that makes everything so much better. In this mode, which is separate from your original save game, you retain all your unlocked gadgets and upgrades, but the difficulty is ramped up, enemies are stronger and the counter indicator is gone.

Sadly, there are a few flaws that are present, but it would be a shame to focus on them in a game that does so much right. However, they can’t go unmentioned, and that said, it’s a pity that, just like before, most of the boss fights are forgettable, as I previously said, and are just repetitive affairs. Rocksteady definitely tried to make them interesting, and that they certainly are, but aside from the very clever, unique and awesome tangle with Mr. Freeze, and the shocking final showdown, the rest are pretty much the only aspects of the game that aren’t great. Secondly, I personally felt that the Catwoman sections felt largely insignificant and quick, save for one genuinely fantastic moment towards the end, but even that gets wrapped up in a hurry. They do nicely to change the pace a little, but because being Batman is just the highlight of it all, it almost felt intrusive at times to have Catwoman interrupt the main story. Still, I would definitely say that it is worth it to have her in, because if you download her content, which you should do before you start playing, the beginning of the game literally changes and you not only get to experience some extra variety and collect Catwoman-specific Riddler trophies, but you also get to see what’s happening off-camera, so to speak, and get a different perspective on things. But in the end, you won’t miss too much in the grand scheme of things if you don’t have the code.

However, despite these flaws and whatever personal gripes you may have with the game, you will most likely realise as you play that your concern for them will disappear. It’s a great thing that the more you play Arkham City and get into it, the more you’ll actually want to play it and long to get back to it when you’re unable to play. That doesn’t just boil down to it being very addictive, which it is, but also because overall it’s just an excellent game. And at the end of the day, to ask the obvious, who the hell doesn’t want to be Batman? There’s just something remarkable and extremely rewarding about a game that constantly gives you more reasons to play it at every turn, whether it’s just for the sake of taking out some more thugs, flying around and exploring the city, doing the interesting side missions or chasing after Riddler trophies and challenges. And that’s just within the main campaign. Don’t forget about the challenge maps and additional features, which are worth the time as much as the main story is.

There’s definitely a lot to keep you entertained here, but it’s important that you take your time with Arkham City and don’t rush it, because you can unfortunately miss a great deal of the experience if you don’t allow yourself to indulge in the world and its content. For example, if you don’t do the first four, beginner AR Training side missions, you won’t get the grapnel boost upgrade which lets you travel faster and stay in the air. Truly, if you rush or only stick to the main path, and don’t do a bit of exploring and side quests, you’ll miss out on awesome parts of the game, such as Riddler’s tense missions, Victor Zsasz’s dangerous game or even Mad Hatter’s crazy surprise to name a few. There’s so much to discover and so much more value to be added to the experience if you’re willing to devote time to the game, and it’s all completely worth it. All of this, the Riddler challenges and the New Game+ feature makes this game beg to be played at least twice, giving you so many reasons to do so, and when you’re done there are still the challenge maps, of which there’s more to get involved in.

Aside from being able to play as Batman, Catwoman and Robin in the challenge maps, provided you have the codes, there are also three different types of challenges. Firstly you get the standard challenges from the last game, which are a mix of combat and Invisible Predator maps all with three badges to earn based on your score, and the idea is to get the most points possible. As the names say, combat challenges have you take on increasingly harder waves of enemies, while predator maps require you to stealthily eliminate your enemies as quick as possible, completing challenges along the way. Then there are the Riddler Campaigns, which mix three challenge maps together and add in some modifiers, such as giving you a time limit or less health. Finally, you’re able to choose a third option, which is to play the challenge maps with your own selected modifiers, and it’s great because you can either make it easier for yourself, such as by giving you the ability to regenerate health over time, or make it harder for yourself, and it’s good to increase your skills and challenge for leaderboards.

Graphically, Batman: Arkham City is amazing, with the city beautifully realised in a dark, gritty sort of way, and character models being intricately detailed and fantastic. It’s simply amazing to glide over the city and take it all in, or watch from atop a vantage point and observe what’s going on or listen in on radio chatter – you truly get the sense that you’re in a living, breathing world. There are, however, some minor issues with lip-syncing at times and occasional texture mishaps, but it’s nothing major really. Also on an extremely high note is the truly exceptional voice acting, especially by the two leads Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Mark Hamill (Joker) who really are a dream team, delivering out of this world performances. All of the other important characters deserve a great deal of credit as well, with the only problem being that the generic thugs don’t have too much variety. And it certainly can’t not be mentioned how incredible the soundtrack for the game is, with some of the predator moments featuring music that reaches epic proportions. At times, it’s enough to stand with the best out there.

Batman: Arkham City is something special. It’s not only the best licensed game ever made and the perfect Dark Knight experience, but it’s also amongst the best action adventure games currently out on the market. To say that this game is better than Arkham Asylum would be a disservice to both games and their separate merit. But this game will, without any hint of doubt, be considered as the benchmark for all future games like it, perhaps even as a benchmark for this entire genre. It doesn’t just live up to the hype, it surpasses it as well as any expectations you could have had. It’s a dark, brutal and brilliant adventure that may be a few steps short of perfection, but in the end is nothing short of a masterpiece.

id Software are no strangers to the FPS genre. In fact, they were pioneers in the shooting industry, producing instant classics such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. These games reshaped and redefined the way we played first-person shooters, and helped drive the industry to where it is today. So, with that type of pedigree following them around, id created RAGE. Another First-Person shooter, this time set in an apocalyptic wasteland, which included RPG elements and vehicular combat. Sounds awesome, right? Well, you would be spot on, because RAGE is an outrageously awesome shooter and a fantastic game. What it is not, however, is another genre changing or defining title, but rather one that slips comfortable into the company around it.

RAGE is a gorgeous shooter that takes place in a spectacle of a wasteland. id Software have really gone all out to great one of the most jaw-dropping beautiful games on the market now, with the idTech 5 engine and their new Mega textures technology. Sadly, especially on the PS3 version, this beauty is hampered by numerous visual glitches, that cause textures to frequently pop-in and often cause delays in texture loading. Fantastic shooting, strong AI and great voice acting make up for this, but ultimately the story lets you down. With no real meaning or incentive behind your actions, you simply become everyone’s errand boy and finally the single last hope for civilisation. As I said before, id didn’t take many risks with this title, producing a fantastic shooter, but certainly not one that will go down in the history books.

Your story starts a few hundred years in the future. The earth has been hit by a massive meteorite, leaving the plant looking like the face of Mars and devastating the human population. Luckily, you were one of few people to be enclosed in special pods buried beneath the earth’s surface, quietly waiting in cryo sleep, until you are woken up and tasked with rebuilding civilisation. Thing is, not everyone in your pod survives, and from the moment you wake up, you are alone on a near unfamiliar planet. The Wasteland takes no prisoners, and it’s not long before death comes knocking at your door, only to be hampered by a local survivor with a keen rifle eye. And so begins your quest through the Wasteland, aiding and conversing with anything that stands upright, and putting yourself in perilous positions in order to discover what really happened while you were asleep.

So I’m sure many of you are like “Wait, there’s a game really similar to that,” namely Fallout 3. Yes, sadly even the apocalyptic setting is becoming somewhat of a bore now, and RAGE fails to bring anything new to the table on that front. The story presented in RAGE is boring, uninspired and easily forgettable. In fact, you’re not even sure who you’re really fighting until about 3 hours into the game, when you start hearing whispers of an oppressive organisation called “The Authority”. Eventually you stumble upon the local resistance fighters, who then take you under their wing and force you to go and put yourself in any more danger for a cause that you don’t even entirely understand. Hell, up until the last hour or so, you’re not even sure why The Authority is seen as an oppressive organisation, especially when 90% of the rest of the population is out to kill everyone else as well. In short, there really is no reason to actually focus on the story in RAGE, since there is absolutely no depth or originality. Rather focus on the fantastic shooting sections and AI, which really make RAGE shine.

The Wasteland is an extremely hostile place, and there are many creatures, bandits and ghouls just waiting for the right opportunity to take your head off. Each section of the Wasteland belongs to a specific group of nasties, and once you venture into their strongholds and dens, the differences of each become immediately apparent. You’ll be sent to various different “mission hubs” as I like to call them, which are basically dens that require you to shoot through tons of enemies, pick up something near the end, and then watch as a quick shortcut to your entrance is made so that you can make a hastily escape. Missions will be given to you by main quest givers, but explore the game’s two central hubs and various little settlements, and you’ll find others in need of your services. It is a bit of a shame that id chose to focus specifically on FPS action in this regard, meaning that side-missions really get elaborate or different, and finish u way too quickly. They often involve you visiting a den that you have already blasted through, which doesn’t really incentivise you to go looking for even more quest givers. Thankfully, shooting is what RAGE does best, so revisiting areas is always exciting and extremely fun.

Enemies in RAGE aren’t dumb. though they may turn to complete ragdolls when they die, with the sense that they lose all bone structure upon the last bullet hit, they rarely go down without a fight. Mutants are the fodder of the Wasteland, and can easily be killed, but don’t except them to make it easy for you. They hop and jump about, evading your fire and forcing you to constantly move around, especially when a group of four or more decide to attack simultaneously. Then you get various different bandits, whose armour and attack patterns can vary from clan to clan. Near the beginning, most bandits are retarded British redneck type folk, who wear little to no armour and most run at you with flaming torches. More advanced enemies include Gearheads and Authority soldiers, which will require the right weapon and ammo types to dispatch. Enemies react realistically to bullet fire, and will often hop around on one foot after you shoot them, or even crawl on the ground and fire off some final rounds at you before you end them in brutal and gory fashion. These varying enemies help keep the shooting fresh and exciting, but this is only half of the shooting pie. The other half comes from the array of different weapons you have at your disposal, which will certainly keep you experimenting.

RAGE offers quite a few weapons for you to decapitate, blow up and mangle enemies with. From the massive Settlers Pistol, to the Automatic Crossbow, and even a massive Minigun that shoots BG rounds (Doom anyone?). There may not be many unique weapons in RAGE, but the different ammo toes for each weapon helps keep each of them feeling fresh and exciting. How about a Shotgun that can shoot electric grenades, of a Crossbow that shoots mind control bolts that turn your enemies into walking time bombs. The Settler Pistol can fire off all six of its rounds at one, and the Assault Rifle can fire off shots that are embedded with crystal pieces from meteorites. These varying ammo types might just be all fun and games at the beginning, but near the end of the campaign the right ammo type will become crucial to success. Running head first into a group of enemies will usually mean death, but thankfully RAGE is quite forgiving in this regard. You have the ability to revive yourself when you go down, similar to Borderlands except a bit more restricted. After using your defibrillator, you have to allow it to recharge, meaning death in the few minutes while it does could mean a checkpoint reload. And considering that RAGE’s checkpoint system is so badly spaced, you will have to regularly save your game, or risk losing up to nearly 30 minutes of your game time.

There are also various gadgets that you are able to craft in order to bring a different kind of sending off to your foes. Remote control explosive cars and EMP make up the normal gadgets, while walking Sentry bots and Wingsticks spice up combat in a mew way. Wingsticks are easily the most fun weapon to use in RAGE, delivering instant death to most enemies you through them at. Upgraded them and watch one Wingstick decapitate three foes directly in front of you, sending a barrage of heads flying all over the place. Gathering loot is also crucial to your survival in RAGE, with all manners of ammo and crafting items lying all over the place. Vendors are always able to sell your anything you need, but since money is not always an easy commodity to come across, looting is often your best option. Vehicular gameplay also makes up a large part of RAGE, and with many small trips and races scattered around the Wasteland, you are never without an excuse to hop into the nearest Buggy and take down some bandits. The lock-on system works extremely well, making driving and shooting on the fly a breeze and extremely enjoyable. It’s just a bit of a shame that the races against AI opponents is rarely difficult, and your will hardly ever encounter a close finish.

Online is where this problem can be rectified, offering exciting and extremely fun racing against three other opponents. Events such as weapons specific races and pure racing are fun, but Rallies are where the fun is at. In these events, you rush around a closed off race track, collecting big beacons for points. You also gain points for destroying other enemies cars, meaning that rush towards every single beacon does not ensure success. These events are explosive and chaotic, though the lack of anything else means that the multiplayer aspect of RAGE is also a missed opportunity. With all these fantastic weapons introduced in the single-player, it’s a shame that there is no real competitive multiplayer to really test them in. There is, however, a fairly short yet fun co-operative mode named Legends of the Wasteland. In this mode, you are able to go online or hit up split-screen with a friend and tackle some short yet explosive backstory missions. These short missions flesh out some of the stories you are bound to hear NPC’s talk about during the campaign, and do a great job at realising some exciting Wasteland legends. While they are fun, there are only 9 missions on offer, meaning the experience ends way too soon.

Now, with all of that out of the way, I can get down to the one single thing that utterly annoys me about RAGE: texture pop-in. Ok, so for those who don’t know, texture pop-in is the term used when texture take a few seconds to finally come into detail and bloom into their full resolution. Now, games that this is also noticeable in include Gears of War, which is known for having a few texture pop-ins during cutscenes and beginnings of multiplayer matches. Now, that is nothing compared to RAGE. On both the PS3 and Xbox 360, there are major issue with textures, meaning that id Software’s new Mega Texture technology has a few glitches on current hardware. On the PS3, a 8GB install is mandatory, while a 22GB install in optional on the Xbox 360. The greater install size on the Xbox 360 means that texture’s load a lot quicker on Microsoft’s system, whereas Sony’s console really suffers. Textures are constantly popping up everywhere, and often make this otherwise gorgeous game look like an old, pixelated mess. The reasoning behind this rest on the way the PS3 stores installed data. Rather than having one massive file that can be constantly accessed, the PS3 splits it’s install files into thousands of smaller files, meaning the game has to constantly look for the relevant one in order to load this texture. While this can convert to only 1 or so seconds in the game, it is still noticeable and removes any sort of immersion the Wasteland might put you under.

The same occurs on the Xbox if you choose not to install the textures, meaning that you will need a large HDD in order to enjoy what RAGE has to offer. id Software also made a big deal about how they wanted RAGE to run at the optimal 60 frames per second on consoles. Well, they achieved this, but at a price as well. In order to keep the game running at a silky smooth 60-fps, the game reduces the resolution in order to alleviate the stress on the hardware. What’s worse is that this system is never consistent, with nearly no resolution degrade in high action sequences, and then ridiculous amounts of stress during simple strolls through the city. It’s honestly baffling how id Software could release a game that did this, as it show bad coding and programming. The PC version has also had its fair share of technical difficulties, though by now many patches have gone a long way to fix this. On the bright side, character animations during dialogue are beyond astonishing, bringing each and every character alive, and really making each dialogue sequence one to look forward to.

All these technical difficulties aside, RAGE is still an awesome game that should catch your attention. These visual issues are irritating because they take away from such a beautiful game, and really ruin a package that is so close to the most beautiful looking game ever made. However, nothing can take away from the exhilarating shooting, the tight vehicular gameplay, a lengthy campaign and fantastic art direction. The lack of a better story is indeed a bit of a disappointment, but id have really set the stage for something that could seriously be built on. If they do decide to continue this RAGE franchise, there is not much they will need to do in order to blow our minds. Fix the Mega Textures and weave a fantastic story, and they’ll have a winning formula.

Marvel’s latest forays into film adaptations have yielded success with Thor, Captain America and X-Men First Class dominating the box office. However, in the arena of videogames this is predominately a different kettle of psychic powered fish. X-Men Destiny is from the Dev team over at Silicon Knights, known for developing a host of sub-par videogames (like Too Human). This game was an opportunity for Silicon Knights to demonstrate a new take on the Marvel universe, and not dismally fail.

From the first playthrough, it is apparent that Silicon Knights had little understanding of the comic book property discrediting the X-Men franchise for all its worth (in a really bad and cheesy way). Well, it has been like this for awhile in the entertainment industry, but at least the recent catalogue of films are taking risks with their approaches to adapting the comic book source. This latest effort is proving to be a hard playthrough. Not because the game is amazingly difficult and harsh, but rather that X-Men Destiny is deprived of any creative vision, is paced with the vigour of an elderly gentleman in a walker, and has a lacking depth of passion for the subject matter. Equivocally, what remains is a substandard excuse of a game.

I can tolerate shoddy graphics, a benign and insipid story with no coherency (I’m playing Hard Reset) and even a dodgy camera. But when all of these misnomers are packaged in one game and sold on the shelf under the moniker of X-Men. It feels like super-gluing a Ferrari badge on a Golf GTI, and mismatching spinning rims because you couldn’t afford to purchase a whole set. It’s unsightly and breeds bad game design, and when other games have pulled off adaptations a hundred times better (e.g. Batman Arkham Asylum). It fundamentally pales in comparison. Therefore, X-Men Destiny is a great case study of how not to make a game.

Firstly, the game hammers it home that X-Men Destiny will gift the prospective player with the ability to create their own unique Marvel universe character. This was alluded to in the debut trailer, and the Dev diaries. What I played, disappointingly, was a predefined Action RPG with a limited range of only three characters (no appearance customisation, or other tweaking to be heard of). From the roster, you can select a bog-standard Jock (Grant Alexander) who by some extraordinary circumstance has received mutant abilities, a Japanese emo schoolgirl (Aimi Yoshida) whose parents smuggled her out of Japan, and finally the tenacious son of an anti-mutant extremist (Adrian Luca) who’s in conflict with his recently acquired mutant abilities.

I chose Adrian, in the hopes of playing through a story with emotional depth, and then was guided to the power selection menu where I was prompted to select powers from three categories. The three categories for core powers were: Density Control (whereby the player can manipulate their own body mass to deal devastating physical attacks), Energy Projection (in which the player can utilise a variety of energy-based attacks), and Shadow Matter (entailing the usage of “Shadow Matter” to equip one’s self with indestructible blades formed from matter). As is the case with this game, I could only select one core category of powers, and I picked Energy Projection. Before we proceed any further, one must take note that these powers are non-canon and from my experience removed some of the joy I was expecting in detailing a character with a “mish-mash” of different mutant’s abilities from the start (like Wolverine’s healing factor and Havok’s plasma-related powers). However, as I progressed through the game (and the repetitive storyline) I acquired canon powers, but many were inextricably tied to the core power category I had chosen. So if you crave the goodies from the outset you need to grind excessively in-game, in order to obtain that sense of satisfaction. Once you’ve acquired the powers (obtained through the collection of X-Gene power-ups) you can customise your character accordingly.

Yet these powers are more so enhancements for the predefined core powers you’ve selected. These enhancements are used throughout three base abilities consisting of: offensive, defensive and utility (such as increased speed or dodging) abilities. For example in the offensive category of the X-Gene abilities I picked Pyro’s power enhancement which layered my energy projectiles with heat damage incurring higher damage on enemies over a long duration. In the defensive category, I selected Ice Man’s ice shield which encased my whole body in ice and aided in shielding me from enemy attacks. From the utility abilities, I chose ‘Surge’ which regenerated my mutant power bar as I dodged enemy attacks. In terms of the mutant powers mechanic of the game, I felt that X-Men Destiny could have solidified its introductory experience by providing well known powers in the template creation of your character, from the first instance. It would really have helped to emphasise the point of X-Men Destiny which is to decide your own destiny, and essentially make choices of what powers suit your play style. However, this is more a preference than anything.

A great selection of powers, however, does not redeem X-Men Destiny in other parts where it is sorely lacking. Most notably, the game suffers in the gameplay, aesthetics and story departments. Gameplay-wise, my selection of energy projectiles as a core power meant that the majority of my offensive was shooting barrage after barrage of sparkly fireworks at my enemies (mainly The Purifiers a group of Anti-Mutant extremist and the odd mutant). My character had two types of attacks. With the first, being the ability to shoot an array of singular energy projectiles in short bursts, with the second iteration far more powerful but longer in range requiring a longer power-up period in comparison.

There are basic combos available but the diversity travels that far and doesn’t exceed the potential of mixing abilities; which is disheartening in a game which totes to offer free reign and ‘choice’. Yes, you continually do collect new power enhancements, but the combos are far and few between. You can jump mid-air and plummet to the ground causing enemies to scatter, shoot beams and generate a shield. But the repetitive fights draw out the novelty of the game with attacks and combos in battle becoming dragged out. This reduces gameplay to the level of a chore draining the enjoyment from the initial playthrough.

The sameness throughout is reinforced by the armies of foes consistently sharing the same character designs, with rarely any differentiation between enemies. The monotony is occasionally broken when other mutants join in battles or you’re facing a boss. This is staggeringly the majority of the gameplay, with missions structuring a framework for your character to move from battle to battle. Moreover, missions are characterised by pursuing mission objectives from the game’s two factions which are the Brotherhood of Mutants, or the X-Men. There is no grey area in between your moral choices. You either have to remain strictly ‘good’ or ‘evil’. The middle ground is implausible in X-Men Destiny because the notion of “choice” and fulfilling your own “destiny” are not the game’s focus. Furthermore, the game’s storyline does nothing either for the game as a whole.

The storyline doesn’t meet the expectations of the brief presented by Silicon Knights with the promise of a branching storyline and in-depth character development. Rather, the storyline is sordidly conceptualised with a dull plot, beyond the expected incoherency one has of the comic book source. The storyline follows cliches explicitly to the point that it comes off cheesy. The original comic books remain endearing, even with cliches and tropes of the genre. But X-Men Destiny seems to have been written like a misconstrued comic book plot which failed to make it to print.

X-Men Destiny’s story explores the repercussions of the death of Professor X, which has to led to Magneto recruiting a huge mutant army with your character caught in the crossfire of all out war. It’s your job to save people and avert the oncoming crisis. In comparison to other comic book videogames, the storyline is a bit drab and is really there to provide a basic motivation for characters to carry out their own mission. Adrian, who I played as, typically wants to help people but consequently is coming to terms with his own mutant abilities. The development of your character in X-Men Destiny isn’t fully expanded upon, and character development remains two-dimensional (irony at its worst). Furthemore, the visuals of the game don’t do justice to the source material.

Aesthetically, X-Men Destiny is dated visually and has texture pop-in issues with many of its character models in-game not up to scratch. Silicon Knights attempted to shift stylistically away from a graphic novel aesthetic and ended up in half-way house between bold outlines and a realistic style. As a result, playing the game is jarring and doesn’t help to emphasise the violence of the combat.

On a side note, the implementation of power-ups in the game is another negative aspect. As it draws attention away from the RPG element that Silicon Knights were attempting to focus on. There were also some sound design issues with characters’ voices feeling out of place (like Cyclops and Emma Frost), and were distractions from what otherwise could have been a good game.

This is really a pity because X-Men Destiny could have taken a different approach to adapting the X-Men franchise. Instead it falls into all the traps and loses the plot, or lack thereof. Taking on too may genre tropes and different gameplay mechanics is the reason why X-Men Destiny comes off as a second rate game.

I pose these questions to you. Would you like to die a whole lot and potentially develop a hernia through pure frustration? Do you mind terrible narration and a rather pointless plot? Does the occasional slow down and wonky rag doll physics excite you? Well if you answered yes to those questions, I have good news for you. Dark Souls is here and oh boy is it hard.

Dark Souls, from the developers Fromsoftware, is the spiritual successor to Demon Souls and all the pain and frustration it entailed. So what is Dark Souls? Well basically, it’s a no nonsense, all difficulty, RPG that challenges the player to get through its MMO like world and setting in one piece. The game doesn’t hold your hand and makes sure to punish you for each and every single mistake you make. That’s it really. I mean, yeah there’s a story and I suppose that adds another purpose to the game, but I wouldn’t bother with that. For one thing, the story is about as generic, Japanese and badly translated as one can get and isn’t worth buying a game for. I would try and explain the narrative to you, so that you could decide whether it’s worth the attention but that’d be impossible. Honestly, I didn’t bother to pay attention and even when I did, I really couldn’t explain the intricacies of it. Let’s just say that you play a warrior destined for adventure and to save a land from something and well… that’s about it really. I’m sure there’s more but Dark Souls’ narrative really isn’t its strong point. What does make Dark Souls worth the purchase is its uniquely challenging and infinitely satisfying gameplay.

The way the Dark Souls works is that it’s a 3^rd person action RPG that involves combat according to a more action driven system; a bit like Oblivion if you will. Dives, rolls, parries, blocking, magic, potions and attacking at the right time are what matters in Dark souls. Though it does maintain a very deep RPG mechanic that revolves around a quite in depth stat and inventory system. Initial character setup tasks you with choosing the standard stats defining class, gender and then a gift item with which to start the game. The problem is that the initial setup is more an initial need to check an FAQ and was about as vague as you can get; offering little to no information in what I was doing or choosing. I don’t mind the challenge in game but having to fight the game mechanics is never good design. Just because the Japanese have a tendency to ‘be quirky’ is no excuse for a game that already punishes you in every other aspect. Luckily, I’m an RPG fan and had a general understanding of what each stat meant and how the class system worked. Good luck figuring out the gift selection without reading online guide though. Actually, I should warn you now, this is one of those games that will go down better if you have a guide on the stats and mechanics of things close by. Without which, you’ll be constantly guessing and may end up regretting a choice that you made much earlier on. I’ve probably oversimplified it but the video I’ve included in the review really does speak a whole lot more words than me trying to explain it.

Once you’ve figured Dark Souls out though, you’ll have an absolute ball playing the game. You’ll die a lot, lose all of your souls on numerous occasions and be tempted to break your gamepad; but I’ve never had so much fun being so angry. Don’t worry too much, the game isn’t impossibly hard, it certainly is finishable and just takes some patience and perseverance to complete. Besides, it’s such a unique and rewarding process that every time you defeat an enemy after your 8^th or 9^th try, there really is no other sense of accomplishment like it. Just remember, Dark Souls tends to favour patience and planning as well as knowing the specific ins and outs of yourself as well as your enemy. This makes boss battles, despite some of them being enormous and malevolent things, a lot more manageable. While the times where you need to think fast and require a more precise movement, like getting trapped between a few enemies is much more difficult. I know this is starting to sound more like a game guide than a review, but that’s the point. Dark Souls is the type of game you play for the unique experience only it can provide, despite its technical niggles.

As an RPG experience, Dark Souls asks you to level up by means of the souls you have accumulated along the way. However, souls are also the currency with which to purchase equipment, upgrade your inventory and create new objects. It’s no surprise then that spending, saving and not losing those souls is a constant battle in Dark Souls. Especially because dying means you drop them and if you cannot reclaim them before dying again, you lose them all. You do keep your equipment though; otherwise the game would be impossible. Just because the game is meant to be difficult, Fromsoftware did not want that difficulty to make the game impossible. Speaking of which, remember strategy is king and there’s no shame in retreating or grinding. Fighting everything in the area and healing at the bonfire, only to reset and respawn the enemy hordes so to rinse repeat is one of my favourite strategies and is thoroughly encouraged. While there is no shame in these tactics, there is however shame in blindly running in and hoping to brute force your way though the hordes of enemies. If you think that might be your approach to Dark Souls, quit right now and do not buy it. Speaking of bonfires, I know I mentioned bonfires somewhere; the bonfire is a very important part of Dark Souls and acts as a sort of general purpose base camp. They completely heal you with use and so is a heavenly sight to behold. They also provide the hub for levelling up, creating new equipment or magic (what Dark Souls comically calls sorceries) and it offers some other great features.

As you might have noticed by now, Dark Souls is very combat driven experience and in that aspect it is brilliantly grounded and has solid mechanics. Even at low levels, and with the right skill and process, something I lack, you could probably defeat the last boss. That is if you don’t rush in, where even a pair of lowly skeletons will give you a huge amount of grief. Actually, on the topic of the game design within Dark Souls. I know it’s going for the whole MMO feel and so removing pause seems like a good idea. The thing is though; a lack of pause is annoying. I’ve died a few times, not because I couldn’t match the enemy’s ability or level but because I needed the toilet and the game wouldn’t pause. Even if you press the PS or Xbox guide buttons, the game will keep going and unless you’re in a safe spot, you will die.

The multiplayer component of Dark Souls is the cause for this pause issue. The game aims to mimic an MMO and so allows for PvE invasions of another person’s game or PvP co-operation. The mechanics are quite deep and work very well if you meet their requirements. You can also do other things like leaving messages for others to learn from your mistakes or just troll them. The problem right now is that you need to be the same (or a similar Lvl) to someone else before you can work together or fight each other. That’s great in terms of balancing the experience, but does mean that there is a large disparity between Lvl’s right now. This means it might be tough to find someone worth challenging or that you want to work with at your Lvl. Just give it some time though. Dark Souls, like Demon Souls before it, will soon have a strong multiplayer following of people who take it quite seriously. I’d try to explain the specifics of multiplayer more but it’s too difficult to do in such a short space of time. Just know that whether online or offline the game works well. It’s just that much better, and in fact easier, unless you’re under constant PvP invasion, in online mode.

In the aesthetics department, Dark Souls has some very cool cinematics, despite their pointlessness in regards to providing a story. I’d advise you to ignore the narration and subtitles and just enjoy the aesthetics and visual style Dark Souls envisions, which is actually very cool. The visuals of the actual game aren’t nearly as impressive but they have their moments and more than anything else work towards the whole setting of the game. In any other game I’d say they look bad, in Dark Souls they work quite well. What’s weird is that while some of the NPC’s have really bad voice acting, others are quite well done, especially when compared to the story narration. It’s like Fromsoftware really did try but because of localisation issues they weren’t able to distinguish the good from the bad for a Western audience.

Before I finish, let’s just address some of the impressions I’ve probably given of Dark Souls; that the game is broken or heavily bugged. It isn’t, it actually works quite well and is whole bag of fun. Dark Souls has some surprisingly quick load times, especially after each death; a sure sign of a well coded game. I suppose though, the quick load after death was a requirement for the coding team knowing that everyone playing Dark Souls will die a hell of a lot. I also encountered relatively few bugs in general; the gameplay just needed a bit more tweaking for its Western release. That being said, it’s like an idiot, so me basically, programmed everything outside of combat and in such cases, the AI is a bit daft and the physics is wonky. Yet as soon as you enter combat, the AI becomes brutal and has no problem ending your life. It’s funny that after death the rag doll physics makes enemy bodies react as though they’re floppy and about 20 grams. Maybe their souls are made of lead and once you take them they become as light as balloons.

Look, I could go on and on about the fulfilling experience and uniquely challenging gameplay, but you already know if you’re getting this game or not. And if you’re not sure yet and like a challenge as well as an intricate combat RPG experience; go and buy it. If not, or if you get easily frustrated or are impatient, stay away, far, far away.

Spider-Man games have always been a bit of a “touch and go” subject in the gaming world, with their quality standards often varying in radical degrees. From the awful first movie adaption, to the brilliant sequel film adaptation, and then back to the boring third film flop, these games seem to either hit the mark perfectly or miss entirely. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was one of those that seemed to hit it spot on, giving you four different Spider-Men, four different universes, four different play styles, four different art directions etc etc. It helped keep the game interesting, even though that too eventually boiled down to monotony. Spider-Man: Edge of Time, however, strips these varying styles in favour of a more streamlined experience, as well as only giving you two Spiders to worry about. Sadly, the monotony and shallow combat seems to have worsened too, making Edge of Time more of a step side-wards rather than forward.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time wastes no time getting started, and from the minute you insert the disc into your console, you are propelled into the world of 2099, the time of Miguel O’Hara and Spider-Man 2099. Miguel is keeping a close eye on Alchemax, a mega corporation in the distant future with some shady business corporate members and scientists. One of these is Walker Sloan (voiced by Val Kilmer), a scientist that envisions jumping into the past and founding Alchemax long before its time. Clearly, this is a big no-no in the world of time travelling, as soon after he succeeds, both Peter Parker and Miguel O’Hara’s worlds are changed drastically. Peter Parker no longer works as a photographer for the Daily Bugle, instead working a desk job at Alchemax. In 2099, Alchemax has taken over the corporate world, and the whole world lives under its shadow. Cue a joint effort by both the Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099.

Through some clever DNA handiwork, Miguel establishes a link through which he and Peter Parker can communicate. This effectively sets the stage for what is Edge of Time’s strongest feature. The constant banter between both heroes creates a stark contrast on their different personalities, and this often leads to humorous and quirky dialogue. Amazing Spider-man continues with his “So bad, they’re good” punch lines and puns, while Spider-Man 2099 has a more harsh and serious tone. The dialogue would be nothing without the fantastic voice-acting however, and it should be noted that Josh Keaton and Christopher Daniel Barnes give it their all when portraying Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 respectively. Listening to Peter Parker make wise cracks about the possibility of a Spider-Man musical is extremely funny, though listening to Spider-Man 2099 replace every possible profanity with the word “shock” can get a bit much.

Not far into the game, both Peter and Miguel realise that their actions in their respective times have adverse effects on one another, allowing them to twist the timeline in their favour, and sometimes to a great disadvantage. Spider-Man 2099 may become over run by failed mutant experiments, leaving it up to Peter Parker to find the test subjects in his time and destroy them before they ever appear in Miguel’s time. Another instance, once Peter and Miguel have traded times, is where Peter is trapped by two walls closing in on each other, and it is up to Spider-Man 2099 to find the Alchemax building blueprints and alter them to make sure those walls never existed. These moments create a fantastic sense of tension, as the life of one hero rests in the others hands. The small corner picture in picture presentations help add to this tension, but it always feels as though Beenox missed a great opportunity here. Rather than allowing you to run around destroying everything in an attempt to see how it affects the future, all these “Quantum Causality” changes are scripted, making the prospect of considering how your actions will affect the future boring.

Combat is where things begin to really fall apart in Edge of Time. Both Spidey’s have an array of different moves that they can employ on the nearest baddie, with specific buttons handling attacks, another dealing air launches and lastly web attacks. Sadly, because combat is overly easy, you will probably end up using the same combo over and over again, leading to extended periods of button mashing. Collecting some glowing orbs along the way allows you to upgrade these attacks, and purchase new flashy combos, though you never really feel the need to upgrade your arsenal, purely because combat ceases to evolve. The dodge ability from Shattered Dimensions has also been removed, so you can no longer evade attacks with the endless grace that Spider-Man processes. Instead, you’re forced to take it in the face and move on.

Each Spider-Man also has unique special attacks, which can almost be used all the time since the cooldown rate is almost non-existent. Amazing Spider-Man is granted some amazing super-speed abilities, allowing you to become a ghost to enemies, with their attacks slicing right through you. Spider-Man 2099 apparently moves so fast that enemies can’t track his movements, allowing you to set up a decoy of yourself for enemies, missiles and bullets to focus on it rather than you for a few seconds. While these abilities are occasionally fun to use, they also highlight a smaller, but highly annoying flaw. Combat is overly flashy in Edge of Time, with highlighted paths marking your attacks and all sorts of sparks flying out of enemies when you hit them. Don’t get me wrong, flashy visuals aren’t a bad thing at all, but they do become an issue when they flood your screen to the point where you no longer know what the hell is going on.

Objectives are also extremely repetitive and boring in Edge of Time. For the most part, you spend your time beating up enemies for access keys, tapping a button to force open a door, heading through corridor after corridor and… well that’s pretty much it. You never really even know when the game has begun, partly due to the fact that the tutorial feels like it engulfs the entire game, as you are constantly kept on the same path like a slave, commanded by increasingly repetitive and annoying text pop-ups. Luckily, most of the boss fights are a lot more exciting, especially the final cinematic, explosion filled finale. Then again, boss fights like Black Cat are annoying and frustrating, forcing you to do the exact same thing three times and placing you back at the beginning if you fail. Just as in Deus Ex, the core gameplay and boss fights give off the sense that they were made by different companies, as they don’t fit well together at all.

Edge of Time also restricts and limits the most exciting power that Spider-Man processes; being able to swing around at great speed. All the rooms are small and tight, never allowing you to truly flex your muscles and swing around with exact accuracy. This means no dive-bombing enemies, no hasty escapes in the heat of battle, and most importantly no grounds to fool around for endless hours. The game wants you to walk, and let’s be serious, when you’re Spider-Man you don’t want to walk. You are also able to web-zip to certain surfaces, but this system feels fragile and often doesn’t work in the way you want it to. Thankfully, there are tons of freefall sections that Spider-Man 2099 takes part in, providing an exhilarating rush and bringing forward the questions of how tall the Alchemax building really is. If you find the strength to not thow your controller against the wall in some periods of frustration, these sections provide a much needed break from the serious monotony that the game throws at you.

Visually, Edge of Time is a massive step backward when compared to Shattered Dimensions. One of the outstanding features in that title was the distinct and different visuals that complimented the individual universes. That has been stripped from Edge of Time, with both time periods looking exactly the same, despite the massive time difference. Amazing Spider-Man no longer has the distinct black outline that used to make him stand out in a comic book style, and even the year 2099 seems to have become a lot more dull. Corridors and environment are repeated with a slight “flashy, futuristic” aesthetic added, but at its core it’s the same metal filled, office looking corridor that you passed 5 minutes ago. After you finish the short 7 hour campaign, there really isn’t much else to do. Web of Challenges returns, with many unlockable goodies for serious Web Heads to unlock. Alternate costumes, story memos, and more await those you dare take on the story once more. Enemies can also be scaled up in difficulty for a sort of New Game+ mode, though the overly simple combat and repetitive objectives will make it very hard for anyone to pick up the controller and start this adventure again.

Sadly, Edge of Time has come as a massive disappointment for those expecting the same type of quality that was present in Shattered Dimensions. The simple combat will bore you to tears soon after beginning, and once you come to the realisation that all your objectives seem to have to real weight behind them you will wonder why you are even playing at all. That is until you realise how fantastic the voice acting and script is, staying true to the classic Spidey humour and pleasing fans of the source works in every way possible. It well and truly is the most outstanding aspect of the game, and while it’s not enough to make this the Spider-Man game fans deserve, it does keep it from being a complete failure.

What is that thing?!

In all honesty, PES 2012 should have delivered more based on what it promised and isn’t so much a leap forward as it is a moderate upgrade of PES 2011.

First, before we go any further: a bit of history. I’ve played PES games a little here and there over the years but was only forced to sit down and stare it in the eyes last year when I reviewed it. A year on, I still dislike Konami’s choice in soundtrack, still find the commentary duller than Sunday lunch with the grandparents and feel that every player looks as if his face has been cast in very coarse industrial concrete albeit with a very accurate mould.

That said, PES has always offered an experience that is very different to FIFA and, from a raw gameplay perspective, is often better. PES 2012 then was a welcome surprise because of just how much fun it was to play matches. The gameplay really has been overhauled with some minor changes and additions that add up to a big change.

Each match feels faster, more fluid and sharper than ever before with a greater level of control over each player. The passing is no longer as inconsistent as it used to be with balls actually being played where you want them and when. That said, calibrating your pass is an inconsistent science and can often lead to passes drifting embarrassingly into the line of an intercepting opponent or bouncing straight off the foot of a hapless teammate. It takes some getting used to but you do eventually get the hang of the sensitive passing although the sensitivity also extends to shooting and free-kicks/ corners.

The pace of the game has been upped as well which provides some really intense football filled with end-to-end stuff. Helped by this is improved player AI. While your opponents are not noticeably more adept, your teammates play a far better brand of football than before. On medium to higher difficulties, they will position themselves accordingly to intercept passes and stop runs and they’ll usually make the right runs when it comes to going forward. Teammates will also automatically get in position to receive a cross or start the run to receive an overhead ball.

It removes a great deal of the frustration from previous games when plays would never quite work out far too often. Another great innovation is the ability to control teammates while you’re on the ball.  With a flick or click of the right analogue, AI teammates can be manipulated. It takes a fair bit of practise and is a tricky thing to integrate into one’s style of play but once you’ve got it, this auxiliary player control works really well. It allows you to get a teammate to cover a runner while you close down the man with ball or even get teammates to make runs/ move into space before the ball is played to them. It also comes in handy for set pieces where you can move them around like pawns on a chess board.

The ability to control AI teammates is initially something that you may not want to use and will often result in clumsy play but once you take to it, you can pull off some truly spectacular interplay with one-two’s, layoffs, clever through balls and the like.

With a finer degree of control when on the ball, skill moves are much easier to execute and it’s far simpler to pull off something effective that actually gets you past a defender even if the flashier tricks are a little unintuitive and over-complicated. In addition to this, players also have a wider range of movement with the ability to make diagonal runs and AI will even make dummy runs to lead defenders away.

When you’re in a match, PES 2012 offers a technically superb and genuinely fun experience that’s would be hard pressed to not put a smile on your face. It’s off the pitch that you may begin to wonder whether Konami is really putting all that much effort into the entire game.

There’s a host of small things such as the squads being inconsistently updated. Yes, PES may not have all the licenses but that doesn’t mean they can’t just Google the squad lists or something. In PES, Liverpool fans will be pissed enough at the fact that their team is unlicensed under the pseudonym of Merseyside Red while rivals Man Utd are fully licensed without having to see the likes of Christian Poulsen in the starting 11 (Poulsen has left the club) and Suarez sitting in reserves. In addition to this, player ratings are somewhat unfathomable. Charles N’Zogbia is certainly a decent player but in what part of the multiverse is he deserving of a rating of 87 while Nani gets only 85? There are many, many more examples of this ridiculousness.

Then there’s the fact that players such as Ronaldo and Messi are proportionately valued in relation to players such as Ganso or Honda yet the entire scale is shifted so that players like Ronaldo are worth €9 million while players such as Honda are worth around €1.5 million. These are by no means game-breaking issues but they are but a few examples of things which could easily have been fixed had Konami put a little more effort and polish into their work. It’s actually frustrating to come out of a very fun, very awesome match and have to see little issues such as these. You think to yourself and wonder just how little effort it would actually take to fix these small things and then you begin to wonder how Konami went about doing some of these things.

With the level that both FIFA and PES are reaching right now, the small issues make a big difference and ultimately killed FIFA 11 for me. At this level, the devil really is in the details and that’s something Konami needs to realised if they are to produce a more rounded game.

What disappointed me most was the various issues that some of the game modes had. As per usual, the UEFA Champions League is phenomenal to play through and the Copa Santander Libertadores (South American version of Champions League) is pretty cool too. New to PES is the League/Cup mode which allows players to select a league or cup competition to play through with the option to not only edit which teams are in the league/ respective groups of the cup but also how many teams you’d like to play with. For example, you may choose to play the European Cup and happen to like Germany, Spain and Portugal. All you do is select all three teams and you will then play all three teams’ matches.

It’s a simple mode where all you do is play matches but if that’s a little too basic for you, then PES has just the thing for you. Well, a few things actually. First there’s Traning Challenges which puts you through a series of challenges ranging from free-kicks to dribbling to defending. Each type of challenge has 3 stages of increasing difficulty and is great for those looking to hone their skills in various facets of the beautiful game.

Then there’s Football Life which encompasses Master league, Be A Legend and Club Boss. Basically, Club Boss is the driest of the three, dominated by board-room action (not the kind you might be hoping for) and basically gives you a dusty taste of what it must be like to head up a football club.

Master League is your typical manager mode except in that it makes absolutely no sense. You pick your team and then start off one tier below the premier league in whichever country you’ve chosen to play in. You’ll immediately notice an increase in the number of licensed teams with the whole of French Ligue 1, Dutch Eredivisie, Spanish Liga BBVA and a few others receiving the licensing treatment. It’s one of those small things that just makes the game nicer to play and lessens that admittedly ‘Mickey Mouse’ feel you get when forced to play with a team that you know to be called X but have to refer to as AB429.

You can be as involved or removed as you wish in Master League with the option to leave matters such as club finances and transfers to staff. The transfer system is far more intelligible if you do choose to use it and now allows you search for specific players or players that meet a specific criteria rather than being handed a list of transfer targets.  You can even hire various technical staff such as doctors and coaches to improve your team. There’s also a new youth system which has been slickly integrated into the game and allows you to simply pluck youngsters out of the academy when you feel they’re ready.

A nice touch that I found is that you can manage the team and then play through the match like normal or alternatively play as the manager on the sidelines and watch the team play while directing them with a number of preset tactics.

Build a team, like a baws

What can initially be a bit of a mindf*** is that you may start with Man Utd and, despite starting off in 2^nd division football, would expect to have the full squad with Messrs Rooney, Nani & co. but will instead find that you have a motley group of random individuals who don’t actually exist. The idea is that you start at the bottom and work your way up into top flight football and subsequently build the club’s reputation in addition to strengthening the squad with each move up the ladder. As your performs better, the club will earn more and you’ll be able to afford more expensive, higher rated players but it’s such a non-sensical system. Firstly, all the players from the team you chose will be chucked into ‘other’ or free agents and will basically be waiting for you to earn enough money to buy them back. This brings me to my second point: If the idea is to start low and take my team to the top, don’t give me the option to start with the likes of Barcelona, rather limit the choice to low-down teams.

Be A Legend is no better. You create your player and then start in a team where your very average player will be able to get regular game time. The problem is that you’ll likely end up with a team that can hardly hold a defensive line and looks confused when going forward. This results in a very frustrating experience as your player will be able to do very little to influence the game.  If you find yourself on the bench, you’ll have to watch on as the team plays out the match without you. It’s a cruel yet inspired touch. What’s annoying is that you can often be brought on off the bench after half-time, have a good shot at goal, help create a goal and still get subbed off after playing only about 30min.

You’ll constantly be treated to little cutscenes wherein the team manager will outline the game plan or talk to you about your performance. There are also cutscenes between each match where your agent/coach will keep you informed with updates. The same goes for Master league where signing players warrants a cutscene of a press conference to introduce the new signing and the assistant manager will constantly feed you with updates.

One feature that I really like is the Facebook connectivity which allows you to share your online and offline progress in PES with friends.  Speaking of online, last year saw major improvement with the addition of an online Master league but PES 2012 does little to improve on that although in all fairness, PES 2011 had a well-rounded online component.

While players still look a touch mechanical in their movement, Konami has done wonders with the visuals. PES 2012 looks great and just about every player in the game, even the lesser known ones such as Macheda from Man Utd and De Laet from Norwich look remarkably similar to their carbon-based likenesses. They all move very similarly but they at least move fluidly. What I can never get over though, is the poor texturing that always seems to come through in Konami games. Players look like the Battle of Normandy took place on their face. There’s also something very disturbing about the way that players’ faces look fine when static but the minute they become expressive, you’re staring at a snarling alien that’s about to bite Robinho’s head off.

PES 2012 is by no means perfect, far from it in fact. At its core is a very sincere game that doesn’t hide behind any pretences and simply wants to deliver a virtual experience that is as close to the imitating the beautiful game as possible. It gets pretty damn close with an insane amount of technical precision and skill required to maximise what the game has to offer but even noobs will be able to enjoy the experience.

That really sums PES up. You can take it light-heartedly and have fun with it, play League/Cup mode on beginner with a Man Utd team where you’ve given everyone emo fringes and put ‘Shrek’ on the back of Rooney’s shirt. Alternatively, you can master the controls, use the Training Challenges to perfect your technique and invest some serious hours into developing a team or player.

Despite the gaping flaws in some its more serious modes, PES 2012 is actually a good game. Unfortunately, the Football Life modes which are designed for long-term play are the most flawed and in an annual sports game such as PES, longevity is key and this is something that keeps it from being great.

With a bit more polish, a greater attention to detail and the realisation that there’s more to creating a great sports game than match gameplay, PES could be a bigger, stronger beast. As it stands, Konami has a lot of ground to cover in that battle against FIFA but PES 2012 is certainly a close runner-up if for nothing other than its technically spectacular and emotionally enjoyable gameplay.

Blazing hot temperatures, burning rubber, break neck speeds and gorgeous super models. If you encounter all of these factors every two weeks or so, then you’re probably not sitting on your ass at home in front of huge TV right? Wrong. F1 2011 is such a real representation of the real life, fast-paced, money loaded motorsport that you’ll find it hard to remember that you aren’t one of the highest paid athletes in the world. From the glistening sun reflecting off beautifully detailed cars, to the technical aspects of the pit, F1 2011 straps you into a car of its own, and doesn’t let you leave until you’ve beat that fastest lap. Fans of the sport will applaud the numerous features and gimmicks that make this feel like the real deal, but newcomers to the franchise should be weary of a steep learning curve that they will have to battle with constantly.

At the top of this F1 experience you have the Career mode. This mode is near identical to the previous game, signing you up to one of the slower and more modest teams and giving you five seasons worth of racing. During these five years you are expected to achieve team goals, such as finishing in certain positions during races, qualifying above a certain position and even season long goals that you will constantly have to work at. Complete these objectives, and other teams will start taking an interest in you, offering contracts for upcoming seasons, which then forces you to decide what is best for your career. Your team will also set you Research and development goals, challenging you to set certain lap times in exchange for upgraded car parts and features. You will always have something to do in your F1 career whether it be on the track racing, or off taking interviews.

You will also be able to tweak your Career experience with multiple difficulty settings, lap distances and how long a race weekend lasts. For the enthusiast, there are long race weekends, which is the exact same format that the sport take. This weekend comprises of three practice sessions, the full three staged qualifying and then the race. Short weekends limit this to only one practice session and single staged qualifying sessions. then, if you really hate practice and qualifying, you can stick to just race days. Race distance can also be changed, with the ability to set three lap races or 10%, 20%, 50% or 100% percent of the full racing distance. Each distance has certain parameters though, with tyre and fuel strategies only kicking in on races of 20% or more. There may be four difficulty settings for each weekend, but unlike split-screen mode, you are not able to finely tune each setting. This is where one of the most frustrating issues becomes apparent.

F1 2011 suffers from major gaps between the difficulty increments. Let me explain; For the first few races I chose the Medium difficulty setting, just while I can to grips with the handling and new tracks. I soon grew tired of this level of difficulty, purely because I started setting lap time 3-5 seconds faster than anyone else on the track, which is tons in F1. Eventually, I would only have to do one lap in both Practice and Qualifying, as no other car could come even close, regardless of the fact that I was in a low ranking team. So, I rose the difficulty to Hard, in the hopes of finding more of a challenge. After numerous frustrating races, I found it increasingly difficult to even qualify two seconds behind the leader, never mind ahead of my team mate. Even after many hours of practice, I struggled to get it right, and it seemed that the difficulty was just too brutal for me at the time. However, going back to Medium would not help my cause, as lapping people after 6 laps of racing doesn’t really prepare you for the next step.

This jump in difficulty would be less apparent if the Ai wasn’t so, well “AI-ish”. Your opponents on the track will never make unforced errors, following paths in a strict and precise nature. This is sad, because it means you’ll probably never see one of F1 2011′s newest features: The Safety Car. A long asked for addition, the safety car will hop onto the track if there has been a sever accident, and either debris or cars are left stationary on the track. Driving behind a road car under s strict speed limit might not sound fun in game form, but it adds another layer of realism. Stress not however, as if the safety car annoys you, you can easily turn it off and enjoy uninterrupted racing bliss. Serious F1 fans will however enjoy the thrill, as a safety car at any point in the race will force a change of strategy, and keep you thinking on your feet.

Driving Aids also make a big difference to your performance on the track, but thankfully these can be changed on the fly, at any moment. Hardcore simulation fans will surely turn all of these off, but more fragile players should think wisely about how much traction control the need, and whether ABS is a good idea or not. Another thing you should take note of is how fragile your car is. Tap another racer in front of you, and risk an additional trip to the pits, effectively screwing your chances of winning. Spin of fast enough and risk ending your race against a wall or other racers. Steer off the track, picking up debris, and higher your chances of having a puncture. All of these and more factor into how carefully you must make your way through every lap, while keeping with the pace of the other racers. This makes each lap a new challenge, as the slightest lapse in your concentration could mean the difference between a podium finish and a ‘Did Not Finish”.

Strategy will also play a big role in your races, with the more difficult settings allowing you to determine when to come in for tyre changes, what tyres to change to, your fuel mixture and more. From the beginning of the weekend, you are given a limited number of tyre sets, each with a specific attribute. For example, prime tyres give good grip on a dry circuit and last long, while Option tyres give the best grip, but in turn wear down quickly. You must juggle your tyre sets effectively in order to be fastest in Practice, Qualifying and the Race, or lose out to teams with a much better strategy. During races you will also have to keep an eye on your fuel mixture. Use too much while pushing most of the race, and find yourself forced to reduce your speed gradually near the final laps. All of this information is conveyed simply and clearly, and having your pit manager update you constantly makes you never feel lost or confused. While racing you should also be aware of penalties that you could incur, such as rejoining the track dangerously, causing an accident, cutting corners and more. These penalties are sometimes inconsistent though, with the game not always making up its mind whether or not to penalise you for cutting a corner or not.

Codemasters have also done well to add new features that are present in this year’s season, namely the DRS (Drag Reduction System) and KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System). KERS is at your disposal from the beginning of each session, and allows you to give a momentary boost of speed to your car. There is a limit as to how much you can use per lap, so careful distribution at crucial points during each lap could help you shave precious seconds off your lap times. It can also be used as an effective tool against overtaking opponent drivers, allowing you to boost just out of reach. DRS allows you to open up the flap in your rear wing, allowing you to reach much greater speeds at the cost of greatly reduced down force. During Qualifying, you are free to use DRS whenever you like, while you are only able to use DRS in races if your are at most a second behind your opponent, and only in specific zones. Use DRS at the wrong moments, and find yourself spinning head first into the nearest wall, as the reduced down force will not hold up well in any sorts of corners.

One thing that may be an issue, especially at the beginning of the game, is learning to control your car while still going at an average of 180 mph. Using a standard controller is perfect until it comes to very precise steering changes. It’s not entirely bad, but in comparison to using a steering wheel with force feedback, there is really no comparison. This becomes even more evident when driving in the rain. Get caught mid lap with heavy rain and Prime tyres, and you’re going to have to put on some exceptional driving skills to make it to the pits. Even with your wet tyres on, driving in wet conditions will be a challenged for even the most experienced drivers. Find yourself behind another racer on the track, and you’ll soon be blinded by a torrent of spray hitting your visor, requiring mass amounts of bravery on your end to keep up your speed and take the corner perfectly.

Visually, there aren’t many areas where I could point out faults. Cars have been given the best treatment possible, with the sun glistening on each on every surface, while rain slides off at blistering speeds, like some form of water art. All the tracks have been stunningly recreated, and it would benefit you to learn each and every one of them nearly off by heart. Monaco retains its beauty and unique sense of flavour, and the night circuit in Singapore is an extra special treat, with all sorts of skyscrapers lighting up the surrounding environments. There is one thing that should be noted though. F1′s visual aesthetics are meant to be seen while racing down the track at blinding speeds. Slow down and you might notice some not too detailed track textures, though this shouldn’t really bother you, especially since you’re never meant to go slowly at all. Another odd thing is that you never see any of the Driver’s faces. Whenever you see them, they will always have their crash helmets on, making only their eyes visible. While you are still easily able to distinguish each driver, this feels a bit cheap, and the lack of a podium animation is also puzzling.

In the audio department, F1 2011 really flexes its muscles. Cars sound incredible, roaring to life when leaving the pits, and letting you know that you are getting every ounce of power out of it when speeding down a straight. Impacts with walls and other cars sound fantastic, and I still cringe every time I hear my front wing snap off and shatter. The voice of your pit manager also creates a highly authentic feel, and fans of the sport will appreciate how accurate the information being fed to you is. Your pit manager will let you know how your lapping times are looking, if you are catching the guy in front or losing time to the opponent behind, let you know of tyre temperatures and engine status, and even send words of encouragement now and then. You’ll feel as if you have a real friend looking out for you in the pits, and it’s a really nice touch.

Outside of the Career mode, there are other distractions and feature that will help keep the life of this simulator going. New to the series is Proving Grounds, a time-attack based mode that puts you in a car, under specific weather and track circumstances, and a time to beat. This is a true test of driving ability, as you are not able to tweak car settings in any way, forcing you to adapt and work with what you have. There is also the traditional Time Trial mode, which allows you to set the car up to your fancy and fight for dominince on the Leaderboards. Split-Screen Multiplayer also features, allowing you and a friend to battle it out in single race events. Races are filled with AI opponents, and all the difficulty settings and driving aid options are also available. There is some visual degrade when plying split-screen, but thankfully the frame rate does not take a hit. So if your friend sucks ass and crashes all the time, it doesn’t mean you’ll have to suffer for it as well in terms of slowdown.

Online Multiplayer can pit you against 15 other players from around the world, with the added feature of AI opponents filling up empty spaces on the grid. Up to 16 players can take part in three-lap races, qualifying sessions, or tougher multiplayer games which include qualifying followed by a longer-distance race with pit stops. Having the AI fill the empty slots makes for some exciting long races, as they can provide decent challenges as well. The most interesting and innovative addition to online though, is the Co-Op Championship mode. In this mode, you and an online partner form a team in Career Mode, working together to accumulate Constructor Championship points. On top of that, you’re are also rivals, competing for Championship points and team favouring, which will grant you more advanced car upgrades over your partner. This forms an interesting dynamic, in which a sort of love/hate relationship forms. On the one hand you want your team to succeed, but on the other you strive for personal glory. In order to win, you’ll have to strike a fine balance between the two, while keeping ahead of your partner (Maybe Hamilton and Button should practice their teamwork in this mode).

F1 2011 is a fantastic sequel to a game that won numerous awards last year. It takes everything that was good in last year’s entry and touches them up a little, while adding a few things to create its own unique flair. While the AI still needs a bit of work to come off more realistically, and the controls need a bit of fine tuning, nothing can take away what this title has accomplished. There is simply no greater feeling than setting a time in qualifying and watch your opponents futile attempts to better it. That is why we love F1, and it is why F1 2011 is such a compelling simulator.

Disclaimer: I tend to dislike RTS games. Especially, ones that involve spaceships. Sins of a Solar Empire and Home World are not my friends. You have been warned. However, I do enjoy Starcraft 2

Space Pirates and Zombies is an RTS game developed by MinMax games who seemingly wanted to develop a game following in the footsteps of Sins of Solar Empire, combining combat elements from Gratuitous Space Battles in the mix. What you get is a space exploration RTS game where Asteroid-like combat and micro-management is the colour of everything the game has to offer. Just like Civilization 5, in S.P.A.Z (like how I feel when I play the game) everything has to be expertly micro-managed. The story follows that two factions have been at war as the human race has advanced into space. In the midst of all this space exploration, and the war between the factions, pirates began to appear, and zombies soon followed after the outbreak of a Borg-like disease. You control a mothership which has become stranded in space, and is in need of repairs.

The basics of the game involve maneuvering your ship throughout the known galaxy (“warping” from point to point) collecting resources with a variety of ships (you can build at your disposal) and can continually upgrade. Research trees and upgrades are available to you as captain of your very own galactic rust bucket, and so new content is always available on the fly. In the mothership, are hangars where you can build and upgrade spaceships, and then deploy them to battle enemy spacecraft whilst collecting resources needed to repair your rusty old tanker of a ship. Intially, you’re limited by the size of your hangars and the current pace of your technology tree and upgrades. But this changes as you progress through the game. In battle, after defeating enemies, you have the ability to scan enemy ships and build them from spec. As such, you’ll soon be building a space fleet to fit your own dastardly desires. As is the case, since I’m not suited to RTS games, I died many times in-game and was killed by zombie space craft, and a variety of swashbuckling space pirates. There was a tactics option available but I winged it and ended up with many of my mining ships destroyed, and my awesome little fighter as a space pirate’s chew toy. I was inextricably “owned”, yet such is life.

Aesthetically, the game is overtly 2D in design reminiscent of old-school shoot em’ ups like Gradius, Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun in style. S.P.A.Z has such great design and effort crammed into such a small release. It’s astounding and little touches mean everything is so well characterised in the game with unique characters, a well developed story and dialogue throughout. This gives the game a gleaning shine and helps to sell the game as an overall package. I’d argue that for the price, and if you’re fan of these types of games; it’s a really good deal and won’t leave you