Famously described as a tower defence game put in reverse, Anomaly Warzone Earth (or AWE for short) aims to please RTS fans with great strategic components and a beautiful world. Not many RTS games are even available on XBLA arcade so AWE is treading on new waters. Will it sink or swim?

AWE introduced me to something I have never quite experiences. A tower defence game…in reverse. That’s not something I’m used to all. You are Commander Fourteen. Despite your hilarious call sign, you are a commander who is in charge of managing and protecting your units from alien forces that have started to invade earth. The aliens have landed and it’s up to you to find out what they’re up to and to potentially blow shit up. From the first cutscene you get introduced to something that’s not exactly common in arcade games. Decent voice acting. Your general and team-mates all don British accents and the voice actors did their work quite well indeed. Some dialogue is said with a comedy focus and sometimes your general makes a bad pun that just adds to the hilarity. It’s all a great addition to the game and one not many RTS games have.

The gameplay mechanics are interesting and fresh. You basically need to make units and guide them through the war-torn world one enemy at a time and you do that by making a predetermined route that all your units follow in a straight line. Your convoy won’t stop at all and just keeps on moving, killing anything that comes in its way. It all sounds pretty basic, but the main attraction to this is that you have to command the Commander (LOL Punny) to use one of 4 different skills along the route. These skills are repair, decoy, smoke screen and airstrike. You pick these skills up randomly across the battlefield or when you kill certain enemies. When a skill is deployed, it makes a circle that affects all units in its area. This adds a massive strategic element to the game and helps you make certain decisions throughout the levels.

Your survival is dependent on the correct implementation of those 4 skills. If you use them carelessly or not in the right circumstances, then you might as well be kissing your shiny ass goodbye. The game does switch things around a bit and forces you to make certain changes on the fly to your route. This keeps you on your toes and ready for anything.

AWE pretty much surprised me with the level of detail it had in the various cities you fight in. All the buildings and enemies are expertly crafted and have a graphical quality that can even match some retail games. This adds to the overall experience of the whole thing and makes you more immersed in the happenings of this game.

They implemented an ingenious tool that allows you to fast forward time while your convoy is moving and makes the game much more smooth and fast-paced. It’s not without its issues, however. The units you have are not that varied and you can do only so much with the ones you have. There’s also the issue of repetitiveness that’s involved because you essentially do the same thing over and over, but there’s at least some form of variation to it all with the game presenting  you with a specific challenge or objective.

AWE is an excellent RTS game to have in your library and one you won’t soon regret. With extra challenges and a sizeable campaign mode, it will surely entertain your mind for a long while.

It seems like a lifetime ago since I was fifteen years old and foaming at the mouth in anticipation for the original Prototype, which is a game from 2009 that I still absolutely love. It had its fair share of flaws, but it was a great game with an amazing and pretty insane story that faltered only because of convoluted presentation. Yet, it’s still one of my personal favourite sandbox games. Despite that, however, I was skeptical of Prototype 2 matching the overall experience of the original. But if I have to be honest, I must say that I walked away from Prototype 2 quite pleased, with the only disappointment being that it was rather forgettable. Sure, it has a lot wrong with it, but it also does a lot right, and in the end if you’re going into this game for some mindless chaotic action, then you’ll get all the thrill you need. But if you want something more meaningful or outstanding, you probably won’t find it here.

Prototype 2 made quite a bold move with its story, as the basic idea of the plot is that you’ll need to kill the protagonist from the first game, Alex Mercer. As a whole the game is pretty much a straight up revenge story, which is exactly what the developers had in mind for the game. In the game you take on the role of Sergeant James Heller, who is out on duty when he gets various calls from his wife who is fearing for their daughter’s safety. When Heller eventually returns home, he finds them both dead which causes him to rejoin the military and its fight for New York City against the deadly Mercer virus. Heller, however, only has one thing on his mind, and that’s revenge against Mercer, who he blames for the death of his family. But destiny has a different plan for Heller, as his early encounter with Mercer goes south, with him ending up being infected by the original game’s protagonist. Mercer’s infection causes Heller to develop the same powers as his adversary, and from there the hunt begins.

The story was strange to form an opinion about for me, because for the most part I wasn’t entirely sure whether it wanted to be taken seriously or not. It’s hardly interesting or exciting, the dialogue is overflowing with F-bombs and is often really juvenile, at times it approached some more mature or darker themes only to revert back to total absurdity and, in general, it’s a plot where you’ll just go with the flow rather than pay much attention, which is a pity. However, I feel the main problem with the story is actually the character of Heller. In the original game, Alex Mercer presented a very interesting dynamic as he was a victim but also an anti-hero who did horrific things. At times you could sympathise with him, and others you’d probably think he was wildly bonkers but with a strong motivation for his insanity. Heller, by contrast, is supposed to be more human because he’s a man who lost his family and driven to the edge of his sanity, but for most of the game he just comes across as an unsympathetic asshole who can be even worse than Alex Mercer himself. While he often is portrayed as a mindless brute who can be just as hilarious as he can be badass, he isn’t much of a victim and you definitely can’t relate to him. Many gamers probably won’t care as long as they get to be badass and break things, but for me Alex Mercer was just a much more deep and interesting character to follow.

Another thing that was rather upsetting was that Alex Mercer has been completely changed from the original game. With a new voice actor and seemingly new personality, he just lost all depth which makes his encounters with Heller significantly less interesting than they should be. I get that I’m going on about the story for quite a bit, but it’s only really to come to the point that you shouldn’t be taking this sequel seriously at all. It was clearly designed to be a fun ride more than anything else, despite how ambiguous the story is when it comes to how it wants players to perceive it. And that’s what I ended up doing really, as long as I could have more reasons to uppercut helicopters or turn people into lethal bio-bombs. And after all is said and done, when it comes to gameplay Prototype 2 continues the series’ desire to make players feel like the most powerful being in the world, and pulls it off excellently.

Prototype 2 is nearly identical to the original with its gameplay, but many improvements have been made that definitely make things feel better, if not new. The parkour is still as awesome and addictive as ever as you’ll charge at breakneck speeds, run up walls like a boss, scale buildings with a simple jump or glide through the air. And it feels like Heller is easier to maneuver than Mercer was in the first game, but that’s mainly because Heller starts out a lot slower and weaker and it’s only in the later stages of the game and after acquiring many upgrades that he shows his true colours. The mission structure and upgrade system have both also undergone a considerable improvement, and have become far easier to work with. Now they both work together. Rather than grinding out thousands and thousands of experience points like in the first game, Prototype 2 lets players improve Heller’s stats such as health, regeneration or shape shifting using skill points gained after levelling up, as well as acquire mutations through completing side missions, which provide a permanent boost and are presented in categories such as offensive, defensive, locomotion and power specialist. For example getting enough experience will level you up and allow you to maybe boost Heller’s maximum health, while acquiring a mutation could do anything from vamping up Heller’s top speed to making him immune to bullets. Lastly, players can level up their main powers and firearm skills by consuming special targets in the world.

It’s a fantastic system because it allows players to gradually become more powerful and constantly progress, but the problem comes in that this unfortunately makes the pacing really slow, as it requires a sizable amount of work to earn upgrades. But hey, at least it’s a bit better than acquiring a million experience points like you needed to do towards the end of the original game. However, it does bring me to one of the worst things about the game, which is that practically a third, or dare I say half of the entire game feels like a tutorial. For most of the early hours of the game your hand will be held, you’ll be told what to do and overall you’ll progress really slowly. It even takes forever just to be able to allowed to start hijacking helicopters and tanks. You get the five main weapons, namely claw, blade, hammerfist, whipfist and tendrils with shield now being a built-in block ability, at set points in the game, and they’re spaced quite far apart so you don’t really get free reign to play with all of your toys until much later on in the game. It takes quite a long while before the game opens up and allows you to run wild, which is a real pity for those who played the original and want to immediately get more of that, but fortunately the best of rewards comes in later when you finally become a powerhouse and have acquired most of the upgrades. It really ends up being worth it, and delivers the game’s best moments.

On the matter of the powers and the combat system, there’s a lot different. Firstly, you’re able to equip two powers at once and use them together without having to access the radial menu. While you can’t really combo them together, it’s cool to have access to two rather than having to keep swapping. The powers seem to be a lot more balanced this time around, with equal amounts of fun spread across them, and it’s more enjoyable to pick a favourite now that all powers remain useful throughout the game. However, it’s unfortunate that a number of Heller’s attack animations have been rehashed from the previous game, and despite that some great moves have been completely omitted. For example, the barehanded fighting moves are mostly gone, and Heller doesn’t have bullet dive drop, hammerfist toss or the ability to use whipfist in the air to latch onto helicopters. But while he’s lost those, he has gained some other badass moves, such as the ability to instantly destroy tanks and helicopters or rip their weapons off and use them to cause mayhem. Not to mention bio-bomb, where you turn someone into a lethal tendril bomb either stealthily or blatantly and watch the priceless chaos unfold. Using Heller’s abilities is simply an amazing feeling, because few games can capture the level of power that Prototype 2 manages to give you in its later stages, and it’s just a thrill to experience it.

But despite how enjoyable these elements of the game are, another one of the worst problems with Prototype 2 is that it’s very repetitive, and a big part of the reason for this are the missions, which seriously lack variety and cause the game to feel quite shallow at times. Most missions involve simply killing something or infiltrating a base, consuming targets of interest and exiting alerts. I recall a few deviations, but without any interesting story to drive the game forward the lackluster missions really become a lot more noticeable. Let me put it into perspective. A family member of mine, who has no interest in or knowledge about modern video games, was watching me play the game and commented that it was crazy and obscenely violent, which is a good thing, but then went on to ask me what the idea was of it all, because I didn’t seem to be doing anything important other than just killing stuff. And that’s perhaps the gist of it really. Enjoying this game isn’t about the story or doing anything meaningful, it’s simply about complete carnage and finding ways to jack around, misbehave and cause chaos. Is that enough? Well it certainly is if you want mindless entertainment, but there’s not a lot more in it for you.

Prototype 2 will take you over ten hours to finish, depending on your tendency to mess around or chase after collectibles. On top of that, there’s always a new game+ mode, which is great to have, and an Insane difficulty mode, for all those craving a challenge or achievement. Even if most of the early hours are consumed by tutorials and slow pacing, there’s a great amount of gameplay time on offer here to make it worth the run. Graphically, Prototype 2 is quite an impressive step over its predecessor. It won’t really amaze you, and in a number of areas the visuals can look ugly or lacking in detail, but it looks pretty decent overall and the best thing about it is that no matter how much chaos happens on screen, the game will never show any signs of slowing down. It’s fantastic when considering just how much chaos Prototype 2 can stuff your screen with, even if the game cheats a little bit by cutting down on the draw distance. The game uses sound well to convey the absolute mayhem that gives it its name, and surprisingly the voice acting is of a good standard despite the absurdity of the dialogue. I never had any technical issues with the game, and it really was a very comfortable experience to have.

Prototype 2 succeeds at providing players with a game that they don’t really need to take all that seriously and can simply enjoy without much effort. Unfortunately, it’s not really a lasting or meaningful experience, and as such you should be wary of paying full price for it unless you’re a fan of the original or a completionist, because there’s plenty of satisfying content here. Prototype 2 is a great deal of fun and a noteworthy distraction from the boring real world, but sadly it’s pretty forgettable in the end.

I have this unspoken love for the Fable franchise. While the games are not that great, they still have some sort of charm and flair. It’s a nice game to play when you have some time to kill and the misplaced adult humor has always had me intrigued, since I first played the franchise. They are not great games, but they do have their own level of special, and I like that.

Enter Fable Heroes.

Let me start by saying that I’ve had high hopes for this game. I really wanted it to succeed in the arcade marketplace, where it would then introduce me to some more of that quirky Fable goodness. It did exactly that. In the opposite form. In Heroes, you play as puppets which are characters from the Fable franchise. The game has you hit shit until they die and get gold. I just described the extremely deep goal that this game presents you.

There is no storyline at all, even in the slightest. While this isn’t such a bad thing, because beat ‘em ups don’t really need storylines as they are fun to play, Fable Heroes completely messes up in the fun department. The combat is excruciatingly repetitive with nothing to separate it from the other, huge, host of beat ‘em ups.

You use the X-button to hit shit. That’s about all there is. There is a flurry attack, but it takes about 2 seconds to charge and in that time you’re being raped in the nostrils by Hollow Men. And when the flurry attack actually hits, it does little-to-nothing in terms of damage. There is an area attack available, but you lose one heart every time you use it. Please explain to me why that’s a good idea? Couldn’t there be a stamina bar somewhere, or some variation of, limiting you from just using area attacks? Nothing at all? Just make an attack that can potentially kill you? I don’t even…

Your ultimate goal in Fable Heroes is to get as much gold as you possibly can, so that you can transfer it into Fable: The Journey — which isn’t releasing at any point of time in the near future. If you play this game for weeks on end (I seriously commend you if you manage that) then you can be an instant billionaire by the time you actually get The Journey.

The only good thing about this game is the characters and locations that are taken from the Fable franchise. You play in all the memorable levels from past Fable games and use the puppets of all the memorable characters, and that’s about the extent of it. The puppets aren’t necessarily well designed, and look kind of stinted when you’re in actual combat.

One of, if not the most annoying thing about the entire game is the absolutely idiotic camera. Sometimes it does its job and puts you into a top down perspective of the field, as per the usual beat ‘em up formula, but it sometimes goes south. Literally south. It goes into the side of all the action and makes the enemies and your puppets extremely difficult to differentiate. I frequently got lost in the immense orgy of enemies and gold coins. Due to that, I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what I was hitting.

The AI is that of the Herp-a-Durr variant, and it does exactly the opposite of what it’s supposed to be doing. When there is a boss fight, the load of idiots just stand there in front of the massive boss and get insta-owned. They don’t dodge or use their attacks correctly, they just stand there bashing cluelessly and dying more frequently than they’re supposed to. If you want to torture yourself and play this game, then I highly recommend playing with some real-life players. I swear even Jimmy the Resident Retard can pull off a better job than those AI idiots.

The way you level up, is, after every “mission” you get a set number of dice-rolls dependent on the number of coins you managed to allocate throughout the level. You then roll the dice, land on a skill-specific square and choose one of three options. These options are what you will buy with your gold. It’s somewhat unique, but it’s not really all that great or revolutionary.

You do get a host of power-ups in the levels, and they come in the form of lucky-packet chests. Some are completely useless and some are maybe a bit useful. There are no exciting powers and you sometimes question whether or not you actually want a power-up. They range from making your puppet bigger or smaller, super speed, some coins and even a chest that attacks you. The most useful of the lot is super speed which has actual practicality to it.

Please, in the name of all that’s holy and Gordon Freeman, please don’t get this game. I beg of you. There is nothing great about. Nothing unique and nothing exciting. I’ve promised myself that I will say these words when I get to review a bad game. Fable Heroes is a load of steaming, stinking, rancid piss.

Following the success of its predecessor, Trials Evolution set out to prove something. That it can be bigger, faster and more extreme. Quite the tall order for a simple arcade game. Did it succeed or did it fall face first into a ramp (like I always do).

Actually, it pulled it off beautifully. Everything is bigger and better in this sequel, when compared to Trails HD. In fact, it borders on epic. In Trials HD you were constricted to a single warehouse packed with various forms of obstacles. Trials Evolution went quite a few leaps forward by making the tracks more expansive by using forests, entire cities, rocky mountains and even a Limbo themed track. All are beautifully crafted and are quite a sight to look at. There was the odd texture not loading, however, and this often distracts you from the beauty of it all.

Trials HD was infamous for its ungodly difficult tracks and Trials Evolution is no different. The beginning levels are all easily pulled off with no faults, but then it gets brutal. It goes out of its way to annihilate you with constant crashes, making you feel worthless. It’s almost like that kind chubby girl who treated you to a nice dinner and made good conversation, before proceeding to drug you and whip out a strap-on dildo (not speaking from personal experience, I swear *shiver*).

But it gets easier once you learn the track and how to use the bikes to their full potential. There are a multitude of tracks available in the singleplayer mode, with some of them having their own custom made theme and unique characteristics. The game teaches you how to play by making you achieve licenses, which ranges from D to A. The difficulty of the tricks increase accordingly. It helps make new-comers feel welcome without eliminating the challenge the game puts forward.

The game uses a medal scoring system with Gold being the best. In order to achieve Gold you need to complete the track in the set amount of time, where you’re allowed little to no faults. It is challenging to say the least and only the most practiced players will be able to achieve the coveted Gold medal, especially on the Hard and Extreme tracks.

There are skill games available and they come in various spices of wacky or challenging. It’s not only bike games, however, as you get to play other forms of games too, like rolling a ball along platforms. It gives a nice distraction from the singleplayer game, and offers you the chance compete with the people on your friendslist.

The jewel of Trials Evolution lies in its custom tracks that are made from users. The game gives you tons of editing tools to fully craft your favourite scenes, be it a gigantic penis or a model of your entire city. You also get the Pro editing tools where you can actually toy with the game’s programming, to make your own little game. With all these tools available, the Trials community got straight to work, and boy, did they do an excellent job.

There are hordes of creative tracks available on offer, and some are just absolutely brilliant. I was playing Takeshi’s Castle in all its glory (and difficulty), where after that I was playing Angry Birds with a biker. There was also a Portal 2 stage that actually made use of custom Portals and set-pieces from the game. You can also create your own mini-game using the editor. For example, I played a Space Invaders game that looked almost identical to the original. The possibilities are quite indeed endless and more and more tracks keep popping up. You will never be in short supply of fun tracks to play. They take mere seconds to download, so you can stock up on quite the sizeable track collection in no time at all.

Something new to the franchise is the multiplayer mode. You still have the ghosts of the people on your friends list haunting you while you’re playing a track, but now you can also take them on face-to-face in two game modes: Supercross and Trials. Trials is just the usual tracks that can be played, where the fastest to do it, with the least amount of faults wins. Supercross is basically racing your bikes from one point to the other in the fastest way possible. Both modes are great fun with friends and you would soon be cursing yourself for doing a faceplant in the first 2 seconds of the race.

For every race you complete, and medal you earn, you earn money to buy various parts for your bike and clothes for your biker. While these are not essential, it does give you the freedom to make your suicidal rider unique to the other insurmountable horde of riders. There aren’t a lot of options, but just enough to make the best of it by using different colours.

Trials Evolution isn’t without its issues, however. Sometimes the physics don’t respond as they intended, which then in turn causes you to crash and waste your chance at getting a Gold medal. It can become rather frustrating at times to know that you crashed, but it wasn’t at all your fault. Often when you restart a track the textures don’t load properly at all, and when you’re going fast it doesn’t load either. It’s not gamebreaking, but it’s quite the nuisance.

And then the soundtrack.. Oh no RedLynx what were you thinking? The first thing you hear when starting the game is a bad rap in the form of the Trials song. It’s bad and makes me want to kill myself. Then the game suddenly turns into a hormonal teenager. One time it’s a techno beat, then it’s a rock song then out of the blue comes a screamo-emo metal song. It’s just all over the place and starts to grate a little later on.

Besides some stupid music choices, Trials Evolution is a brilliant game. It does so many things right and with the wealth of custom tracks you will never be bored with it. If you have an Xbox then why don’t you have it already?

Before I start let me just say that this is the most disturbing game I have ever played. Behind its cartoony posterior and fun controls, it’s really kind of psychotic. I mean, blobs of goo smiling at you before their rather spectacular and violent means of suicide. That right there is creepy.

Let’s get on with the review shall we?

The Splatters is a puzzle physics game where the objective is simple: Explode your suicidal heroes and let their goo drip onto bombs of their respective colours in the most spectacular and imaginative way possible. The controls are easy enough to pick up and play straight away, but you do get stunt abilities such as changing trajectory mid-jump, launching yourself like a torpedo and even reversing the entire field. All of these have strategic significance and you need to utilize them all in order to get all the bombs and pass the levels.

The game uses stars as its scoring system with 3 stars being the best. It takes a keen eye and good skill to achieve the coveted 3 stars and it doesn’t make it easy to do so. You need to up your multiplier by using stunts in quick succession and creative ways to explode all the bombs. The bombs are sometimes difficult to notice because a single one is very small and often you miss it and have to do the round over again.

The game starts out simple enough with only easy puzzles and tutorial missions, but then it gets hard. Very hard. The game stays true to the “easy to play, difficult to master” mantra with puzzles that seem impossible, but are doable if you use your stunts and blobs wisely. There are 3 modes available to play with their own objectives. Maximum combo, normal play and skill shots where you have to use the correct stunts at the correct time. All amount to quite a sizeable game with lots of levels to complete and attempt to achieve 3 stars.

The Splatters is immensely addictive once you get into it. I plunged into a 3 hour straight session because I couldn’t put it down. I just wanted to unlock more levels and achieve the highest score. It is a casual game at its core and it’s great for a quick distraction, but it gets challenging at times and requires quite a bit of effort to truly play right and have fun.

The graphics are that of a cartoony art style mostly found in casual games like Angry Birds. It also adds to the said psychotic undertones, but that’s just me. The level designs could have been done better though and it looks a bit “tacked on” in places. The music is an adequate ambience of relaxing jives that make you look forward to blowing those little bastards up and laughing at their blood dripping on balls that explode

Have I mentioned this game is psychotic?

When The Witcher 2 first released, it fell into a niche that was at the time rather unfilled, except perhaps by Demon Souls for PS3. It was a game that was not only pure in its RPG elements but brutal in its difficulty, refusing to hold your hand and at times even throwing you straight into the deep end while watching you hopelessly attempt to keep from drowning until you inevitably do, then reload your game with superior knowledge so that next time you might fare better.

It was a game that held nothing back and right from the get-go, would either make or break the player, setting them up for the challenges ahead and showing them what real RPGs can do, or watching them walk away with their tails between their legs.

Fast forward a year and The Witcher 2 is still highly rated as an RPG, having won many awards for both its amazing graphics on PC and its pure RPG structure. But the plan was never to stop simply at a PC exclusive and as such, CD Projekt RED have now released what they’re calling the Enhanced Edition, packed with all the free DLC packs and other additions that were released over the past year to PC gamers, as well as various new additions and changes, for Xbox 360. PC gamers rejoice, for if you already own The Witcher 2, you may download an Enhanced Edition patch (it’s 11GBs) to acquire all of these new additions and changes for yourself, free of charge. Bless CD Projekt RED, those Polish beauties.

The only remaining question then, is does The Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 do the job that the former PC exclusive did, just about a year ago?

But first, let’s talk about the various aspects of the game. After all, we didn’t exactly do a review on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings when it released on PC last year, so there might well be a few who are a bit shaky on the details. Good thing you all have me to tell you about it.

The first and most obvious feature of The Witcher 2 is that it contains probably the most mature and adult-oriented storyline of any game, ever. No, we’re not joking around here. It’s got political intrigue, racial tension and sexual encounters all over the place and apart from the latter with regards to horny teenagers and tissues, most of these would fly right over the heads of those not abundantly prepared for it.

The story revolves primarily around Geralt of Rivia, a witcher living in Temeria who has suffered memory loss after quite literally dying and being brought back to life. A witcher is a mutant, in the canon, a human usually, who has trained their body to the extremes and dabbled in various toxic potions and magic such that their bodies become mutated, giving them cat-eyes and removing the pigment from their hair, but granting them extra strength, intelligence and agility in order for them to fight the beasts that other races cannot. It’s for this reason that the last few remaining witchers ply their trade as bounty hunters, killing monsters for orens — the game’s gold-coin-based currency.

Geralt himself starts off the game in the employ of his majesty King Foltest, along with Geralt’s girlfriend Triss Merigold who serves as royal advisor, but is also a kick-ass mage who is your companion (and fuck-buddy) throughout the game, or at least those parts where she’s actually useful (with clothes on). Foltest seeks to quell a rebellion and retrieve his illegitimate children (they call them bastards) and with the help of Geralt and the Temerian army, successfully does so before taking a knife to the neck at the hands of an assassin, another witcher to whom Geralt was once acquainted but since losing his memory, cannot remember.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on who you are and how much of the game you want to play, Geralt is framed for the murder and held for regicide by Vernon Roche, leader of the Blue Stripes; basically the king’s secret service of agents. Eventually however, with a combination of Geralt’s recollection of the events leading up to Foltest’s murder and his mentioning of Iorveth, of the Scoia’tel — literally ‘Squirrels’, a radical group of elves dedicated to fighting humans, in order to stop oppression — whom Roche particularly detests, the duo spring a daring escape from prison and Geralt sets out with Triss and Roche in tow, to clear his name and bring the real killer to justice.

What follows is an amazing tale of discovery, adventure (of the carnal kind, as well) and inevitably justice. Perhaps even some vengeance or redemption depending on how you play out the story.

It’s important to note that as an RPG, The Witcher 2 does exactly that: it places you in the role of Geralt of Rivia and lets you play the game. To that extent, you will make decisions, complete quests and build your character exactly the way you feel you should and the game does nothing to promote a particular style or direction. If you want to ignore a burning orphanage with children still inside while helping an old lady to cross the street, that’s your prerogative. While there are ‘moral choices’ of some sort, there is no ‘morality scale’ that measures how evil or good you are, allowing you to pick and choose as you desire. It’s quite an interesting way of allowing a player to discover who they truly are, without any sort of meter to measure how much of a nice guy they are, or what have you. The only incentive to making a certain decision would of course be the loot you could acquire by making it, and that decision could be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or somewhere in between.

As an example of this, you could opt to bait two soldiers who tortured the patients at an insane asylum by leading them to a ghost who seeks to kill them in order to find peace, or you could warn the soldiers of the ghost’s intentions and head in and kill the ghost yourself. Which is ‘good’ choice again?

The quests in The Witcher 2 all deserve some acclaim for this as even the lowest-level fetch-quest turns into a learning experience, an engrossing adventure that has you spending far more time on it than you would in other RPGs. Exploration is encouraged as a result, where you find yourself exploring and re-exploring areas of the game world, just in case you missed something the first, second, third or fourth time. And it never gets old.

Each chapter in the game then changes the game-world, mixing things up for the player even further. What’s really interesting in The Witcher 2 is that depending on your choices in the first chapter, the next two play out entirely differently. And by entirely, I mean the second chapter will be based in a whole new side of an area depending on your choices in the first chapter. Instant replayability? Check.

The Witcher 2 was always a beautiful game on PC and it delights me to no extent that even on console, somehow, the game still looks gorgeous. One might easily call it the Xbox 360′s new most graphically superior game. And it really is. Compelling proof that a game can be both beautiful and engaging. The engine that CD Projekt RED are using is something for the history books.

It really helps the atmosphere of the game when you can place a player in a forest teaming with undergrowth, flora, fauna, and make it so believable that they forget they’re actually in a game and this forest doesn’t really exist. At least, until something attacks them and kills them forcing a reload. Engrossing is an understatement, in this game. Even on console, I find myself walking through areas with wide-eyed-wonder at the graphical splendour on show.

The greatest irony then, and perhaps even more of a plus based on what I’ve already said, is that you will actually find yourself spending half your play-time in the menus.

Remember, this is an RPG and as such there is typically an inventory of items that you’ve collected, either through looting, purchasing, crafting (through the use of diagrams) or as rewards for quest completion, so you’re always managing that inventory and making sure you don’t become over-encumbered, which would severely limit your combat capability. The usual map screen also features, showing you important quests and the area you are currently in, although for the life of me I could never quite read it correctly.

Furthermore, there’s the obligatory character screen which contains various sub-menus but most notably your skill trees, of which there are three major variants (salute), namely Mutant, Combat and Magic. With Mutant, you acquire skills that involve the creation and use of bombs, traps and most notably potions. Potions in The Witcher 2 cannot be consumed in combat and must therefore be consumed, typically before combat begins, which adds to the preemptive nature of most combat scenarios. Each consumed potion adds to your toxicity level, meaning too many will kill you. However, if you take a potion and become ‘poisoned’ meaning your toxicity level is above zero, you could gain certain bonuses to your character’s abilities. The Combat skill tree provides bonuses to your combat abilities, as if that needs saying, while the Magic skill tree provides bonuses to your Signs, which are basically spells in the game. More on this in a bit. The final skill on each tree is, let’s call it a super skill, each unlocking a special ability that effectively rewards you for investing many points into that particular tree. The way the game is structured, at best you can max out one skill tree and have a few points in the others. Further replayability. Check.

Probably the biggest addition to the game’s typical RPG menus is that of the Journal, which you will spend hours and hours reading through. Trust me, even the most illiterate action-nut — who saw the box and thought “hurr durr new God of War game lol” or something — is going to find themselves paging through the journal as not only is it intriguing as fuck, but it’s also entirely necessary in order for you to progress with certain quests. Seriously. It’s not about being babied around, or not being smart enough to figure things out on your own. You need to read the fucking journal. There is simply no other way for you to progress with certain quests. A huge boon then that it’s as interesting as it is. The quests themselves contain notes and text in a style of narration, as if told many years later by a character you will familiarise yourself with over the course of the game.

There are various sections to the journal apart from the list of quests, most notably the locations and characters menus. There is also one for the monsters you will encounter in battle throughout the game. As you play, you will come across various books with information on monsters as well as characters, locations and a whole load of other things. It is in your best interest to read these books as the ones with monster information in particular, are essential to your ability to kill those monsters. For each monster, your knowledge level determines how much of damage you do against them, how much of damage they do to you, and most importantly; how exactly you can kill them. Because some monsters are not straight-forward slice-and-dice variants. Some have ridiculous weaknesses that could turn a twenty-minute fight into a thirty-second lol-fest. Others are completely immune to certain things. Reading your journal is key.

Coming back to that preemptive nature of the game’s combat, most battles are handled best through preparation. If you are attempting to complete a certain quest that requires combat, let’s say defending an NPC from an army of attacking wraiths, it is in your best interest to first read up on wraiths and discover their weaknesses, prepare traps and bombs that wraiths are weak to, lay those traps and equip the necessary bombs, coat your weapons in something that does extra damage to wraiths, consume potions that will enhance your abilities and finally, save your game just in case you fail and have to do all of that again. This is why preparation is essential; because if you don’t prepare for a battle, you make the game exponentially more difficult for yourself and at times borderline impossible. No, Dark Souls players, do not go “Challenge Accepted!” because trust me, you know nothing of difficulty compared to this game on the aptly named Dark difficulty. These monsters will laugh at you. Prepare for fights and suddenly you have a fighting chance. See what I did there?

Combat in the game is handled in a far more streamlined manner to the first Witcher title, which contained three combat styles that required manually switching between them in order to effectively fight. Cumbersome and tedious, so this time they’ve allowed for just two styles, each mapped to a separate button. Basically the light and heavy attack you know from most other games, Geralt has a speed style and a power style. Some enemies completely shrug off one of those styles, forcing you to attack with the other… you would know this if you read the fucking journal.

To go with this, Geralt has two sword slots; one for a regular sword for attacking humans and one for a silver sword (usually called a Witcher’s sword) for attacking monsters. Each sword could in theory attack anything, but you would do reduced damage if you used the incorrect sword. I try not to question the logic there. Some of these weapons — as well as armour — contain upgrade slots which you can fill with runes that provide minor upgrades such as a slight vitality (health) increase or a bonus to damage.

Spells are another huge point of the game. Whereas in the first game you had to learn each spell as you progressed, in The Witcher 2 you start out with all but one of your spells unlocked. Actually, they’re called Signs here, so let’s get that right. See, this is basically CD Projekt RED throwing you a bone, since the effective use of Signs drastically increases your chances of survival. The final Sign is unlocked upon acquiring the final skill in the Magic tree. Each Sign has a different use; one is basically a force-push — Fus Ro Dah before it was a thing — while another sets traps on the ground and another creates a protective sheathe to block damage. Each Sign can be upgraded for even more devastating effects.

Casting Signs uses up Vigour, which is kind of a mix-up of Stamina and Mana from most other games. You also use Vigour when you block and counter-attack, the latter of which must first be unlocked. Vigour, of course, regenerates over time, assuming no Signs are currently active. You can increase your Vigour by investing points into the relevant skills in whatever skill tree you opt to pursue. You can also increase your Vitality (health) in this way.

One thing I really liked about the combat in The Witcher 2 is that unlike many other RPGs where there’s a certain stigma around the combat system, either it’s clumsy and nonsensical or just doesn’t work, or on the other end of the scale it’s too action-y and therefore loses the entire point of RPG gameplay (I’m sure in your head you’re already thinking up examples of each), The Witcher 2 gets it so right. The action is frantic and fun, but in order to survive you still have to prepare, bringing the RPG elements right into the core and nailing it home nicely. It’s a game where you can have fun battling things, if you put in the necessary work before-hand. Rewarding? Check.

Now, I understand that in the crossover from PC exclusive to console iteration, there will be certain differences that arise as a result of the ridiculous gap between the technology of modern PCs and the Xbox 360, but I still feel it necessary to dedicate a bit of this review to noting the differences between the versions because, quite honestly, the differences I found are just… weird. If you don’t care for these differences then by all means, skip ahead.

The first difference that would probably be on everyone’s mind is that of the game’s graphics. They’re actually surprisingly on par, in most places, however you ought not to expect the crisp texture clarity or post-processing available on modern-day PCs and that sexy Ubersampling feature is all but a myth on the Xbox 360 version. I’d still rate this game as easily the best-looking I’ve ever seen on console.

The next difference is that of the menus. For whatever reason, there is no seamless transition between them as with pretty much any other game ever. Instead, changing from one menu to another fades the screen to black for a second. Why is this a thing? It’s annoying to say the least, especially considering how much of time you actually spend in the menus.

For no apparent reason whatsoever, the control scheme has been changed up. See, I played The Witcher 2 on PC with a controller, for the most part — the keyboard controls were kinda clumsy — and as an example, the speed style (or light attack) was assigned to X, however on the Xbox 360 version it’s assigned to A. It’s a somewhat jaunting experience, having to re-accustom yourself with controls you were once all too familiar with. Imagine reloading your weapon in Gears of War 3 with LB instead of RB? It’s just… wrong.

There are more loading screens now, an obvious difference I guess, based on extremely inferior console technology. That the game manages to still be somewhat seamless is truly a feat. However it still manages to distort some audio and I noticed some terrible normalisation in places, where Geralt and everything around him would be a certain volume and a specific NPC he interacts with would be double that volume, and of rather horrendous quality. Thankfully this isn’t a constant appearance but during long story segments it can rear its ugly head a few too many times.

Finally, again for reasons I cannot fathom, the difficulty has been scaled for the console version, such that playing on Normal is the equivalent of playing most games on normal, more or less. Gone is the tough-as-steel-nails, you won’t survive, sort of structure to things on even the easiest difficulty. This time around, Casual really is for casuals. I’m not sure if it’s across both platforms that this change has occurred or whether CD Projekt RED thinks console players not worthy enough for the PC’s version of Normal difficulty. Hell, even Dark difficulty seems easier than it did on PC, but not by too much. It’s still going to pwn you, but this time it at least gives you some breathing space and some ice for your battered head, instead of leaving you for dead.

In all these changes are non-consequential for most but could still affect the experience, even if you haven’t actually played the PC version before, especially that egregious fade-to-black that the menus do. Some other issues I found with the game involved the usual RPG story of glitchy characters whose hair would fade into their faces while limbs faded into their surroundings, or who would move about erratically while requiring you to follow them. Then there’s the confusing mini-map which contains various icons I still don’t quite understand.

Protip: Play this game with your manual out. You’ll probably need it at some point.

That’s about it, really. I didn’t have any other issues with the game and found it to be quite the unforgettable experience, both on PC and Xbox 360. If these issues I’ve mentioned are enough of a bother for you then by all means, use the rating I’ve given the game but if you don’t care for them and consider an RPG something to be judged purely on its story, characters and combat then go right ahead and bump that rating up to Perfect.

The Witcher 2 is, once again, an RPG experience like no other — except for itself — and in a year that contains such games as Mass Effect 3, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Skyrim (okay it’s a fiscal year or something), it stands right up there and holds its own. If you want a sci-fi experience then without doubt you’re going to try that BioWare game but if you’re up for something more fantastical, more Tolkien-esque, then you can do no better than The Witcher 2.

If you don’t buy it because of what an amazing game it is, what an engrossing story it has, what interesting characters it boasts and what fulfilling combat is features, then by all means; buy it for the gratuitous amounts of sex it throws at you.

Typically, when one mentions Yakuza your mind thinks of an under-appreciated Japanese take on GTA or possibly that shady group of Asians who will just never be quite as badass or influential as the Triads. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Yakuza (either definition) doesn’t really mix well with Dead Rising/Resident Evil type zombie action and you’d be right. But that didn’t stop Sega from trying. Come to think of it, there’s very little that could get in Sega’s way when they put their minds to it. The developer is a bit like that kid in primary school who always won the perseverance award, mostly because they couldn’t win any of the others. Anyway, we’ve ended up with Yakuza: Dead Souls and let me tell you right now it is a confused and oft bipolar mess of shoddy design, obscurity and downright stupidity.

Okay, my job here is done, time to collect my paycheck from Dean (haha) and we can all be on our way. Oh, you’re still here? Well, I guess I could give you something to read while you wait for your porn to buffer/download.

Yakuza: Dead Souls takes the familiar city of Kamurocho and throws it into the deep end of a zombie outbreak. However, this being Japan, it is contained so quickly that the zombies are restricted to a small quarter of the city while the rest is free to continue life normally. In fact, the containment seems to have happened so quickly that most of inhabitants of the safe part of Kamurocho either don’t know about the vicious and brain-thirsty zombies on the other side of the walls or simply don’t care but you never really get the feeling that part of the city is under lock-down because the living dead have taken over it. Maybe it’s an Asian thing?

There are four playable characters in YDS (I wanted to call it Dead Souls but that doesn’t exactly work now does it) namely Shun Akiyama the loan-shark, “Mad Dog” Goro Majima the psychotic yakuza and construction company owner, Ryuji Goda aka The Dragon of Kansai who has woken from a long slumber and finally Yakuza series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu who is stoic as ever. You’ll be familiar with all of them if you’ve played previous Yakuza titles since they all appeared in at least one at some point during the series.

Each has their own little personal story as well as a contribution to be made to the overarching plot. Or at least that was the idea. In reality, none of the character’s stories really get wrapped up properly nor do they tie in to the main plot all that well and while we’re at it, the main story itself is so empty and void of any meaningful moments that it ultimately resolves nothing and ends with little more than an anticlimactic *poof*. None of the characters are really tied to each other either so you just hop from one to the next without any real meaning or purpose behind the transition. The story feels like it was designed to be that meaningless since it’s non-canon but at least wrap it up nicely if you’re never going to revisit it.

Also, with the exception of Goro Majima, the characters are rather flat and dull. Part of this is down to the fact that some dialogue has been recorded, mostly for cutscenes but a lot of the scripted dialogue is simply delivered to you via text boxes at the bottom of the screen which is funny because I didn’t know this was a Gameboy Colour port. As a result, you either read through all of it like a moron or skip it and forget about the plot which really is the favourable option given the distinct lack of any plot worth following in this game.

You can explore both the infected and safe zones of Kamurocho with players being able to enter/exit the infected zone at will unless they’re in a mission of course. There are several ways to get in or out but one of the intelligent ways in which this game was designed is that you can go through any of them to explore the infected zone but once in there, you can’t access a story mission if you entered through the ‘wrong’ way in. You then have to finish exploring, go out and then back in through the entrance they want you to. A slow clap for the genius who came up with that.

You’ll also notice the jarring juxtaposition between the two areas gives the game a very bipolar outlook. On one hand it’s trying to be a Dead Rising style zombie shooter while on the other it is trying very hard to be a normal Yakuza game with lots of side missions and things to do in the living part of Kamurocho. It’s a bit like shooting your mother in the face while petting your Siamese cat.

The infected zone also requires lots of back-tracking which becomes tiresome in the relatively claustrophobic environments that you are often presented with. The side missions and extra content are what you’d expect from a Yakuza title with casinos, bars, hostess clubs, Club Sega, bowling alleys, golf courses and more. Of course it all feels more out of place than a prostitute in a mosque where all the men know her name but none will acknowledge that fact. Especially when you were juts gunning down a hoard of zombies 2 minutes ago.

There’s a good variety of side missions too but they really shine in their humour, or at least Majima’s side-missions do. There’s one where you help a group of pervs rescue a woman who is apparently helpless and nude. There’s another where you convince a clan leader to dress up as a girl in order to attract zombies due to the rumour that they target couples and it is even complete with some authentic karaoke.

The game even takes pots shots at the hackneyed zombie genre with one side-quest where you have to predict the order in which a bunch of clichéd zombie movie characters will die. There’s even a zombie rights activist group that appears in-game. Yes, this game actually has some good moments and humorous ones at that but they are not enough to save this pathetic game.

Maybe talking about the gameplay will calm me down. The first thing you’ll notice is the camera which has at least several minds of its own and rarely points where you want it to, especially when you’re in the middle of eliminating a group of zombies. The frame-rate chugs every time you tap the analogue too hard even though the game looks well below par. Controls are clunky and awkward, even if they do work on a Rainman sort of level. This isn’t fucking calming me down at all, I guess deeper into the ground you go, Yakuza: Dead Souls.

YDS favours gunplay over previous Yakuza titles’ bare-knuckle brawling combat style which had a melee focus. There’s still melee in this game but it’s so ineffective you may as well hurl insults at the zombies for more of an impact. Yo momma’s so fat, her combined IQ’s pushing 3000. No? Okay.

There’s a variety of zombies and mutants for you to shoot at but they’re all enemies that you’ve likely seen in other zombie games. For example, there’s a carbon copy of Left 4 Dead’s witch and really there’s just a complete lack of originality with the zombies. It could also be the fact that every time you’re introduced to a new one, there’s a 99.76% probability that they will be spammed so hard all over the place that it becomes more than routine to gun them down. The boss monsters are a decent enough challenge but the rest of the game is piss easy which is actually a God send. Why? Because aiming in this game is so temperamental and useless that blind faith would serve you better and that’s precisely what Sega seems to have realised so the idea is that you point in the vague general direction of the group of zombies you want to shoot and your character will take them all out. Zombies also have a tendency to wait for you to kill their dinner buddy before trying to attack you which is thoughtful.

The upgrade system isn’t bad and allows you to level up a character’s melee combat, health, armour, skills etc and the nice thing is that upgrades carry across characters so it doesn’t feel like you’re starting from scratch each time you move onto another character. However, this generosity of game design seems to have made its own problems since every character plays and handles exactly the same as a result. They didn’t have to but that’s just the way Sega did it. Thumbs up to those guys, seven thumbs up in actual fact.

Before I forget, let’s talk guns. There’s a great variety of them in this game and all the kinds you’d expect but you can really get through the game with only a pistol and some small amount of effort given that every character’s pistol has unlimited ammo.

What I really love about this game is how Sega tried to avoid criticism from people like me and fans alike by billing the game as a light-hearted title and non-canon. New flash: it didn’t work, bitches.

Stellar Impact is an online-only strategy game that emulates, but greatly deviates from, traditional DotA-style gameplay, taking place in a sci-fi universe and focusing on space naval combat and micro-management. It treads a fine line between classic real-time strategy and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games. It’s the first title developed by Tindalos Interactive, and while it’s a pretty solid attempt at creating something new in the genre, it faces a fair set of problems that prove to be extremely difficult to overcome. The main issue is that it suffers in the face of its incredibly strong competition, with games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends on offer at zero cost. As such, Stellar Impact has to sell itself on its unique space navy combat, and if you’re someone interested in this concept or looking for something new in the genre then this just may be a good choice. It definitely shows promise.

The game caters for up to 12 players, and offers two gameplay modes, namely Conquest and Battlefield. The former is similar to traditional DotA, in that you have to destroy your opponent’s base that is safeguarded by turrets, your enemy players and mini attack squadrons that spawn at set intervals, much like DotA’s creeps. However, the twist is that firstly you’re able to buy up to three mini fleets to follow you and help you in combat, ranging from armoured tanks to assault squads, provided you have the cash for it. Secondly, you’ll need to work with your team to capture objectives on the map that all grant different bonuses that are important to winning a match. If you want something more action orientated, then Battlefield would be your mode, as you basically have to eliminate all enemy players or defend a central objective for 120 seconds, and be the first team to win all three rounds.

Aside from a tutorial that covers the basics, Stellar Impact is quite happy to throw its players into the deep end, and even when you feel like you’ve got it you’ll still have to learn the hard way online, as you suffer at the hands of stronger and more experienced players. The core reasons for this is that firstly the game doesn’t really have a matchmaking system, so you’ll need to make sure you’re playing with lower ranked players if you want to have a chance at fun, and secondly, in addition to in-game ship upgrades that disappear after each round, as is the standard, there are also permanent upgrades in the form of equipment that is awarded at the end of each round. This means that the more games you play, the stronger you’ll get, which doesn’t make things easy for newcomers, as it’s unlikely that you’ll be starting on an even playing field with the rest when starting up a game. To put this into perspective, I had to learn the hard way as I suffered four straight defeats when I first started playing, making barely any contribution to my team due to my lack of experience and power. However, the upside to this system is that things inevitably get better, and you’ll appreciate it more once you’re past the bad times.

The great thing about Stellar Impact is that its gameplay is simple to grasp, yet it’s a surprisingly deep game that’s difficult to be good at, as it requires a wide-range of player tactics and micro-management. It may prove daunting in the start, but the reward is in reaching a point where you finally become a force to be reckoned with. There are 5 starting classes in the game, defined by the ship you pick, of which you have the choice of Destroyer, Cruiser, Dreadnought, Corvette or Frigate. Unfortunately, to get the Support, Carrier and Artillery classes you’ll need to pay. Each class is distinctive in its attributes and value to the team, and have a large number of special abilities of which you can equip four at a time before starting a match. It’s really awesome to have so much customisability in how you want to play, whether you want to be tank, full on assault, a survivalist or a balance between attack and defense and more. Creep abilities and ship attributes are levelled up in-game using command points earned by killing enemies, capturing objectives, and gradually over time, lasting for the duration of the round. Your ship’s four primary abilities are levelled up using your limited number of skill points available per round, as you reach new tier levels as indicated by the bar at the top of the screen.

Players control their ship by using a right-click to set its direction, and pressing W to move forward. Hitting W again will increase throttle speed, while the S key is used to slow down or completely stop. Left-clicking targets an area or enemy ships, and the space bar fires off your weapons. Your ship’s abilities are mapped to the number keys as is the standard in a game like this. At a glance it seems simple enough, but it’s actually very difficult to effectively maneuver your ship in the thick of battle, so much so that it can often become frustrating to play well, especially when you have to avoid the number of environmental hazards floating around. These come in the form of floating asteroids, which are lethal upon impact, dust clouds which continuously deal damage to you, plasma fields that drastically slow down your movement speed, solar flares that pull you in and deal significant damage to your shields, and gas clouds that render you invisible to the opposition unless they have a scanner or come into contact with you. It’s of critical importance to learn how to micro-manage your ship and its weapons.

These elements add a great sense of skill and tactics to the game, and it becomes rewarding when you eventually learn how to play. The best parts of the game are in customising your ship, selecting the right skills and upgrades and planning your moves carefully in order to best your opponents. Once things are rolling in first gear Stellar Impact really becomes a gem of an indie game, and admittedly I really started to enjoy the game only once I became competent at it and felt like I could make some kind of impact on the game. It’s incredibly satisfying to destroy your first enemy, let me tell you that much. Depending on the game mode you choose and the number of players, matches can last anything from fifteen minutes to an hour, although the upside is that if you’re blatantly losing with no chance of recovery, your team can vote to surrender so as to prevent opposing players from deliberately delaying the inevitable and wasting your time. Of course it can happen that players surrender prematurely, but you end up getting a win so it evens out. Furthermore, it’s pleasing to see that Stellar Impact tracks quitters by showing the percentage of games they’ve abandoned whenever they join a game, so you’ll be fully aware of the risks you’re taking if one of those players happens to end up on your team.

The game looks pretty decent visually, and it’s not overly busy. Maps are nicely detailed and quite dynamic, offering a playing field that’s diverse, easy on the eye and charming. The only problem I had really was with the User Interface, which isn’t the prettiest or most intuitive of interfaces. It takes a while to get used to it and to learn how to properly manage your upgrades and resources. It could do with an improvement, but it’s not exactly unusable by any means. With regards to audio, it would have been nice to have a wider-range of background music on offer, but your own music can always fix that. The sound effects are pretty good though, which makes the experience more enjoyable. Stellar Impact is a breeze to play in terms of its functionality, as it loads really quickly, there is minimal delay online and overall it’s just a very comfortable experience. I had no problems finding games, navigating the menus or learning how things work, but in fairness it does take a fair amount of time to learn how to play.

In the end, Stellar Impact is a really fun and surprisingly deep game that delivers a pretty good tactical experience. Unfortunately, it will most likely fly under the radar for most players due to its stronger competition. To reiterate, despite this being a gem of an indie game, it’s quite difficult to recommend Stellar Impact, even for its entry price of $10, when there are a number of great alternatives in the same genre, namely DOTA 2 and League of Legends, both of which are completely free to play. Your desire to play this can only be influenced by how much the sci-fi concept appeals to you. But either way, if you’re looking for something different in this genre, then this would be a good choice.

Angry Birds, whether you love it or hate it, is fast edging closer to world domination. It may not be the most sophisticated game around, but Rovio faced a challenging task in trying to freshen up the now established and extremely popular formula, and what better way to do that than to take things into space and bring zero gravity into the mix. However, while the new space setting doesn’t dramatically change the way the game is played, I can respect their attempts to freshen things up, and they have definitely achieved that to a certain degree. It’s satisfyingly fresh without deviating too much from what makes it special. There are around 60 levels to keep you entertained initially, with more to arrive through free updates. Sadly, hardcore extra levels require an additional purchase, and while the asking price isn’t exactly a train smash, it’s a bit upsetting that these fun levels haven’t been included in the package already, especially when considering that Space has fewer levels than its predecessors.

It’s business as usual with you having to kill a bunch of pigs using your limited birds, except this time the focus on gravity has done wonders in creating some pretty unique and exciting puzzles. Due to the absence of gravity, firing your birds into space sends them on a slow, straight journey, while attacking nearby planets, which have their own gravity fields, will greatly affect the movement of your birds. Some gravity fields have a strong pull, while others will increase movement speed and alter your birds’ directions. These combine to produce some fantastic results, often presenting you with some pretty awesome opportunities to create chaos and unleash hell on those nasty pigs. You’ll get to curve your birds around miniature planets and attack pigs from behind, crush them by using floating debris and use the environment and gravity in rather interesting ways to win. For instance, things can get pretty trippy when you have two gravity fields right next to each other, and you’ll need to exercise more precision in your attacks unless you want to watch your birds go bonkers. However, due to this a few levels can feel like they rely more on luck than actual skill, as results will almost be random, but overall the game does a great job of presenting you with inventive new challenges with each level.

There are a few new gameplay features in Angry Birds Space, and they’re pretty awesome. The first is naturally the new birds. While you still get your standard Red attack bird, Blue cluster bird, Black Bomb bird, and the now Green large tank bird, you’ll also get a new Purple homing bird that has replaced the previous Yellow speed bird, and a new Ice bird. The former moves in standard fashion until you click to lock onto a target, where it will then gain a burst of speed and close in for the kill. The Ice bird, as you may have guessed, freezes pigs and objects, allowing you to crush them with your next attack, which is useful when faced with stone defenses. Another new addition to the formula is with the hidden golden eggs, which now instead of just giving you a sense of achievement, also serve to transport you to bonus levels that are really fun and act as mini intervals to the level you’re currently playing. Some are really cool, like the Space Invaders-inspired bonus. But my favourite new addition is the boss battles, which feature a pig in an armoured space vehicle, and you’ll need to crush his ride with floating asteroids and your Bomb birds. It can sometimes take luck to win these, but they’re easy and fun.

The only real downside to Angry Birds Space is that, because it only contains 60 levels initially, it can be over really quickly and leave you wanting more. And bar one or two levels, I didn’t find the game to be particularly challenging. Some might enjoy going through the game with minimal frustration and difficulty, but I’d have much rather preferred the game getting increasingly difficult as you progress. Either way, it’s highly entertaining, and despite the criticisms it’s picking up these days for its lack of sophistication and identical sequels, I couldn’t help but play this game continuously right until I completed it. Angry Birds Space is as addictive as its predecessors, if not more so with its fantastic space setting. It’s not perfect, but I had a great deal of fun with it and wouldn’t mind having some more levels. Although I really hope the new levels brought in are more challenging and over the top.

Angry Birds Space looks as awesome and as charming as ever with its new setting, and it’s a joy to play. Admittedly it’s not as vibrant and colourful as its predecessors, but the setting more than makes up for it. The new animations are great, and it’s worth a smile every time you see a pig get a sudden scared look on his face when danger is close or breathe a sigh of relief if he narrowly escapes it, and it’s funny to see a pig doze off to sleep while wrapped in a protective bubble. These pig expressions can make you really want to kill them though. The background music is pretty intense and really fitting for the style of the game, while the sound effects are just spectacular. It was definitely hard for me to get over the new Purple bird’s priceless “Peek-a-boo” scream. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

Angry Birds Space is a great new direction for the franchise. It admirably manages to be fresh without giving up or deviating too much from what made it so popular. If you’re a fan of this series, then you really don’t need to be told to go out and get this game. However, if you’re not, then the familiarity to its predecessors that Angry Birds Space holds onto definitely won’t turn you into a fan now. In the end, love it or hate it, Angry Birds Space is a great game that does what this series does best.

Us gamers are getting really spoiled from surprising places lately. I can’t remember a time where so many awesome Arcade and Indie games were released so close to each other, giving us new and interesting things to keep us entertained in this dry AAA spell. Journey is a prime example, showing that if you shun indie titles in light of AAA titles constantly, you’re missing out on something truly special. FEZ, in many regards, is another one of these examples. A game that starts out looking like a one trick pony, FEZ quickly turns into one of the most engrossing, difficult and entertaining puzzle platformers around today. Combine fantastically implemented elements and extremely well thought out puzzles with some undeniable 8-bit charm and you’ve got one of the best Indie titles you could possibly pick up. Several technical issues and high levels of difficulty may scare you off, but FEZ is certainly a journey that you’ll want to see to the end, just to start it all over again.

People have been waiting for FEZ for a very long time. It would even be easy to say that FEZ was one of the most anticipated Indie titles ever, with the announcement coming nearly 5 years ago already. Designer and Creator Phil Fish has become a household name to gamers around the world, mostly because of this title and his appearance in Indie Game: The Movie. Or maybe it’s because he said Japanese games suck? Forget all of that though, because FEZ is here, it’s great, and it has really been worth the wait.

FEZ doesn’t follow the story of a character named Fez, despite many people still thinking that. Instead, you take control of Gomez, an adorable white fluffy looking being in a world of other 2D fluffy white beings and animals. You see, Gomez lives in a reality that only knows 2D, where small children make remakes about how flat you are looking, teachers discuss evil 3D cubes and elders talk about “the other dimension”. It’s not long before you meet another important white being, that then reveals that “it’s time for your destiny to begin”, or something along those lines. Cue the appearance of a giant 3D cube, a massive explosion and the crumbling of Gomez’s world. However, in the process, a magical Fez is bestowed upon Gomez, allowing him to finally explore the magical third dimension. The universe simply can’t take all of this, and begins falling down around you, prompting Gomez to begin a journey that will restore stability to his beloved world. This is what FEZ makes you think it’s about, but that’s only scratching the surface, with a toothpick, the size of a hair.

You see, FEZ is more than a game with one gimmick. Sure, the feature of perspective changing is not new, but the way FEZ implements it is truly remarkable. With the simple hit of the left or right triggers, you shift Gomez’s world into a whole new dimension, allowing you to explore areas that were once non-existent for the first five minutes of the title. For a while this is your only really tool in FEZ, and coming to terms with how shift dimensions affects your position on the terrain doesn’t take long to get used to. Instead of “thinking with portals” you’re now “thinking with a Fez”, and soon you’ll be zipping through levels and mastering platforming by using your dimension shifting Fez to cut corners and connect platforms that were once far apart. That’s not to say that you’ll soon be bored of the platforming, as later levels will require some thinking on your part, as well as quick timing as time switches count down and change the world around you.

But even this is not entirely what FEZ is all about, which may come as a surprise to most people who have been following the game’s development. FEZ is essentially a puzzle platformer, but at its core it’s an intuitive and often highly challenging series of puzzles. Puzzles are littered throughout every area of the game. While simple platforming and exploration will reward you with gold cube shards (needed to complete and progress through the game), it’s the anti-cubes, artifacts and treasure maps that will keep you coming back to FEZ for hours on end, and a New Game+ option ensures its longevity. It’s what makes this simple title to unique and engrossing, but it could also lead to some players abandoning it all together.

FEZ’s puzzles aren’t always fair. Sure, most of them have enough clues, subtle at most, for you to figure them out and even riddles that take you an hour to unravel are still enjoyable and rewarding at the same time. However, there are some that simply expect you, as a player, to see things most wouldn’t. I’m treading lightly on this subject, purely because even just giving examples of some puzzles diminishes the surprise of travelling through FEZ, but you should be warned that this is not an entirely easy game if you’re going for more than simple completion. Puzzles will force you to see the world from different angles, interpret 8-bit diagrams, decipher a completely functioning language, figure out how numbers work in Gomez’s world and more. Puzzles aren’t always solvable from the moment you encounter them, but the game also does a poor job of communicating this to you. Some may see this as an addition to the challenge, but a little hint that suggests further exploration could’ve saved me a lot of wasted hours.

Thankfully, FEZ is so chopped full of content for you to explore that you’ll never really feel that one left puzzle hinders your entire experience. FEZ is made up of several hubs. Wait, make that tons of hub worlds, all connected and interlinked to one another. Some act as major hubs that offer multiple doorways to smaller, more focused pieces of land. It’s hard to become completely lost in this world, as telling yourself that you’ll eventually back track becomes a bit hard when you’ve teleported to five different hubs in the space of ten minutes. Thankfully, a highly detailed map that shows all the hub connections ensures that you never get too lost, and hints at other unexplored areas. Back tracking will happen more than once, but FEZ’s worlds are so varied and well-designed that you’ll never feel as though it’s a chore.

It’s just utterly incredible how much environmental variety there is in this gorgeous 8-bit game. Yes, it’s all 8-bit and absolutely stunning. One minute you could be on a small island with a lighthouse, hearing seagulls chirp in some monotone beeps and listening to the ebb and flow of water, and a few doors later you could be in a graveyard world, dominated by sounds of thunder and populated by some cute little ghosts. Each section builds onto the hub it originates from, with subtle differences bringing change in a gradual way. Level design is superb; you should rarely ever get lost or confused as to how to progress in a given area, regardless of the fact that you can only see one side of each area at a time. Some inspiring 8-bit visuals that complement the game style and an incredible soundtrack keep you completely immersed in this stunning world, you’ll soon come to love Gomez’s world like no other in gaming.

There are, however, more than a few things that strive to break your immersion in this stunning world. FEZ is not without its technical problems, which is bizarre considering it has been in development longer than most AAA title nowadays. Crashes, and some really violent hard crashes, do occur. Your game may simply freeze, or throw code at you and completely lock out. Polytron are at work on fixes for this, but right now it could happen nearly once every hour if you’re unlucky. It breaks the illusion that the game puts on you, which is sad considering it’s such a happy and engrossing universe. On top of that, controls can sometimes not respond in the way you want them to, and some odd visual glitches and slowdown when transferring from one environment to another do a good job of reminding you that this is just a game. It’s disappointing to see, but thankfully it’s nothing really game breaking.

Other than those few niggles, there is really no excuse for you not to take notice of FEZ, if you haven’t already. I could honestly tell you a lot more about the world that has spawned out of Phil Fish’s brain, and how the team at Polytron has done such a fantastic job with this Indie title. However, FEZ is about exploration, discovery and surprise. Polytron hasn’t delivered what they have been teasing and promising for the past five years. Instead, they’ve gone leaps and bounds ahead of what most expected from them, creating a game that is destined to become an instant classic, and a game that will certainly go down in gaming history. FEZ is not a game you should consider, but rather a game you shouldn’t think twice about downloading. Wake up Gomez, we have lots of exploring to do.

Let me start by saying I had way too much expectation for this game; post-release however, and a couple reviews as well as articles later and that expectation came crashing down around me. Good thing they did though, I would’ve been sorely disappointed had those expectations reached the game. I think it was the potential behind Resident Evil: Operation Raccon City’s (RE: OCR) concept and premise that brought about such unrealistic expectations. Think about it, an almost purely co-operative and multiplayer Resident Evil; designed from the ground up to feel, play and handle like one. Had RE: OCR been anything like the game I pictured in my mind, it would’ve been great; unfortunately it isn’t that great and falls somewhere between a disappointed-but-not-entirely-horrid-meh and mediocre.

RE: OCR opens to an inspired title screen that immediately conveyed images and thoughts of past Resident Evil glories; as soon as I went into campaign mode however, well it went downhill. You’re supposed to be able to experience the campaigns story as a cooperative multiplayer experience, and failing that, with bots as replacements for any empty teammate positions. Naturally, none of my friends own RE: OCR yet and so I opened my campaign to the public, expecting 3 to join my game within a couple minutes. After multiple tries of absolute bupkis, I tried for one last attempt, certain someone would join, luckily 1 managed to join my game and the two vacant spots were taken by bots. Not that the teammate I ended up with was much better than the bots, who are particularly bad in their own right. Ok so they’re rather stupid and will do all in their power to get killed, steal the relatively few healing sprays and never use them and well… well they got on my nerves, put it that way.

Maybe I should explain the story, that’s always been a strength of the Resident Evil franchise right? Well RE: OCR places the player in the role of the USS, Umbrella Security Service, Delta team, who are tasked with acquiring a sample of the G-virus before Dr. Birkin can defect and escape with such a precious company asset. As one would expect, and as the universe of Resident Evil has pre-ordained, Delta team fumbles the mission and this leads to the outbreak Raccoon City undergoes. Delta team are then tasked with removing any evidence that can point to Umbrella’s involvement and kill any and all survivors because well, well Umbrella have always been like that; who knows how they keep screwing up, nonchalantly killing everyone and getting away with it. In the grand scheme of things though, Resident Evil games have never been particularly good at explaining the events at large; instead, they’re particularly good at the finer the details, the protagonist, antagonist and the narrative around these characters. By making RE: OCR an almost purely multiplayer experience however, Slant Six Games has lost any and all of that finer point charm and what’s left is a generic set of characters with more plot holes than there are zombies.

Fortunately, and as an elite USS team, each squad member is a specialist of some sort and has appropriate passive as well as active abilities to compliment their weapon choice. An example would be Lupo, assault specialist and Delta team commander, who is capable of increased armour, reload speed and can deploy abilities like incendiary ammo and temporary invincibility as well as infinite ammo sprees. There is some balance to be found here and when cooperating with other players, rather than idiot bots, unsure of what character they are, you can get a relatively enjoyable experience for brief periods of time. It won’t last long however and your only respite from the campaign, a campaign fraught with a mediocre story, sloppy controls, a lacking experience and some of the most annoying quick time events ever imagined is a reasonably enjoyable multiplayer suite.

Mutliplayer contains all the classic modes wrapped up in Resident Evil flair. So there’s team death match; survival, which is more capture the flag than anything; hero, which revolves around killing and defending particular heroes from the story; and some variation of those modes. As part of both the campaign as well as multiplayer modes, there is the chance the player will become infected which, left untreated, will result in the player joining the zombie horde and being given the task of killing the remaining players. There are a few other nifty features like run-and-gun and so on, which while new to the Resident Evil franchise, aren’t executed particularly well and are missing a lot of needed polish. It’s that prevailing feeling that everything from the set pieces of each level, to the visuals and gamplay, all of it meets the minimum requirements and no more. RE: OCR does just enough to avoid being classified as a bad game. But when you compare it to a majority of the Resident Evil franchise, well it’s not exactly a proudest moment.

If you’re a diehard fan and are determined to buy a resident evil game, I suggest waiting for Resident Evil 6 or perhaps Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS, which is actually a relatively awesome Resident Evil experience packed into a portable package and far superior to RE: OCR.

In the indie gaming world, there is one unquestionably popular genre, 2D physics based puzzle platformers. They are the dominant breed and any new indie game attempting to make its name, especially in that genre, will almost certainly have its work cut out for it. That said, if a game were to stand out, it’s usually for a reason, and with Vessel we have a darn good reason.

So let’s skip the introduction to this show and tell and get straight to the meat and potatoes; which without some unique gameplay aspect to draw you away from the million other titles, Vessel has no hope. Fortunately for Vessel’s sake, and for the sake of the player who has to cash out a higher than normal price for an indie game, you get a very meaty game with plenty of gameplay girth to back it up. As you’ve no doubt surmised, Vessel uses physics based puzzle mechanics and standard platforming to comprise most of its levels. The difference here is the introduction of some rather unique water and AI based mechanics.

The premise for the game is the protagonist’s most prized invention, a fluid species that runs and powers the machines of this steam punk era, now changed and corrupted for the worse. This species, the Fluros, in an act of rebellion, lock professor M. Arkwright, that’s you, outside of your lab and starts to play haywire with your machinery, creating a mutated and squishy uprising you need to prevent. In order to do so, you need to manipulate the fluid and fluros powered machinery by using a series of switches, pipes, controls and levers to get the fluros to operate more buttons, doors and other such devices out of your reach; or that need simultaneous activation. To further along your cause, not that the fluros need your help, with their insatiable need to press lit up switches, you are given seeds. Seeds, when introduced to the appropriate fluids, transform into specific fluros that then go on about their business. As they follow their own paths, you use the machinery, fluid and a trusty storage tank strapped to your back to manipulate them into doing your liquid based bidding.

It’s all very well devised and despite a lengthy 10 or so hour game, that’s ages for indie games of this sort, there is almost no end to new and enjoyable puzzles, challenges and things to see; it’s one of the best paced games I have come across. On top of that is an almost perfect learning curve that gently guides and maintains the appropriate challenge throughout the game. Vessel doesn’t let you get off so easily all the time however and will make short work of your steady pace and confidence with the occasional brain buster or massive, multi-tiered, multi-levered puzzle. It’s all in good fun though and while you’re able to reset any puzzle you think you’ve made a mess of, there are a couple ways of doing some and all provide a nice sense of accomplishment. That, in addition to secret content and puzzles makes Vessel one of the most packed and well worth the cash indie games in a while.

It’s not all perfect, no game, especially with such a small dev team ever will be. Fluid physics can act up or get a bit wonky now and then and the fluids physics don’t always play nice with your character. It’s very infrequent however and you’ll be enjoying the quirky look and enjoyable sound track to the game; though the sound track can get a bit repetitive and the odd extra song wouldn’t hurt. The other slightly lacking feature was the narrative which never really reveals enough, or when it does, with a quick enough pace to satisfy your curiosity. At the end of the day however, it doesn’t really matter as the gameplay is more than enough to satiate any fan of the genre or one that wants a very enjoyable physics puzzle romp.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations is the third entry in the next-gen series, boasting the largest character roster for the franchise to date. It includes all of the characters from the previous two games, as well as some new ones to make a total of 72 playable characters. It’s a large number, that’s for sure, but considering that we’ve played this game twice before and experienced most of these characters and story arcs, Generations definitely had its work cut out for it to make it worth the time once again. While an obvious eyebrow-raiser would be the game’s price, which is a bit more than expected, the game did have a fair amount of ambition, and if there’s one thing that’s clear it’s that Cyberconnect2 really knows how to dish out fan service in style, and in large amounts. Of course the question that needs to be answered now would be whether or not this series still had some life left in it.

For better or worse though, aside from the large character roster, Generations is more or less the same package as its predecessor, including a new story mode and the obligatory Free Battle and Online modes. There’s also Survival, where players are given one health bar and need to beat as many opponents as they can with it, Tournament mode, which sets up a bout with a number of characters, and Training, which is self-explanatory. There’s also the Shop, where you can buy a whole lot of little extras, but it isn’t anything be excited about because aside from the extra Substitution models, there’s nothing to buy that adds to gameplay. It’s pretty standard for the series though. The one major plus is that the game comes packaged with all of the fighting arenas from the first two games as well as a number of new ones, which is excellent. However, to focus on one of the most controversial aspects of the game, the story mode has undergone a massive change, and while in some ways it’s for the better, for the most part it feels disappointing and lackluster, and a rather lifeless experience.

The story mode in Generations offers a number of scenarios following the stories of various characters from the show. It’s a nice touch that the story is told through images from the anime, voice-overs, text summaries and actual anime content in the form of cutscenes, but the problem is that the story mode has basically become a glorified arcade mode without much substance. The good part to this is that unlocking characters takes really quick, and you can get them all in hardly a day’s work, but the real letdown is that there’s no more exploring the Naruto universe and no epic boss battles whatsoever. The former could easily be forgiven for me if some of the big story battles had been recreated in gloriously epic style that the series is known for because of the last two games, but it’s all been reduced to straight up fights, one after the other with nothing else to add variety. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded if Generations had rehashed all of the boss battles from the last two games and just added some new ones. That would have been great, but as it stands the story mode is a very shallow and dry affair that you’ll just want to get done with to get all of the characters. It really doesn’t capture the sense of epic we’ve come to expect from this series, and it seriously damages the single-player experience.

The gameplay in Generations is almost identical to its predecessor, with the developers only really aiming for minor refinement to the core mechanics rather than changing anything significantly. However, the main change is with the Substitution technique, which previously allowed you to evade your opponent’s attacks with the right timing and by depleting your Chakra bar. Now, the timing has become extremely generous, but you’re only given a limited number of uses governed by a yellow bar divided into four blocks that is located under your Chakra bar. The yellow bar is recharged during combat, but it has a noticeable delay so if you use up all of your Substitutions you’ll become susceptible to extremely damaging attacks from your opponent if they manage to break your guard. This makes combat more about resource management, and it also makes the system a bit more approachable to less skilled players. Fortunately it works pretty well, putting a greater emphasis on landing combos on your opponent and trying to do the most damage during these short windows of vulnerability.

The great part is that battles still feel as fun and fluid as ever. It’s even easier than before for fans to jump in and have an awesome time challenging friends, and the amount of characters on offer will definitely help keep things fresh and exciting. However, the one problem with the roster is that the younger versions of the characters can feel pretty redundant compared to their older, more varied counterparts. Not just that, but their techniques are naturally more primitive as well, so most fans would probably just go for the newer and more awesome versions of the characters. Sure they’re still fun to play, and provide a good sense of nostalgia, but chances are that they won’t really be used much. Still, there’s not a whole lot to complain about with regards to having so many options, and it is really pleasing to have all of the characters available on one disc. Furthermore, the new characters are most definitely welcome, and it’s good to see the likes of Haku and Zabuza be included, since both of them were strangely left out of the first game. It’s really fantastic to experience all of the game’s characters and to just enjoy the ease of play and frantically exciting gameplay, which is rewarding for fans.

Perhaps the main concern with Generations is that you’d think that because most of the content has been rehashed from the previous two games, with specific reference to the characters and gameplay, the developers would have taken the time to balance things out or perhaps add more jutsus and special moves to certain characters. Sadly, this isn’t the case, and in many ways the game can still feel very unbalanced, especially when it comes to characters’ Awakening modes, because some are still dramatically overpowered while others are just plain useless. I understand that the game is simply meant for fun and to be enjoyed by its fans, but it does hurt the competitive factor when it comes to online play, and you discover the many cheap ways in which you can be completely destroyed. Fortunately the online mode is good, and it’s easily accessible and also features Replay support, which allows you to watch and download replays of matches between other players, and Spectator mode, which lets you view matches online to learn new things or if you don’t feel like playing yourself.

At the end of the day, Generations succeeds at being highly entertaining. The price tag could put you off when considering that there is hardly any substance for those who were looking forward to another great single-player experience, and the only really big selling point is the gameplay, and getting to have all of the characters and stages, plus what’s new, on a single disc. If that’s enough to sell you on this, then you definitely won’t regret making this purchase, especially if you have a lot of eager friends willing to play this with you, because it feels more refined than its predecessor and is still a hell of a lot of fun to pick up and play. There’s a lot on offer here to satisfy fans, but it’s undeniable that more could have been done here, most of all with regards to the single-player experience, which is a serious letdown. Generations isn’t really a major step up, but it’s worth it if you’re not planning on playing it alone.

The game’s visuals are still jaw-dropping, even if it is the third time we’re seeing it. Generations just looks incredible in motion, and still manages to impress despite not improving over its predecessor by a large margin. The animation is fast and fluid, and fights are a vibrant, colourful and brilliant sight to behold. The new stages look great, and are very well detailed, and definitely not as bland as the ones from the first game, so there’s plenty of variety to enjoy in this regard. The anime cutscenes certainly look great in high definition, but some fans may be upset at the fact that they’ve been dumbed down when it comes to blood and intensity. As always the music is fantastic, and it’s a soundtrack perfectly fitting for this game. Technically the game is more or less flawless, and one of the most pleasing things about Generations is that the loading times everywhere have been reduced significantly when compared to its predecessors. This greatly improves the player experience, and it makes progressing through the main story mode a bit less of a chore, and moving from fight to fight quite seamless.

In the end Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations gets by as a minor refinement over its predecessor, even if it is seriously lacking in terms of its story mode and single player experience. The good part is that fights still feel and look as amazing as ever, and it’s still great fun to play. It’s definitely a game that knows how to give its fans an awesome time, and you certainly won’t regret buying it if you have friends to play it with, but it feels like a bit more could have been done with this game overall.

Wikipedia loves to classify the Twisted Metal franchise as something which is purely of the vehicular combat genre, which it is for the most part. However, this iteration of the game leans towards a serious attempt at qualifying the motivations of characters for entering the Twisted Metal Tournament, and the background of their lives and wishes to be granted by Calypso, the demonic organiser of the event. The game this time around focuses on three contestants stories: Sweet Tooth, the deranged psychopathic clown, Mr. Grimm, an enraged mass murdering stuntman, and Krista Sparks, known as ‘Dollface’, a former supermodel defaced with a cursed doll mask.

Twisted Metal is divided into three playable sections with each of the three characters telling a different story, with live action sequences inter-spliced between the actual death matches you partake in. From the start, Twisted Metal already offers you three different characters to experience the game as, each with a different vehicle which changes how you experience the combat and driving mayhem of Twisted Metal. I will use Sweet Tooth as an example with which to explain the gameplay.

In Twisted Metal, Sweet Tooth drives an ice cream truck which has the special ability to either shoot a clown-faced missile at enemies, or transform into a giant clown robot. Each special attack has a cool-down period following their use, which means that you can’t rely on continually using that special attack within many of the death matches. This is due to fact that the game requires more than just spanning special attacks. Twisted Metal offers you a variety of different death matches with conditions such as zoned areas where combat can take place, time constraints and special enemies which come at you in the middle of one of the many destruction derbies. These restrictions mean that you have to think on your feet and in Twisted Metal quick reflexes are necessary because everyone else is out go get you.

You have many weapons such as rockets, missiles, freeze rays, exploding remote controlled cars, explosives, shotguns, machine guns and other armaments to take out other players with. The other characters that make up the rest of the tournament drive many different vehicles from standard muscle cars, to trucks, a police car and even a motorbike. All of them have their own special attacks and with the wacky maps you play through you have to take full advantage of the controls and the car at your disposal. What I like about the vehicle selection in particular is that you aren’t stuck driving just Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck.

You can select other faster vehicles and the game provides a car garage in the death matches for you to change out cars when you’re low on health. You can pick up extra health from health trucks driving around. But getting to these trucks becomes a bit tricky because of the nature of most of the maps. The maps can become a maze of streets, debris, tunnels, bridges and in one stage parts of the level start elevating up and down throughout your run. The combat itself is frenetic, explosive and destruction is around every corner. At one moment, you could be gunning down some poor ‘sod’ on a motorbike before you are catapulted by a truck halfway across the map. The bosses in the game are deceptively simple at first, but turn into challenging beasts because the A.I. in Twisted Metal is unrelenting when it comes to boss challenges. Yet I didn’t find the normal difficulty to be that ‘hectic’ in the slightest.

What I particularly like about the game and this can be noted quite clearly in Sweet Tooth’s story arc, was the utilisation of live action footage to bring to life the background story of the character. These montages were serious in tone and I felt them to be a nice break from the cartoony goriness of the combat in the death matches. Many critics and reviewers argued that this broke the flow of the game and gave the game a schizophrenic identity by trying to be a serious game in cut-scenes, and a cartoonish gory romp in the rest of its parts. I, on the other hand, was delighted by the interesting story developments that brought to light the deeper motivations and ambitions of the playable characters in the game. For most people, the focus of Twisted Metal’s appeal is the multiplayer component which is great fun, with different factions and a variety of different modes. Yet in the multiplayer modes it become apparent that the controls for first time players could be perceived as ‘difficult’ and require some getting used to. However, this game offers some serious value. But with many great games there are some negative aspects that need to be brought to light.

In Twisted Metal’s case, I found the online pass implementation to be a bit buggy with the game freezing. This occurred following a boot up of the game whilst attempting to redeem my online pass code from within the game. This was remedied by redeeming the code from within the PSN store. After that, the game seemed to be solidly working and I tried it out by attempting to join some online servers. But I was greeted with ‘connect to server’ errors and the only mode which I could gain access to was the ‘Instant Online Action’ mode. Many players have reported similar problems, especially with older PS3 models and many Slim owners have posted about the online pass issue. A patch has been released to rectify this. Alessandro had pointed out that he had no problems. So this could be an issue that comes down to people with slow internet, or just a ‘luck of the draw’ thing. Nonetheless, many gamers are having freezing problems and crashes with the game.

Otherwise, when playing the game through the instant mode the combat is great and vehicle combat is fun online. Also in the online modes it becomes pretty apparent that the control scheme for some of the vehicles becomes difficult to use because of the nature of the keymapping for controls in the game. This takes some time to get used to to. But I don’t feel that it’s game-breaking. It’s just a pity that these already ‘recognised’ online problems have not been sorted out by Jaffe and his team. It dampens the overall experience of Twisted Metal which has a solid singleplayer experience.

On a more positive note, the game has some of best metal tracks out at the moment and the soundtrack is a metalhead’s wet dream. The voice acting is great for characters like Sweet Tooth. But I found Calypso’s narration from within the game to be a bit irritating. Overall, the audio design is pretty good in Twisted Metal. The visuals are nicely updated from the previous games with greater emphasis on vehicle combat than an actual focus on producing ‘pretty’ character models and textures. Twisted Metal is firstly a game which is focussed on gameplay, and I found this to be refreshing in an era where gameplay design is an oft forgotten area for some developers. With that said, the game has darker visuals than predecessors in the franchise.

A strange rumor has been circulating that if someone falls in their dream and doesn’t wake up before landing, he’ll die in real life…

Not the most positive thought, but there you have it.

Every so often you get a game that sticks out of the crowd without any additional effort whatsoever. Catherine is a prime example of such a game.

You take control of a guy named Vincent Brooks. He is a poorly-paid systems engineer with little to no ambition, about to stumble into a situation beyond his very own comprehension. He is a faithful boyfriend, has a girlfriend named Katherine and they are your normal couple going about their daily lives. On a usual non-eventful evening after Vincent and his good friends were drinking at their favorite bar, the Stray Sheep, a very innocently looking girl dubbed Catherine enters the picture. She is persistent, and Vincent drinks more than his usual quota for the evening and one thing leads to another. He wakes up the following morning with Catherine in his bed. Things start to go really bad for this poor 32-year-old individual.

With all of this going round and about, strange rumors begin to circulate and pollute the airwaves of the local barmaids. Apparently, young men are dying off one by one. An odd and interesting fact begins to arise that most, if not all of these young men have been experiencing strange and rather vivid nightmares about climbing to try and get away from “something.” Vincent, the poor protagonist of this rather morbid story, is also one of the unlucky souls who experiences the nightmare. Why is that? It is believed that these strange nightmares are connected to young men that are cheating their better halves. What happens in these dreams? Ah, yes, that’s where things get rather interesting.

If I were to to break Catherine down to all the different elements that makes it a unique, rather strange and captivating experience it would be as follow. First off, the art-style and overall look of the game is very much inspired by the Japanese type anime. Some cinematics are your typically drawn anime, where most of the other cut-scenes and gameplay are of similar style, but instead cell-shaded models. If you’re an anime type person, you’ll be at home with Catherine.

The narrative parts of the game takes place mostly in our beloved bar, the Stray Sheep. You will have the opportunitys to talk to your local bar fellows and find out more about the mystery plaguing the town; send text messages; drink; change the music on the jukebox; and play an arcade game that works on the premise of pushing and pulling blocks. This game is also found in the main nightmare sequence, and it’s called Rapunzel. The locals in the bar are a rather strange bunch of people that offers interesting and somewhat cryptic advise. It is also necessary to mention that the mouth animations are not very convincing, and will probably irritate a small amount of players. It’s nothing game-breaking, though.

The gameplay is where all the fun is to be had. This is a puzzle game, yes, but not your average puzzle game. It takes the rather simple principle of pushing and pulling and gives it a unique and enticing flavour. The nightmare sequences consists of these gameplay mechanics, where your main goal is to reach the top of a ridiculously formed stack of blocks. Sounds simple enough, although it isn’t. You will push and pull your way to victory, but victory is not always an easy task. The first puzzles in the game will be easy and you will breeze through them, but you will be tested to the point of frustration. The puzzles are always fun, but as you near the end of the game you will begin to struggle and die. A lot.

One of the very few qualms I have about the game is that it can get really frustrating at times, even on the “Easy” difficulty setting. It is difficult, most definitely, but ultimately rewarding. Do not fear, retries and other interesting items can be found during the levels. These items will aid you when things seem rather dire and hopeless. Pillows will give you extra retries, where you will come across another pick-up that will give you the chance to deploy your very own standard block. This helps you out of a tricky situation. There are various other pick-ups that will be available to you as well. There is also a vendor between the levels where you can pony up some of your hard earned coins for an item, if you feel that you will need the extra support. The animations of Vincent when is he climbing, in his boxer shorts and pillow under the arm, can been seen as quirky, but it matches the overall aesthetic well.

At the end of each night, and after a series of towers has been climbed, you will face a boss character. This isn’t your traditional boss-fight, more like your own “boss-puzzle-avoiding-and extra stressful-level”. Boss characters vary a lot, and can be quite a disturbing sight. These fights will keep you on the edge of your seat, while sweat pours down from your brow. I would like to tell you more about these boss characters, however I don’t want to spoil anything. The whole “wow-element” comes from your typical “WTF-moments”. There is no better description than this.

Speaking of your typical weird moments, I think it’s super important to mention the way you and your fellow dreamers see and experience each other. Sheep. Doesn’t make sense? Let me explain: you perceive the other people in your dreams as mere sheep. They will stand on 2 legs and talk. Each will have their own characteristics, whether it be a tie, sunglasses or long hair. You can talk to these sheep, learn more about their current happenings in their lives and learn new techniques. There is also a connection to these sheep and your real life.

When you’re in the Stray Sheep you will talk to people and receive text messages, which you can reply to. These interactions will have you making decisions, however small or large they may appear, they will have an impact on the story as it unfolds. There are several endings to the game, and each is determined by your actions. A meter will appear on the right-hand side of the screen with two colors: blue and red. This meter will appear after you’ve made a decision and will determine Vincent’s thoughts and reactions. The story itself took a rather strange and wildly unexpected turn, which I did not see coming. No matter how simple or ordinary the situation of poor old Vincent’s journey appears at first, it will not stay like that for long.

The game consists of three different parts: Golden Playhouse is the main game; Babel has four co-op levels that need to be unlocked; and Colosseum is where you and a buddy can test your skills competitively to see who can reach the top of the climb first. All these modes are fun, but your primary reason to play Catherine is for the main story. The main story will keep you busy for about 15-20 hours.

Pink Floyd is easily one of the greatest bands of all time. They have so many songs that still resonate today; nearly three decades after some of their best hits were released. One song in particular, The Great Gig In The Sky, is probably one of the most emotional and inspiring songs ever composed, which is ironic considering the song doesn’t contain one lyric. It’s a seamless melody of beautifully choreographed instruments, mixed with some exceptional voice work. A song that is able to evoke some of the deepest emotions you could experience and on a given day, could even bring you to tears. Journey, in many regards, is exactly like this song. Through its exceptional use of simplistic gameplay mechanics and flawless presentation, Journey is able to deliver one of the most emotional, inspiring, and perfect gaming experiences out there. It’s truly a marvel to behold, and a landmark in defining games as works of art.

From the get go, Journey does not feel like a traditional game. It opens up with some gorgeous shots of the desert land you’ll soon explore, and before you know it, you’ll be interacting with your character and the land around you. There is no “game” like intrusion at all, barring one or two tutorial messages that are themselves subtle. Journey interacts with you as you interact with it. It puts you under a mirage that often makes you forget that you’re even playing a game. You get so caught up and lost within this journey, that you actually feel that you’re undertaking it, instead of a character sprite on-screen. This is most of the reason why the journey becomes so emotional, because every setback, every enemy, every friend you make along the way interacts with you, and your attachment to the world around you becomes so tight that you’ll never want to let go. This is the beauty that grabs you within the first few seconds of Journey, and fails to let go even after you’ve switched off.

As far as story goes, it’s incredible just how much can be taken out of a narrative that essentially has not one line of dialogue. Your journey starts off with a robed, ummm, let’s call him a “being” for the sake of political correctness. You wake up in a barren desert wasteland, and have no idea where you are, or what you’re meant to do. A large shining mountain lies in the distance, and you feel driven to travel towards it. As you progress you’ll have visions of a society that seems to have been lost over time. A society that you belong to. The story is conveyed in short little cutscenes involving a large white robed figure and tons of hieroglyphics. You, as the player, are left to derive any form of meaning out of everything thrown at you and, regardless of the way you see events, you get the feeling that you’re some sort of last hope for this civilization. However, you are in no way led to believe that your journey will resurrect them, or that this journey of yours is the key to salvation. It is simply a Journey, and this little bit of narrative context only serves to further invest you in your character and the journey it is on. The character is uncertain of his role, uncertain of his place and most of all, uncertain of what to do next. These feelings are reflected on you as you play, and make the gameplay that much more engrossing.

Journey’s gameplay is simplistic in its presentation, but has quite an interesting execution. With the simple press of X, you are able to launch your red-robed being into the air and glide effortlessly through the air. This makes up what is essentially the core game mechanic of Journey, providing an elegant yet effective way of moving around. A scarf made of a magical fabric governs how high and how long you are able to sustain this flight, and finding additional pieces of this fabric floating in the air extends this scarf. This scarf also symbolizes the life or “willpower” this being has to continue. Throughout the game, giant stone enemies and changing climates can shorten and sometimes take large chunks out of your scarf. You can never really die, but having your scarf that has been growing for the past hour suddenly get cut in half is heartbreak, and an extremely effective mechanic for instilling tension in certain sections.

Additionally, you are able to send out shouts and chimes at any moment, which react with dormant pieces of magical fabric that you encounter, as well as other things that should be discovered on your own. What makes these shouts so interesting is that they constantly stay in tune with the fantastic soundtrack in the background. Having things react to your shouts and then seamlessly integrate with the music around you is enchanting, and you could almost be completely satisfied with meditating and letting out shouts every now and then. The orchestral back drop is something that should also be applauded. With there being no dialogue throughout the entire game, music is the primary source for building tension, personifying exciting moments and translating emotions to you as a player. The orchestra does their job superbly, with every note hitting you with a ton of emotion. It’s what drives the story along, and what makes you so invested in this being’s journey.

Journey is, after all, a linear game. It doesn’t feel like it from the outset, with the massive spanning desert that is laid out before you. There are subtle hints and interesting points that beg for exploration, usually leading to further exploration. The entire game feels as though you’re moving from one interesting point to another rather than a linear pathway. Every “checkpoint” you venture towards feels instinctive rather than laid out, and as you progress further and further into lost ruins and underground caves you’ll always feel as though your own exploration lead you on this path. Since Journey is a somewhat solitary title, this type of progression fits right in.

Your whole journey doesn’t really need to be lonely, thanks to Journey’s unique take on multiplayer. Journey takes a little hint from MMO’s and Dark Souls in a way, allowing another player to join you in your journey at any time. The catch is that you never know who you’re playing with. There’s no gamertag, no way of inviting friends, no way of communication. Chat is completely disabled and your only means of some meaningful communication is through shouts. At first you might think this in itself is useless, but it doesn’t take long for you to realise that you are able to fully communicate with your partner in this manner. Since it’s the only means of talking, you soon come to a mutual understanding on what you’re saying to each other, allowing you to aid one another on the journey. Alternatively, you could encounter players that stick with you for a brief period of time and then wander off in a completely different direction. There’s no obligation to do anything with these partners so you are free to aid or hamper each other’s progress. Having someone else along for the ride does change the tone of the game, as that feeling of loneliness is now shared. However, it’s hard to describe the feeling of watching a partner of yours disappear into the desert, followed by the powerful realisation that you are, once again, alone.

But what really sets Journey apart from most downloadable games, never mind most games in general, are its visuals. Journey is easily one of the most beautiful titles ever created. The spanning desert shifts from a flowing piece of watery art to a finely detail gleaming sea of grains, shining and reflecting every bit of sunlight that falls on it. Journey looks like a piece of fine art, with distant structures and environments dripping with gorgeous watery bliss, while visuals closer to your character reveal some extraordinary detail. You’ll be utterly blown away in most sequences, especially during some standout “glide” sequences that I simply cannot describe to you. Environments also go through a surprising amount of variety. Although most of your journey takes place in a massive desert, the way the developers twist and change the way it looks around you is quite interesting. Some environments make you think you’re underwater, while a snowy mountain is probably one of the best pieces of art a game has ever displayed. Animations are top notch as well, and watching robed being’s cloak whistle in the wind is truly magical. It shows that an attention to detail was top priority when designing this game and it’s utterly refreshing to see that nearly nothing was compromised on.

Journey is honestly one of the best games ever created. It sucks you in from the moment it begins, and leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just experienced something extraordinary. It doesn’t matter that it only lasts around three hours, since the length is perfectly suited to the style of gameplay. Any less and you’d feel underwhelmed. Anymore and the novelty would fade. Every element of Journey has been meticulously crafted from an absolutely flawless experience, and the effort that Thatgamecompany has put in is truly commendable. If you own a PlayStation 3 with an active PlayStation Network account, then there is no reason whatsoever that you should not download this title. It’s a journey that doesn’t need undertaking, but one that you should most definitely endure.

The Silent Hill series has been at a rather depressing low for some time now, and it didn’t show any majorly positive signs of recovering. When Silent Hill: Downpour was announced, I became hopeful at it deciding to go in a completely new direction, but I was skeptic of it being influenced too heavily by contemporary styles, forgetting all that made it such a compelling game. I went into Downpour expecting to be disappointed, and ready to be bitter about all that it could have been, so you can imagine my surprise when Downpour caused me to engage with it for hours on end, unable to get away from it and becoming frustrated when I was forced to stop playing. I’d long given up hope that I’d find a deeply interesting and frightening horror game any time soon, and by that I mean find one that doesn’t just require you to commit monster genocide. But Silent Hill: Downpour offered me many of the things I’ve been missing from the genre, and even though it stumbles along the way, it delivers for the most part.

The game has no ties to the story from the previous games, and instead takes things in its own direction. I feel this was badly needed in order to provide players with a refreshing take on the franchise, and that’s exactly what it is to a certain extent. Sure as a fan you may be familiar with many of the game’s tricks, but despite that Downpour offers a powerful narrative-fueled experience filled with memorable moments and intriguing characters. In the game you take on the role of convict Murphy Pendleton who, for reasons initially not revealed, is being transferred to another facility. Along the way, the transport vehicle meets in an accident and unfortunately strands Murphy in the town of Silent Hill. To say more would spoil an experience you’d much rather want to play through yourself, but it’s important to know that Murphy is quite a uniquely interesting lead, and you’ll find out who he is and what all he’s done through a series of flashbacks over the course of the game. And as you know there’s a reason the town wants Murphy there, and he’ll have to face a great many dangers and a number of character-defining decisions, as well as come to terms with his past if he’s to survive.

Now, there have been a lot of complaints about this game amongst critics, but really this is the first Silent Hill game that I’ve invested so strongly in since before the tragic title that was Homecoming. The developers of this title were perfectly justified, after seven games in this franchise, to try something new and attempt to deliver a fresh take on the haunted town we’ve grown to love so much over the years. If this sort of re-imagining doesn’t happen, then all we’re going to be left with is an assembly line producing the same title over and over again. That said, Downpour is Silent Hill, and it retains its roots whilst still making some modern advancements, particularly with its scale, player-controlled free camera and simplified controls. But don’t be fooled. If you want to be reminded of the old days, then Downpour does that pretty well, as you won’t have your hand held at all, and you’ll pretty much be left to figure everything out on your own with no sense of direction other than a vague map and a word or two from the protagonist. The game does a fantastic job of making you feel lost and rather lonely, but the irony is that loneliness can be a gift considering the monsters and crazies you’ll meet along the way.

The name of the game is exploration, and in this way Downpour has been scaled up quite a lot. It’s not exactly an open world, but there’s a lot of ground to cover if you’re planning to explore every nook and cranny of the town, not to mention you’re able to enter quite a lot of houses and buildings. In addition to the main storyline, there are completely optional side missions that do well to provide their own scares and tell their own interesting little stories, and the good part is that you can avoid these entirely without penalty, but doing them will expand the backstory and reward you with supplies. But there’s also another reason to venture off into sheltered houses, and that’s because of the heavy rain and merciless storms that come and go, which serve to draw out the town’s monsters and make them even more aggressive. Now you know where Downpour got its name. As if the thick mist, creepy anomalies and eerie music wasn’t enough to make you want to run and hide. It should be clear that Downpour is a very atmospheric game, and the developers definitely did fantastically well to make Silent Hill a scary, unnerving and haunted place that is constantly oppressive, and doesn’t ever let you feel at ease.

The best moments in this game come from its memorable scares, its intriguing puzzles and its terrifying set pieces and environments, and it’s hard not to get sucked into the mystery of Silent Hill because of how great these moments are. Admittedly, the game has to be rolling in first gear for you to be compelled, and it can be a rather rough start if you don’t speak the game’s language. It’s great that the game doesn’t hold your hand at all, but sometimes you can just be utterly clueless as to where you’re supposed to go or what you need to do in order to progress, and running around aimlessly naturally loses its appeal, so if you’re not used to this kind of experience then don’t feel bad about consulting a walkthrough. I don’t remember the last time I’ve ever had to use one in all my years of gaming, but there were moments in this game where I was pretty lost, and that could be partly due to the fact that I put the puzzle difficulty on hard. Overall though, when the game gets going it’s deeply interesting and damn unnerving. Personally speaking, I genuinely don’t get scared for any horror movies or games, as I tend to find them amusing, but you know it’s a compelling and immersive experience when you’re on the edge of your seat and don’t notice the time fly past, you’re jumping at every door closing loudly behind you and your mind is trying to scare itself. The game is pretty good at messing with you.

Downpour is definitely a callback to what makes horror titles great, but sadly it’s not perfect, and stumbles quite a bit on the way. The two most disappointing things about the game, which are also its biggest failings, is the monsters and the combat, and I’ll start with the latter. I have absolutely no problem with the clumsy and ineffective combat system, because that is how it’s meant to be. You’re supposed to feel like an ordinary, vulnerable man against these monstrous creatures, and not like some kind of super soldier. You’re supposed to run from fights, which fortunately Downpour allows you to do most of the time. However, what I do take issue with is firstly that there’s no physicality to the combat, as it feels really floaty almost like you’re swinging your weapons underwater, so there’s no jarring or brutal effect in swinging a sledgehammer or axe and making contact with an enemy. Secondly, and much worse, is that there are times, especially at the end of the game, where combat is forced onto you, and clearly the game’s primitive mechanics aren’t made for that, so it can become really frustrating and disappointing. Fortunately though you can avoid fights for almost the entire game.

The monsters are also surprisingly a letdown, as they’re bland and unimaginative. They succeed at being freaky and dangerous, but they don’t share any personal connection with Murphy and don’t seem to have any meaning in the game other than just being there. If there had been a bit less of them or if they had been removed entirely, it may have even made the game better. This may seem like a huge deal, but it isn’t really, since the game’s best moments don’t even involve monsters at all and you can, and should, run away from most encounters. However, it is saddening that so much effort went into the game’s atmosphere, but the monsters hardly received the same care and attention. What makes up for this somewhat are Downpour’s “Otherworld” sections, where players are thrown into a desecrated and evil parallel dimension and forced to run from a burning red light. These sections are both intense and creepy, as players will have to knock over objects to slow down the red light as well as think fast about which direction to run. These sections start out great, but admittedly in the later stages of the game they can focus too much on trial and error and go on for too long with no checkpoints in between.

However, these two flaws combine in the ending sequence to produce a final act that is borderline intolerable, if not for the game’s multiple endings and horror-filled moments in between. In the final act combat is forced onto you and monsters appear more frequently, which really gets under your skin and causes immense frustration, threatening to put a damper on all that you’ve enjoyed throughout the experience. And it doesn’t help that the final boss fight is just pitiful, but thankfully it doesn’t take long once you know what to do. It’s really unfortunate because most of the game’s shortcomings can be forgiven throughout the game, even if their significance may differ from player to player, but the ending sequence throws the two biggest flaws at you and makes you pay full attention to them with no way out. But no matter how frustrating these parts of the final act were, it was just impossible for me to ignore everything else, because it’s been too long since I’ve had a genuinely powerful, good and lasting horror experience. Yes it’s new, but it’s still very much Silent Hill, and I feel the developers found a great balance between holding onto the franchise’s roots without neglecting the need for it to move forward.

Downpour will take you about eight to ten hours to complete the main story, with plenty more substance readily available if you decide to do all of the side quests and explore the town in full. Plus there are multiple endings, as mentioned above, so that adds to the game’s replay value. Graphically speaking, the game is great visually, and it really has to be since atmosphere is everything in a game like this. But fortunately it’s the town of Silent Hill that ultimately gets the most credit, as it’s fantastically realised and really captures the haunted feeling that it should have. The rain and storm effects are awesome, and really add a different dynamic to both the game and its visual style. The character models and environments are really well detailed, but the monsters leave a lot to be desired, even if they are creepy at times. On a technical front, there were no problems other than the frame rate, which sometimes stuttered for no reason at all. Although I could make a minor nitpick about the loading, which occurs in real-time and sometimes causes the game to freeze for a few seconds. It’s distracting, but not game breaking in any way. Finally, the game’s music is excellent, really drawing you in and creating the atmosphere with all the familiar yet still eerie background noises and soft haunting melodies.

Silent Hill: Downpour is not a revolution in the horror genre, and it probably doesn’t outclass the best games in this franchise. What it does, however, is drag this series out of its depressing slump and deliver a genuinely good, compelling and memorable experience that is driven by a powerful narrative and plenty of terrifying moments. It’s a refreshing game that remains satisfyingly familiar, and when it gets going, it’s hard to put down. And that’s a great relief, since these days Silent Hill usually spells disappointment and missed opportunities. Downpour corrects that, returning the series to greatness.

The release of this game should have never happened, and as I shall tell you ‘why’ Gaijin Entertainment hasn’t pulled any type of miracle off with this bad excuse for a game. Creatively with Blades Of Time all the productivity of Gaijin Entertainment has been pined on the attractive female protagonist with a Japanese name, and ironically a British accent which is quite a jarring sight to behold as she continually narrates throughout the whole game, nonstop. Ayumi is as paper-thin as a character can get. I vastly prefer Bayonetta, at least she had personality. All Ayumi can seem to do is complain about her predicament as a bounty hunter stuck on an island planet full of treasure. With all of this focus on characterising Ayumi who is a truly one dimensional character the other aspects of the game lack the necessary vigour to pull this mediocre mess together. None of the elements in the game have had noticeable attention paid to them because they lack any type of balance and foresight to how gamers would respond to design choices. I say this is bad development on the part of Gaijin Entertaiment who doesn’t seem to understand what the word ‘fun’ entails.

Blades Of Time is a combination hack-and-slash game with shooting, RPG and puzzle elements. It’s main drawing point is the ability to rewind time in battle and to solve puzzles which I’ll elaborate upon a bit later in the review. It attempts to follow in the tradition of the Devil May Cry series, Bayonetta and the God Of War series of games. However, its execution of all these different elements fails. Firstly, the hack-and-slash attacks and combos in the game are cumbersome to execute properly and the flow of the game is severely stunted by an ineffective parrying system which does little to block enemy attacks, except for bashing your sword wildly against the enemies.

But countering in essence doesn’t work half the time as it is supposed to. This means that combos can easily be broken by enemies and after awhile even the combos you can use become dull and repetitive. Add to this, the gunplay which is an abortion as well in Blades Of Time of time and you can see why I feel that the game is not truly the sum of its parts. Particularly when the gun play is forced into a prescriptive third person over-the-shoulder view that doesn’t work particularly well for a hack-and-slash game such as this. As a result, the sensitivity of the gun perspective has also been heightened by the developers and makes guns uncontrollable for the most part. Combat as a result feels sluggish and doesn’t flow seamlessly as I had hoped for in a hack-and-slash game like this, with gun play on top of it.

The RPG elements of the game are not effectively integrated into the overall game design and feel tacked on. These elements include the ability to level up Ayumi by buying upgrades for all her combo attacks, new spells and various skills she can use in battle. Spells include anything from earthquake based attacks, to firey spell barrages and typical freezing attacks. You can equip weapons and find new ones as you journey through the game, finding equipment which betters Ayumi’s stats in certain areas and can increase the effective of elemental attacks. But after awhile the usage of spells and skills becomes questionable as nearly every enemy can eventually be taken down with typical hack-and-slash combos and attacks. It all feels ‘off’ because the balancing of the enemies in Blades Of Time truly makes no sense. Bosses are easier than normal enemies, and one particular enemy a servant of some Chaos fellow can kill you one shot if you don’t run away. It’s all pretty stupid.

The story is set on some treasure planet that Ayumi is thrown on to via inter-dimensional portal travel thanks to the promises of loot by a mysterious guild of pan-dimensional bearded time monks. Ayumi is looking for a way out of treasure planet by making her way through the challenges of a dragon temple, and hopes to find her partner in crime. He only features much later in the game which is a pity as Ayumi is the most agonizingly bland character to grace a videogame in quite a well.

The essential part of the game’s design and its attraction for many gamers would be the ability to rewind time whilst in combat. Time, and the duration you can rewind, is measured by a gauge which continually depletes as you rewind time. Depending on how you stop and rewind time you can create various time clones of yourself to attack enemies. This basically means repeatedly bashing out combos on your controller and rewinding time which becomes quite difficult in the heat of battle, and doesn’t work out half the time as planned. The time rewind mode is needed for some of the puzzles which require you to rewind time in order to open a door, or push a button as enemies attack. On top of this, you can use spells and guns to attack whilst in time rewind mode. Everything becomes heavily convoluted and the system doesn’t work as it should.

Visuals in the game are pleasant enough, but other hack-and-slash games from the last two years look visually more pleasing and attractive to the eye. The game’s visual aesthetic is heavily over-saturated meaning that at times navigating Ayumi through the planet’s environment becomes unbearably slow and clumsy.

If there’s one thing this game lacks and desperately needs is ‘flow’. It just feels static and more of a chore to play than anything. Blades Of Time could have been a step in a new direction for Gaijin Entertainment and Konami. Rather the game is a wasted exercise in how not to make a hack-and-slash game. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone. I was sorely disappointed at this wasted opportunity and I hope Konami doesn’t finance further games from this IP. Please just kill it with fire.

With last year’s Ace Combat review, a Top Gun: Hard Lock review in the foreseeable future and today’s Birds of Steel review, well I’ve sort of become eGamer’s official flight game reviewer. I don’t exactly remember climbing into the proverbial cockpit and signing onto all these reviews, but I don’t mind; flight games seem to be reliably decent and even good with the case of Birds of Steel. Birds of Steel, unlike the flight games I’m accustomed to, which are usually modern arcade fighters, is a WWII flight combat simulator. More than that though, it’s chocked full of content and from the opening menu screen you know you’re dealing with a game taking itself quite seriously. The WWII appropriate soundtrack immediately soars from my speakers (pun intended) and was really quite good; it made sure I was in the mood to swap lead with any and all opposition who crossed my Spitfire’s crosshairs.

Of course, and with my experience of flight games, I know that more than anything, an overly complex control scheme or bad controls instantly destroys any appeal or enjoyment. It’s never fun when you fly into the ocean, which is easier than you might think, or crash while coming into land, only to have to start the whole mission over again. In this regard however, Birds of Steel is an easy game to learn and difficult to master, the way it should be. And if you’re having second thoughts about the realism the game proclaims, you can always set the difficulty of control to simplified and it becomes very tolerable, even with little to no experience. Knowing that no controls will ever be perfect however, and because WWII planes didn’t exactly break the sound barrier, or get anywhere exceptionally fast, Birds of Steel has appropriately placed checkpoints throughout its many missions. And boy does it have a lot of missions and modes to enjoy. From historical campaigns that give you the relevant historical context and plenty of archived footage to entertain and enlighten you; to something like 100 other procedural missions; a mission editor; a dynamic campaign mode and many multiplayer modes.

Dynamic campaign allows you to relive many of the greatest historical battles of the era and gives you a chance to change things for the better or worse. You can not only pick the side you fly for but choose the missions you partake in and all your efforts, whether you succeed or fail in a particular mission, changes the results of the battle. It’s not exactly world changing but it’s a nice concept that is executed well and I enjoyed it. Multiplayer modes are just as varied and start with simple cooperative missions where you and your friends fly as a single squadron to opposing team versus modes. The versus mode offers a few variations on capture orientated missions and comes down to holding areas and watching your opponents points drop quicker than yours. There are also tournaments and special events that allow you to enjoy limited offer missions and awards should you take part and win. All you need to enter is an online connection, the appropriate rank and plane and you’re good to go.

The multiplayer modes can be more fun than the large scale battles the single-player mode offers and dogfighting another player, relying only on ability thanks to the lack of guided missiles, is quite satisfying when you wipe them from the sky. Experience is achieved by doing all sorts of acts throughout the single-player and multiplayer missions and rewards you with higher ranks and the superior planes that accompany those higher ranks. It actually works surprisingly well and has, on more than one occasion, inspired me to re-attempt a mission in order to get the experience needed to afford and try out all the new planes available.

Speaking of which, each plane is quite well detailed and although the large areas you fly through could use the extra pixel or two; it’s a better looking game than almost any other flight simulator and I never had a single performance hiccup. The only thing better than the look of the planes is flying into a massive aerial battle with smoke, explosions, AA fire, planes diving and destroying each other around you and you trying to nail that one who got away; Birds of Steel does that and does it fairly well. All-in-all, Birds of Steel is a good game and an even better flight combat simulator. I had my doubts about it when I got it delivered to me one early Friday morning, mid-Mass Effect 3 I might add, but I was wrong. It’s far from the perfect flight simulator and still maintains that proud flight simulator tradition of the occasional tedious minute where there’s nothing to do but fly toward a checkpoint. Other than that however, it’s worth looking into.

Capcom are known to be completely in-love with the idea of cross-overs, but it seems that this time they went a bit bonkers. Street Fighter and Tekken are two fighting games you’d never see sitting at the same table, but I suppose that’s what makes this idea so unique and fun. Credit to Capcom, fusing two games and universes together, that couldn’t be more different, was undoubtedly a gutsy move on their part, but fortunately, and rather surprisingly, the result is actually pretty decent. There’s a freshness about Street Fighter X Tekken that definitely makes it welcome in the fighting genre, and it’s quite an ambitious title that aimed to offer an experience fitting for not just casual and hardcore fighting fans, but fans of all skill levels. Furthermore, it had the challenging task of bringing the best elements from both Street Fighter and Tekken together while still favouring the former in gameplay and style. Just so you know, we’ll have to wait and see one day how Namco Bandai do with Tekken X Street Fighter, the still-to-come fighter that focuses more on the Tekken fighting style, but that’s a story for another day.

Admittedly, right off the bat Street Figthter X Tekken appears to be pretty standard in terms of content. The game didn’t seem to be bursting with content, and my initial feeling was one of being disappointed. Thankfully I soon discovered that the Arcade and Trial modes do a great deal to compensate for this, although the game does feel bare-boned in the end. Arcade mode takes you through the story, based on the first character you choose, and it’s actually really entertaining with its awesome cutscenes and its lighthearted feel which you’ll get to experience through the characters’ quips before and after battle. I was particularly happy with the final boss fight, as for once in a fighting game it wasn’t a frustrating and cheap affair, although that could depend on your difficulty setting. After Arcade you’ll get your standard Versus mode that caters for up to four players, an in-depth Training mode, Challenge mode and of course customisation and Network features. Challenge mode opens up three gameplay choices in the form of Trial, which is an awesome mode that you’ll go to in order to polish up your techniques, Mission mode, in which you’ll defeat CPU opponents under special conditions, and Tutorial mode, where you’ll learn the basic rules of the game. Finally, Network allows for up to two players and lets you play online, view replays and check rankings, while the customisation menu lets you edit characters.

The game does a great job of providing players with resources to learn its mechanics, through its Training and Trial modes, as well as offering the ability to watch replays of skilled players and actually spar with a buddy online. It’s a great thing because if you’re a newcomer you’ll have plenty to go on, and won’t be left in the dark or feel inadequate. Unfortunately, online connectivity is not completely stable, and lag is entirely unpredictable, which can make for a frustrating experience, and make the online feel almost like a lottery in this regard. It seems to vary from player to player, with some experiencing things as almost unplayable and others getting minimal lag. Either way, for now it’s a bit of a letdown, and a bad stain on an otherwise exciting game. Hopefully all it will take is a patch or two to improve this or fix it entirely. In the mean time, there’s a lot to get used to, a great character roster to try out and playing with buddies will always provide the most entertainment. Not to mention that it will take you quite some time to play through the enjoyable Arcade mode with a variety of characters.

Street Fighter X Tekken is a 2D fighter that features two-on-two combat, with each player using two characters and being able to swap between them at any time in battle, either by using the designated button input or during combos. You’re able to play one-on-one fights with each player controlling both party members, or get a friend to actually play on your team, or even play two-on-two fights supporting up to four players, which are great fun. Fights can get pretty tense due to the fact that if one party member falls, the entire team loses no matter how much health the still-alive fighter has. However, when you swap out, your resting character will regenerate health up to a point, so it’s important that you manage your team well. However, a complaint I have is that characters can regenerate a bit too much health too quickly when tagged out, and this causes problems when it comes to the length of matches. But Capcom has done a great job with the two-party system, and you’ll really have to be effective in combat to dish out the most damage during combos, as the game focuses quite a bit on juggling combos. If you’ve played Super Street Fighter IV, then you’ll probably be familiar with many of the game’s mechanics, but there are some new features that do well to differentiate the experience.

The gameplay is similar to Street Fighter with its six-button layout and special meter that is used for super moves and EX moves. While the action is fast-paced and really fluid, it’s not quite like Street Fighter due to some minor input delay, which caters for the Tekken cast. But Street Fighter X Tekken focuses a lot on your special meter, as it’s built up rather quickly and can be used for one of the game’s most important features, namely cross-cancelling. By using designated button inputs or some of your special meter you’re able to attack your opponent and bring your partner in mid-combo to dish out the pain. It’s important to learn how to use your characters, because you’ll find that keeping it simple by only switching out when your character is low on health will weaken your combat effectiveness and put you at a disadvantage in the late game. On the subject of super moves, they only cost two blocks of your special meter, while all three blocks can be used for a double special involving both your characters. The game is great fun to play, and mixing up the tools at your disposal is enjoyable, making for quite dynamic fights. With regards to what’s new, arguably two of the game’s most daring features are its new Gem system and Pandora mode, which both do well to cause some controversy.

Firstly, Pandora mode is like an all or nothing gamble, made available in your last moments, that sticks you with one fighter from your team and gives you ten seconds and an unlimited special meter to defeat your opponent with, otherwise you automatically die. The idea sounds intense, and in some cases it can be rewarding, but for the most part it’s a mixed bag because for one specials run down the clock so you can pretty much kill yourself even if you play your cards right, and two it can turn fights cheap. Moving on to the Gem system, which is the biggest addition to the game, I found it to be quite unlikable in all honesty, and both a hassle to customise and rather irrelevant in casual fights. The system is used to add modifiers to your characters, in the form of Boost Gems and Assist Gems, with the former giving bonuses to attack, defense and speed, when certain conditions have been met, and the latter giving passive boosts that automatically trigger at the cost of your special meter. Then you get certain Gems that only benefit Pandora mode, which is discouraging. The hassle comes from the fact that you can’t create your own preset of gems to apply to any characters you want, you’re limited to two gem sets per character and you have to modify individual characters’ gem sets, which is tedious.

Those two features aside, a good thing about Street Fighter X Tekken is definitely that it manages to effectively cater for casual players without completely alienating hardcore fighting fans. It’s a very accessible game that feels easy for the casual crowd to get into. Even if you’re just an average player, you can still feel competent after a bit of practice. And it does go pretty far to help out casual or less experienced players, even allowing you to set quick combos that map complicated inputs to a single button. However, there’s a catch to using these shortcuts, as they have various costs attached such as draining your special meter or reducing your damage. I’m still mixed regarding how I feel about this system, and I didn’t really want to use it, but I suppose that it might be a good thing for players who need the extra assistance and have difficulty with inputs. I do admire the fact that Street Fighter X Tekken took some solid steps towards opening up the fighting genre to a wider audience, but it does suffer from some mishaps due to some of its design choices, and its depth is in question.

I’ve briefly mentioned some things about the countdown clock, and it’s an important complaint because it often harms the fighting experience. Sure you can set the round time to infinity, but there’s a competitive reason time is limited. Now, the issue is that in Street Fighter X Tekken I’ve had more time overs than I’ve had in any other fighting game in recent history, and this is down to a few reasons. But I’m not completely sure whether it’s because matches just go on too long or if I don’t know the game that well yet, but it’s quite irritating that the clock can cause such annoyance and harm comeback potential. One of the biggest reasons for this is that super moves don’t freeze the timer, and some of them go on for long so you can drain time. Also, if time runs out during a super then damage stops being dealt, which is really frustrating if you manage to land one in the dying moments of the round. Another reason for this can be blamed on certain stages and some character’s walk speeds. They both work hand in hand. Some stages are a bit too big while some characters walk too slowly, and this can encourage run-away tactics as well as eat up time. It’s clear that there’s a little bit of unbalance here.

However, there’s plenty to love when it comes to the character roster and gameplay, which is what’s ultimately important. Naturally it will take time to get any idea of how the balance is looking, but right now it feels awesome to mix Street Fighter and Tekken characters together, with the latter turning out surprisingly great. Capcom somehow managed to make the selected Tekken characters feel right at home in this game, whilst still keeping true to the characters at heart, and that’s something to admire. You’ll definitely spend a lot of time just trying out all of the different characters and trying to find out what your favourite team is, and there’s plenty of diversity and reward in this. It’s easy to say after playing this that the Street Fighter and Tekken rosters actually complement each other rather well, and it does make me more excited, personally speaking, to see how Tekken X Street Fighter will turn out.

As with any new fighting game, it’s quite hard to rate in its early stages when gamers are still learning it and getting to know the ins and outs of the game. And in the end only time will tell if there is a competitive future for this title. Due to this it’s hard to predict whether this game will run out of steam or if people will find things in it that they really like and grow to appreciate. Or whether the opposite will happen. But as it stands now, it’s really fun to play and a solid effort on Capcom’s part. However it’s just hard to tell whether this game is deep or not, because it feels a lot more casual. And one of the things that really got to me was that a lot of the in-game content has been locked, most likely to be released as future downloadable content. For example, both customisable colours and new gems have to be bought, and apparently there are a bunch of characters on disk that are locked, which is just pathetic, but expected of Capcom these days. Although that doesn’t make it right. In the end, I do very much enjoy playing it, respect its freshness and understand the challenge Capcom faced with a game such as this. And the game does do a lot right when it comes to appealing to a wider audience.

Graphically, Street Fighter X Tekken is great. It’s pretty much a similar style to Street Fighter IV, packing loads of personality, heavily stylized character models and flashy super moves. Stages are vibrant and dynamic, but some of them didn’t really impress me as much, visually, as some of the standard Street Fighter levels. But there’s no denying that this game is awesome to watch in motion, and sounds fantastic. I did have an issue with some of the stage music though, as certain arenas have irritating music that are painful to listen to. Regarding how the game performs on the PS3 and Xbox 360, it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two from a technical perspective, especially when it comes to the online play, but it’s evident that the PS3 version has a more steady frame rate and less screen tearing than the Xbox 360 version. If you’re deciding which version to get, I’d probably suggest the PS3 version since it contains additional characters for free, giving you a bigger roster to choose from.

Street Fighter X Tekken is a fun, fresh and rewarding game that the fighting genre probably needs. It’s a surprisingly decent game, but there’s a fair amount of uncertainty surrounding it right now and there are a lot of things that could be improved on or changed for the better. Only time will tell whether this game has a competitive future ahead of it, but for now it’s an entertaining title and a solid effort to offer something new, although it is flawed. It’s easy to have a good time playing it, especially with friends, and it’s definitely worth trying out, but just don’t expect it to blow you away and you’ll be fine.

This is not FIFA-lite, it’s not a football simulator and it certainly isn’t going to give you a deep and complex single-player experience like its big brother. No, FIFA Street is another beast entirely. The core focus is different and the way you play the game is even further removed from what FIFA/PES fans may be used to.

And now, a brief history lesson. FIFA Street was created as football’s iteration of the successful NBA Street and while the first game missed more than it hit, the second had enough going for it to be a pretty good and quite memorable PS2 title. The focus was on crazy tricks, ball control and capturing that real street feel which FIFA Street 2 did expertly. FIFA Street 3 decided to take a stab at establishing the series on the current generation of consoles and failed miserably due to being little more than a big demo and having such little scope that it was an insult to demand the price of a normal game for it. Everyone looked like wonky caricatures and the only good feature was being able to wall-run but we have Prince of Persia for that.

So the new game doesn’t only have a reputation to uphold by finally establishing this series on the current gen the way its predecessors did on PS2 but it also has to undo everything that the third game led people to think about FIFA Street as a series. It was tentatively then that I accepted news of a new FIFA Street being in development some months ago but then I saw the first trailer and I knew that this was what I’d been waiting for.

Having spent a weekend with this game, I can confidently say that this is a triumphant return to form for the series and certainly a must-have for any soccer fan. It’s not as zany as previous titles but a little more grounded and grown-up with the focus still on mesmerising footwork and having fun.

FIFA Street may be FIFA 12 deep down since it runs on the same engines, uses largely the same animations and was even created by a team of people that worked on FIFA 11, but that’s certainly not the case from an exterior perspective. The game is stripped down and far more simplified when compared to its bigger, more intimidating sibling. The idea is to be more navigable with a focus on making the game more accessible to newcomers and old hands alike. There are some idiosyncrasies such as Options and Settings being tucked away in some sub-menu rather than just being right there in the main menu but it’s nothing big, just some odd yet inconsequential design choices. Anyway, menus and the overall interface are pretty slick and really lets players do everything they need to.

While it is initially jarring for those accustomed to the likes of FIFA 12 and PES 2012, this game plays very differently and forces you to play it in ways that you won’t necessarily be used to. The last two annual FIFA releases have forced players to approach a match with more tactical awareness and a better understanding of how to work the ball rather than just sprinting with the ball and shooting. This is essential in FIFA 12 or you’ll struggle quite a great deal if you don’t play the game the way it wants you to. This is exactly what FIFA Street does, it demands that you play in a certain way and at times the game resembles a fascist dictator for this, but it never makes any apologies for it and certainly shouldn’t.

The primary assets in this game are skill and close-control, because what makes this format of the beautiful game so much more attractive is the way players can weave in and out of opponents with the ball stuck to their feet, or leave their opponents standing flummoxed in the wake of a dizzying trick performed at their expense.

True to reality, the bias is on attacking with defence being reserved to the backseat. Controls are largely just slightly simplified versions of your standard FIFA scheme which includes a more basic iteration of the new Tactical Defending that takes some getting used to, for noobs like myself who have stuck with Legacy Defending, but you get the hang of it all rather quickly because that’s the whole point – for the basic controls to be easily mastered so that the focus is really on manipulating your analogue sticks to make the ball do majestic and magical things at the feet of your player. Players have a greater degree of close-control than they do in FIFA and pulling off some simple tricks is fairly basic. Even jiggling your right and left analogues about a bit will likely produce something half decent, so even a rank amateur can get past players, but it takes some practice to get the hang of purposefully pulling off some tricks, while learning when and how to use them takes just as much perseverance.

The attacking bias means that defending is a bit tricky and you often only have one man at the back to stave off an onslaught, so a goal here and there is inevitable, but matches are typically very high scoring and it is pretty easy to score using the right technique. This gives each match this great high-intensity, high-scoring feel to it. The game seems to be very German in its insistence on you following a set playing style since deviating from the standard of short passes and big skills with a lobbed pass here or a ranged shot there practically never yields results. Even through-balls are wayward. It’s a wee bit Nazi, but you’ll certainly appreciate it once you see what the game has got you doing to get past players when you take the easy options out.

There are some issues that have crept in such as goalkeeper AI being notoriously haphazard with keepers sometimes rushing out of their goal to steal the ball from an opponent and other times the keeper will just stand there and you have to force him out manually. Auto-switching is also iffy and when it doesn’t work, you kind of have to cycle through your players to get to the one you want. These are issues that only come up when you’re defending but it never becomes a serious problem because you can usually prevent the goal and even if you don’t, goals are easy to come by. It’s certainly not FIFA 12 where that one goal could decide the match.

That said, FIFA Street is no slouch when it comes to variety. There are nearly 40 unique venues to play at and not only are they all vibrant and adequately detailed, but their layouts are different and this modifies the way you play the game ever so slightly. There’s a variety of locales from parking lots to backstreets, gyms, courts, riverbanks and more. Some are expansive and can comfortably host a 6v6 match while others are cramped and require a great deal of close control and accurate skill. Even the size of the goals vary and some pitches have outs while others have barriers which you can bounce the ball off and this contributes to making each location feel different since you play slightly differently at each.

Do you know what really got me excited about this game though? The fact that it would include over 100 of the best clubs from Europe and North America. The entire Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, MLS all those teams are there with a squad of about 10 players to choose from. The trimmed squads won’t please everyone since I believe players such as Andy Carroll didn’t make it into Liverpool’s squad but there’s largely nothing to complain about on that front. Every football fan has this debate with friends or family at some point: “Which team would be the best at 5-a-side?” Well, now you can find out and boy is it a treat to be able to do so. Any fan will appreciate this addition and it is truly something to behold to be able to play with Messi or Nani or Zlatan or Kaka in a setting that demands their creative best. There’s also a smattering of international teams on tap and some street teams to boot.

As far as match-types go there’s such a wide-spread that you won’t get bored any time soon. There’s standard 5v5 or 4v4 with no outs and that’s either timed or to a certain number of goals. Then there’s the more professional futsal which is 6v6 or 5v5 on a rather large court with outs and set-pieces. We also have Freestyle which requires you to reach a certain number of skill points (earned for doing tricks) before the opposition. The catch is you need to score to lock in the points you’ve built up. Similar to that is Panna, which is really just about pure skill and being able to make your opponent look like an utter potato. You get points based on how you beat your opponent and must score to lock those points in while sending your opponent’s uncashed points to the trash. Finally we have Last Man Standing (keep calm and see what I did there) which starts you out with any number of players from 3 to 5 and you lose a man for each goal you score. Like dominoes, the aim of the game is to be the first to lose all your men.

Each type requires a different approach and focuses your skills in different areas of this format of the game, whether it be passing, close control, or trickery. Lots and lots of variety makes for a slightly different experience every time you play the game. You know what really stands at odds with this variety? The way each player feels whether you’re on the ball with them or chasing down an opponent, they all feel the same and while some are better than others at dribbling or skills, you don’t really feel it even though you can see it on-screen. This is perhaps because they seem to use largely generic animations so that Ronaldo (who is apparently from that part of Portugal that no one wants to be associated with) doesn’t move any differently to Rooney really.

That said, the game does at least look great and while players don’t look any better than they do in FIFA 12, many look a touch more realistic such as Ronaldo who just never seemed to be rendered properly up till now. However, some players look more than a little strange and Luis Suarez looks distinctly Indian. I seem to be mentioning issues with Liverpool’s team more than any other, it’s curious how that happens to the team with perhaps the worst luck the footballing world has ever known. The environments are rich nonetheless and the silky visuals are a perfect compliment for those exquisitely smooth skills.

So what’s this game got to contend with FIFA’s Manager and Be a Pro modes? It’s called World Tour and while it can’t hold a candle to the depth and intricacy of Manager mode, it is good fun and pretty compelling at that. You create your own Virtual Pro or can even import the one you prepared earlier in FIFA 12 and then assemble a team of unknowns who will then go on to tackle the world. You can create your own team crest, design a kit and so on and even choose what apparel each player wears when they’re in street clothes for matches.

You complete events to progress and there are four stages of events as it were. You start off in regional where you can choose what region of which country you’d like to start in and then move onto nationals for that country and penultimately continental before going international. Each time the difficulty tips up just a bit and you’ll face increasingly tougher opposition. You start off facing street teams comprising nobody’s like yourself but by National level already, you’ll be squaring off against mid-table teams from the country you started in.

Your players earn skill points for performing in matches and these can be used to upgrade them in various areas such as defence, speed, dribbling, you get the picture. It’s a great system and before you know it, your team will be pretty damn invincible. Winning events also unlocks content such as new street teams for Exhibition Matches or a new location to play in but mostly you’ll unlock branded apparel to kit your players out in. What is a bit incongruous is the fact that after winning certain events, you will have the opportunity to poach a player from one of the team’s you played against but the thing is that barring their superior proficiency for tricks, these players are usually pretty much inferior to your starting team in every way after you’ve levelled them up a couple of times. What I did notice that’s pretty cool is that amongst the fictitious players in these street teams are some real street players and freestylers such as South Africa’s Kamalio. That was kinda cool for me but nothing too special since he was slow and couldn’t tackle, and so became pretty useless pretty quickly since you sort of have to be an all-rounder in street soccer, since positions are not fixed, because there aren’t really enough people for that.

As I said, it is a surprisingly compelling campaign and could last you a good few days if you speed through it or play on easy. What makes it even more intriguing is that when playing tournaments you can opt to play against real people and their teams rather than an AI team. It’s cool in theory since it’s still part of your single-player experience except it depends on a strong community to work and people drop in and out of tournaments like dead flies on a yo-yo.

Online you can play an exhibition match but only with your created team and not one of the club or international teams. This sucks, because I wanted to play against Dean, but because I had progressed much further in World Tour than him my team was like Madrid and his was a bit like Powerlines FC. I’d prefer the option to play on more level terms. Past that you can sign up to take part in the divisions which are essentially 15 leagues of sequentially greater rank complete with relegation and promotion. Each season is 10 matches and it’s a nice concept, but there’s little to play for besides trophies and bragging rights. There’s no exclusive apparel to be unlocked or anything of the sort.

The online multiplayer is really just lacking a driving force and isn’t helped by the lag you tend to pick up when playing. Even the modified version of Autolog borrowed from NFS doesn’t do the game any justice. It’s called Street Log, and that’s probably where it belongs, because all EA had to do was adapt the system for a sports game, but instead they ripped out bits and pieces of it so that all you have is the Autolog that you got way back in Hot Pursuit. So it tracks your friends’ progress and shows you what they’ve been up to, but there isn’t that interactivity to it where you are challenged to best a friend . Like the rest of the game, it’s a simplified version of the source material but unlike the rest of the game, it’s worse off as a result.

This is a great social game, definitely one to play when you have friends over, but not one for online which is a cruel irony if ever I saw one.

One thing to note is that there’s no commentary in this game. You get announcers at some events, but that’s about as much as you will get. The only other voices you’ll hear are those of players as they shout and call, and you’ll also hear some spectators. There’s a good mix of songs to play to, but the problem is that there are barely enough songs to put on a mixtape cassette. There are literally only five or six songs and no option to add your own playlist. If there is, it’s hidden deep within some obscure sub-menu.

The game takes those FIFA engines we’re so used to and re-purposes them. The visuals are put to much better use with these smaller, more detailed environments and the precision dribbling from FIFA 12 is a really invaluable part of this game that absolutely shines in showing us what it can do. You don’t see too much of the Impact Engine, but there are glimpses of it in the way a player can lose his footing or slip on a court surface and it’s also there when you’re skipping past opponents with a more realistic interaction taking place rather than your player just kind of ghosting through the other.

A real problem is that the game is sometimes a bit too laid back in its approach and doesn’t really recapture that energy and vibe that football usually has on the street. You feel it somewhat later on when there’s a sizeable crowd around you which cheers of excitement every now and then. This game certainly has no qualms about what it is, but you get the feeling that it’s subconsciously trying to be a bit more like its more mature sibling than it should. I’m not going to psycho-analyse the game because, well then I’d probably need my own psych-analysis and a padded cell but what I’m saying is that the game feels more grown-up than I remember FIFA Street being and while it makes for a great experience, it lacks that certain craziness and energy that it just should have.

A great game, there’s no about that but FIFA Street could do with loosening up a bit and giving us that little bit of atmosphere and emotion that it lacks somewhat. The series seems to be tending more towards becoming a futsal simulator but I suspect this is to balance out the ridiculous insanity that was happening in FIFA Street 3. I mean wall-running, my goodness what a preposterous notion and with a soccer ball? Don’t make me laugh. You know what it is? It’s the fact that this game was developed by a previous FIFA team, as in people who are used to making serious sports games.

FIFA Street is filled with tons of variety and despite some issues and niggles here and there along with a patchy multiplayer, it is a very solid game and a great springboard from which to relaunch the series. It must be noted that you can see places where EA could have perhaps done better and it feels like they left that for future titles.

Ultimately, you have a hugely fun game that looks good, plays well and is simple enough to get the hang of very quickly. Don’t believe me? My brothers put down FIFA 12 for this and still haven’t gone back.

Last year was very good to gamers. With titles such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman: Arkham City, Portal 2 and more, gamers were really spoiled for choice when it came to top notch AAA-titles. As good as this may sound, it was also sad, as many equally as good titles went unnoticed, despite the fact that most of them were GOTY winning material. One of these, and probably the best of the lot, was Rayman: Origins, a 2D, side-scrolling platformer that was able to both impress and blow away critics (including myself) with its incredible level design, unique and gorgeous visuals and undeniable charm. Now, it has finally made its way onto a platform that actually seems perfect for it; The PlayStation Vita.

Making the trasition to the portable platform seems to have left no marks on the quality though, which is probably the most incredible thing about this game. The title is identical to its console counterpart, however one of the most addictive parts of the game did get stripped; Multiplayer. Part of the fun on the console version was having a few mates over and taking on levels in some of the most frantic 4-player co-op action you’ll ever find, but the cut is understandable. Still, some online co-op could’ve still been implemented. Aside from that, the game is identical. You’ll still take control of Rayman and his friends in their quest to, well, do something. As you should know by now, Rayman: Origins doesn’t concern itself with a half-assed story, but rather lets the fantastic gameplay speak for itself. And boy does it have a loud voice.

At its core, Rayman Origins is the best platformer you’ll probably ever play, despite its 2D only orientation. Rayman has a fairly big repertoire of moves that will allow him to shrink, hover, jump, slide and punch his way through obstacles, all of which are unlocked as the game progresses. Levels feel fast and frantic, and the way the environment interacts with your actions is one hell of a sight to behold. Entire rock columns and structures crumble, monsters chase you down, and colourful fish swarm around you in varying locales that all scream with diversity and artistic brilliance, and having these beautiful locations that engulf Rayman are probably some of the best features of the game.

Visuals look as vibrant as ever on the PS Vita’s fantastic OLED screen, and even with a smaller resolution, the amount of work put into the distinct art style is still easily apparent. As most of the artwork was hand drawn before being but into a digital state, every single piece of foliage, every enemy, every collectable feels vibrant and alive. Rayman Origins really does take you into his world or colourful, and sometimes terrifying, inhabitants, and the artists in charge can really be proud of what they accomplished. The framerate also never fails to keep up with all the fast paced frantic fun, making this feel more and more like a console game in your pocket.

But what exactly does one do in Rayman Origins? Well, I’m not going to go into too much detail, because as I said, the game is identical to the console version, which I reviewed last year. In a nutshell, you’ll take control of Rayman in the pursuit of freeing some cute little pink beings that have been trapped by some nightmarish creatures, or something along those lines. As I said, story is never really a concern, so you won’t really have to worry why you need to help these creatures, but it never really matters. Throughout each level, you collect glowing yellow Lums, which are basically the same as Golden Rings in Sonic, and they quickly become an obsession of yours. Part of the brilliance in this title is just how addictive it is. You could easily find yourself playing levels over and over again, in the pursuit of capturing more Lums, or uncovering secret areas. You’re never forced to come back and reply stages, but clearing them quite thoroughly will help unlock even more exciting and unique areas, such as the “chest chase” levels. It’s rare for a game like this to hook you so deep, that you almost feel obligated to finish a stage in its entirety. Not because you have to, but because you absolutely want to.

Chest Chases are probably the most exhilarating pieces of platforming in the game, and it’s a shame there aren’t more opportunities to get more out of them. Each one pits you against a chest that has caught onto Ryman’s box sashing ways and instead of lying in wait for the same fate, darts off and forces you to keep close behind. These levels are extremely exhilarating; mainly due to the fantastic level design that surrounds them. One wrong move could mean failure, and having the environment shift and change at a rapid rate as you sprint through really keeps you on your toes. Thankfully, the amount of challenge present is just right, and you’ll never feel cheated or frustrated. This is a great demonstration of Rayman Origin’s well implemented difficulty curve, and a testament to just how tight the control scheme is. You’ll never perform a jump or move that you never initiated, and there is absolutely no delay to your actions on the screen,. You could compare it to Dark Souls in a way. When you fail, it’s always because you did something wrong, and you’ll always know exactly how to mend your mistake. Trial and error may creep in here and there, but with such a forgiving life system, you’ll never feel too scared to experiment.

All of this is nicely wrapped in a package that, at first glance, seems completely identical to your console version. But surely there must be some added or different features, right? Well, yes and no, as Rayman Origins on the PS Vita shies away from adding anything really meaningful to the formula, which in itself is good and bad. Good, because, well, it was just so darn perfect on consoles, that we should be happy the full and non-watered down possibility wasn’t made into a reality. However, if you’ve played it to completion on a console, you’ll find it hard to go through the same task again on a Vita, especially when most of the stages you’ve already fully explored and raced through. Justifying a second purchase of the same game is hard for most, but having Rayman with you wherever you go can be worth it, especially when you have nothing to do and you realise he’s right there waiting for you. The joy in that moment of realisation is indescribable.

On the flip side, Rayman Origins never really takes full advantage of what the Vita has to offer. Sure, you can use the touchscreen to navigate menus, collect lums and kill enemies, but other than a few totems scattered around levels that you have to touch to collect, nothing really makes meaningful use of this big feature. This is probably my only other disappointment with the game. While I’m glad no forced and stupid features were added for the sake of being there, I feel more could’ve been done with the tools laid out. Some neat accelerometer moments could’ve been fun, but if Ubisoft realised that it wasn’t working with what they had, and decided to put it in anyway, I would be angrier. So, maybe the restraint on the new features is actually a good thing.

Add in a “ghost” time trial mode, and that is basically what Rayman Origins offers you on the Vita. Don’t get me wrong though, this is still one incredible title, and easily one of the best you’ll ever pick up for the platform. If you recently bought a Vita and the only thing you think is good is Uncharted, think again. Go out and buy Rayman Origins. It will change your life, in an absolutely fantastic way. Platforming is far from dead.

I was asked to review The House Of The Dead III and with fond memories I remembered the days of old school light gun games on the PS2 like Time Crisis, House Of The Dead II and even Point Blank. Most of these games I played when I was a younger gamer frequenting the arcade like a lone survivor with a shotgun weaving through the masses of ‘zombies’. ‘Zombies’ in my experience were teenagers who wanted to get it on in the recesses of the putt-putt section at the shopping mall. Those were the good days. House Of The Dead III is of the same period as those good old’ arcade days and its age shows clearly from the first play-through, all the way through into the later levels.

Like any Japanese rail shooter, House Of The Dead III has a story which is as nonsensical and ‘wtf’ as those weird Japanese adverts you sometimes come across on YouTube. Some scientist’s kid has succumbed to the effects of a horrible disease. As a means to curing his son the suspect scientist thinks it a worthy mission to turn all of the employees that work for him into Hulk-like zombies which are most of the bosses, and a number of different zombies who are as absurd as the storyline itself.

In the game, you play as Lisa Rogan, daughter of the first game’s protagonist, and a guy named G. Yes he is named G. You can switch between both of them. Either Lisa or G. It’s all up to you. So I chose to play as Lisa because she looked badass with the shotgun and G looked like he shouldn’t be anywhere near any type of weapon. He was always in constant danger whilst play, and was attacked by zombies countless times. So I didn’t trust him to hold his own. Let alone with me controlling him.

The game starts off with you breaking into some kind of facility with video sequences played throughout telling the story of the deranged scientist and his zombie child. The game itself is as simple as any light gun game gets. Especially, when on a PlayStation 3 and the fact that I didn’t have PlayStation Move meant that I couldn’t test out the new PlayStation move optimisations built into this new release of the game.

But moving on to the actual gameplay, all you basically do in House Of The Dead III is shoot zombies on the screen as the flounder towards you with Thriller dance moves and weird superhuman speed. You are equipped with a shotgun. Therefore, you shoot the damn zombies with the shotgun. It’s simple science and the game is all about timing. If you waste all your rounds and miss a few of the undead you can lose a life. But if you time your shots well enough you can earn a high amount of points, earn a better ranking at the end of a stage and win a life as well. However, you have to be careful as you only have a few lives. House Of The Dead III is a trial and error game which rewards replays due to its arcade roots which back in the day was more about eating up your pocket money as fast as possible, then letting you overcome the difficulty curve.

However, I was used to Time Crisis so House Of The Dead III was not too much of stretch for me. I made it through a few of the chapters before I died. As a result, I can safely say that the game isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does indeed have a fetish for puking out huge-ass bosses like its going out of fashion. Every boss you encounter in the first few stages is basically the same guy; huge with a central weak point. Again, I expected this kind of level design with House Of The Dead III because of its arcade roots. What is nice about this instalment of the game is that the visuals have been up scaled for HD resolutions and the arcade feel of the game is still maintained. despite a move towards a console platform like the PlayStation 3. Although, I do have my doubts about the PlayStation Move support; I still think the game is decent enough.

I just feel that the visuals haven’t dated well and the storyline is too corny and predictable for the gamers of today. The sound design is terrible and the voice acting involves some of the most hysterical dialogue. In truth, House Of The Dead III is like a B-Grade action movie and many gamers won’t understand that going into the game.

After playing the game quite a bit I still think that the Time Crisis series is more challenging, and that this type of game is still more suited to the halls of an arcade than an analogue controller, or motion-based controller. I would really dig a light gun peripheral for the PlayStation Move. Maybe then I would consider buying the motion-based controller system, and recommending this game to anyone.

Originally planned for a full retail release until it was decided that a shorter, smaller, downloadable game would be more appropriate; I Am Alive finally arrives for download. So was it worth the wait, should it have remained a full release or is this exactly what we need in a downloadable game? Well there’s certainly a lot of promise behind the premise to I Am Alive. Surviving an apocalyptic class event, appropriately named ‘The Event’, and navigating a now dystopian city, all the while trying to survive in the midst of a more ruthless, less forgiving, humanity; it certainly has its charm. It’s apparent I Am Alive was meant to walk the path less taken, and I’m not just talking about avoiding some insatiable need for every developer to add zombies, as if wiping out most of humanity isn’t enough. Instead, I Am Alive gives you control of an average Joe, a man barely able to find his way in this new world.

What I enjoyed was that instead of the usual no questions, only shooting bravado we are accustomed to in these sorts of games; I Am Alive sticks you with a man who has only managed to maintain his sanity and a thread of humanity with the thought of returning to his family. Unfortunately, it’s a narrative that lasts for about as long as it takes to traverse your first couple objects and soon reduces itself to the more tedious acts of survival; like fetch quests, random combat situations and Uncharted style climbing throughout the city.

I Am Alive tries to emulate a world’s end situation by making use of a combination of situations like limited rations, stamina and health recovery as well as making each fight a life-or-death situation. On paper it’s quite a good idea though its execution has left much to be desired. The climbing situations quickly become frustrating when quirky controls mean you stumble your climb just enough for your character to run out of stamina mid-climb and so fall to his death repeatedly. Moreover, many of the fight situations are actually trial and error and never actually allow for much variety in approach; attempting anything different usually results in your death. This is because the control scheme makes use of the same button configurations for many of your actions and is so fussy about your exact position, context and how you’re facing that many of the planned combat situations become inelegant slash fests or hoping you have enough ammo in your gun, which you won’t. This wouldn’t be so bad if the enemies dropped ammo as they are supposed to but a couple annoying bugs have meant they do not drop as often as they should. Even the bow, which is meant to provide a reusable arrow, can fall victim to glitches and you’ll find your arrow disappearing after taking out only one of a few gang members now approaching you. Finally, the interesting, and supposedly more realistic narrative, quickly simplifies itself into encountering every human as being either a ruthless thug or immobile, scared survivor. It left me cynical as to the nature of the world this game takes place in and I lost even more interest in the game’s premise.

Plot wise, and for all the good the opening cinematic and initial game sequence made, I Am Alive tapered off from its heroic and fundamentally human tale of survival to a quest monger who could do nothing but errands for other survivors. Sadly the camcorder sequences meant to deliver the story do no more than tell tad bits of your character’s journey, despite the potential for a very interesting cinematic style. Even worse is a sudden, anti-climactic, and what can be best described as wonky ending that left me completely unsatisfied. You can use the slightly more challenging survival mode as a challenge to survive rather than a told journey but the game really isn’t enjoyable enough to warrant this.

Visually, I Am Alive looks quite good for a game coming in at under 2gb and its aesthetic suits the game quite well. There are plenty particle and moving cloth effects to keep those enticed by eye candy entertained. It’s certainly not the best looking game but does brilliantly for a downloadable one. It is extremely gray though and there is very little colour to behold; though this is almost certainly the point given the dust, rubble and apocalyptic nature of the world around you. While I may empathise with the developer however, I cannot completely sympathise; it is too bland, too free of colour and only manages to insinuate the tedium in many of the games quests. If I Am Alive had a better gameplay mechanics, more refined controls and an interesting narrative worthy of the hype I’d happily accept the gray colour as homage to the struggle and dystopian nature of the world around you. Unfortunately it doesn’t, so I won’t.

The last few days have been a very happy time (gaming-wise) for me. BioWare fanboyism notwithstanding, it’s been quite a while since I’ve felt so rewarded as a gamer. Perhaps it’s just the style of games, but there’s something special about the Mass Effect series. It has a certain charm to it that is near impossible to ignore, you simply cannot help but fall for it.

The first Mass Effect with its deep focus on storytelling and cinematics, was very much a space opera. One in which a newly promoted human soldier accidentally became the messenger for a great warning: The reapers are coming. Throughout the game, the overall aim was to stop a rogue Spectre but how you went about doing so — at least missions-wise — was entirely up to you. Well, to some extent. Exploration of new worlds was something different, combat was relatively decent but the game’s real charm came with the way it told its story and the many hours you would spend listening to various characters and responding to them in kind.

Mass Effect 2 held nothing back thereafter, taking a far darker and mature approach to storytelling while also tightening up the combat and simplifying the RPG elements. BioWare’s direction was pretty clear, with the game upping the difficulty and taking some of the emphasis off storytelling, yet keeping things cinematic and entertaining. The game posed some difficult questions to the player and, more importantly, allowed the player to craft a story that was truly their own, based on both their choices in the first game and their eventual choices in the second.

Mass Effect 3 aims to strike a fine balance between those two games.

For the most part, it has succeeded.

From the get-go this time around, your objective is pretty clear. No more faffing about, no more trying to convince the council of their existence. The reapers are here, and they’ve taken Earth hostage. Expect no prisoners as humanity and inevitably the rest of the galaxy, face down their pending demise.

Not if Commander Shepard has anything to say about it.

The game’s catch-phrase leading up to release, has been simply: “Take Back Earth.”

This is your objective in the game. This is why Mass Effect 3 exists. You must take back Earth, and the only way you can do so is by destroying the reapers.

Shepard takes it upon himself after narrowly escaping Earth during the invasion, to enlist the help of any who will hear his pleas, and then bring them back to take on the ancient race of sentient machines and reclaim Earth for all humanity. Because humanity’s kind of important to the reapers for some reason…

Make no mistake, this game plays out on a truly epic scale. The entire galaxy is under reaper attack, meaning you must travel through systems and fight them on various battlefronts.

To add to the already complicated situation, The Illusive Man is after revenge for Shepard’s abandonment and wishes to carry out his own ends during this game, going straight hostile on Alliance forces — to which Shepard is now re-instated — and pretty much anyone else who opposes them or has opposed them in the past.

There’s a lot of story in Mass Effect 3. It’s mind boggling, just how much there is to do in this game. It does start out a bit on the linear side but it doesn’t take long before the entire galaxy is free to explore. An understandable approach since many would be overwhelmed by a hundred different priority missions straight-up, as was the case with previous games.

Don’t you worry though, once you’re in the thick of the game’s campaign, you will have loads and loads of missions, be they secondary missions, miscellaneous fetch-quests or proper main story missions.

Most of these missions can still go in a number of ways depending on your morality and choices, however it must be noted that a lot of the emphasis has been taken off morality choices in the form of your typical ‘Paragon’ and ‘Renegade’ — Paragon for life — with the focus now being on whether helping or hindering someone provides the best benefit for your cause. It’s refreshing and leads to some incredibly interesting situations, but more on that later.

The thing about Mass Effect 3 is that it doesn’t want to bog you down unnecessarily. So it offers up most things with a hint of… let’s call it: optionality.

If you go looking for story by exploring every area of your ship or for example the Citadel, between each mission, you will find a lot of story. If you go searching systems for secondary missions or miscellaneous quests, you will find a lot of story. The game has a lot for you, if you’ll only put in the effort to look for it. If not, it won’t punish you for it. You may simply progress through the story as you please.

As a result of this so-called ‘optionality’ many conversations don’t occur as they did in previous games. They’re far more streamlined this time around with less actual dialogue options but more words being exchanged and effectively more conversation occurring per dialogue choice. There are some conversations that won’t even occur as your typical cutscenes, further emphasising the ‘optionality’ of the deeper story elements on offer.

That said, there is some amazing story-writing on offer here. As with any BioWare game. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

The game has some amazing set-pieces, directly resulting from the scale of the story. Remember that reapers are huge. Extremely huge. World-swallowing in some cases. However, there are smaller versions of them as well.

The reapers have also converted many of the existing races which allows for some new, unique types of reaper that you’ve not encountered before. Along with husks, you now get corrupted, severely disfigured versions of batarians, turians and even asari. It gives the game an almost eery edge, offering up some spine-chilling variants that stare down the player and go: “You could look like this some day.”

Getting one over the reapers involves recruiting allies to your cause, which again lends to the set-pieces on offer as you attempt to enlist the aid of the turians, the krogans, salarians, asari and pretty much anyone else who will hear your call. At times in suitably over-the-top fashion. The things you are required to do in order to win over these races and others provide the basis for some of the most amazingly well-written pieces of story that I have played, probably ever. Seriously.

The writing in this game is in true BioWare fashion, and is truly as epic as the set-pieces themselves.

Some of the choices that I was asked to make had me spending extremely long periods with the game paused, mulling over the consequences of the choice I would eventually make. Some are more straight-forward such as an ethical choice versus a choice that yields more allies, whereas others are a little more complicated. I won’t spoil that for you all.

This being the third game in a series, there are lots of familiar faces all over the place, as well as a few fresh and interesting new ones. Throughout the story, you will meet pretty much every surviving squad member from both of the previous games, with some even joining your squad — Garrus, we love you so — once again. The new additions are suitably unique and, to be frank, turn the Normandy into even more of a freak show than ever before. But in a good way.

The squad choices on offer in this game are reduced in number from the previous game but more than that of the first, striking a balance but typically allowing for an ideal member for each situation if you’re of the preemptive type.

Romancing characters has returned, where you have the option of rekindling an old romance, starting a new one, or starting up something of a love triangle between characters you previously romanced. Worthy of mention if only for the addition is that Shepard may now engage in same-sex relationships, which is fine if you’re into that. If not, shut up and bang someone else.

Each character on your squad, as well as various crew members aboard the Normandy, lend to the excellent writing on offer in the game, with a fair amount of humour thrown in as well as many references to previous games that true fans would instantly recognise and laugh at; running jokes if you will.

Garrus really loves to calibrate things.

The combat in the game has been vastly improved, but is still imperfect. Mass Effect 3 attempts to bring better action elements into the game and as such, your character now boasts a combat roll, quick-mantle and context-sensitive moves for when you’re in cover. These work well to make the combat faster and more accurate than previous titles, however it is clumsy at times and doesn’t quite feel right.

Most of the popular weapons from previous games have made a return, together with some fresh new additions. Each weapon is upgradeable on its own, which means no longer having to leave behind a favoured weapon because it has become inferior. You can also mod weapons again, re-introduced from the first Mass Effect because everyone loves having modified weapons.

Combat sections are diverse, with multi-tiered levels and complex skirmishes that involve either avoiding hazards such as energy fields or staying clear of fire from turrets, as you attempt to rid the world of whatever it is that’s shooting at you. For the most part, battles seemed tough and engaging, but fair, and the introduction of a manual revive option for teammates is a godsend. No longer do I run out of medi-gel that I could be using to heal myself, because I have to keep reviving a useless teammate. But also: teammates are actually not useless this time around.

Some story levels focus purely on combat, whereas others mix in various forms of exploration and cinematics as well. There are darker areas around that require weapon-mounted flashlights for some Doom styled fun, outer space sections that put you in the vacuum of space for some Dead Space styled fun, and slightly stealthy sections that allow you to get up close to enemies for some, uhm…

Most of the time, regardless of the level, you will find yourself exploring every inch of the map for such things as weapon upgrades and credits.

Okay, let’s talk multiplayer.

For the first time in the Mass Effect series, there is a multiplayer component to Mass Effect 3. While it might have initially had people sceptic, predicting something tacked on and broken, what BioWare have actually delivered is something that is both well thought-out and highly engaging.

So it’s definitely a huge plus, straight up.

The multiplayer is stylistically similar to that of horde mode, where you fight off waves of enemies, increasing in quantity and rank as you approach the latter waves. There’s only eleven, with the final wave being a simple hold-point extraction wave.

There are three difficulties from bronze to gold, and three different enemies on offer, namely; Cerberus, geth and obviously reapers.

Players work in squads of four to not just hold off attacking forces but also complete miscellaneous objectives every few waves. Teamwork is essential and if even a single person doesn’t work with the unit, expect a quick and resounding failure. As such, players are encouraged to work in a team with experience and credits are shared once the game is completed. I appreciated that addition, but I do see the possibility for exploitation as well. Still, something I can live with.

Credits earned in games will go towards purchasing reward packs, of which there are once again three — such is the theme of the game it seems. These packs include such things as once-off power-ups, equipment packs that aid you in missions, weapons and weapon mods, as well as characters.

The characters themselves are quite varied, although most will require unlocking via said reward packs. All six classes are available to play, with some characters having different skill-sets within the same class. Levelling goes up to 20 for each class and is persistent for each character in that class, meaning if one levels up, all in the class level up.

Currently there are only six maps available to play, however there is room for much more, perhaps through DLC packs that are hopefully not exorbitantly priced.

The big hook to playing multiplayer, apart from how truly addictive it can be, is that your efforts in the multiplayer contribute to what’s called your ‘Galactic Readiness Rating’ which starts off at 50% and rises per game played in multiplayer, up to 100%. Over time this rating drops a few percent, encouraging you to go in and play more every now and then.

What is the “Galactic Readiness Rating” used for? I thought you’d never ask.

See, in Mass Effect 3 your profile is persistent across singleplayer and multiplayer, meaning that for example your kill count increments over both modes. But more importantly, your ‘Galactic Readiness Rating’ is a factor in your attempt to recruit allies as Shepard.

When Shepard recruits allies in the singleplayer, they are added to what’s called ‘War Assets’ which effectively lists the recruited allies and works them out to a number which is then totalled. There is a minimum number that must be reached before you can ever hope to take on the reapers, however that number is factored based on your ‘Galactic Readiness Rating’. This means that, let’s say you have ‘War Assets’ of 3,000 with a 90% ‘Galactic Readiness Rating’. Effectively, you’re only allowed to take 90% of that 3,000 (or 2,700 for those who are bad at maths) into the final battle. A huge factor for any who care for perfect playthroughs and the like. But since the ‘Galactic Readiness Rating’ never drops below 50%, you’re free to ignore it if you so please.

Speaking of things to ignore, character customisation has made a return, allowing one to completely change the face, armour and now weapons of their Shepard, as they see fit. Don’t like the buzz-cut standard male Shepard? Swap him out for your own, original design. Not too keen on the armour you’re wearing? Swap it out for something else or change the colour. It’s all more of that ‘optionality’ for you, if you so desire it.

The level cap in the third game is back up to sixty, which allows for some revised RPG mechanics in the levelling system. Each skill starts off on a linear path before branching out on the higher levels. This allows you to craft a character more suited to your style, and gives you some freedom of differentiation where, for example if you and say Garrus — still busy calibrating things — have Concussive Shot levelled differently, you effectively have two unique variants of the same skill. Very handy.

Further customisation of skills is available once again through advanced training, where you may teach yourself a special ability that is unlocked through conversations with squad mates. This can be very useful for say, a soldier who lacks anti-barrier capability. They may then go and learn warp ammo and win ALL the barrier fights. Unfortunately in my playthrough I was unable to learn that beauty of a special ability; Reave, because it was unavailable to me, having killed off (in the first game) the person who unlocks it for me.

I still miss you, Kaidan.

The engine that powers Mass Effect 3 looks very similar in style to that of Mass Effect 2, with the dark contours, blue hues and glare and of course, beautiful visuals. Mass Effect 2 was a huge step-up in graphics so it was fully expected that on the same hardware, Mass Effect 3 couldn’t be that much of an upgrade. As such, it isn’t. But this is like comparing revisions of a high-end Porsche. The game is still breathtaking gorgeous, especially during some of those over-the-top, epic set-pieces I mentioned earlier.

The game’s sound is as on-target as ever, providing an atmosphere and feeling that lets you know that not only is this a BioWare game, but it’s a Mass Effect game in space and you will submit to its allure. It moves from up-beat and action-packed to haunting and chilling, depending on what’s happening on scene.

If I had to find something to complain about, apart from the clumsy cover system, it would have to be the number of bugs I encountered in the game. In Mass Effect 2, you’d be hard-pressed to find many bugs. A few exploits, sure, but no real glitching to speak of. Here, player conversations can get a bit weird with whomever you are speaking to suddenly disappearing from the screen while their audio dialogue still plays, or either party suddenly turning their head perpendicular to whomever they’re speaking to. At a few points in the game, my Shepard simply got rooted to the spot and would not move, forcing a save-game reload. Bad design, or lazy bug-testing. You decide.

It’s a crying shame because apart from that, the game really is incredibly polished and borders ever so closely on that shiny perfect rating. It’s definitely the best game this year so far, and might well prove to be the best overall by the end of it. Only time will tell. Until then, it’s back to multiplayer for me. I have a galaxy to save.

Before I start this review I just want to point out that I haven’t played the first Trine. So I didn’t know what to expect from Trine 2. Let’s just say I was extremely surprised and the game really is something special in the indie market.

Trine 2 is the sequel to the original Trine by developers Frozenbyte. The game is a sidescrolling action platformer with RPG and puzzle elements. This may sound odd at first and the combination seemingly ludicrous at first. But Trine 2 is a fun and rewarding experience, and as I shall explain offers much diversity for the prospective player. Right off the bat, what I first liked about the game was the limited amount of exposition in the beginning of the game. There was no lengthy explanation about the nature of the world, or typical drawn out cut scene.

Trine 2 from the outset is very sure of itself and the pedigree it has achieved with the first game, which is considered an indie classic by many players. The game establishes the basic premise that there are three heroes: a knight, a wizard and a thief all tasked with a quest, yet unknown, bestowed upon by a mystical flying object called the Trine.

The Trine has bounded the three characters’ souls together and you journey on a quest together as one ‘entity’. As per requirement of the game’s level design and challenging puzzles you have to change between the three characters to pass challenges as they arise be it monsters, physics based puzzles and platforming sections. This means that the developers behind Trine 2 can change up the gameplay and as a result the game never becomes boring and engages you on a number of levels.

Each of the characters has a unique ability which becomes useful in being successful in the number of different levels that become increasingly more difficult as you make your way through the game. Amadeus, the wizard, can levitate and move objects with his magic, and manifest boxes and planks to make your way across perilous sections of a stage. Zoya, the thief, can grapple on to certain surfaces and swing across obstacles, shoot arrows at enemies and is perfect for long range assault. Finally you have Pontius, the knight, the strongest in close-up combat with two weapons at hand: a sword and shield to defend and attack enemies with, and a heavy hammer to bash through stone walls. All of these characters together are necessary for you to make it through the whole of the game.

Each of the characters has an individual life meter and if they die you have to wait for a checkpoint before they can be revived. So Trine 2 forces you to use all the characters equally and this means the gameplay doesn’t become stagnant. At the same time, if you prefer a certain character like the wizard (which I did) you can upgrade his abilities through a skill tree. Levelling up is achieved through the collection of magical vials throughout all the levels in Trine 2. Most of these magical vials are precariously placed within puzzle elements, traps and challenging areas which for me made the reward of levelling up a much sweeter experience.

Nothing is handed out to you on platter. I found this quite refreshing in an age of games where gamers are gratified so easily by games. Sometimes a challenge is great and Trine 2 sets out its challenges with good pace and great flow that doesn’t feel disjointed at all.

I never got a chance to test out the co-operative multiplayer component of the game where you can play with three friends as all three characters. Each player has to pick one of the three characters. No one can be the same as the other. Creating the same dynamic as experienced in the single player.

Visually, this game is a graphics whore’s wet dream exponentially visually pleasing to the degree that I couldn’t believe this was an indie game and shames some of the AAA titles coming out this year. On my mid-spec PC rig the game was running at a steady 50 FPS which is impressive for such a visually stunning game. The visuals bring the fantasy setting, characters and the story alive with feeling. You are drawn into the world. Skyrim does the same thing. However, remember that Trine 2 never had the same budget as Skyrim.

Trine 2 is an unfolding interactive fairy tale with some of the best platforming you’ll play this year. The vibrancy of the colours and the lovable characters made me think of Monkey Island, and the host of older point and click adventure games.

All of the characters are fully realised without the need for lengthy exposition and dialogue. Trine 2 at times feels more like an RPG than a sidescroller. Add to this, an impressive musical score that adds immensely to the flowing game design, and you have one of the best indie games out at the moment. I implore you to play this. Yes, it’s that good. I have nothing negative to point out. I am thoroughly impressed. Play Trine 2 now. The game has since become available on PSN. It’s also available on XBLA and on PC.

It’s hard to find a good platformer nowadays. Save for the recent, and brilliant, Rayman Origins, I struggle to think of maybe a handful of titles that still stick to this principle of gameplay. Now, on the other hand, Action Platformers are even more a rare appearance, and no, Uncharted does not fall into this genre at all. I’m talking about games where platforming and action melded together to form some type of gooey awesomeness. Games that have been forgotten by this generation, but not forgotten by those who played them years ago. Older titles such as the initial Rachet and Clanks, Sly Cooper, and maybe even Crash Bandicoot. But there is one dynamic duo that trumped them all, at least in my view. Jak and Daxter make an explosive return to the Playstation platform, and while it might not have been with a sequel like many fans had hoped, the HD Collection does a fine job of reminding us why this series is so phenomenal, and why Naughty Dog should really make another one.

Jak and Daxter, the HD Collection, includes all three games that made a massive impact on the PS2 all those years ago, and along with it made a huge impact on many gamer’s lives, including myself. I never owned a PS2, but I somehow managed to play all three when they were released, and being of such a tender age, I had no idea how fantastic they really were. It only occurred to me, years later, when that craving to have more of the duo would not fade, that I realised just how amazing each and every entry was. It’s also incredible to see just how far Naughty Dog pushed the limits with the series initially, making one of the first 3D open-world platforms, experimenting with no loading screens (which was mind blowing back then), and taking such huge innovative risks, especially when you put Jak 1 and 2 next to each other.

If you have never played any of these titles before, then you’ve really missed out on one of Naughty Dog’s golden eras. I won’t be going into great detail for each and every title, but for those of you who have no clue what world Jak and Daxter live in, here’s a quick rundown. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was the first entry into the series, and was a pivotal moment for gaming as a whole. The first Jak and Daxter featured something unbeknown to the gaming community at the time: no loading screens. The first title was purely a platforming title, with some very light action element making their way in in order to spice up some very average gameplay. What made the title stand out was the gorgeous world Naughty Dog crafted, with a fantastic art direction and glorious open worlds that spanned for far and wide.

The second entry took the franchise in a bit of a new direction. Gone was the mute, friendly looking Jak that players had come to love, replaced with a more mean, angry and rough character in a dismal future world. Flying cars and actual guns made an appearance, and it was almost like a PG version of GTA. You could steal flying cars, cruise on your hoverboard and shoot everything up, as long as it was the enemy. A massive map (again, for the time) accompanied the game, with outer regions only requiring a short pause of the game, but again, no loading screens. It was in Jak II: Renegade that we were also introduced to Dark Jak, and alter ego of Jak that manifested after tons of experimentation with “Dark Eco”, the same stuff that turned Daxter into..well…whatever the hell Daxter really is. Now, think of Jak III as the same type of formula, just with more locations, more guns, more explosions, and just all round more epicness on a grand scale.

Having all three of these games remastered has been something that people have expected since the whole HD remake “genre” emerged, and thankfully, it has been worth the wait. The visuals may look aged at first, but once that fantastic art style kicks in and you realise why this is still one of the best looking games on the PS2, you’ll appreciate the work done to bring them into glorious HD. The first Jak and Daxter probably looks the most aged, with some very bland and stretched textures here and there, but the lush, massive world that Naughty Dog created all those years back still shines through. The depressing setting of Haven City might have been a big change from the first game, but the diversity and life of the city is still incredible, with slums showing off the real low life style of the time, and the glorious Stadium and market sectors still standing out amongst the crowd. The desolate wasteland adds to that variety in Jak 3, but it is a pity that most of the textures that make up this area didn’t receive such an excellent upgrade, unlike the rest of the game.

Gameplay wise, it’s fantastic to see that the level of action and platforming can still hold up in today’s market, and although it feels surprisingly easy in the beginning, all three games scale up the difficulty fairly quickly. There are no real changes to controls and gameplay in a sense, so aiming in Jak II and III is still a little imprecise and off target from time to time. Flying cars still handle fairly badly around corners, but after a few minutes you’ll feel right at home again, and changing your altitude to dodge traffic will become almost a second nature. The hoverboard is still present, and still as awesome as ever to use whenever you want. There’s just so much diversity in each game that you’ll often forget that the last one was made years ago. It’s something that is missing from this generation of games, and having all these different options available to you in one or two titles makes you wonder why so many other games have only simple mechanics to their name.

Playing all three of these titles again once again reminded me why I love Naughty Dog so much, even though their Uncharted series does that all the time anyway. Knowing that a potential Jak 4 is still on the table for the future, having this collection helps keep you at bay until Naughty Dog wake up and actually develop it. Too bad The Last of Us replaced it, but who knows, maybe after that, we’ll actually have the much wanted sequel to one of the greatest trilogies on the PS2. Its three games on one disc. A disc you’ll probably never get tired of, ever.

The people closest to you are in danger and you’re their only real chance of rescue, so what do you do? Shank the fools of course; at least, that’s Shank’s idea of a rescue. Shank 2 is a continuation of the original’s 2D beat ‘em up brutality and takes the action to a new level. There are more weapons, more baddies, more violent ways of silencing your foe and it’s all rendered in an awesome drawn and painted style, giving it that Saturday morning (perhaps Samurai Jack) kind of feel; so, what’s not to love? If you’re a fan of 2D beat ‘em up action and a balanced as well as enjoyable challenge; Shank 2 is definitely for you.

The original Shank took revenge plots to its gruesome and 2D extremes, Shank 2 shies away from that and instead gives Shank (the man, not the game) a much needed vacation somewhere in South America. Unfortunately, and as is the way with these sorts of things, a military regime, originally formed to remove the country of its many cartels, has risen to a more dictatorship sort of power. This leads to a revolution Shank couldn’t be bothered any less about; that is until an old friend is kidnapped. Shank then decides that the only way to save this friend is to slaughter everything that moves; what follows is a visually glorious and blood spattered romp. That’s about as far as the story goes and though you travel through areas like swamps, shanty villages and industrial harbours; it really makes no sense why you are in any of these places or why this has anything to do with the resistance and dictatorship.

That’s beside the point however; the plot is merely a tool, albeit a blood soaked shank, to take you from one enemy encrusted area to another. Fortunately, this slightly disconnected world gives plenty of reason for multiple enemy and boss types, giving a welcome comical edge and variety the original Shank lacked. Speaking of gameplay, and if you’re going to play Shank 2 on PC, I highly suggest you use or invest in a gamepad. The keyboard and mouse layout is hopelessly complicated and has the weirdest and most frustrating direction approach I have seen in a 2D game like this. What I mean is that in order to face an enemy you need to place your cursor at the end of the screen (or close to it) you intend on facing. If, like me, you have a habit of placing your cursor over the enemy you’re trying to mutilate on say the right of your character, but the cursor is still closer to the left of the screen, Shank will face left and flail his weapons in the complete wrong direction. This can be amended with a gamepad and takes almost all of the frustration out of the game; it is no longer a labour to play, it’s a treat and extremely enjoyable. The gamepad controls are smooth, responsive and suit the style perfectly, allowing you to pull of all the magnificently violent combos you wish.

The gameplay in Shank 2 is well refined and the pacing is just right. There’s only the briefest of moments between slaughtering your foes and that’s only to allow you to experience some rather decent platforming sections. That’s not Shank 2’s speciality however, what Shank 2 does best is 2D beat ‘em up violence. Animations are almost perfect and you can pull off all varieties of combo and counter on your overconfident enemies. Depending on the character you pick, did I mention you can play through the game as a variety of unlockable and unique characters, each with their own style of weaponry. You need to choose a heavy, ranged and munitions type weapon for each level and Shank for example: packs a shotgun, pistols and throwing knives as his ranged weapons of choice. Each weapon has its strengths and weaknesses and allows for a welcome bit of distinction to each players attempt. Best of all, Shank, bad ass though he may be, will have a tough time overcoming each level as they are quite challenging and depending on your intended difficulty give a well balanced test of your abilities. This is especially the case when confronted with one of the many bosses; all of who have their own weaknesses and formulaic attacks which I suggest you learn because if you’re defeated you’ll have to restart the battle with the boss’s health replenished to full. It’s a fair challenge and never overly taxes your ability, and even when it does, there are plenty of checkpoints to keep you right in the action.

Shank 2 is a fun game, but it’s even better to look at. If the many environmental hazards and traps don’t catch your eye, the scenery and art style will. Its comic book look is perfectly executed and throws so much detail at you, given its drawn and painted aesthetic, it’s hard to believe. To accommodate the look is an audio track littered with the kind of action intense songs you’d expect and others, fronted by some awesome guitar work, to go with the South American theme. I enjoyed the sound quite a bit, especially the Santa style guitargasms that appropriated many of the levels.

As awesome as this all sounds, it is only one of two modes, the campaign mode that plays out this way. The other mode, survival mode, is a unique twist on multiplayer support and one that I enjoyed:

Survival mode can be best described as a 2D fire fight (Halo) or horde mode (Gears of War) and involves protecting 3 cache supplies from wave after wave of enemy. As you’d expect, there are all variants of enemy, including large bosses; the enemy types that frequent the campaign; and the bombers whose job it is to take out your supply cache points. There is also the opportunity to buy unique powers and reinforcements for use against the many comical waves you’ll have to hold back. They’re quite fun and all have a purpose; I quite enjoy the boar which repeatedly runs up and down the tier (or level) you purchased it on, making sure to ram any enemies between it and the wall.

Survival mode seems to have replaced the original Shank’s cooperative campaign as its multiplayer and allows for another player to join in on the brutality. It’s certainly a lot easier with a friend, without which, you can’t revive yourself and its game over once you die even a single time. Even better is the opportunity to choose among multiple characters to play with; each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses and unique weapons to choose from. It actually allows for a bit of strategy, not that it matters much once the crazier waves start spawning in and it becomes a mad dash to defend as much as you possibly can. It’s a well thought out mode and I was surprised at how enjoyable and well executed it is; something to really make Shank 2 worth the purchase. It may not be as good as a cooperative campaign in some aspects but has a much higher replayability factor and remains fun for quite a while. This is even true when you’re stuck with a partner you don’t know (courtesy of online play) and you both have your own agendas in mind; that is until the levels get increasingly difficult and you start to work together. It’s simple but fun nonetheless.

Despite its lack of a cooperative campaign and somewhat lacklustre story, administering only occasional above average moments, for the price, Shank 2 goes above the call of duty. It’s an improvement and evolution of the original’s formula; take one beat ‘em up, add a bit of Tarantino, God of War and a graphical novel; and hot damn do they work well together. I’ve played quite a few rounds of survival mode and I’m yet to tire of it; though we’ll have to see what the soon to be released Mass Effect 3 has to say about that. All in all though, Shank 2 is a fun game, full of beat ‘em up cameos, a good challenge and even among some of the best current beat ‘em ups, there’s plenty of reason to buy it.

Personally, I love the indie genre, and I’m always excited to play whatever I can get in it. The genre often offers something that you just can’t get in mainstream. However, Deep Black: Reloaded is a painful exception to that. I hate to bash an indie game. It makes me feel like crap. But Deep Black sadly left me with no other choice. It just doesn’t represent anything I go to the indie genre for. In fact, just picture the most unimpressive, generic, simplistic and devoid-of-entertainment third person shooter, and Deep Black is basically the indie version of that. However, at the end of the day, indie game or not, I can only judge a game by what’s in front of me, and playing this was a pretty lifeless way to spend my time if I have to be completely honest. It’s very disappointing, because it could have been decent.

Deep Black is a third person shooter set in the near future. It’s apparently about a chaotic world, terrorism, espionage and a desperate power struggle for biological weapons, but honestly I couldn’t follow much of what was going on. This was very much due to the horrendous dialogue and uninteresting storytelling, which eventually led to me having a lack of interest. The opening to the game makes things seem really cool as it blends in-game cinematic visuals with graphic art, but don’t expect to see that again. What was initially pleasant for me to see was that Deep Black packs quite a bit of content for an indie game, including forty single player missions and even an online mode. However, due to playing this game early, I was unable to play the multiplayer because no matter what I tried I couldn’t find anyone else online. Therefore, I will only be focusing on the single player, but really the multiplayer component only had Deathmatch and Team Deatmatch supporting up to eight players from what I could see, and I’m quite doubtful that it would have made this game a whole lot better.

The story just isn’t well-told at all, or presented in any engaging way. When you have lines like “watch your ass” answered with “I’d rather watch yours, it’s nicer”, it becomes hard to take the game seriously. And really, the example I just gave is one of the easiest to swallow. Later on the lady who that response is aimed at actually refers to her ass in a not-so-classy way. I also seem to recall her talking about having butterfly knives in her stomach or something. I’ll stop right there, you get it. The voice acting is okay to decent for the most part, but really I just found myself skipping the cutscenes eventually. If I have to be honest, I mostly kept playing to hear enemies die. When they die you’ll hear what are probably amongst the most hilarious death screams you can find in a game. I’m pretty sure it’s not actually possible to scream like that for so long after you’ve just been shot three times in the head.

Normally I wouldn’t particularly care about the story if the gameplay was good, but unfortunately it’s just as bad. I tried to be as lenient as possible because this is an indie game, but seriously, you can replicate this exact same experience for better or worse in the reject section of the third person shooter genre. Minus the underwater sections, which actually can be decent at times. However, I will say that Deep Black isn’t the worst game I’ve been exposed to, I mean I’ve played far worse in mainstream. But it’s definitely somewhere down there. There’s really not a single noteworthy aspect to the gameplay. For most of the game, you’ll just be advancing down linear, constricted corridors taking cover and shooting the same enemies over and over again. There are some underwater sections to break it up, but strangely they feature less than the on-land shootouts, despite being the highlight of the game. They’re not great by any standards, but they’re better than anything else the game has. Weapons fire differently underwater, and you’ll basically navigate in a 360 degree radius avoiding environmental hazards, killing enemy robots and divers and moving at high speed with your rocket boosters.

That could have made this game at least acceptable, but there are far too many technical issues and a serious lack of any real fun to be had. The gameplay is extremely repetitive and lifeless for a start, and it never changes. The only thing I haven’t yet mentioned is the harpoon gun you’ll get, which enables you to pull switches and stealth kills enemies on land from a range, and hack certain enemy robots to make them fight for you. That may sound a bit exciting, but it isn’t really, as you’ll hardly get the opportunity to pull off the latter two. It’s usually just one lone enemy somewhere, or a minute or two of shooting robots underwater. There’s no variation in the gameplay beyond that. All I can remember doing is holding down the fire button until something dropped dead. The more I played this game, the less I wanted to keep doing so. I wasn’t actually entertained, and I spent most of my time with it feeling like I was choosing to play Solitaire on my own rather than go to that awesome party a few clicks away.

I waited until now to get into the technical issues that prevent you from having fun, because it’s quite a lot to take in. Firstly, the framerate is seriously dodgy and inconsistent. The game often chugged when nothing was happening, and slowed down to frustratingly low rates at some moments of heavy action but not in others. Even worse, the animation is insanely glitchy, especially with enemy movement. Sometimes they moved freakishly and inhumanly fast from one point to another, and at others they almost seemed to half teleport and half completely spaz out. You can imagine how annoying this is when enemies attempt to melee you, either if you get close or they rush at you. It forces you to melee kill them, and the problem is that you can still get damaged while executing them, even by another enemy’s melee attacks. So it often happens that you’re doing an execution on someone, but end up dying half-way and left to stare at the game over screen while the enemy you were melee killing continues to die. You can probably see from this that dying in this game is frustrating, because it’s often not due to a fault on your part or a lack of skill, but rather a failure in the game’s mechanics.

The cover system is next on the list of irritations, as it’s the weirdest I’ve experienced recently and contributes quite a lot to your death count. Pressing the space bar snaps you to cover, and you’re able to blind fire or jump out and return fire the usual way. However, the strangest thing is that while remaining idle in cover prevents you from getting shot, the slightest movement exposes you to enemy fire, and they’ll often hit you the second you move. It often happened that I was on low health, and I fired off two or three shots blindly, but the moment my gun raised over cover I got hit and died. I tested this. Blind firing actually enables you to get hit by enemies. And not just that, but simply moving in cover exposes your head to enemy bullets, and heck even just reloading once allowed me to get shot. But if I sat completely still behind cover, I was able to fully regenerate my health without any worry. Another problem is that you can’t take cover while holding a heavy weapon, so you actually have to waste time changing weapons to drop it first and then going into cover, which can get you killed. I really don’t know why heavy weapons couldn’t have just been dropped automatically when entering cover.

The last grievance with the cover system is that you can’t jump to other nearby pieces of cover, but an evasive roll is mapped to the same button so you could make your character confused. Speaking of, another case of confusion can come up with the secondary fire option, as it’s mapped to the middle mouse button, but scrolling changes your weapon so the two can get mixed up. It’s also annoying that when you die, the “load from last checkpoint” option is mapped to enter, but the “restart the entire level” is set to space, which is exactly the key you’re going to be hitting before you die. Enter isn’t used for anything. Alright, there is a confirmation screen that asks if you’re sure you want to restart the level, but the confirmation button for this is the Enter key, so if you get mixed up you could lose all your progress. It only happened to me once before I started being more careful, but I wasn’t thrilled to say the least.

I’m pretty baffled how I managed to talk so much about a game that offers so little, but really, the screenshots and trailers for this game are very misleading. This isn’t a fun or good experience to have, it’s just boring and feels uninspired with its gameplay. However, the one positive thing I can say about the game is that aside from the technical problems, Deep Black looks surprisingly good for an indie game, graphically speaking. The models look solid, the environments are detailed and the water and lighting actually looks really good. Unfortunately, that’s where it stops, and it’s just such a pity that the game gives you no reason to play it at all. Since I’m always such an innocent and honest person, I must confess that I actually resorted to playing Angry Birds Seasons whenever I got too bored of this. Thank the world for Angry Birds. Right in the middle of Deep Black I’d just alt tab and have actual fun. But in all fairness, I didn’t give this the worst rating because it’s an indie game, it has good graphics, the underwater sections can be decent at times and it’s at least functional. That counts for something.

In the end, there really isn’t any reason to play Deep Black: Reloaded. The title’s ambition is admirable for an indie game, but there isn’t anything else noteworthy about it. There are plenty of other indie games that are far superior to Deep Black. In a thriving market, this game is lifeless, makes no impact, and it’s just not entertaining at all. This isn’t what you should be playing indie games for.

Despite never owning a single SSX title until now, I have always been a massive fan of the franchise. SSX Tricky is forever engraved in my mind as one of the best sports games I have ever played, and I have waited a long, long time for the mighty snowboarding franchise to land on this generation of consoles. Having done that this past Friday, I can honestly say without a doubt that SSX is the finest entry this franchise has ever produced, and possibly one of the greatest sports games ever released. A few odd design and feature choices may upset fans of good-natured multiplayer action, but if your fix for an exhilarating, breathtaking and extremely enjoyable sports game has gone long unchecked, then SSX is the perfect title to get your gaming adrenaline pumping once more. The nine Deadly Descents are marvels themselves, and depict SSX action in its finest form.

Unlike many other entries into the series, SSX actually offers some background and story to guide you through the nine Deadly Descents presented before you in the single-player portion of the game. This is truly a reboot in the essence of the word, and players who are only encountering SSX for their first time now won’t feel as though they’re being forced to watch from the outside. Each and every returning character is given a brief backstory, introducing you to the entire SSX Team and their addictions to pushing the limits. The story has Team SSX racing around the world as they seek to ride all nine “Deadly Descents”. These are mountain ranges and routes that are some of the most deadly snowboarding drops around the world, each with their own unique theme of danger. Ex SSX member Griffin is out to get back at his old team and promote his own, which leads to a race against time to see who can conquer all nine drops first. It’s all really cliché and uninspired, but if you came to SSX looking for something different, then you’re in the wrong place. That’s like putting down the FIFA name because of its lack of a narrative.

What is important is that the single-player portion of the game does a great job of plunging you into the world of Snowboard, Surfing and Motocross, or SSX for short. Don’t get ahead of yourself though, this title features just one of SSX’s disciplines, but I’m hoping future titles will be more ambitious and hopefully branch out into the remaining two. Despite being confined to one type of extreme sport, there is still tons of variety to be had with the campaign. Events are usually only split into two different modes, namely Race It and Trick It, which either involves a race down a slope or a contest of uber tricks and massive combos respectively. This may not seem like much variety, but when you see just how different each and every mountain slope is, you’ll soon realise that they themselves provide variety enough. On top of this, each locale has specific survival and special events, which usually incorporate a deadly part of nature into them. Having limited oxygen on Everest or massive cliffs in Patagonia are some examples, and having nine very different threats really evolve your play style in interesting ways.

Deadly Descents make up part of the icing under the SSX cake. In these events, nature is your only competitor, and your objective is simple; Survival. Each event has one aspect of nature working its hardest to see you fail, whether it is gravity, tress, rocks, avalanches, oxygen or darkness. In these types of events, the gear you equip is almost just as important as the skill you bring, as having inadequate gear could mean the difference between success and failures. Before you set out on these or any other event, you’re able to customize your chosen boarder with a selection of apparel, boards, special gear and more. Most of the required gear is usually given to you during the story, but coming back to past events presents medal challenges that will require better and more expensive gear. The store only stocks four types of each item, which is a bit silly at some points, as you’ll have to buy utterly useless gear in the hope that a better piece appears in its place. Credits to spend at these stores are earned while doing events, and before you know it you’ll be up to your neck in unspent credits, especially if you plan to keep your SSX experience offline all the time.

While most of the challenges presented by Deadly Descents feel cleverly designed and well implemented, some tend to feel more like an annoyance than anything else. For example, staying in the sun while riding in Antarctica because of the extremely cold temperatures directly affects how your descent will turn out, and forces you to adapt your riding style in a clever way. On the other hand, dropping you into a horribly lit network of caves in Kilimanjaro with only a headlight might seem like a frightening and equally exhilarating idea, but in practice it only serves to frustrate you immensely when run after run you’re forced to restart due to always finding yourself falling off unseen cliffs. This type of frustration can be said for Oxygen events as well, and Avalanche events aren’t as cinematic and exciting as I thought they would be. However, events that give you access to “Squirrel Suits” are extremely enjoyable, and soaring through the air for hundreds of meters at a time is such a joy, especially since controlling this flight feels so natural. Ice events are equally fun, and narrowly missing icy edges just after your ice picks get really dug in is heart stopping fun. After completing these events, you’re able to take any piece of gear into previous and future events, allowing you to tweak each and every slope experience.

But an SSX game could have all of this and more, but without its signature blend of fast boarding with massive tricks, it would still be nothing. Thankfully, SSX does not fall short in this department at all. In fact, snowboarding is probably at its finest it ever has been in SSX. Racing down mountains still gives you an unbelievable sense of speed, and pulling off various tricks and turns is as elegant and simple as ever. For those of you who are hardened SSX veterans, you’ll be pleased to know that EA have kept your control scheme intact for you to enjoy, but the button layout might just tempt you to change your ways. Using just three buttons, you’re able to pull off an impressive array of tricks, and holding either R2 or the Right Trigger further tweaks each and every move. Pull enough off in a combo and you’ll achieve “Tricky” status, allowing you to turn each of your tricks into Uber tricks for a massive points boost. Continue this combo and you’ll soon hit “Super Tricky”, which allows you to pull off all those mind-blowing Super Uber tricks the series has become famous for. Break dancing in midair, spinning a board around your neck and kicking it away from you are just some of a few signature tricks that you’ll see, and with each rider having different unique tricks, you’re bound to see some even more spectacular. It’s the SSX formula as you know it, but it feels refined in many ways. It’s smoother, more responsive and pulling off spins and flips is faster than ever. It wasn’t broken, and I’m glad EA didn’t feel the need to fix it.

Added to this formula is a rewind feature, which is similar to those you’d expect to find in modern racers. In most events, you’ll be able to rewind indefinitely, but all of this time bending power comes at a price. During race events, you’re able to rewind as much as you want, but only you will be affected. The remaining racers will continue on forward while you go backwards, greatly disadvantaging you if you constantly use it. In trick events, points are deducted each time you use a rewind, which could mean the difference between first and second, especially when you take into account just how difficult the computer A.I is. In survival events, you’re given a limited number of rewinds, but consequences when using them are gone, since you aren’t really competing against anyone but nature herself. You’ll probably find yourself using these rewinds mostly in trick events, as having a massive combo multiplier disappear after one too many flips is often so heartbreaking, that a small hit on your total points may not really even bother you if you nail the landing the second time around.

What has been given a bit of a facelift however is the slopes and routes you’ll be tricking it out in. In previous titles, most of these tracks were artificially created and imagined, and although they were extremely fun to board in, they gave the game a bit of an arcade feel. This time around, each slope is recreated from actual mountain ranges and drops, such as the Himalayas, the Alps and Antarctica. There are numerous locales around the world that you can visit, but the best part is that each of these slopes feels completely real. Numerous paths can be taken while descending, and most of the time you’ll find yourself experimenting with new and different routes in order to find the best line. Some paths are considerably more dangerous than others, and listening to your helicopter pilot will save you more often than not, especially in survival events. These realistic representations of slopes are probably the only bit of realism injected into SSX, but it feels just right. Having slopes intertwine and cycle between day and night actually changes the way you’ll play it, and finding different lines that complement tricks and races will keep you replaying them over and over again.

SSX might not be the most technically proficient game when it comes to visuals, but that doesn’t keep it from looking spectacular. Tricks are flashy and vibrant, with blue and yellow glowing trails following you when in Tricky mode. Equipping boarders with glowing suits is often quite awesome, especially in dark routes, as it turns SSX into some form of Tron meets Snow. However, mountain ranges and slopes are where visuals are taken to new levels. Having each area mapped out using actual photographs, EA have recreated these routes beautifully, and seeing thin ice blow over a massive descent as you deploy out of a helicopter is a real spectacle. Snow looks and acts as you would expect it to, and you get a really good sense of speed as you race down each and every mountain range. It’s beautiful to see in real time, and the screenshots really don’t do the game justice. The soundtrack and accompanying music also deserves a massive shout out, and it’s clear that EA have fallen head over heels in love with Dub step. If you don’t like it, then don’t worry too much, as the playlist is littered with fantastic music from various artists, and Run DMC’s “It’s Tricky” just brings back all sorts of nostalgic memories.

Outside of the campaign, you are able to tackle previously completed events in every locale you’ve played before, but with different medal challenges and objectives this time around. You’re also able to equip modifiers that directly affect your event. These modifiers have to be bought with credits, but can bestow you certain attributes such as easier trick landing, faster spin and flips, faster boots speed and duration, and much more. These modifiers can help you on some surprisingly challenging events, and act as a good way to mix up the action a little bit. But all of this really prepares you for the real challenge that SSX has waiting for you. Online play against thousands of over enthusiastic riders from across the globe? It’s called Explore Mode, and it’s a whole new way to play online.

In Explore Mode, you don’t race or trick it against other players simultaneously. In fact, you never directly play with an opponent at the same time. So where’s the appeal then, right? Well, in place of direct competitive action, there are various different events with time limits on them. These time limits can range from a few hours to whole weeks, with the credit “pot” growing over time. Basically, you have to buy into events as you would buy into a game of poker at a casino. You then get the chance to try and top the high score, which is set by someone else in the world. Each event has a massive total pot of credits that are distributed when the time limit ends, with players in higher brackets bagging more than ones with lower scores. It’s a weird, but extremely addictive take on Multiplayer action, as the whole feature almost feels like gambling. Granted, there are some events that don’t require a credit buy in, but these have much smaller winnings. Events also carry with them certain rules, such as no rewinds or modifiers, meaning that there are tons of unique events waiting to be explored.

Online, your gear is everything. This is where most of your credits will be burned, as having the best gear possible could give you the edge you need to reach a really high bracket of winnings. Credit can be eared by doing events online or offline, but surprisingly, you’re also able to purchase them with real money or Microsoft Points. It gives a weird feel of “micro-transactions” to the game, which is highly bizarre for console titles. You might never feel the need to burn cash for credits, but players who get sucked into the game’s multiplayer could be tempted to spend a few bucks on some extra credits. It’s weird, but at least it’s not the only way to earn credits. Another more imaginative way is Geotags. Geotags can be placed anywhere in Explore Mode, but the harder the placement, the bigger advantage for you. Why? Well, the longer your Geotag goes untouched by other players, the more credits you earn over that period. It’s extremely imaginative, and it will take some impressive skills to place some really difficult ones for the world to tackle.

Sadly, there is only one gripe I have with SSX, but it’s a fairly large one. The inclusion of Explore Mode is great, but it came at a cost. SSX does not feature any simultaneous competitive play, and on top of that, no spilt-screen multiplayer. This is probably the biggest “what the fuck” moment EA could’ve presented, as jamming SSX for hours with a friend is probably the fondest memory I have with the previous titles. It’s a sports game, there should be local competitive play. FIFA has it, so why shouldn’t SSX have it as well.

Brush that painful decision aside and you have a near perfect package of snowboarding action. Fans have waited for a long, long time, but thankfully, the wait was worth every second. SSX brings with it some of the most exhilarating and addictive sports action ever, and is really a pedigree in the extreme sports genre. There really is nothing else that can give you a similar, let alone better, experience, and it truly deserves your full attention. SSX is prettier, better, faster, harder and crazier than ever, and it’s finally here on this generation of consoles. We’ve missed you.

Angry Birds Seasons for the PC is a special edition that comes packed with practically all of the holiday and festive-themed expansion packs released from 2011 to 2012, which is pretty awesome. From 2011 you’ll get the episodes Mooncake Festival, Summer Pignic, Easter Eggs, Go Green Get Lucky, and Hogs and Kisses. And from 2012 you’ll get Year of the Dragon, Wreck the Halls and Ham’o'ween. All of this amounts to a total of over 200 levels to play through which, together with the comfort of playing on your good old PC, ensures that you’ll literally get hours of entertainment out of this package.

Alternatively, it’s the best thing you could possibly give to kids if you need to keep them busy. I mean, it’s Angry Birds, what’s not to love? Well, probably the fact that there’s nothing really new, but it’s not like I was expecting anything in that regard. However, the only two things I didn’t like about this edition went hand-in-hand. Firstly, certain chapters don’t allow you to pick the level that you feel like playing through from the start. In order to unlock the next level, you have to complete the latest available one. It raises an eyebrow as to why this was done, especially since other episodes allow you to choose any level you wish. It’s so that if you find yourself stuck on one level, you can just move on and come back later. Secondly, and this makes the first issue more irritating, things can get tough pretty quickly rather than gradually increasing in difficulty, so if you’re on a challenging level you’ll have to sit tight and keep going until you finish it if you want to move on. Or just try your luck with a different episode.

Otherwise, the game is as charming and addictive as ever, and the holiday and festive themes are really cool. Visually, they’re colourful, vibrant and attractive, and I don’t think any fan of the game is likely to get bored here. It’s a great bundle, especially if you need time to kill in moments of desperation or painful boredom. The problem for me though is that there’s literally nothing else I can tell you about the game. It’s Angry Birds. If you liked it the first time, well, there are tons of new levels for you to challenge yourself with to get those triple gold star ratings and complete the bonuses. Get to it!

I’ll say it again. It’s Angry Birds, and really, what’s not to love about Angry Birds? It’s very addictive and packs over 200 levels to play through, making it great value for money. If you’re a fan looking for more, then Angry Birds Seasons is the ideal package, as it will definitely keep you entertained for hours.

When Dean emailed Adam and I (the resident indie gamers that we are) and asked someone to review Smash ‘n Survive, I was, well I was looking forward to it. I had heard about it and read a review somewhere that was quite positive about this indie Twisted Metal/Burnout clone. It must’ve been late and I must’ve been suffering from cancer of the brain when I read it because well, well it’s not that great. Let me get this out of the way right now, Smash ‘n Survive is not a bad or horrible game, just a very boring one. In some sense boring, or lacking character as I like to call it, is worse than being bad; bad games are at least good for making fun of. So what’s so average about Smash ‘n Survive?

The game is very 1990’s to start, you know, heavy metal, car, fire, brimstone and all that you’d expect from Twisted Metal on the PS1. The problem, well Twisted Metal 1, a game from 1995, did it better. So what went wrong? Well Smash ‘n Survive presents the player with 3 game modes: campaign, versus and game mode. Game mode does exactly what you’d expect and provides modes from racing to checkpoints to a destruction derby styled mode creatively named ‘Mosh Pit’. Versus provides multiplayer versions of those aforementioned modes and is one step up because not only does it let you verse other human opponents but removes the horribly bland A.I from the game. The A.I. is predictable and unimaginative, resorting to the same collision and run tactics again and again. The final mode, campaign mode, is the exact same as game mode except that it alternates the mode you’re going to play and you unlock cars each time you successfully complete a round.

There are apparently 40 cars to unlock, not that I’ve seen them all because I couldn’t manage the will power to complete campaign mode. More than that, they’re supposed to offer varying styles of driving and all feel unique. From my perspective however, I didn’t notice anything beyond looking different and slightly better or worse turning and breaks. It just feels so disconnected and there’s almost no sense of speed or control, it’s numb and as I’m sure any racing fan knows; that’s the worst possible fate for a racing game. Even the weapons fitted to the vehicles, something supposed to make the game more exciting, all felt weak and nothing really stood out. The problem is quite simple, when you compare this to games as far back as the PS1, games fraught with issues and glitches; it still underperforms and makes almost no attempt to differentiate itself in any way. And don’t forget it actually has to compete with a brand spanking new and soon to be released Twisted Metal. I suppose an online versus mode might have saved Smash ‘n Survive from such a judgement but well, it doesn’t have one; this in a game with 6 players versus. I mean if I invited 5 friends over for a console session, something we usually reserve for Halo and Guitar Hero nights, and presented them with this, unless heavily drunk, they wouldn’t be my friends anymore.

Graphically, Smash ‘n Survive is above average and its musical score certainly fits the game, though a bit droning and headache inducing. That said, the tracks and arenas you race in are as bland and grey as you’re going to get; though I suppose it does make the slightly better cars stand out. It’s really hard to recommend a game that makes almost no effort to appeal to the senses or any faculty of enjoyment. You could assume I’m an idiot and buy it anyway, but with free flash indie games better than this; honestly, why would you bother?

The main reason I chose to review Asura’s Wrath is not because I’m a big anime fan but rather because the game looked very different to anything else out right now and thus promised a unique experience. It certainly delivers that but at a significant cost.

Asura’s Wrath is a game steeped in mythology with a great deal of insane action and a protagonist so fuelled by rage that an atomic blast is set off every time he burns his tongue on some rather hot tea. Sounds a lot like God of War, no? Well the game also takes the Heavy Rain route of trying to be an interactive movie of sorts. The difference though is that Asura’s Wrath is actually trying to be a 3-part anime series comprising around 20 episodes.

In fact, CyberConnect 2 (Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm) took it so far as to have a slightly varied creative team do each episode and players can get a bit of filler in between each episode which takes the form of a few storyboard/manga style panels to add a little bit to the story.

The story itself is certainly an interesting one and definitely solid enough for any action game but doesn’t quite cut the mustard in a game that is all about the cinematic experience and mimicking an anime series. Asura, the game’s protagonist (Noddy badges to everyone who already figured that one out), is one of the demi-gods who make up the Eight Guardian Generals whose duty it is to keep the dark forces of the Gohma at bay. To give you the bullet points: Asura is summoned by the Emperor after temporarily defeating the Gohma and upon arriving finds that his leader has been slain. He awakes to find himself being framed for the Emperor’s murder and wouldn’t you know it, someone conveniently went out and killed his wife on the same day. His daughter, Mithra, is still alive but has been kidnapped by the other Guardians and in his efforts to rescue her, Asura is cast down to earth where he practically dies.

He awakes 12 millenia later in Naraka which is the Buddhist underworld. He cannot remember who he is but ultimately remembers and discovers that the other 7 Guardian Generals have effectively been raping his daughter for the past 12 thousand years so as to harness her powers as High Priestess. This allows them to ascend to new levels of power as well as new levels of douchebaggery as they now refer to themselves as the Seven Deities. Asura quickly sees that they have become greedy and power hungry and have basically turned the world to shit.  He therefore begins his quest for revenge and has to take out every Deity before getting to Deus, the one who masterminded everything in the pursuit of purging the world of evil. Funny how the demi-god with the serious God-complex is named Deus, huh?

That’s the premise and it’s pretty interesting and certainly a nice twist on the original mythology but there’s not much more to it. It’s a lot like Kill Bill in that Asura is out for revenge and must take out each of the six other Deities before he can get to Deus but really that is all that happens and there’s very little else along the way. Also, if you thought AC 2 was crazy with those jumps of several years between sequences then Asura’s Wrath is psychotic because at one point it jumps 500 years forward without even batting an eyelid.

It’s effective enough as a plot but they could have done more with such a unique premise. It doesn’t help that every character has a much depth as a paper cutout nor that Asura himself is basically just a shouting ball of rage who only seems to know about 5 lines with his favourite being “shut up”.

Honestly, Asura is the single angriest character ever and is rivaled only perhaps by his Spartan counterpart, Kratos. That said, anger is the only discerning characteristic you ever pick up on. He is just  that empty a character. They could certainly have learned a thing or two about defining an angry protagonist by more than just his anger from God of War.

The story may be lacking in many areas but there’s still a lot of narrative quality. The English voice-acting is nothing special but the Japanese voice-acting is sublime and even if all the characters are shallow as a puddle, you’ll love them for their voices. The lip-syncing is a bit off though no matter what language you’re playing in, although I suspect this is because they did some kind of half ‘n half so that it kinda looks like they’re speaking Japanese and kinda looks like they’re speaking English.  Also, the lesser characters such as villagers only have Japanese dialogue and don’t even get subtitles so that’s quite poor where consistency or even just a moderate attention to detail is concerned.

The story is very well told despite being a little empty. A great deal of effort went into producing some great cinematography, the likes of which you rarely ever see in games. Each cinematic is exquisite and since the whole game is basically one extended cutscene, the whole game looks great but more on that later.

Let’s talk about this oddball gameplay malarkey. Basically, it’s like Heavy Rain but with a lot more brawling fight sequences. I really like these types of games because it’s far more engaging when you’re actually interacting with what you’re watching. Where Heavy Rain constantly had the player doing something in the game, Asura’s Wrath takes far too much delight in the spectacle of itself. The game holds the player at distance and really only reels the player in for fight sequences or a few on-rails shooting bits as if the action choreographer quit. When the game does request some QTE action from the player, it’s more just a TE because a stoned sloth would have fast enough reactions to cope with pretty much anything the game throws at it. You also get the feeling that the game couldn’t really care less if you were there or not because often missing a prompt to hit a button doesn’t have any tangible repercussions.

The game seems to prefer excluding the player and only really lets you in to for a few minutes to accomplish your current objective rather than letting you experience the journey there as well. This means that of the 7 or 8 hours you’ll spend with this game, you spend a bit less than half that time actually having any sort of interaction with the game. It is also a title that is far too easy for its own good and so your health will never drop below half. I don’t even know if a death screen exists in Asura’s Wrath and I’m used to seeing them often in most other games. Hell, I’m pretty sure FIFA showed me a death screen once although it may have been the start screen with Rooney’s face all over it.

Anyway, the combat is very simple and mostly relies on mashing the same few buttons as your beat your way through the Divine Army  which is controlled by the Seven Deities and the Gohma who take the form of blackened apes, giant tortoises, rhinos, fish, rays and elephants with blood vessels on the outside.  As you deal more damage and down more enemies, Asura’s Burst gauge will fill and when full, he will perform a finishing move that basically acts as a means of clearing the area of baddies so that Asura can move forward; much like in those old brawler games where you couldn’t progress until every bad guy on-screen was on the ground.

There are some truly epic boss fights though in a time where boss fights are quickly becoming a forgotten idiosyncrasy of days gone by. Of special mention are when Asura fights Wyzen who eventually grows to be the size of earth itself and attempts to squish Asura with his mountain-sized finger. How’s that for monstrous scale, God of War? There’s also the battle against Asura’s master, Augus. It is simply astounding. I won’t say any more about it but those who have played that demo will be heartbroken to know that you have already experienced two of the best bits that this game has to offer.  There are many memorable moments though, not least of which is Augus cock-blocking Asura by punching him in the face and knocking him out cold. Did I mention you fight large golden Buddha toting massive guns on many occasions?

The on-rails shooting sections are okay to start with but remain exactly the same throughout the game and become rather tedious and annoying with the iffy aiming system and occasional sheer chaos of what’s happening on-screen.

As I mentioned earlier, the game is made of twenty or so episodes, split up into 3 acts. Each episode is about 20min long and thus guarantees about 10min of actual playtime. However, each episode break is punctuated by what is certainly unnecessary loading even if the game is running on Unreal 3. This causes a bit of frustration and slows down what is ultimately a very well-paced game. Take away those pesky loads and you’d have a much a smoother flow.

That said, the game flows like honey between loads and blends seamlessly between battle, QTE and cutscene/cinematic. It is actually quite excellent in this respect and the only other game I can think of that does this so seamlessly is Heavy Rain but then it didn’t have epic fight scenes where you take on about twenty enemies at a time.

This game certainly is a visual spectacle. It has been crafted with such intent and semi-hand drawn almost cel-shaded graphics are fantastically different while still being really good.

Asura’s Wrath has this very technological feel to it, right down to Asura’s mech arms and it contrasts really nicely with the ancient Buddhist mythology to produce something truly unique. There’s even a giant rail gun type cannon called the Brahmastra which is fashioned to look like a giant blue Buddha. It’s basically the Death Star in the Dalai Llama’s robes.

Speaking of arms. Asura usually has two and sometimes six but often enough he has none at all and he actually kicks ass (because that’s all he can do) hands-free.  That just seemed worth mentioning a long a shout out to anime fans and pretty much everyone that Asura’s ultimate rage transformation is fucking awesome.

Asura’s Wrath is certainly a distinctive and different game. It is certainly memorable enough and culminates in a rather special experience that I doubt I’ll be forgetting any time soon. The problem is the lack of gameplay variety and more specifically the lack of gameplay period. Base on my scarce experience with anime, Asura’s Wrath really does capture the feel of a Japanese animated series in every way.

It’s a great concept that the game has and the approach seems a perfect fit as well but the execution is just lacking. CyberConnect2 made the mistake of thinking that we’d be happy to just sit back for half the game’s duration and that it would be okay if we did the same 3 things over and over when we did get a chance to interact. Players want to interact, that’s what gaming is about so when you’re intentionally shutting the player out because you don’t want them to ruin your little piece of scripted magic then you have most definitely lost the plot.

Is Asura’s Wrath a great experience and one I’ll never forget? Yes, certainly. Is it a great game? No, and most that lies in a poorly realised concept that didn’t really seem to factor the player in until it was too late to give them any meaningful role to play in the game. Heavy Rain had you making the decisions and performing actions and because you felt like you were physically doing these things, it drew you in like no other game or movie can. That is what Asura’s Wrath should have done but is a bit too OCD to give you any real control. You get the ominous feeling that the game would be better off without but the fact that you are actually interacting with it, albeit not as much as you’d like, is what makes it such a special experience.

I certainly enjoyed Asura’s Wrath for the unique experience despite all its flaws but it is simply not worth the price. You can be done with it in a weekend or less and will likely never play it again. It is certainly a memorable and unforgettable experience but there is simply no replay value and if all you’re after is a weekend’s worth of fun and entertainment then Charlie Sheen can get you a lot more for that kind of money.

In keeping with Adam’s recent review of the flash game Arcane Arena, I thought it appropriate to introduce you to one of the best free flash games I’ve ever played, and I’ve play a lot. Crumpled takes the standard platforming puzzle mechanic and adds more than enough creativity to make it thoroughly enjoyable. Instead of simply manoeuvring through a level populated with obstacles, requiring some sort of pre-thought and careful action; Crumpled adds… well it adds a blob. This blob plays an important role and you’ll want to grasp its usefulness fairly quickly if you want any chance of completing the more difficult levels. As the player, and through using the WASD keys, you control a little stick figure capable of using parkour like jumps and climbs in order to overcome the obstacles between you and the end of the level. The difference being, you are also given control of a shape shifting blob (through the mouse) that when given specific colour coded powers is capable of shifting into a number of shapes like a rectangle and square. In order to succeed in Crumpled, and as I’m sure you might’ve guessed, you need to control both stick man and blob in combination; using the blob to bridge gaps, break falls and activate buttons for the stick man.

The controls are, at times, a bit tricky and controlling both the stick man as well as blob will require a bit of finesse if you’re to have any hopes of accomplishing the more difficult levels. There also seems to be quite a bit of thought involved before each leap as there are numerous ways of approaching each obstacle, some more dangerous, risky or fool hardy than others. Failing a manoeuvre could mean falling to your death, touching poison or a couple other stick man crippling obstacles. What’s more is there are combo points that are allocated to those players capable of pulling off pre-determined combos throughout many of the levels and doing so, or completing a level in a quick time, will result in a medal for your hardship. The final interesting twist is the inclusion of a slow-mo power that when used slows down your stick man so that you can provide safe landing and move your blob to the next landing point before your stick man falls to his demise. It’s well executed, refined and very responsive (expect for the very occasional blob slow down); all in all a very polished mechanic and heaps (or should I say leaps) of fun.

The aesthetics of Crumpled is even better and provides a very believable doodled drawing look to the game. The audio is populated with laughter, talking and all the noises you’d expect of a classroom and makes for a great presentation; it feels as though you’re playing a game on your exam pad, and looks like it too. The music has a French violin and guitar track and works almost perfectly with the game. I know there are many indie games that have taken this scribbled approach to their visuals but trust me when I say Crumpled is one of the best.

There’s not much more to Crumpled. It’s a great game that makes use of some thoroughly enjoyable mechanics that I would’ve happily paid to experience. If you have flash installed on your PC, well of course you do, then go to this link and play it now.

Syndicate is a game that attracted a wide amount of attention from us because of its exciting trailers and difference to other shooters on the market. Yes, many comparisons have been made with it and last year’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but apart from a few story details I can assure you that the two couldn’t be more different. Syndicate takes place in 2069, and puts you in control of Agent Miles Kilo, the latest prototype agent from mega-corporation Eurocorp. Thanks to Eurocorp’s DART chip, which is a neural chip implant that enables its users to access the dataverse, the world isn’t controlled by governments, but instead by mega-corporations called Syndicates. The world is split between chip-users and “unchipped” people, who are deemed inferior. The various Syndicates are at war, and to fight it they have created Agents, who are bio-engineered and chip-augmented super soldiers designed to carry out their will. Kilo possesses the new prototype DART 6 chip, which naturally makes him special, and the game begins with him getting sent on his first mission. From there, you’ll be diving right into the middle of the Syndicate war, trying to make sense of what exactly you’re fighting for.

While the premise of the game makes it sound like there is a lot going on here, the truth of the matter is that Syndicate’s story is practically non-existent. At least, it gets completely lost in all the action, and is barely even told. The game constantly alludes to there being something big happening, or that events are slowly leading up to some kind of grand finale, but nothing ever comes. In fact, hardly anything of significance happens in the story at all. Now, looking at Syndicate it’s clear to see that there are some great ideas here, especially with the conflicted and inhuman main character, but the problem is that this plot is so cliched by now and the game makes no effort to differentiate. Everything is told to you in such a casual manner that all importance is soon sucked out of the plot. Basically, the plot can be summarised as follows. Kilo takes orders from a big-time corporation who turn out to be using him, and once he gets a mind of his own he realises that they’re the baddies. Not every plot needs to be entirely unique, but it was definitely possible for Syndicate to make something more out of this one, especially when they have such an inhuman and twisted protagonist to drive the story forward with.

Kilo for me was somewhat interesting. He seemed to have some kind of humanity buried deep down somewhere, but he was far more robotic than human. He doesn’t speak a word and kills without hesitation, and that includes innocent people if you’re trigger happy like I am. But aside from brief flashbacks to his past towards the end and some comments from other characters here and there, Kilo is never explored in any depth. Not just that, but he couldn’t possibly be. And the reason for that is because the campaign abruptly ends after barely six hours with what can only be described as an eyeball-explodingly predictable and cliched ending. But that’s not the main problem even. The issue is that the ending the game goes for requires substantial character development in order to have any lasting meaning, but the campaign is just too short for any of that and the game doesn’t make any effort to develop its protagonist. What I’m criticizing the game for may sound quite excessive, but the truth is that it’s just the basics of good storytelling. Syndicate has nice ideas, but it fails in its execution of them. I’m not expecting a work of art, but a story with substance, and one that is at least engaging.

The good part is that the campaign can often be good fun with its enjoyable and fast-paced brutal action. It’s just unfortunate really that it’s far too repetitive, and sadly stays at the same level of intensity throughout its entire duration. What I mean is that you won’t really be doing anything else aside from walking down linear paths and going trigger happy to clean out a room of more-than-happy-to-die enemies. Now, the idea behind enemy AI is solid, and they do display some level of intelligence often enough when they dive out of cover and go prone to shoot at you, or rush at you if they’re at the advantage. But the problem is that for the most part enemies are content with being canon fodder, and will freely allow you to blast them to hell or charge straight up to them and perform quick executions, taking them out one by one. Sadly, there are only a handful of execution animations. That said, the combat, weapons and great pace to the action makes it entertaining, but there is a lack of variety and some issues. One of those being with the cover system, which is entirely automatic, as in if you get close to a surface you will enter cover. While in theory this should make for a fluid system, the problem is that you don’t stick to cover, so you can become exposed quite easily just by moving your crosshair.

Syndicate deserves praise for its weapons and unique Breach system. The guns are awesome, and feel great and powerful to use. More than that, nearly all of them have secondary fire options that actually change the way the weapon functions entirely. For example, one of the machine guns can swap to its scope, which turns it into a heavy rifle that can hit enemies through cover. But the core of gameplay is Breaching, which basically enables you to “hack” other chipped opponents and computer systems at any point in battle by simply targeting and holding down a button. For example, you can dud grenades thrown at you, disable shields or cause turrets to attack friendlies. Furthermore, you also get access to unique abilities in the form of Suicide, Backfire and Persuade, where you can force an enemy to blow himself and his friends up with a grenade, short-circuit an enemy’s weapon to stun and damage him, or turn an enemy against his allies. Lastly, using DART you’re also able to slow down time and see through walls, but use of this is limited. These abilities need to be recharged after use, and to do that you’ll need to keep killing. All in all, it’s a fluid and fun system that works very well in the game, and while it doesn’t really add much depth to gameplay, it certainly gives it more personality.

It’s upsetting to see that despite the creative Breach system, the game chooses to focus purely on gun combat. It doesn’t often find unique and inventive ways to use its own mechanics, and even though it’s fun, you can’t help but feel there’s something lacking. I hoped to find something more in the game’s upgrade system, but there was no joy there. While the system is pretty solid and functional, nothing you unlock really adds anything new to gameplay, but simply makes you harder to kill and more lethal. That’s usually fine, but it becomes slightly awkward here because upgrade points are mostly available at set points in the campaign and to make matters worse you finish the game so fast that the majority of abilities remain locked. Ultimately what you’re left with is an experience that feels empty, and incomplete. With the story and post-mission player ratings and statistics not providing much incentive to progress through the campaign, it falls completely on the gameplay to keep you playing, and with that it’s only a matter of how long you can stay entertained with the limited experience on offer. It’s a shame really, because it makes you wonder whether the single-player should have been dropped entirely in favour of the more attractive co-op mode, or if more should have just been done with it.

Syndicate’s co-op mode is undoubtedly the better half of the game. It focuses more on the Breach system and teamwork, with up to three other players, rather than pure gunplay. There are nine missions on offer, playable on normal, hard or the unlockable expert difficulty level, and it’s up to you how long this will keep you hooked. The gameplay of the co-op has a similar style to Left4Dead, in that you and your mates will fight and survive through a number of enemy waves and eventually reach “safe zones” which serve as checkpoints and places to stock up on supplies. It’s just surprising how much more value is offered in the co-op mode. Things start out pretty easy in the first mission, but it quickly turns really difficult, and the AI become extremely punishing. This means you’ll need to pick appropriate skills and work as a team, focusing on healing each other, breaking enemy shields and using your abilities to help friendlies or to attack enemies. It really can be quite brutal, but this is all part of the fun.

There are both more and better skills offered in co-op than in the main campaign, such as Shield, which gifts your whole team with an armour bonus. You’ll get to customise your weapon loadouts, and earn experience to increase your rank and unlock new abilities. There is a lot more variety, in both level design and abilities, compared to the main campaign. Additionally, you’ll also earn research points in missions, which are used to unlock new weapon mods and abilities, and this allows you to play the role that you want to. It’s just puzzling why many of these elements weren’t incorporated into the single-player mode, even in some small way. I’m positive the campaign would have been a lot better if it had included these sorts of customistation options, especially since action makes up the entirety of the campaign. It would certainly have added some much-needed substance to the single-player.

However, it’s a sad thing though that as much as the co-op does right, it bares a similar set of problems to the campaign, in that things just become lackluster after a while. The Breach system doesn’t have enough depth or creativity to carry the gameplay forward on its own, and the scenarios and mission objectives are often not that diverse or exciting. Overall, you get the feeling once again that something more could have been done here. I just had no desire to continue playing after a couple of hours. Syndicate is unfortunately the manufacturer of its own demise. In today’s world, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to co-op multiplayer, and many games also include a great single-player package to go with it. So with Syndicate’s single-player mode hardly being enough incentive to buy this, it becomes difficult to recommend this game at its full asking price on its co-op multiplayer alone. And that’s a shame really, because the co-op is actually good fun, and offers something of decent value.

Graphically, Syndicate is gorgeous. Even though the bloom effect seems to be overused at times, the futuristic design is excellent, and the blue-hue colour scheme is awesome to look at, and surprisingly easy on the eye despite being bright and flashy. The visuals are clean in spite of the excessive violence, and the game retains a classy appearance. The feel of the world is great, and the game has plenty of personality, even if it doesn’t really feel alive. I particularly loved many of the weapon and character designs, especially Kilo. I don’t really remember any standout soundtracks, as music was pretty subtle for the most part. That, or it was just drowned out completely by all the shooting and explosions. However, the voice acting was actually of a good standard, which at least made the narrative authentic, even if it wasn’t really that engaging. In the end, as an audio and visual experience, Syndicate fortunately delivers nicely, and it’s definitely one of the best aspects of the game.

Syndicate is a fun game, there’s no doubt about that. You won’t feel like you wasted your time or gained nothing if you play this, but it feels like it should have been a lot more than it is. It’s not the worst of disappointments, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless. The game is entirely ordinary, doesn’t last, and quickly fades from memory. In the end, this is only good for a brief distraction, and nothing more.

What are the three greatest evils you ask? Well, they are a rainbow shooting panda, an enraged clown and an overpowered mage. Now isn’t that both awesome and random at the same time. But under all of this randomness the game is quite fun. The controls are simple with basic direction keys, numbers on your keyboard dedicated to spells and the spacebar for dashing. Yet when the levels become progressively harder Arcane Arena reveals a darker side, and the game can become frightfully terrifying. Well it’s still a game, anyway.

In the game, you start off from level one where you’re introduced to the basic controls, and the first enemy a little slime monster which is speedily inching towards you with killing intent. The first spell you’re given is a flame spell, and serves you well in torching the little buggers. More slimes soon descend upon your tiny mage who’s stuck within the boundaries of a tiny map that he has to manoeuvre around with his dashing ability, and the flame spell becomes invaluable. Dash is also useful to take out the lower level slimes, but things soon change.

As you play, the amount of enemies on screen increases drastically with an array of elemental gremlins, goblins, slimes, armoured soldiers and the aforementioned bosses. They all make up this kooky cocktail of magic spamming domination as they endlessly attack you horde after horde. This happens every level and continuously with only a few moments of rest before the next wave of magic wielding anarchy arrives in anime ‘chibi’ style.

After annihilating a wave of enemies successfully you can unlock a skill from a selection menu as a level up bonus. Selections can include options like new spells such as lightning, turrets (which can be infused with other elemental spells), ward, ice shards, as well as other selections which increase health and damage resistance. There are indeed quite a few options to choose from. This gives the player great variety and is great to see in a free indie title such as Arcane Arena.

Visually, the game has bright colorful Zelda type visuals that catch your attention. Aesthetically all the enemies are differentiated with elemental colouring accordingly for each enemy set and each race of enemy from slime to imp, or whatever those things are, is clearly identifiable. Enemies can go invisible and also use spells and in the chaotic mess on screen clear-cut visual differences come in handy in dealing with the hordes of enemies. The soundtrack on the other hand is nothing to rave about and whilst suitable is not a clear highlight of the game.

On the plus side, the boss fights are quite challenging and the game doesn’t stagnate because of a limited amount of levels. However, I must warn you that after you hit the level five mark and move upwards the game becomes relentless as enemies are furiously spawned. Arcane Arena won’t give you a moment’s rest. This is a really good thing for a free indie game and I highly enjoyed it.

The first and most obvious thing gamers will want to know about any HD collection is the contents of the box. Seriously, this collection cannot be faulted on that front, as it’s simply astounding how much is on offer here. For a price you won’t regret, you will become the proud owner of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker fully ported and upgraded from the PSP, and finally the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 MSX2 games found when you start up Snake Eater. Now I’m a massive fan of the MGS franchise, in fact it’s my favourite series of all time, but even if I wasn’t there’s no denying that getting a total of five games for this price is definitely worth it. Especially five games from a franchise as decorated as this. But that’s not even all. The grand cherry on top is that both Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater feature in their Substance and Subsistance forms respectively, which means they both come with a bunch of extra content in addition to the main game. If that’s not enough, then know that Peace Walker has been fully upgraded with not just its controls, but also its multiplayer, as you’ll now be able to play co-op online over the PlayStation Network.

It would honestly make me feel like a jackass to make any complaint whatsoever about content, but one can’t help missing the original Metal Gear Solid, especially if you’re a newcomer to the series and need to make sense of the fantastic story. Kojima refused to just update the graphics, insisting that if the original game was to be revisited, then it would be to re-imagine it rather than re-master it. Fair enough, but it’s missed nonetheless. Now, for the sake of making you aware, the next thing to take note of is that, while Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater do appear in their later-released upgraded and content-packed forms, there are a few bonus features missing from both games. An example would be that MGS 3 doesn’t feature its online multiplayer mode. Personally, that doesn’t affect me at all, because I’d much rather play Peace Walker’s co-op over that. Now, while it isn’t the end of the world that some pieces of non-essential content are missing, it is a slight downer that they weren’t preserved.

It’s obvious when playing that these games come from a different era. The feel and controls won’t be like any other game you’ve played recently, it’s complex and challenging and definitely at a different level. However, the games have remained perfectly in tact, and have not undergone any changes other than the excellent HD remastering. So while unconventional to play and experience, they are exactly the same as they were in their own era. It will take time to adjust if you haven’t played a game in this series before, especially to the controls and unique mechanics, but it’s unquestionably worth the effort. Furthermore, you’d do well to know that all of the games feature full trophy support, which is a plus for any who enjoy achievements. To touch on the basics for a bit, I have to say that I love how this collection handles the menu interface and navigation between games. Other bundles could learn a thing or too. The title screen has a stylish and clean design, allowing you to view the details of each of the three games, as well as browse through their manuals. You’ll get treated to the games’ respective main themes when highlighting them, which is pretty cool. Lastly, you’re able to return to the title selection screen from the main menu of the three games, so it’s really easy to get around.

Naturally I won’t be going into full detail with each game, as I’ll mainly be telling you how each performs, starting with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The first thing you’ll notice is that the game is fast, responsive, loading times are short and it feels right at home. Out of all the games in the bundle, it perhaps has the hardest controls and camera to get used to if you haven’t played a game in this series before, but it’s definitely worth it because it’s an absolutely incredible experience. If it helps you can always play the game on the easier difficulties first to get used to it. You definitely won’t be used to the excessively long cutscenes which are a staple of the series though, but it’s the norm. You’re either going to warm up to this franchise or you won’t. It’s always been a game for its fans, but there’s no denying that it’s up there in history’s best gaming experiences. Now, the original PS2 version was always smooth and clear with its visuals, and because the game is mostly played in small, in-door environments, the HD upgrade hasn’t really made a huge improvement. For its time it was one of the best-looking PS2 games around. The only noticeable difference here is that the field of vision has been expanded a bit, which improves the quality of the cinematic experience. But only marginally.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is perhaps the best all-round experience here, purely speaking in terms of the main campaign. The HD visuals have really improved the visual experience, upping both the framerate and resolution. It’s still arguably one of, if not the best-looking game on the PS2, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see it in remastered HD visuals, as the level of detail is just that much better now. Many gamers, especially newcomers, would probably find Snake Eater to be the most amazing game in the franchise, and that would be due to the reduction in cutscenes in favour of gameplay depth. And since the HD collection features Subsistance, you can enjoy the upgraded camera which is a huge improvement and much more comfortable to work with. The only technical problem to mention is that in cutscenes the lip-syncing can be a bit off, but there’s nothing else to fault. Really, you owe it to yourself to experience this game, and I believe it’s one of the best in history. The story, gameplay, soundtrack – practically everything Snake Eater did, fans would agree it was as close to perfect as you could want. For me personally, playing this again was like coming home after years spent away.

Finally, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has perhaps benefited the most in this collection, and has undergone the most improvements. While it was a great game on PSP, the main problem with it had always been the handheld’s obvious limitations, especially with regards to controls. Now with an additional analogue stick to work with and a higher resolution, the experience suddenly feels enormously better. But even though Peace Walker is not exactly the highlight of this franchise, there’s no denying that the amount of content it packs is incredible. And now that the game actually has proper online play for its co-op multiplayer mode through PSN, it just finally seems like it’s realising its potential. Furthermore, the HD collection’s Peace Walker allows you to share your save files, as in you’ll get to transfer them from your PSP to your PS3, or the other way around. So you won’t need to start from scratch if you’re already put in the hours on your PSP. A little unfortunate though is that even though Peace Walker looks infinitely better than its PSP counterpart, graphically speaking, it is just an upgraded version of the PSP game after all, and so you’ll notice the bland environments and lack of intricate detail compared to, say, Snake Eater. It’s not a deal-breaker exactly, but it’s noticeable.

The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection is almost a perfect tribute to the series, and probably amongst the best examples of how HD remakes should be done. Even with the omission of the original Metal Gear Solid and some minor flaws, this is still deserving of a perfect score. It’s simply a phenomenal deal, and to any fan it’s almost impossible to ignore. To series newcomers, I’d strongly suggest playing the original game first, and if you enjoy it then don’t hesitate to pick this collection up. For what you’re getting here, this is worth every cent. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection is a must-buy.

NeverDead is a title published by Konami that has been developed by Rebellion Developments (the guys that brought you Azhar’s favourite game; Rogue Warrior) and features as director, one Shinta Nojiri, making for an interesting mix of British development ties with some Japanese influence, and of course an American-accented protagonist because “America! Fuck yeah!”

You are Bryce Boltzmann, once a noble and courageous knight who travelled the world hunting demons, now a mere shadow of his former self… a few thousand years later. See, Bryce is immortal. Cursed by a demon in a battle gone wrong, Bryce lost both his humanity and his one true love thanks to his complacency and has since spent eternity regretting it. Modern day Bryce is a cynical alcoholic, a mess of a man that works as a bounty hunter pretty much just because there’s nothing better to do. He is accompanied by a female called Arcadia who is every bit as cold and harsh to the world as he is, just a bit more serious about things.

NeverDead is first and foremost an action title, but what immediately comes to the fore is the game’s comedic nature. It’s quirky and there is humour abound, from corny one-liners to full on characters that exist only as comedic devices. The game wants you to laugh and it tries very hard to do so. From the story to the dialogue to the characters, the aim is entertainment from a game that doesn’t take itself seriously at all.

If anything, Bryce is more a parody of badass than he is actually badass. His immortality grants him the ability to detach his limbs or head and lob them about, or re-attach limbs that have fallen off. Bryce takes every possible opportunity to make the relevant joke, be it about a lost arm, leg or head.

The dismemberment factor pretty much forms the gist of the game’s mechanics, at times requiring you to navigate puzzles or simply get to the next point in a level by detaching a certain limb or your head, and using it to solve the puzzle or reach the next area. You may also regenerate lost limbs at the touch of a button. As an example of how this works in game, you could come upon a ventilation shaft and not be tiny enough to fit into it, so you pull off your head and roll yourself through the shaft and into the next area before regenerating the rest of your body and moving on with the level. It’s interesting and a unique take on immortality if it were used in any sort of practical way.

Unfortunately, as interesting a concept as it might have been initially, as you play through the game you realise that the developers just ran out of ideas or didn’t really think some through properly enough, and the entire game ends up reeking of lazy design choices. There isn’t much variation although it’s easy to spot many possibilities for other cool things, but the game never asks them of you so it feels as though the newly introduced game mechanic is a waste, just a reason to be different and not actually embracing the difference itself.

You might argue that since Bryce is immortal and able to re-attach lost limbs, the game difficulty is irrelevant since it would just be three kinds of ‘Easy’ but actually you would be very much mistaken. See, Bryce is probably the greatest pushover ever to exist in a game. Even on the lower difficulties, combat is a series of dodge-rolls away from harm only to get hit anyway and instantly lose a limb, requiring you to then dodge-roll into it because that is how you re-attach lost limbs in the game, before some other enemy waiting on the other side of that dodge-roll hacks off another part of your body. In practice it’s a clumsy system that results in frustrating fights and makes Bryce seem as though he is Christiano Ronaldo getting touched, in a football game. Such is the forced exaggeration that is his reaction to any bodily harm.

Combat in the game is handled entirely in the third person, with a combination of guns (be they pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles of shotguns) for each hand fired by each trigger, or what is called a Butterfly Blade, which looks like a large folded butter knife. Throughout the game you fight mostly variations of demons that look like they’re straight out of Devil May Cry, together with the odd ‘shoot the weak spot’ boss battle, some that actually take advantage of your ability to detach limbs by requiring you to, for example, lob an arm into their mouths and then shoot them up from the inside to damage them. You acquire experience for killing enemies as well as collecting orbs through each level, that allow you to purchase skills that range from typical examples such as faster running or better aim, to some more oddball ones such as bullets that heal allies if you shoot them or explosive limbs for death by appendage.

Your partner Arcadia is a human and therefore is vulnerable to damage and may die, but it never feels like it in practice. In fact, throughout my time with the game I found it easier to just let Arcadia tank ALL the things while I shot at them from distance, running in only to revive her when necessary. She takes far more hits before she goes down, as opposed to Bryce who is instantly decapitated upon being so much as poked in the side. To add insult to grievous bodily injury, there is this little fucker of a demon that, if you aren’t quick enough, will suck in your lost limbs and eat them up, or if it’s your head you are forced to play a mini-game that involves timing a button press, failing which you are effectively stuck inside it for eternity, forcing a game reload.

It’s not all bad, though. In fact — and quite the opposite of my initially done review, for the love of the internet — having mentioned all of the bad parts first, it’s time to get down to some of the better aspects of the game.

The first of those is most definitely the story. It’s certainly not anything to write home about, but the method of execution is very nicely carried out and the actual plot itself, while cheesy to the point of being cringeworthy at times, does not fail to entertain the player. The game plays out in two timelines, telling parallel stories. The first of these is the story of Bryce as a human, and is told in cutscenes between campaign missions. Young, brash, cocky, pretty much the archetypal human, Bryce and his wife Cypher battle various demons and attempt to slay them until finally they meet their match at the hands of Astaroth who curses Bryce with immortality. Very much like flashbacks, these cutscenes serve to fill the gaps and explain why Bryce is the drunken asshole that he is in modern time. That of course, is the premise for the rest of the game, which follows modern day Bryce on his latest bounty hunt that starts off as a simple mission but escalates before he finally discovers that Astaroth is back and it’s time for the two to meet once more.

I enjoyed the story. I did not expect production values that were anywhere near award winning, but I did expect to be entertained and the story provided that entertainment. Not just that, but it had me laughing as well. Smiling along at the very least. Yes it got corny and borderline flatulent at times, but for the most part the humour is genuine and fits just right.

The characters are another strong point of the game. Bryce seems to be the only character who doesn’t look like he’s straight out of an anime or JPRG, with pretty much every other character looking as though Rebellion ripped them right off a Final Fantasy game. The characters are memorable, quirky and delightful additions to the game. One particular enemy reminded me of The Joker at times, such was his entertainment value.

The game’s graphics are… well, they leave quite a bit to be desired. It is easily understood by the fact that most environments can be reduced entirely to rubble, but destructible environments are nothing new and there have been far prettier offerings in recent times. All of that brown blurriness needs to step aside so that the Japanese influences upon this game may be properly felt.

At least the sound is great, if you’re a fan of rock music. It’s an action title that asks you to fight hordes of demons, so the backing soundtrack featuring entirely Megadeth music is welcomed, even fitting, all things considered.

Coming back to lazy design for a bit, you get the feeling that Rebellion wanted to be different but weren’t keen on putting in the effort in doing it right. I’ve already mentioned the dismemberment, in this respect. There are times when you have absolutely no idea where to go or what to do, only for some glitched enemy to suddenly appear and attack you after twenty minutes running around looking for something to kill in order to trigger the next area. Or worse, you’re just not told where to go next and must guess that you need to pull out your head, throw it into a barrel, shoot that barrel causing your head to fly through the air and into an open pipe somewhere, down the pipe and into the chimney of a building you can’t enter. Or something.

Battles are another example of lazy design, with not that much variation on enemy types and most enemies being basic bullet sponges, albeit with various methods to kill them. Unfortunately, you will spend most battles simply rolling around because of how egregiously flimsy and useless the so-called ‘immortal’ Bryce is. It’s almost a ubiquitous immortality, if anything.

So like a sitcom then, NeverDead is flawed and imperfect but not terrible either. It never set out to be any different in the first place. You’re either going to enjoy it because it entertains you and keeps you going until your next viewing of an actual series — probably House — or you’re going to hate it because the recorded laughter is annoying and the jokes are about as pathetic as MySpace.

What frustrated me the most was that NeverDead seems, at first glance, to be every bit an action title. It’s even billed as one in the trailers (check out the one above for example), but really its true charm comes in the comedic value that it offers. Almost a counter-productive strength then, when you consider that the worst part about the game is the one that’s being sold to audiences through marketing.

I would not recommend a full-price purchase, however if you’re on the lookout for a cheap game that provides some no-frills, no-fuss humour and light-hearted comedy, you need look no further than NeverDead and its eternally drunk immortal.

Wait, how do immortals get drunk in the first place?

Alan Wake was released exclusively on Xbox360 back in May of 2010, and it was a great game to say the least. For me, it was actually one of the few games on Xbox360 that made me green with envy. Now, the sad part is that Remedy always wanted a PC version, and it was actually on the cards until Microsoft decided to cancel it. However, despite that, the developers still wanted to release a PC version, and so Remedy continued to press Microsoft for the green light, eventually getting it around the middle of 2011 only. Apparently, the green light was given not just because of Remedy’s pestering, but also because of its good standing with Microsoft, and the time allocation, in that the PC version was meant to be available ahead of American Nightmare. Long story short, Remedy got back to work, and instead of picking up from the scrapped PC version, it actually worked from the Xbox360 code and proceeded to add in some new features in order to utilise some of the more powerful elements on modern hardware. Finally, the game was officially announced last December, and here we are.

Now, we’ve already reviewed the game back on Xbox360, so it would be pointless to do so again. If you’re hearing about the game for the first time, then it would be best to revisit the original review. But if you’re only interested in hearing how the PC version turned out, then that’s exactly what I’ll be on about. Firstly, the PC version comes packed with both DLC packs, namely The Signal and The Writer, which is cool. But the thing to take note of is that as of now, the game is only available through Steam, with a retail release planned for March 2, which is quite a bummer. However, on a happier note, the PC version of Alan Wake seems to be performing quite well, which Remedy revealing that it has recovered from its development and marketing costs for it within the first two days of it being on sale.

As a PC gamer, the first thing you’d probably find yourself wondering about is whether or not the installation process is a hassle. Well, I had absolutely no problems with it in that regard, and there’s certainly no annoying DRM to worry about. Secondly, and most importantly, PC gamers would find themselves then thinking about whether or not the game is a proper effort or a lazy port, and the implications of that. Quite happily I am able to say that the game’s journey to PC has been handled fantastically. Not only has the game been optimised really well, but everything you usually want and expect to get in a PC game is here, such as fully customisable graphics and control settings. On that note, there isn’t a huge upgrade in the game’s graphics, but there’s a noticeably small improvement. It’s also extremely comfortable to play, and it controls excellently on PC, and feels right at home.

It was easy for me to love this game and have a great time, and not just because it’s the first time I played it properly from start to finish rather than in bits and pieces. The reason is because it’s just a great experience to have. For one, I encountered absolutely no bugs, glitches, framerate drops, crashes or technical problems of any kind. It was responsive, smooth and awesome the whole way through. Well, aside from the bad lip syncing issues that are still here. Secondly, one of the best parts for me was that there were barely any loading times, and whenever they came up they were extremely short. I did play it on a pretty powerful gaming rig, mind you, but as I said before it’s been optimised really well so it’s unlikely you’ll face any problems as it’s not too taxing on hardware either.

Alan Wake is not the longest game by any means, as it only has six chapters presented episodically. However, each of them are quite long, and the game flows really well through them. It will take you about ten hours to complete the game entirely, give or take a few, and with the two added DLC packs you’ll probably get an extra hour’s worth or so out of the game, and that’s a pretty sweet deal considering the current price. It might be a good idea to pick it up now while there’s still some time to kill before March’s releases, or failing that you can always look forward to getting it one day as a retail purchase. It’s definitely worth the time, and its fluid pacing makes it a great game to spend a weekend with. It’s solidly entertaining, and has a engrossing story to boot, which will keep you hooked.

Alan Wake on PC is a great experience to have. It may not have made any major advancements from the Xbox360 version, but in the end it’s more or less exactly what we wanted. Remedy did a fine job bringing it to the platform, and it feels right at home. Try not to miss out on this game, if you can help it.

The unfortunate thing with mixed martial arts games is that there’s never a middle ground. A game is either stunning or it’s annoying.

For one to buy a fighting game, it shows that they have some sort of competitive nature. In life, they don’t want to lose — especially in a fight. Fighting games are no different.

That being said, a fighting game will either blow you away with visuals and gameplay that works, or it will frustrate you with buttons which do nothing when pressed. And, in the heat of the moment, this can cause a lot of rage.

And that’s the thing. UFC Undisputed 3, upon it’s return, could either be a great success boasting great visuals and fantastic gameplay, or it could be a one-hit knock out.

Fortunately though, UFC Undisputed 3 is the title fight we’ve been waiting for. The George St. Pierre versus Anderson Silva, if I may.

THQ’s decision to develop the game for an extra year is great one. The game bounced back with numerous changes, all of which one should welcome with open arms.

One of the most welcomed additions to the game is the key configuration. One can now simply walk into Mordor, as punching, kicking, and submissions are a lot easier to achieve.

In the beginning of the game you’re prompted with the choice of two control layouts: one really complex — from UFC 2009 and 2010 — and one really simple. Depending on your experience with the game, you may choose. This is editable whilst in game, if you choose wrong first time round.

This, on its own, is a great addition. It was often noted that the leading problem with UFC Undisputed is the control system. No-one knows how to do anything once the fight moves the ground. It was utterly unfriendly for newbies. And, very cool for veterans. Fortunately, there’s now the chance for newbies to understand the game and how it works with a basic controller layout. Thereafter, nothing stops them from kicking ass with the big boy buttons.

Now That The Game Is Easy To Play, Let’s Fight!

Starting off, the game has been modified to look like the UFC. Then, it has been adapted to be like the UFC with 150 fighters across seven weight categories. The Champions, the underdogs and the veterans — your favourite fighter should be in the roster.

Following this, UFC has added Pride Fighting Championship to the mix. For those questioning what that is: Pride was like UFC, but in Japan, and in a boxing ring. The significance of Pride in UFC reveals two things: UFC doesn’t blow their own horn, and they are more than happy to offer variation. The Pride mode offers the chance to fight in a ring — opposed to a cage known as an Octagon — and the chance to fight under different rules. For example, in the UFC ruleset you may not kick a grounded opponent in the face. In Pride, the Japanese allow you to kick grounded opponents in the face. A big, and enthralling, change which is really fun.

Unfortunately though, with the upside comes a downside. Pride seems very limited as it offers significantly less fighters. That means, all the great Pride fighters who previously existed don’t exist anymore. The fight card feels shallow and somewhat limiting. With Pride, it’s fun to mix it up, but that’s all.

After the great addition of Pride, the game now offers a Head-Up-Display when trying to submit someone in the fight. This is very useful.

In the previous UFC titles, it was a mystery and a mission to submit someone. One was under the impression that to submit someone successfully, you needed to undergo a six month training camp in analogue trigger usage. In other words, it was seriously difficult.

UFC Undisputed 3 changes this dramatically. The HUD which appears once a submission is attempted allows you to see what the chance of you achieving that submission is, and what you need to do to achieve that submission. Basically, it’s like two snakes, where the dominant snake needs to hover over the submitting snake to achieve a broken arm, or a choke. Way better and easier to do than before.

Gameplay wise, it’s great. Buttons work when pressed, and fights become interesting. Spamming X no longer has the same effect with punches and kicks — one needs to move and be strategic.

The general aspects of UFC and MMA exist in the game — as they did in the previous versions. However, they have been tweaked and bettered over time. One can high kick, low kick, punch, gut punch and clinch with ease. Performing a takedown attempt is easier to do and easier to stop — resulting in a fierce physical and tactical battle.

It’s almost set out so that every fight will be a good one.

Whenever fighters are pushed to their limits, they begin to slow down. Fatigue sets it. It becomes more real. Fighters are tougher this year, however. Before you knock someone out, you usually “rock” them where they become somewhat dazed, and this is your chance to pounce on them, like a mongoose eating snake. In previous versions, once a fighter was rocked, they were easy to finish. This year, not so much — if they are rocked there’s a great chance of recovery — especially if it’s early in the fight and they aren’t tired. It seems as if fatigue plays a much larger part this time round.

At the end of the fight, once you’ve won or lost, the game will give you a table. This shows the kicks and punches thrown, as well as where you hurt your opponent and where he hurt you. Also, it shows you the amount of Shop Points earned.

Shop Points are useful to buy things at the in-game Store. Things like, clothing, movies, fighters, moves and taunts.

The Modes

In UFC Undisputed 3, there’s various modes which offer different experiences. There’s an Exhibition Mode, Title Mode, Tournament Mode, Event Mode, Task Mode, Career Mode and online play.

The Title Mode has play in a ‘league’. Expect to fight against various fighters to win the Title. Basically, you need to work your way through an amount of fighters to get to the Championship. It’s less serious than Career but more rewarding than Exhibition — which is a normal game with no strings attached.

Tournament Mode offers you the choice of a tournament type, either Pride or UFC. You can create your own tournament with various players. Basically, it’s a lounge mode where if you had friends over you’d set this up. It’s knock-out based, therefore, if you lose you’re out. This mode will help decide on a winner at the end of the night.

With Event Mode you’ll be able to create your very own UFC event. Choose the event name, where it is and the number of fights. You can include Title Fights too. The layout for Event Mode is very similar to the UFC, where the whole introduction and build up is the same as it is in real life. It’s like a virtual re-creation of the UFC.

In Task Mode one is required to complete certain tasks in a fight, in a given time. The Task Mode is basically legendary fights which you get to replay, with the original fighters. This mode allows you to unlock fight videos of the ‘Ultimate Fights’ which you are recreating.

Career Mode is what you expect it to be. A Career. You create your own fighter, with in-depth settings to make it very unique. In UFC Undisputed 3 the Career Mode has changed. It no longer focuses on stats as much, but rather training games and fights. There will be drills and sparring sessions to boost attributes and hone skills. In the Career Mode one can either create their own fighter or play with an existing fighter and modify their attributes. Then, you will be able to plan your future as a fighter and join various training camps to improve.

The Career Mode also allows you to set a gameplan, where if you follow it, you get points to better your fighter’s ability. This year is all about increasing skill through practical experience, rather than just offering bland points for punching a bag. So, perform better practically and win the Championship.

Naturally, online play has various modes: Exhibition — like above, it’s just a normal game, a Fight Camp, Leaderboard and the ability to share content. It’s really simple, actually.

In the online mode, sharing content will offer social interaction. Basically, you’re able to make your own videos and montages of knockouts or submissions which you achieved. All your replays are automatically saved, so it’s easy to go back and create great knockout videos.

UFC Undisputed 3 also offers the ability to create Custom logos and banners. The logos you create can be used on banners, or as tattoos. Banners you create can be shown in the cage.

It’s A Lot Different

It’s clearly evident that a year break was quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to the game. The developers, publishers and the UFC sat down to discuss what they want to do and how they want to do it.

UFC Undisputed 3 puts itself forward, more than the previous games. There’s tonnes more features and a style of game which is more practical than the normal attribute based system often found in sports games.

As for commentary, Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg are great. They feel knowledgeable and hardly repetitive. It almost feels as if you are watching the UFC, or listening, at least.

Dear Esther is a very difficult game to review, and the complex reason for that is that it’s actually hard to consider this a game. Now, don’t freak out just yet, as you’ll understand that part when I go on to talk about how it’s played, so for now let’s focus on what it is. Dear Esther is not so much a game as it is like a visual novel, or some kind of experimental narrative experience. That immediately gives it brownie points for originality, but with any title we have to come back to the fundamental point of gaming. And that is the question: is it entertaining? Well, a game of this experimental and unique nature simply can’t be for everyone, but there’s definitely plenty to admire here. And at the end of the day, it’s these kinds of games that we love to see in the Indie genre, because of the spark of innovation that only it can provide. And with Dear Esther, you’ll be experiencing something you’ve never seen before in gaming.

It will quite literally take a few seconds to explain both how this game is played and what you’ll be experiencing. It’s difficult to even talk about anything to do with gameplay, because really there is none. The only input required from you, the player, is to move around the land in first-person. As you progress through the world, of which there are four brief chapters that will take you about an hour or so to complete, you will engage with the plot through voiced-over letter fragments to a woman named Esther. While the narrator isn’t specified, it’s kind of implied that he is Esther’s husband and that she’s dead, killed in some car accident. These monologues activate as you reach certain points, and the interesting part is that each of them are either completely random or specifically linked to the area you’re exploring. This lack of plot coherency was purposefully done so as to allow players to interpret the story based on what they gather. Truthfully, the dialogue is great, and it really draws you in. In fact it’s the best part about the game, but the one problem with it is that it can be hard to follow what’s happening the first time around if you’re not paying close attention to the dialogue instead of the world.

The overall issue, however, is that this game can’t really be explained in words. Me telling you what this game is about probably makes it sound like utter garbage. But it really isn’t. It’s actually pretty compelling, and really interesting as a concept. Furthermore, it’s something you can only know you’ll enjoy if you experience it for yourself. However, I will admit that two real problems with the gameplay, so to speak, is that firstly you move through the world at a very slow pace, and there’s no run or jump button. While this does admittedly help make the plot revelations almost hauntingly intriguing, it doesn’t do well to stimulate players. Secondly, what’s worse is that there is no environmental interactivity whatsoever. As you explore the land, you’ll come across all sorts of curious things and little items, but you can’t engage with anything which not only dulls things a bit, but also makes you wonder what the point of exploring is. Therein lies the real truth of Dear Esther. It’s an experience that is purely visual and immersive. It relies entirely on its visual design, atmosphere, dialogue and haunting music. Does it work? Well, if you’re intrigued then it might be bloody difficult to get away from this game until it’s over.

For an Indie game Dear Esther has awesome graphics and atmosphere. It’s dark, haunted, mysterious and almost perfectly realises its ghost-like themes. On top of that, the variety and intricacy of its visual design is amazing, and it’s difficult to draw your eyes away from what the world shows you. The music is also fantastic, if you can break away from the gripping narrative and listen to it that is, and the game really keeps you deeply interested in what’s going to happen next. You’re slowly chasing after the next little plot revelation, and it succeeds in making you damn curious. But it’s possible that you could find yourself lost, bored or both, and if that happens you either went the wrong way or this isn’t for you. However, the truth is that Dear Esther is actually brilliant as a pure audio and visual experience, and that’s ultimately what the creators were aiming for. It is an entirely unconventional game after all.

Due to the experimental and entirely unconventional nature of this game, I can’t really recommend it or dismiss it outright. The best I can do is advise you to take a look and decide if this is something that interests you, because at the end of the day you’re only going to know if you will like something like this if you play it for yourself. The game’s four chapters will only take you just over an hour or so to complete, so it’s up to you to decide whether that’s worth the asking price. Personally, I believe this is a very interesting game, and it’s worth it to experience something you most definitely haven’t before. Even though it’s daunting to try and rate this critically, I believe it’s an excellent attempt at creating a pure visual and audio gaming experience that is completely driven by narrative. It definitely works.

In conclusion, Dear Esther is most definitely not a game everyone can enjoy, but there’s certainly a lot to admire about it. The only reasonable advice I can give is to try it out if you’re interested, because you may just find yourself completely absorbed and practically forced to see it through to the end.

Watching the opening scene for Final Fantasy XIII-2 made me rethink my approach to this review. Rather than give you plenty of detail any Wikipedia page can do, or tie you down with every aspect of the game, something every other review has already done; I’m going to tell you why you should play Final Fantasy XIII-2. I realise that’s spoiled any chance of the game getting a bad rating but Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a game of special circumstance. Final Fantasy XIII has as many fans as it has haters and Final Fantasy XIII-2 is supposed to amend the things the previous iteration did wrong, as well improve on every aspect of its bigger brother. That’s quite a claim, though having played through a large majority of the game I can happily say Final Fantasy XIII-2 has done more than enough to win back the love of its audience. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about and through pure fanboyism have fooled myself into thinking that. So I’m going to lay out the game on the table and let you decide whether you think I’m right or just plain fanboy crazy; though the foam around my mouth as I type this doesn’t exactly bode well for my cause.

So what’s first? Well the first major issue Final Fantasy XIII had to contend with was the linearity of the game. Final Fantasy XIII-2 blows its original out of the park by introducing a paradox and time component. The just of the game is you, as Noel and Serah, need to travel back and forward in time solving paradoxes (or conflictions in time). The result of which is a massively improved scope for adventure and exploration. Not only are you free to travel to multiple times and locations at any point, as you unlock more and more, but are able to reset them and explore different endings. This isn’t forced upon you and there is almost no back tracking at all. It’s all very well done and encourages exploration as well as travelling to areas you might not be expected to go yet; to challenge your characters against higher levelled monsters, similar to a world map of the older Final Fantasy’s if you think about it. At the end of the day there is a huge scope to play with and you may do it all or skip it all, it’s your choice; just the way we like it.

What’s better than plenty of exploration and an encouragement to adventure beyond the confines of the story? Well side missions and bonus content like a Casino (in Serendipity) and an Arena (called the Coliseum). There are chocobo races, quizzes, secret bosses and all you’d expect from a Final Fantasy game. It’s executed well and despite the occasional cheesy mission or fetch quest, I thoroughly enjoyed the variety. The only real downer to an otherwise well executed time travelling mechanic is the initial load times between time points; it’s not Deus Ex long but it’s long enough to be noticeable.

Combat is another improved aspect, the paradigm system remains but with a few tweaks. You’re now able to tweak your paradigms to a couple of different ways and of course there’s the monster mechanic. The monster mechanic, as many of you must know by now, replaces the loss of most of the characters from Final Fantasy XIII; though it’s done relatively well. Each monster has an assigned paradigm and levelling them up through a slightly different crystarium system to your characters allows you to improve their usefulness in combat. That, plus the ability to transfer and infuse passive abilities to each monster allows for quite a diverse combat system. You can also customise the look of your monsters through the use of aesthetic items but they’re just that, purely aesthetic and completely up to the player. Each monster also posses a feral link ability, a sort of monster limit break, that can be used once their feral link gauges are full. They all offer unique strengths, some good, some meh, and in concert with the new systems of Final fantasy XIII-2, it’s a much improved and more enjoyable system. More than that, it means a new joy to grinding because being able to accommodate rare and unique monsters to your party through training and side quest makes grinding more than worth it again; Final Fantasy XIII-2 is making good on the staples that it lost in Final Fantasy XIII don’t you think?

Before I continue, I should make note that the levelling-up crystarium system of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is much simpler than its previous iteration, despite looking strategically complex. Moreover, and I suppose I should introduce what some will consider the elephant in the room, quick time events. Quick time events are part of each monster’s feral link ability, most boss battles and a large majority of the more intense cinematic. I know some will sigh at the mention of quick timing events but worry not, they’re done surprisingly well; though I’m sure you think I’m saying that out of some fanboy love. In fact, they allow for a couple options at some points, so press either ‘X’ or ‘Square’ to initiate slightly different sequences that give a nice little difference to an otherwise tired mechanic. Of course there are paradox puzzle events, something shown in most of the gameplay trailers prior to the game’s release; they’re basically a variety of puzzles used to interconnect certain story elements and side quests. These paradox puzzle events are interesting enough to break up the pace and challenge the mind but never quite enough to justify some of the puzzles that seem to be there just for the sake of doing so. The final feature, do you see how much has been added, is the fragment feature that allows for learning more of the game’s lore, unlocking awesome quirky abilities for your character as well as Mog. Mog is a fantastical creature, inspired by the moogles of past games, who not only acts as Serah’s weapon but allows for you to search for hidden and hard to get items, adding more to that exploration value I was raving on about.

Story wise Final Fantasy XIII-2 is much the same as it previous iteration, one potential sore point for some of the (ahem) ‘haters’. Its style can be quite convoluted at times and is of course of anime descent; if you’re not into that sort of thing then I would say the rest of the game more than makes up for itself. Personally I enjoyed the story and characters such as Snow who kept me emotionally connected to the game, except for the odd occasion, and there is a lot of potential in it. Remember, Final Fantasy is not a western RPG and its story is designed for a certain audience. Any fan of previous final fantasy games may really enjoy this story, or not, you decide.

There are a lot of other little changes made to the game that make it easier to pick up and play as well as enjoy. Tutorials aren’t forced upon you and you can skip any at any time, as well as many of the features and mechanics of the game are introduced fairly quickly. It’s all done well enough not to need the first 6 hours to introduce mechanics like the last game did. Moreover, and after you start up a loaded game, Final Fantasy XIII-2 will tell you the story so far and catch you up with anything you might have forgotten. It’s done quite well and shows effort and care put back into the game. There is the occasional rough spot and places were less some areas seem slightly inferior to others but nothing is especially bad or frustrating.

I saved this last point because it was the one aspect of Final Fantasy XIII that people didn’t complain about, the aesthetics of the game. The visuals are just as good as the previous game, even better at some points and I suppose a little worse at others. Overall the game can suffer very infrequent slowdowns but it’s not surprising considering the extra detail crammed into the game. The only aspect that seems to have suffered is the audio where there are some songs that seem more suited to the heavy rock of Devil May Cry and a couple other electro pop songs with. While seemingly appropriate, it made me miss the songs of the previous game. The audio track has its moments but at other times let me down.

All in all, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is an improvement over Final Fantasy XIII in every way, audio track aside, and I can’t see nearly as many people hating on it. It really is a vast improvement over the previous game and the addition of DLC promises to add extra challenging battles, side missions and content to extend your play time into the hundred hour category. Final Fantasy Versus XIII will probably be a superior game but it’s going to have to work extremely hard to win me over from Final Fantasy XIII-2

The billing has certainly been great for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (from here on, simply Reckoning) in the months building up to its release. Talk of the star names heading up production for the game had many expecting either something amazing or a complete failure because of the tendency of all-star teams to let their egos get in the way.

Reckoning itself is a crazy amalgamation of various esoteric gaming styles and underlying mechanics but it comes together very cohesively, forming a solid experience that does true justice to the names in the credits.

Let’s begin with the story for the game, a natural starting point for any discussion based on a role-playing game.

There is one.

It’s good.

Saying any more than that would honestly spoil the experience, but I will try and explain what I can with as little revelation as possible. The world of Reckoning revolves around the fates of inhabitants, with many living out their lives having already seen their demise and accepting it. You however, have no fate. Well, you did until you died…

The game starts off with you lying on a pile of bodies, the disposal site for what is called the Well of Souls; an experimental device that successfully brings you back from the dead, fully recreated in both body and mind. This then creates truly one of the most inventive and resourceful game mechanics ever to be seen in an RPG.

Basically, because you were dead once and have now been ‘resurrected’ you have no fate. Having no fate means that every breath you take affects the fates of those around you. After all, you would never have been around those people if you stayed dead. To that extent, you are able to manipulate the fates of others, something that gives you almost godlike status in your mortal body. And you are revered as such in the game, with any who know of your re-existence hammering the point home in case you didn’t already realise it.

Your lack of a fate does more than just dictate the fates of others, though.

Because you are fateless does not mean that you are immortal. Indeed you go down about as easily as anyone else, in fact easier in some cases (more on that later). However your lack of a fate means that you are the only one who can save the world from some evil guy who turned against his people and… yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a bit clichéd in parts, but it is every bit as enthralling and entertaining as the very best of RPG stories, I assure you.

Do note though that you will spend the first ten hours or so completely lost and confused, with regards to the main story. Just give the game some time and you will eventually begin to appreciate it. This is mostly due to the renaming of a lot of standard conventional species and races such as Dokkalfar (probably because good ol’ Salvatore got bored of calling them Dark Elves) but also because characters in the game are about as entertaining as an office fan.

Keeping things confusing for a moment, during character creation you are allowed either of four distinct races: Almain, Dokkalfar, Ljosalfar and Varani… What? Okay fine. Basically in order then: Civilised humans, dark elves, light elves and nomadic humans. Upon picking a race you are asked to then choose what is basically a religion, with various deities on offer. You may then customise your character’s appearance as per regular character creation in any RPG setup.

Building your character works a little differently in Reckoning. Your character starts off as essentially a blank slate with three fields to specialise in, namely Might, Finesse and Sorcery. Think of these as your typical Warrior, Rogue and Mage fields of specialisation, only this game doesn’t restrict you to a specific field. Once you invest enough points in a specific field or combination of fields, you unlock Destinies, which are basically classes in the game. So if you have a high Finesse skill you pick Destinies that give you Thief / Archer type bonuses as per regular Rogue classes, or if you pick a mixture of say, Might and Sorcery, you get Destinies with bonuses that allow for a Battlemage class. Or you could be a Jack of All Trades and do all three if you’re so entitled.

The level of customisation per specialisation field is pretty detailed as well, meaning loads of room for variation and a very specialised character.

The best thing about Reckoning’s underlying RPG mechanics? Remember how we said you have no fate, as per the story? Well because of that, you are allowed to, at any time, reset all of your skills and become a blank slate again, and it fits perfectly into the story of the game. So say you get tired of tanking ALL the things and want to instead sneak around with daggers; you simply visit the relevant person and get your skills reset for a small fee.

The world of Reckoning is a vibrant and colourful one. It’s almost cartoon-like in execution but the artistic style is very effective at how it portrays the tone of the game. Having played it on console, I have to admit that the texture quality left a little to be desired, but that is easily excused when you consider how visceral, clean and simply pretty the game looks, as well as the fact that before it was a singleplayer RPG, Reckoning was built to be an MMO. And it certainly feels like one at times, with the sprawling landscapes and huge open world that covers five continents, each as varied as the next and then some.

The game world is suitably large and well-populated either with random creatures, bandits, civilians or various factions. There are towns and encampments all over the place as well as plenty of dungeons to dive into, if you so desire. The various areas are not rendered in one go like a certain Elder Scrolls series of games, rather divided by loading screens that don’t even take that long anyway so are completely painless. The towns themselves are filled with all sorts of characters including various merchants as expected of your typical RPG. Each town also has a slew of quest-givers and its very own quest-line.

In fact if there is nothing else that will distract you from the main story, the sheer amount of side quests most certainly will. These range from the odd fetch-quest to full on quest-lines that take hours to get through. There are also various factions in the game that offer up quests and each have their own quest-lines and rewards upon completion that range from armour sets and unique weapons to houses and discounts at various merchants.

The combat in the game is best described as a mixture of hack-’n-slash and action fighting, akin to Darksiders, Dante’s Inferno or even Devil May Cry. Lots of D things, basically. You are a hyper-lethal vector, a force to be reckoned with… see what I did there? Your character is very combat-adept, having been a warrior before death and therefore capable of wielding pretty much anything. And there really is a lot to wield, from your typical longswords, bows, daggers (complete with stealth-kills) and hammers to some more exotic weapon types such as faeblades and chakrams. Expect to do a lot of fighting in this game as it more or less throws enemies at you wherever possible.

If I had to describe the style of combat in this game in a single word, I would call it “sexy”.

Each weapon has a chain of attacks and all of them are extremely pleasing to the eye, allowing you to feel suitably badass as you slice up your enemies. However, unless you’re playing on Easy, don’t expect to simply mash a button and get away with it. No, you will have to make ample use of both your block and dodge buttons in order to avoid damage and then deal some out, as well as making effective use of whatever special abilities you’ve unlocked such as a Scorpion-like pulling hook or ground-erupting spikes.

If things get really hairy you can activate what’s called Reckoning mode, which slows down time and increases the damage you deal while decreasing the damage you take. While in this mode, as you weaken enemies their fates begin to unravel. At your choosing, you may opt to manually end the mode by pressing the necessary button prompt on-screen and finishing off your enemies, absorbing their fate energy for a healthy experience bonus and instant pwnage. If Reckoning mode ends before you have done so, your enemies regain some of their lost health and you get no bonus experience for defeating them. It’s a neat system that works well as a complimentary ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card rather than a game-breaking exploit or something that will never be used because your character is so much more powerful than everything else.

Being a game that plays out in the third person, it’s great to see the focus on the combat system and the work that’s been put in to make battles feel memorable and enjoyable. Enemy types are varied and have different weaknesses and resistances as you would expect, forcing you to think strategically rather than hacking away, rewarding the tactical player in the long run.

If you ever get tired of fighting, which you won’t, there are also various other things you can do in the game.

Reckoning is actually one of the few games where all of the other aspects of the game are actually encouraged. Aspects such as Sagecrafting, Blacksmithing and Alchemy. Rather than spending your money exclusively at merchants or simply finding items in dungeons and on quests, you will come to rely on all of these additions in order to succeed at the game.

Blacksmithing is your usual story of crafting weapons and armour using materials you find, however you could also salvage them from weapons and armour that you pick up, by destroying those weapons and armour for their parts. A big part of your combat survival in-game will revolve around your ability to either match up armour sets or craft your own kick-ass armour instead.

Alchemy involves the creation of potions using reagents that you pick up along your travels or purchase at an alchemist. You may also experiment with various reagents to discover new recipes, if you’re not too keen on buying up all the recipes offered to you. Creating potions is another huge aspect of the game that if done right, would yield exponential returns to your character.

Sagecrafting involves the creation of gems using gem shards picked up in chests or looted off dead bodies along your travels. These gems can then be socketed into armour and weapons for various bonuses, some of which are extremely strong. While I didn’t do too much of sagecrafting myself, I managed to fluke a rare gem that gave me crazy lifesteal, so it’s always something worth dallying in at the very least.

If there is a criticism to be made of the game, it is the shoddy character interaction that is present throughout. While there are some memorable characters to meet through your quests, the great majority of characters are monotone for the most part and are synched horribly, making it feel as though you’re watching one of those really old, dubbed kung-fu movies. It’s a minor gripe, made even more minor by the fact that most conversations are optional, but any true RPG player would go through all the conversations anyway, making it impossible to ignore.

Along with the bad voice-acting comes the sheer confusion that you will feel sometimes. The game pretty much throws you into the deep end right from the start, making references to and pointing out features of a world that you have only just discovered as the player, even if your in-game character has been there before. You will spend many hours hopelessly lost or confused as to exactly what you’re doing, but once you are more accustomed to the world that is presented to you, it gets a whole lot better.

The musical score itself is amazing, and fits right into place like the perfect puzzle piece at pretty much every point in the game. It never feels incorrect and always gets you in the mood for whatever it is that you are about to witness. Even if the character interaction makes you cringe, once everyone shuts up and your mute player character is alone with the world, you begin to feel the serenity of it all, almost encouraging you to only engage in conversations when absolutely necessary.

Again, combat comes to the fore with battles sounding about as good as they look. Each weapon has a very distinct sound that would let even a blind person know what weapon you’re currently using, as well as special abilities that sound as epic as they feel.

It seems that in all my conversations about this game, comparisons to titles such as Fable and Skyrim were inevitable. Indeed, the game does feel like a better — actual RPG — version of Fable. Indeed, it has a huge open world and quest-lines like in Skyrim. But to compare this game to either is to do it a huge disservice.

Reckoning is something unique all on its own and while it borrows heavily from other games (not necessarily RPGs either) it succeeds in crafting a niche that it fills very well. There really is no other RPG around that looks, plays or feels like Reckoning does. And that’s saying something.

It’s unfortunate that Reckoning was released now, a month before Mass Effect 3; probably the most anticipated RPG of the year. Many gamers are busy saving up for their N7 Collectors Editions and so will give this a skip, and that is honestly a crying shame because Reckoning more than earns its place alongside Mass Effect 3 and indeed other RPGs as a true entertainment-value, triple-A offering.

Give it a try. Thank me later.

A quick note that the game comes with release day DLC that is free to retail purchasers but requires an online pass for anyone else. The lack of an online pass effectively gates off seven additional quests, and this in an entirely singleplayer offering…

When playing Pineapple Smash Team the word ‘explosive’ comes to mind. In the most interesting of ways the game subjects you to rapid fire shooting, the constant death of enemies and the most absurd weaponry you can imagine. Although, the game is not as absurd as Worms for instance; it is still weird in its own right. With a name like Pineapple Smash Team you wouldn’t expect less. In the game, you play as a squad of four muscle bounded space mercenaries with tiny Lego-styled heads, essentially the Goombas from the Super Mario Bros. movie with Master Chief’s armour. This is quite the deadly pairing.

Anyway, the game is a top-down tactical shooter, or as the lone developer, Rich Edwards, prefers “a fast paced tactical blast-em-up”. So be prepared for very fast gameplay as enemies descend upon you. Basically, you have to commandeer spaceships which are under attack by a variety of creatures like space zombies, aliens and robots. It is your job to rid the ship room by room of the pesky creatures and restore the spaceships to their former glory. You do this by taking out rooms marked in red on the mini-map, as well as completing objectives set out in said rooms. This involves dodging lasers, shots from enemies, moving nuclear batteries into waste disintegrators and defeating bosses on the larger ships.

Combat involves fast paced top-down shooting in the retro tradition. You can fire nearly endless amount of shots at enemies, until your power bar is depleted and you have to let the bar regenerate. In the game, you move from room to room and can destroy a vast array of crates, rockets and other items from which you obtain blue gems which gain you experience. After collecting enough blue gems you effectively level your squad and can choose an upgrade for various grenade-launched weapons you pick up. There are thirteen different grenade types which include: rockets, laserbeam, whirlwind, mine, holo-decoy, tele-frag, health and shield grenades to name a few. On top of this, there are four types of special power-ups: Invincibility, Slow-time, Four-Times Damage and Strike Fear.

The problem with the combat is that it never changes that much and defeating the same enemies over and over again breeds boredom fairly quickly, after a few hours. After levelling up your squad, enemies still seem far too easy. Bosses share the same fate and are too easy according to the difficulty set for the larger spaceships you explore. But by the same standing the game has so many different weapons that it eggs you on in order to use all of them. But after that, it does tire quite a bit. Level design within the game is also repetitive. This doesn’t help matters when every single spaceship has similar looking rooms, and makes different spaceships seem less special in the process.

The game earns some brownie points in the visuals department with a strong bright colour palette in the level design, gameplay and pixellated characters. This helps to liven up the game and draws your attention with colourful explosions. The retro feel gives the game a great nostalgic sensibility visually.

In terms of sound design, the game’s soundtrack is provided by chiptunes maestro Syphus (a.k.a Echolevel) who brings a catchy NES-type soundtrack to the mix that is lively with punchy drums and awesome instrumentation. Yet the music like the level design of the game is at times repetitive, with many of the songs looping over and over again. This might be appropriate for an indie game, but it tires after awhile.

Pineapple Smash Team is incredibly fun and yet is only addictive for a short while. Until you realise that the game suffers from some level design issues and samey enemies. However, the combat is fun and the game has a charm of its own. This is a definite buy if you’re looking for a retro throwback. If not, I suggest you look elsewhere.

The Darkness released in 2007 to mixed criticism. Based on the Darkness comics by Top Cow, the game was all about protagonist Jackie Estacado coming to terms with the powers of the Darkness and the fact that this evil was inside him. Besides that, he also had to deal with a hit put out on him as a result of his belonging to a Mexican crime family. His girlfriend also dies just in case it sounded like there wasn’t enough happening. It was a game that focused on stealthily taking out enemies from the shadows with the aid of demon arms and it was also a pretty good origin story with some emotion to it.

The Darkness II is pretty much none of that. Previous developer Starbreeze has made way for Digital Extremes, a studio who is best known for working on some of the earlier Unreal Tournament titles. The new developer brings a very different game to the table but not for the better. The sequel ditches that stealthy gameplay for a more offensive, violent and gruesome approach. Jackie attacks every situation head-on and rarely ever stops to do things differently. Despite emphasis being put on sticking to the dark where Jackie’s powers are at a maximum, the game opts to rather have players shoot out every single light in a room rather than use any semblance of a tactic. Let it be known that after 30min, having to shoot out lights every time you want to move forward is a chore.

So, the Darkness II picks up 2 years after the events of the first game and Jackie has been keeping his demons at bay for that entire time while also moving up to take his place at the head of the Estacado crime syndicate. Until that is, he is attacked by what is later revealed to be an ancient organisation creatively called the Brotherhood. No, not Ezio’s Brotherhood but another, equally lazy one, that couldn’t be bothered to come up with a less directly descriptive name. The Brotherhood is after the Darkness for reasons that become apparent later on and basically the only reason Jackie puts up a fight is because they go charging in, put him right at death’s door and pretty much force the demon out of hibernation. Clearly everyone in this game is so dim (hehe) that they are incapable of using even the most basic tactics or even a modicum of discretion.

The plot is really all downhill from there on in although that’s making the assumption that there actually is a plot. Jackie unleashes the Darkness, proceeds to hunt down the bastards who attacked him and it’s all very predictable from there. There’s an attempt at a few plot twists and surprises but they’re all so telegraphed that a retarded howler monkey would’ve seen them coming. There isn’t even some character sub-plot going on as there is in Uncharted games. Sure, Jackie’s aunt says some stuff to him and some of his men misquote lines from a dozen gangster/mafia movies but that’s not really anything is it?

Oh, there’s also Jackie’s recurring and increasingly pathetic whines and moans about how he misses his girlfriend Jenny who was offed in the first game but he just comes off as a shallow character with no depth regardless of what he says and his lines have been lifted straight from an old vinyl called ‘The Grieving Boyfriend’ (performed by Whitney Houston because everyone is apparently a big fan now, or at least for a few more weeks). There are also idiosyncracies that make you question just how ‘torn up’ Estacado is about the death of his beloved. For example, the game starts with Jackie entering a restaurant and meeting a pair of blonde twins for dinner. You also get the feeling that he’s ‘seeing’ a lot of women because he can’t even remember them.

It’s an empty plot with very little going for it other than stock clichés, bad writing and idiocy. Actually a lot of that can be attributed to bad writing and equally poor execution. I’ve never picked up a Darkness comic and have actually never heard of Top Cow but I’m guessing that the books are considerably better or they wouldn’t still be going or have spawned two games. The voice-acting isn’t too bad though although the soundtrack would be significantly livened up with some work from Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails as you may have heard in the trailer up top.

There are repeated attempts made to get you to feel something for this mobster with demon tentacles sprouting out of his back but none of them come off. They usually come in the form of breaks in the relentless, mindless gorefest to help with pacing. At the end of each section is a little monologue from Jackie which says nothing special and means very little. Then there are these little playable flashbacks to memories Jackie has of Jenny and while they make the game well-paced, they really just try to recreate that emotion and feeling that Starbreeze created in the bit during the first Darkness where Jackie spends the night in with Jenny and they watch To Kill A Mockingbird - hey, there’s a better way to spend your time then play this game (watch the movie that is, not murder avians).

There are also extended sequences in a mental asylum which take place in the confines of Jackie’s mind as he begins to lose it. You’d think that any caring human being might then feel something for this poor soul with so much shit to deal and a demon on his back (literally) but you’d be wrong. The asylum also features all of the characters you see in the reality of the game but as patients or doctors or orderlies. These also break up the gameplay and cause the game to be surprisingly well paced despite being so utterly poor in every respect.

The game is far more linear than it’s somewhat open-world predecessor and all in the pursuit of being more cinematic and intense but it doesn’t come off too well and rather than looking intense and action-ey like in say God of War, it comes off as arcadey and overdone. I half expected a mock-Mortal Kombat announcer to shout “Fatality!” or “Brutal kill!” every time I disembowelled an enemy. There’s also a lot more violence thanks to quad-wielding. You can dual-wield your preferred fire arm or even tote a shotgun while Jackie’s demon arms slash, grab and dismember enemies. There are four types of executions which all give Jackie some sort of bonus in the form of extra ammo or health etc. Each also has only about 3 animations and when you’re doing about 20+ executions every 6min, it gets very repetitive and routine. You can never even delight in the gore because it’s present in such a comical and juvenile way.

I understand that they’re going for that OTT comic-book violence but the presentation is just so lacking that you don’t care. The gunplay is good enough although you can get through most of the game with two pistols and a can-do attitude. I did and I suck at FPS’s. The aiming is a little wayward but that’s only because they want you to get the skill upgrade which fixes that but more on the skill tree later. Controlling the demon arms is a bit like operating a crane, it looks simple enough but never quite dos what you want on the first try. In The Darkness, the demon arms could bring helicopters down and slither across a room to take out an enemy but in the sequel, they are stumped by a locked gate and need to daze and enemy before being able to make that critical strike. I’m sorry but what kind of sequel are you making when the whole point is to gear the game up to be more action-orientated and yet the protagonist is, by all appearances, noticeably weaker. Maybe if he removed his tampon and shot some testosterone, Jackie would feel a bit more powerful as a character, you know as if he had an ancient demon powering him. Oh, wait.

There’s your typical array of enemies, including old guys with big lights but once you’re halfway through the game, the variety stops coming and combat quickly becomes a bore. There are also several old-school boss battles but these bosses are really just mini-bosses and they may as well be because there’s barely enough motivation to warrant them being fully-fledged bosses. Did I mention that every one of the 3 or 4 boss fights is dead easy and dry as peanut-butter on a cream cracker in hell.

The game also features a rather extensive skill tree which seems to mostly be dedicated to guns rather than actually strengthening Jackie’s Darkness powers. You earn Essence during combat and for doing stuff such as shooting out the lights which in turn can be used to purchase these upgrades or Talents as they are called. You can upgrade so that Jackie can channel the Darkness through his guns or unleash an insect-like swarm on enemies to distract them and so on and so forth. The thing is that while there are many upgrades to choose from, you’ll need barely any of them. For example, there’s one that simply decreases the time it takes to reload a shotgun and there are plenty like it. I purchased a handful of upgrades and made it through the game just fine with maybe only 3 deaths in its entirety.

The Darkness II is really just very easy and I don’t know if it’s Digital Extremes’ idea of making players feel more powerful but it just makes things very boring and droll because there’s nothing to keep you on your toes, there’s no challenge. I think I may have actually gotten bored playing this game because while playing it this past Saturday night, I nearly dozed off during a cutscene. I should mention that I have stayed up all night to play games such as Assassin’s Creed, Arkham City, Heavy Rain and NFS: underground 2 (don’t ask) so it’s not that I was tired, although I was, it’s more that the game just wasn’t entertaining me enough to keep me awake.

In actual fact, if you’re having trouble sleeping, buy this game although it may give you a fear of the dark which would just put you back in the same position so let’s stick with my original suggestion to simply stay away from this game.

The game is also very short, clocking in at only 5 or 6 hours. That’s fine for games like CoD or Battlefield where the multiplayer is still the main focus but this game is all about the singleplayer and you’re telling me that a game with as little polish and effort as this can’t at least be made to last an acceptable length of time? Not that I’m complaining though because The Darkness II was getting a bit long in the tooth by the end of it.

Jackie is also assisted by a little Sméagol-type creature called a Darkling which basically acts as a guide if you don’t know where to go, occasionally helps Jackie out and provides bad humour in the form of dismal jokes and urinating on corpses. Did I mention that it’s a bit Cockney which is just, odd. You also play as the Darkling a few times when Jackie needs a lot of help.

The game is also littered with Darkness comics because that’s obviously a very clever Easter egg to put in a game based on a comic book. One thing that Digital Extremes did right was to opt to embody those comic roots with cel-shaded visuals similar to 2008’s Prince of Persia. However, like everything else in this game, it is terribly executed. They had Olivia Wilde in mind and ended up with pixelated image of her tattooed on a fat man’s belly. Sometimes the game looks good and a lot like a comic book brought to life but most of the time the visual style just looks like bad graphics. Considering that the original was praised for its visuals, this might be particularly disappointing.

Perhaps the only saving grace for this game is its substantial online and offline co-op multiplayer. It’s called Vendettas and follows Jackie’s new team of darkness powered hitmen. They are the new guys that you might hear Jackie’s right-hand man Vinnie mention at some point in the game. There’s Inugami (samurai), Shoshanna (Mossad), JP DuMond (voodoo witchdoctor) and Jimmy who so far as I can tell is only characterised by being paunchy and Irish. Each has their own specialty and unique passive abilities along with Darkness powers. Each also has their own skill tree to upgrade.

There’s an attempt at some humour between the characters but it doesn’t really register. That said, the co-op is cleverly tied into the main story. For example, Jackie asks for his men to find an old contact named Johnny and it is then up to the Vendettas to find Johnny. Going solo is of no use in multiplayer as it is significantly more challenging than the single-player and requires teamwork and communication. At least he developer’s UT pedigree sort of paid off. It’s marred by many of the problems that are translatable from the single-player but it is good fun and almost makes the game not worth burning or selling for crack.

The game is also plagued by bugs and some animation issues, especially online. In addition to this, there’s samey enemies and then there’s fighting the same 5 people over and over again. All the enemy types only have one, maybe two, character models and that’s just another sign of just how lazily and incoherently this game was developed.

The game is short, the gameplay is sub-par, the visuals are wildly inconsistent though mostly just bad, the story is a non-existent turd and any attempts to recreate or recapture some of what the first game had come off as forced and poorly executed and to fans it may even be a slap in the face.

In essence, The Darkness II feels unfinished. You could the impression that the developers spent one morning coming up with ideas and all those ideas were just thrown into the game as were. No time was spent to properly formulate anything or expand on any concept and certainly no effort was made to at least polish the game up a bit. Most of the ‘new’ things this game try out pretty much fall flat on their face and if weren’t for the little bit of entertainment I got out of the multiplayer, I would call this an utter waste of time.

Any game that fails to keep you entertained for even a little bit is not worth it and The Darkness II hardly even makes an effort to draw you in. It is dull, repetitive, generic, ridiculous, unimaginative and as empty as its protagonist. I can handle a game that is flawed but as long as there is some entertainment value, something that gives me a bit of fun, I can handle it. The Darkness II gave me nothing, I felt nothing while playing it and the experience was entirely forgettable. Nothing about it stands out, at all.

The PixelJunk series of games is a leading light as far as simplicity and originality goes. Some, like PixelJunk Shooter and Monsters, have been more successful than others but all have tried to do something different from one another and other games of this ilk. PixelJunk Eden is certainly not new and actually made its debut release in 2008 on the PS3; it’s 2012 however and PixelJunk Eden has finally found its way onto Steam.

PixelJunk Eden is a rather unusual puzzle platformer and certainly provides a unique experience for any willing to give it a try. As the player you control what’s known as a Grimp (the amalgamation of grip and jump) and must find and collect the ‘Spectra’ throughout each garden. Each garden represents a level containing multiple Spectra to collect, the collection of which will lead to the completion of that particular level and opportunity to retry the garden in order to collect each remaining Spectra. Each garden contains plants that the Grimp is able to jump and grip onto, this allows for reaching higher dormant seeds which when enough pollen is collected can be activated, extending a plant from said seed and allowing for higher and higher exploration.

In order to collect pollen the player must either jump through or use a thread provided to swing through enemies which when defeated are turned into the needed pollen. If the player manages to take out multiple enemies without touching another surface they will accumulate combo chains which allow for greater amounts of pollen from each subsequently defeated enemy. It’s worth mentioning that later on there are increasingly difficult enemies that will attempt to shoot at your Grimp, cut your thread or just take you out all together; it can make for a surprisingly tense situation in what is supposed to be a quite relaxed game. There is also a synchronisation meter which when depleted will cause a failed level and so must be sustained with the collection of crystals placed throughout each garden. It’s strange that PixelJunk Eden should have such a meter which continued to hurry me up and force my hand when what I really wanted to do was play the game in a relaxed fashion. It’s a strange mechanic but works to add to the difficulty if a challenge is something you’re looking for. One nice feature, new to the game and available (for now at least) only on the Steam version, is the ability to warp back to a last resting position. Trust me when I say this will make your lives so much easier after falling from way up and not wanting to scale the entire garden again.

The gameplay can be quite enjoyable and is certainly unique, though I found myself somewhat wanting more. I think it could just be me, many others quite enjoy the game, but I found it a little too slow for my taste. It’s strange but despite the enjoyment I got from the game I still found myself thinking about playing another game instead, something that doesn’t usually happen when I’m playing a game. Don’t take this as a negative criticism but rather as a remark that any player preferring a slightly faster (perhaps more intense) and altogether more energetic experience will have to look elsewhere. My only real criticism is the keyboard controls can be a little unresponsive and I’d advise a gamepad; it’ll compensate for the weird feel of the mouse as the controller. Sadly multiplayer didn’t make the Steam port but the game is as good as it’s going to get and I can’t imagine anyone missing it.

The one thing I will say for PixelJunk Eden is it certainly has the aesthetics of an original game. Its artistic look is easy on the eyes and prevents the screen from ever feeling too cluttered. The electro sound track definitely amplifies this and I recommend you try out the game with a set of headphones; it’ll certainly give you an impression you won’t soon experience. If ever you were going to try out something new but a high price kept you at bay, then get PixelJunk Eden, it’s definitely for you.

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?