But if you stuck it out on faith that something worthwhile would eventually come your way – something not a rehash or remake of an old title, the likes of which seem to typify the 3DS library to this point – then you’ll be happy to know that Resident Evil: Revelations has finally arrived.

Built from the ground up exclusively for the 3DS, this new chapter in the RE saga lets players take control of Jill Valentine once again as she and her new partner, Parker, investigate a derelict ocean liner looking for their missing anti-bioterrorism comrade, Chris Redfield. Of course, it’s an RE game, so the ship turns out to be crawling with all kinds of nasty, genetically-engineered monstrosities on the hunt for tasty humans.

The graphics are probably the best the 3DS has ever seen – although the 3D does tend to lose its effect after a while for me, so that I have to keep asking myself, is it still on? The gameplay is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from the series, fighting tough enemies with limited ammo, grenades and well-placed melee attacks – but with a few new features. The first one I simply have to mention is that it’s the first in the series to have a sensible control scheme. RE: Revelations is the first game on the 3DS to use the new-fangled Circle Pad Pro, which gives players a second analogue pad and two extra triggers to use. The Circle Pad Pro unit makes the 3Ds significantly larger, but it also makes it more comfortable to hold with adult-sized hands, so we won’t get wanker’s cramp any more from bunching our fingers up.

But what that means for RE: Revelations is that we can play it just as easily as if we were playing RE 5 on a home console, with full camera control, dual-analogue aiming – and get this, you can move while aiming. That’s right, your feet are no longer rooted to the floor while shooting! Blimey, that’s a first. Some other first-time features include underwater swimming sections, a dodge system that actually works, a scanner that Jill can use to find hidden items, and weapon upgrades Jill can chop-and-change between weapons at will.

Apart from that, there’s the mandatory rating at the end of each chapter, and a whole bunch of criteria players can attempt to meet to unlock new weapons and upgrades. The game is also fairly long for a portable system. I don’t know if it’s enough to get people to start paying attention to the 3DS again on its own, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

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I have said it before, but Nintendo really know how to induce bliss. Everything, and I mean everything in SM3DL simply sings with charm and delight. The menus, the characters, the items and levels. Even the flowers here are happy.

Although from the developers of Super Mario Galaxy, SM3DL has been built for a handheld experience and as such borrows from it along with its 2D brethren, resulting in what is really years of Mario excellence distilled into an exceedingly fun bite-sized package. Controls are fiercely tight, allowing you to deftly explore the treacherous and ingeniously designed levels so creative they will constantly surprise you with how clever they are. Added to this are various new items, including the Tanooki suit, affording you increased hang-time, a boomerang suit which allows you to throw them and the propeller box from Super Mario Bros. Wii amongst others. Each is implemented smartly and if used correctly, will allow you to 100% the game and find its secrets, including a certain green-clad brother.

It’s no surprise that Super Mario 3D Land sports a similar look to Galaxy, what is striking though is how much better it looks. From the colours to the animation to the incredibly well realised implementation of 3D, this game will impress you from start to finish. The 3D makes judging distances much more natural and has allowed the developers to come up with some incredibly crafty levels. An extended depth 3D mode is also available by tapping down on the d-Pad which through magic, makes the 3D more pronounced than before.

The game is divided into eight worlds consisting of five courses and a boss level each. Every course hides three Star Medals to collect and each boss stage requires a certain number to unlock, forcing you to return to courses with your honed skills. Because the levels are so stellar, they are a blast to explore numerous times. The boss battles however, lack much of the creativity found elsewhere, which is a shame. Completion unlocks tweaked versions of the worlds, items and suits, essentially giving you another adventure to play through. Online connectivity delivers in-game presents and times through StreetPass, which while welcome, could have been implemented better perhaps with SpotPass challenges giving players something more to chew on. [edited - 15/01/2012]

While brief, with one or two aspects less than superb stood next to the rest of the game, all in all this is, as far as I’m concerned, where the Mario games belong. It boasts everything you could want, in mouthwateringly small, blissful Italian kisses so charming and cleverly realised you are sure to be dazzled.

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The original aim of this retro review was to cover all three of Thief games as they are presented in the Mastertronic published Complete Collection package. Sadly, despite numerous attempts, multiple patch downloads and endeavours to getting the games running on three different systems, the first two Thief games, Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age, remained obstinate in their refusal to run. I blame Windows 7. The result is that I can only really apply the retro review to Thief: Deadly Shadows, which is the third game in the series. If you pick up this Mastertronic re-release then good luck getting the first two to run. Despite Deadly Shadows working and proving playable, I experienced multiple crashes to desktop and game minimising every time I hit a loading screen. At one stage the crash to desktop occurred while I was saving, which meant that I lost about an hour or so of sneaky gameplay. So be warned: save often.

Thief: Deadly Shadows is master thief (like Master Chief, only sneakier) Garrett’s third jaunt through the dark, twisty streets and castles of the series’ somewhat unique City. It’s still a bit of an odd setting to describe as it blends medieval with steampunk and a dollop of gothic horror. Bizarre to say the least, but it still has its charm.

Garrett, being the sticky-fingered bloke that he is, overhears about the existence of a large opal stone in the possession of a wealthy family. Unable to pass up the opportunity, Garrett slinks off to swipe the heirloom. Naturally there’s more to it than that and soon enough Garrett finds himself in for a lot more than he anticipated. The plot is, to be honest, convoluted as hell, which is either a sign of how streamlined contemporary narrative devices have become, or it highlights the gradual degradation of gamers’ attention spans. Be that as it may, Garrett’s activities in Deadly Shadows are unavoidably intertwined with the actions of various factions, all vying for control of The City. This leads to encounters with soldiers, assassins and ghosts as Garrett tries to figure out what the hell is going on. There’s some time travel thrown in for extra confusion as well.

It’s easy to see that developers Ion Storm wanted to make Deadly Shadows replayable as there are numerous ways to complete the missions. That’s one of the joys of the game: swiping what you were meant to, but then spying an alternate route as you escape the scene of the crime. The object is, of course, not to get caught so taking the route less likely to lead to an encounter with a guard is preferable. Fortunately Garrett has a bunch of tools at his disposal, like the series’ signature water-tipped arrows for extinguishing light sources, and moss arrows to muffle your footsteps across noisy materials like metal floors.

Between missions, you get access to the streets of The City, in which you’re free to roam around nicking anything of value or pickpocket the denizens. At this stage you’ll be able to sell your stolen goods to various fences, and then use the money to purchase more equipment to take into your next mission. You’re also able to pick up numerous little side quests between the main plot missions, and these in-between bits were new to the Thief franchise in this third instalment.

While many of the games we look at in this Retro Review section are able to stand up to today’s offerings, Thief: Deadly Shadows is definitely showing its age. It’s a more calculated and slow-paced game than I remember it being, and despite me having fond memories of being able to explore this “open world” cityscape in-between the missions, I’m left wondering what all the fuss was about.

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Once upon this other time, the wizard, knight, and thief were brought together again by the Trine, and magicked off into another kingdom in desperate need of saving. Hero business, it’s always pretty much the same thing, just different sequels.

Trine 2 might well be the most beautiful game ever made, though. I mean, it’s quite simply amazing, and in the original, unadulterated by dreary pop culture “Omg, it’s, like, totally, like, amazing” sense of the word. This game is like a kind of narcotic reverie, its smudged and saturated pinks and greens and blues and pumpkins and fireflies the work of some eccentric alchemist tripped out on neon fantasy kitsch.

For those of you who – like me – missed the first game for one reason or another [being a terrible person is not a "reason", ed], the concept is fundamentally somewhat similar to The Lost Vikings. If you didn’t play that, then basically, you have three characters with different abilities, and you use these in combination (often variably) to navigate a series of implausibly complex environments.

Amadeus the wizard can conjure up boxes and planks, which he can also levitate; Pontius the knight has a shield and two melee weapons, one of which can break some obstacles; and Zoya the thief has a grapple and bow. Each character also has a bunch of upgrades, that you can unlock by snaffling glowy blue orbs and bottles liberally distributed around the stages. It’s all quite simple, elegant, and straightforward.

Not so much the game, though. It gets going easily enough, but quickly becomes immensely clever and increasingly devious, especially if you’re determined to collect all the upgrade thingums. Honestly, there was one that took us over an hour to work out, and two we had to reluctantly abandon after more or less recreating that scene with the monkeys and the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey several times over.

Speaking of “us” and “we”, this is a game that’s heaps better in co-op. Instead of having to constantly swap, one at a time, between characters to solve puzzles, you and up to two other players can interact with one another, which makes for a whole new category of zany ingenuity and a lot of giggling. With options for both online and local co-op, Trine 2 can finally replace Castle Crashers in your party list.

What’s perhaps most remarkable is the tremendous scope for creativity, particularly in co-op. I frequently had the impression that we’d solved a puzzle in a way unintended, maybe even entirely unimagined, by the developers – but it was still allowed. This sort of flexibility, you’ll suddenly realise, is really quite unusual in a gaming generation predominated by corridor-based shooters and superficial choices. So that’s nice too.

Or click here for Tarryn’s real bottom line, as divulged in a Google chat.

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YOU ARE [NAME HERE]! And this is where I always got stuck for about two hours, randomly generating characters over and over until I had a dark elf thief vaguely resembling Per Gessle from Roxette. What can I say – I was way into my roguelike RPGs, but I was also a teenage girl, and even when it’s just ASCII graphics, looks matter.

That’s because – and this is the important bit, so pay attention – playing Ancient Domains of Mystery is about 50 percent code-based dice-rollin’, player hatin’, and conditional catastrophes, and about 50 percent imagination. Think Skyrim, but where a “T” represents a tree, a “#” is a wall, and death is totally, permanently, incontrovertibly final (more on that in the next paragraph). So, basically, pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons, only the Dungeon Master couldn’t be bothered to make proper coloured-in maps.

This game is very much the same sort of thing as Dungeons & Dragons, though. Go boldly forth, slay and rob many a thing, only to die of both starvation and disease, ignominious and instantly forgotten, among the windswept crags of whatever mountain range lay in the south, I’m not actually sure it had an official name, game over, haha, would you like to play again Y/N? Oh yes, this is where I explain that you can only save the game on exit, and the file is deleted on load.

Just between us and about eight months of daily playing, I never actually managed to finish the game, and this one time, I really did die of hunger and pestilence on some lonely Ancardian bluff.

I died a lot.

One of the game’s more notable features is a corruption statistic that increases over time, causing character mutations that are sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes a bit of both. The trick is, good or bad, the corruption will eventually overwhelm your character entirely, transforming him or her into a “writhing mass of primal chaos”, and it’s game over, haha, would you like to play again Y/N?

The game is huge, perhaps even excessively complicated, and brutally difficult, but one of those games that everybody has to try once, just to say they did, and they died.

Ancient Domains of Mystery is free to download, and available for Windows (including a Java version), Linux, and Mac. Get it here.

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Kirby’s Adventure Wii has more colour, vibrancy and happiness than you have seen in a while. Every themed level breathes with colour and subtle animation, providing great visual variety throughout this playful experience. Each world is crisp and clean, as is the animation, music and effects.

KAWii [nice - ed] is a side-scrolling platforming game where our pink friend, Kirby, can inhale anything around him, letting him either simply swallow, launch the item back out in a star attack, or in the case of certain enemies, transform into a pink version of them. The game uses this to grant Kirby different abilities. Swallow the knight for example, and you gain Sword attacks, the snowman gives you Ice. There is an incredible range of these different abilities and discovering them is a genuine delight. Some of them even have a ‘mega mode’ of sorts, where you can, for example, wield a hammer as large as the screen, destroying all in your path. Superb. The problem comes from the basic design flaw that none of them are necessary to complete the game. Because Kirby can float indefinitely, and inhale enemies to launch as attacks, you can quite often avoid these abilities altogether. Sure, that is not how you are meant to play the game, but at some points the way the game wanted me to play became so infuriating I simply floated to the end. The game has Energy Spheres to collect throughout each stage, which do require the abilities but again are unnecessary, and should have been used, like Mario’s Star Medals, as currency needed to progress.

With only five worlds ending in Boss stages, the game is a little on the short side. Those Energy Spheres I mentioned, along with Stars you collect throughout unlock challenge rooms, where you are tested in certain ‘hat’ abilities and game rooms, featuring a range of activities like a shooting gallery. While this in theory give players reason to collect each and every Sphere, I found none to be fun enough to play more than once.

One things KAWii does rather well is four-player co-op. At any time, a friend can lollop onto the couch beside you, press any button, and WHAM, help you get some of the trickier Spheres. When they get bored or hungry, they simply press ⊖ and WHAM, they are gone. As simple as that, which is exactly what you want.

I was really disappointed with Kirby’s Adventure Wii. It started out so brilliantly, full of charm and potential, but then revealed itself to not embrace any of that, instead offering a mediocre platforming experience neither clever nor fun enough to warrant playing above the plethora of other platformers on the system.

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If you look only at the review scores the game is getting, it seems that The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is one of those titles that has mixed opinions ranging from rock bottom right up to the bell. Some reviewers find it bland and repetitive while others think it’s exciting and engaging. If you ask me, it probably has a lot to do with how far up your bum the stick is.

Anyway, War in the North is certainly no worse than some of the more recent LOTR games – there’s nowhere to go from there but up. In this case, players take on the role of a trio of warriors, Andriel the elf mage, Eradan the human ranger and Farin the dwarf champion, on a quest to stop the machinations of Agandaŭr, one of Sauron’s most trusted generals who has been tasked with conquering the Northern lands while Sauron attends to his business in the South. Along the way you’ll visit many prominent places from the LOTR universe and speak to many recogniseable characters.

The game proper is a respectable, action-packed, dungeon crawling fantasy hack ‘n’ slash fest where players constantly look out for better equipment and weapons, sell unwanted loot between missions and look forward to that next level up that lets them learn new abilities or bolster existing ones. The three characters feel more or less the same apart from their special abilities, which are usually typical action-RPG stuff like area magic spells or powerful melee attacks. There are also abilities that create auras that heal all the party members or war cries tha boost the party’s attack strength – you know, typical co-op stuff. It also has the mandatory-but-curious co-op mechanic by which you can save a downed companion from an open-chest wound or frontal evisceration by rubbing their shoulders for a few seconds.

If you play the game by yourself, the CPU will take control of your two allies, and they’re not too dumb or too smart – at least they keep the enemies busy while you take care of the important tasks. You can also play with a friend on the same console or two other players online or in a LAN (yes, on the consoles too).

On the whole, it’s a solid, fun fantasy action adventure. Among the few gripes I have, I would have liked a bit more freedom in the weapon choices for each character and maybe a few more diverse skills to learn – but with so much variety in enemies, so many awe-inspiring locales to visit and relentless waves of action, it’s not a deal breaker by any means.

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As with many of Nintendo’s first party titles, you will be genuinely reminded over and again why you started playing video games. Through its animations, track design and characters, MK7 throws endless charm and colour at your grinning face.

I imagine a world where everyone plays Mario Kart. For those anomalies, you race your favourite Nintendo characters around 32 ingeniously designed tracks in delightfully little vehicles while launching devious items at opponents, causing them to swear vengeance. New in this entry are the Tanooki tail, allowing you a spin attack, the Lucky Seven, equipping 7 items simultaneously, and the Fire Flower, letting you launch fierce fire balls, each of which are welcome additions to the fray.

Controls are tight and responsive, proving yet again that the 3DS’s circle pad packs accurate punch and for those of you interested, the gyroscopic FP view works a treat. Three newly introduced mechanics are present in MK7. Hang-gliding allows for shorter cuts and has been implemented well into older tracks. Disappointingly, neither underwater racing nor customisation are done well enough to matter. Nintendo could have really gone to town fleshing out the customisation options given the wealth of content across the series, but only a handful of variations are available.

Trust Nintendo to do it, but I found myself struggling to judge distances properly without 3D, showing developers how it can really be used to augment an experience as beautiful as MK7 with its lush visuals. As with the presentation, the music, voices and effects will be familiar to fans and do a great job accentuating the charm the series delivers so very well.

MK7 makes full use of the 3DS’s online capabilities, offering players local multiplayer for up to eight players as well as decent online racing without lag, letting you play through the single player Grand Prix tracks as well as Coin and Balloon battles. Online even boasts communities along with StreetPass and SpotPass challenges.

While Mario Kart 7 does so much right, it also falters in obvious ways. Why the series does not employ the same approach as Super Smash Bros., allowing players to choose from a staggering array of Nintendo’s best characters rather than a mere 16 is a mystery. Imagine racing with Link or Samus? Were this route chosen, new character specific items could be created resulting in a more conscious choice of participant and fresh item ideas. A track editor community akin to ModNation Racers would also do wonders to the stagnating track selection, which while has some brilliant new additions, is made up predominantly of oldies.

For those who don’t care about such things, however, this is kart racing gold at its best.

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But now, we can. Tekken Hybrid is an interesting little bundle made up of three very enticing parts. The main course is a glorious, full-speed, widescreen, high definition version of Tekken Tag Tournament. It’s clearly an upgraded port of the old PS2 version and it still contains the PS2 modes and options – including the Tekken Bowl mode, where you pick your favourite character and play a bowling mini-game which is more addictive than you’d allow yourself to believe.

Apart from that, it’s TTT as we know. You pick two characters to form a tag-team and tackle the game’s various modes to prove your skills. You might have to downgrade your expectations a bit, though. The game was released a decade ago and some of your favourite characters might have less than half the moves they currently do. But it’s kind of cool in a way, it forces you to use old moves and perhaps rediscover their virtues that you might have forgotten over time. If you’ve got enough controllers, you can play up to four players – two vs. two – which is one of the best times you can have with a console, I promise you. There are also some trophies to be collected, but no online modes, though. Sorry.

The second attraction is the Blu-ray feature film, Tekken: Blood Vengeance. This is a full-length movie that you can view in 3D if you have the required TV, which sets the stage for the upcoming Tekken Tag Tournament 2 game. If this is true, then the Tekken story has grown even more retarded than I remember. The fights are pretty good, but it’s full of cringe-inducing voice acting and doubly cringe-inducing anime clichés of the worst kind that will have any sane person rubbing their temples before long. It does look pretty, though, and the Japanese have gotten a lot better than I remember at CG animation. It makes for an entertaining diversion but I can’t see even the blindest Tekken fans calling it a good film.

The cherry on top is Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Prologue, a little teaser for the upcoming game that rabid fans can tear into while they wait for the full release. It has four characters available: Ling Xiaoyu, Alisa Bosconovich, Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya, complete with their new outfits and new moves. Unfortunately there is no Practice Mode and, sadly, no Command List (well, I couldn’t find one) in this little teaser game, so if you want to find out what’s new you’ll just have to experiment. I found two new moves for Ling Xiaoyu so far, and one move I’m relatively sure is new for Devil Jin – but it’s been so long since I used him in Tekken 6 I can’t be sure.

With all this, it’s quite a nice little bundle here, but I’m not sure how many people outside of the serious Tekken fan circles will be interested. Just know what you’re buying – a re-released, decade-old game, a small teaser of an upcoming game and a brainless but entertaining movie. Oh, and by the way, it may come on a Blu-ray disc, but it installs both games to your hard drive, so make sure you have at least 4GB free space if you want it.

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-  From the Book of the Lands Part One: The Monkey and the Lightning-Struck Crèche

Even ten years later, there’s nothing else quite like the original Black & White. Peter Molyneux might’ve cultivated a bit of a reputation for talking up a big game that seldom actually turns out that way, but there’s simply no denying that Black & White was extraordinary, and still is.

The game’s premise is simple enough – there’s a series of islands, and you have to convert everybody on them to your holy cause, which is anywhere on a continuum ranging from “saintly” to “really, positively wicked”. To accomplish this, you have both your own divine powers (FOOD! FIREBALLS!) as well as a creature who responds to your commands, but has also a certain degree of autonomy based on your own previous positive and negative reinforcement. Basically, you train your creature to be as saintly or as really, positively wicked as you like, and leave him to get busy with whatever while you do things your own way.

The more you impress / terrify the people, the more they believe in you, and the more mighty you become, until, eventually, THE WORLD. Then the chapter ends, and you start all over again. There’s sort of a story, but I didn’t pay it much attention. It’s much more fun burning mom and dad in front of their kids (impress / terrify, belief, mighty, THE WORLD, etc.).

It’s the gap between you and the creature where some of the game’s most remarkable (technically, exploitable) mechanics are hard at work. For example, it’s possible – and, actually, perfectly sensible – to be entirely at moral odds with one another. As a tyrannical monster-god, you can rain fire over the heads of your grovelling disciples, and watch as your creature, an angelic paragon of every virtue on the rainbow, rushes in and douses the flames with miraculous water. MAXIMUM POWER.

The game got a sequel in 2005 that, while not altogether horrible, somehow managed to miss what it was that made the first one so special, focussing instead on city management and military conquest. It’s a tremendous shame, really, because the core concept – quite literally playing god – is an instantly compelling one, for all the obvious reasons. Most recently, Ubisoft’s From Dust tried something very similar, but inevitable comparisons with Black & White left it feeling a bit underwhelming. Maybe it’s time the ‘Neux binned the increasingly tedious Fable franchise, and went back to this one.

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From the moment the game launches you will notice the more cinematic approach Skyward Sword takes and it certainly breathes some fresh air into the highly traditional series. Sweeping camera tracks and purposeful framing help bring the franchise to the present level of production values.

This time around you begin on the majestic floating village of Skyloft alongside the beautiful Zelda as students at the island’s illustrious Knight Academy. This is the first time Zelda has been really introduced as a person and the game does a fantastic job of evoking palpable emotion and subtle facial animation. All of this is made even better thanks to the sumptuous art style and some of the very best character and boss designs I have seen for a while, with the exception of Fi, the strange lady who inhabits your sword, who is jarringly stiff and dull in comparison to absolutely everyone and everything else.

For some reason, Zelda entries on home consoles are five years behind. Twilight Princess, a Gamecube title, launched with the Wii and only now do we get our own true entry. As it stands, Skyward Sword takes many steps in the right direction to drag Zelda into the present. Link can now wall-run, hang off ledges, shimmy along them and (as proof of COD’s infiltration into every crevice of gaming) can dash, all of which make use of a stamina gauge. All of these new abilities open up the Zelda formula of adventuring and dungeon exploration to incredible potential. Unfortunately, none of them are fully realised, and as a result the game feels those five years harshly. Link can still only auto-jump, which is simply not acceptable in 2011. The number of times the game threw me off of ledges or into flames is ludicrous. This bleeds to all the other new abilities whereby if you are not aligned pixel perfectly, nothing registers. Link will not try to cling to ledges, he will not climb ladders willingly nor try in any way to help you. Infuriating is an understatement.

Fortunately, the swordplay on offer in Skyward Sword is exceptional. You will want to stand up for this game. Purposeful swings are necessary but the reward is overwhelming delight. You need to read enemies’ movements and attack patterns to strike when they leave themselves open. Combat is utterly absorbing, rewarding and seeing your swipe register in-game is a thing of beauty.

This sublime control extends to all the gadgets you use, including a fantastic flying beetle, a ‘canon’ that fires wind, a whip and even your Loftwing – the giant bird with which you fly through the gorgeous skies surrounding Skyloft after leaping off the edges of the island.

Skyward Sword employs a beautiful watercolour painting style which results in something in between the marvellous Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. The team have also done a fabulous job with animation, both within the game and in cut scenes, with beautiful expressions and charm seeping from every nook and cranny. As a testament to the art design and animation, I forgot within minutes that I was playing a standard definition game. Having said that, the animations are still very Japanese in their stiffness, which I have come to appreciate as a stylistic choice but it still takes some getting used to.

The sound design in Skyward Sword is just as charming as its predecessors. Beautiful music will have you whistling tunes between play sessions and varied and creative sound design makes the game feel fresh each time you dive in. The only hang up, which seems to have become a characteristic fans will never want to see die, is that Link still does not talk, and neither does anyone in the game apart from Fi, who speaks an imaginary language.

Zelda is known for its absorbing game worlds, glorious dungeons and bountiful side quests and Skyward Sword is no different. The game world is a little smaller than previous entries with much more backtracking than ever before. This is handled in a very Metroid-like fashion where you acquire new equipment and gadgets allowing you to reach previously inaccessible areas. Because you return with new abilities, the formula avoids feeling like a chore. Despite this, the game shyly boasts only five main areas, one of them being the hub city of Skyloft and while beautiful to look at, and expertly designed, it is simply too sparsely populated to feel like the centre of a game world.

In its quest to add ‘modern’ game mechanics, Skyward Sword introduces an upgrade system for weapons and equipment. Unexpectedly, this system fits comfortably within the Zelda universe but again, is not fully realised. While each item has a few upgrades, not many of them are essential which resulted in me simply ignoring most unless I happened to have the necessary goods. In addition, shields break, which left me using the very basic shields rather than upgrading, have it break, and start over.

This is a strange Zelda entry. On the one hand, it delivers everything we have come to love from the series while showing us how the series could play in the future, but on the other ignores basic issues the series refuses to shake, such as auto-jumping, a predictable dungeon – new item – boss formula and inexplicable enemy motivations. Had this game launched alongside the Wii, things would have been very different. This is indeed the game we wanted five years ago. While its core design is still utterly superb, and Nintendo have made good on their motion plus swordplay promises, Skyward Sword highlights Zelda as a series shining with potential and rupees but straggling behind the times.

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Well, for that reason and the fact that, although it’s meant to be a multiplayer game, the developers have included a pretty slick interface to allow solo gamers to go through it too. The story scenes are as entertaining as ever, and there’s plenty of them to view. This time, it seems that Dr Nefarious is still sore about Ratchet beating him Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, and hatches a surprisingly small-in-scale and sure-to-fail plot for revenge – inviting Captain Qwark and his bodyguards, Ratchet and Clank, to a phony award ceremony. Things don’t go quite according to plan – surprise, surprise – and Ratchet, Clank, Qwark and Dr Nefarious wind up having to join forces to clean up the mess.

This is where the multiplayer element comes into it. Up to four players can team up, either four players on one PS3 or four players from anywhere in the world playing together online, each one taking control of one of the four characters. Apart from the fact that there are one or two weapons exclusive to each character, there’s not much difference between them. From there, it’s standard Ratchet & Clank fare – blasting hordes of enemies, collecting mountains of bolts (money) to afford new weapons and upgrades and using gadgets to solve bizarre puzzles. The developers have masterfully enforced co-operation between players by making some tough enemies much easier to defeat with the concentrated fire of all the players and by making most of the puzzles co-op specific, requiring players to do things like, say, hit seperate switches at the same time or toss explosive fruit to each other to blow something up. And there’s plenty of variety in the challenges and puzzles you’ll end up facing – suprising variety at that.

But I know what some of you are thinking – where does that leave single player Ratchet fans? Fear not, you can still play the entire game by your lonesome. The way it works is that you pretty much play solo, and a CPU controlled ally will show up whenever you need to complete a co-op objective. This CPU ally is usually pretty intelligent, even going so far as perform some surprisingly complex strings of actions automatically when they are required to. Sometimes they can be really dumb too, but that’s rare.

The graphics and sound are top notch and the game is packed with personality, to the point where I’d readily recommend it to any R&C fan, whether you intend to play it with friends or alone.

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With that track record, I wasn’t expecting much from Saints Row: The Third, despite the hype surrounding it. I was even planning to let it pass me by entirely – which, in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t do. Yes, I was wrong, and Saints Row: The Third managed to exceed my limited and unfair expectations. It’s really, really good.

Saints Row: The Third picks up shortly after the events of SR2. Having conquered Stilwater, the Saints have grown from a gang into a huge media empire with movie deals and merchandise, the works. Unfortunately, that kind of success didn’t escape the notice of the Syndicate, a massive international crime group that decided the Saints owe them tribute. Predictably, negotiations didn’t go well and the Syndicate boss retaliated by crippling the Saints’ empire. Looks like you’ll have to start at the bottom again, building up your army until you’re strong enough to face the Syndicate again and show them that the Saints are nobody’s bitches.

What this means is that you get to engage in a veritable titty-bar-buffet of illegal activities, mass destruction and sinfully enticing side quests. Huge gunfights, tank battles, drug peddling, dangerous street races, car customisation, assassinations… you’ll have to do all of these things at one time or another. As you defeat rival gangs and buy up all the territory in each area, you’ll be able to increase the size of your gang and outfit them better, meaning you’ll have more soldiers to call on to help you out in difficult missions.

Sounds about the same as last time, right? So what makes it so much better? Everything, that’s what. The control system is slick and modern, the vehicle physics feel much better, the combat is fast and furious, right down to the melee attacks and it’s all presented with such over-the-top gaudiness that it’s impossible not to be amused. The cast of characters is as likeable as they are detestable and they have some truly priceless dialogue. The level of character customisation available puts most other games to shame – and not just on the customisation of your character’s body and looks, but in the sheer amount of clothing items you can mix and match. You can even run around completely (completely!) naked if you want.

Add to this that you can play the entire campaign with a friend in co-op or even team up to take on waves of zombie hookers in “Whored Mode” and you’ve got a whole keg full of debauched distractions to engage in, proving once again the timeless adage: it’s good to be bad.

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On first unboxing, it’s all a bit intimidating – between the 200 or so cards, 32 plastic figurines, 17 punchboard map tiles, about 100 tokens of assorted designations, all the dice, and a 32-page rule book, there’s probably enough stuff in here to choke a baby Berserker.

Basically, it’s Delta Squad versus Locust, with the ‘oomans playing the good guys and the bad guys controlled – rather cleverly, at that – with a deck of “AI” cards. The game includes seven mission scenarios of varying complexity, each of which prescribes its own winning objectives, special rules, Locust types, and sequences of map tile configurations to be used. Every Delta Squad member also has his own weapon loadout and perks.

A single player turn is resolved in three stages – drawing new “Order” cards (up to two, to a maximum of six), completing the actions printed on an Order card OR moving OR attacking, and then unleashing the fury of Myrrah’s goons with the Locust phase. Just when you thought you were safe, SUDDENLY BOOMERS.

What’s perhaps most interesting about this game is that your character’s hit points are determined by the number of cards in your hand rather than a preset, and chucking at least one card in a turn is mandatory.

When you take damage in combat, you drop cards equal to the amount of damage, which makes holding onto particularly good Order cards a bit of a risk, and invests in every turn a sense of immediacy not usually present in board games. When you’re out of cards, you’re down, and effectively useless until somebody else comes over and picks you up.

And that’s also the one thing that just doesn’t quite work in this game – when you get back up, you’re on zero cards until the next turn. That’s nice and everything, until SUDDENLY BOOMERS and you’re down again. I’d suggest immediately picking up one or two cards on a revival as a general house rule, and everybody can quote me on that, including the person responsible for writing up second edition rule book.

That’s the big thing about board games, though. If you don’t like a rule, bin it and it’s instantly irrelevant. And really, in every other respect, this is a super game that I’d recommend not only to Gears of War fans, but anybody who’s into team-oriented board games like Last Night on Earth or even Arkham Horror.

* Who, me?

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Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet WEC spaceforce, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker a Silencer supersoldier known only as the Captain has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth the Moon.

The evil lord Darth Vader Chairman Nathaniel Draygan, obsessed with finding young Skywalker the Captain, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space…

Not knowing, of course, that the Captain landed on the Moon about an hour ago already, aboard one of the WEC’s own mining freighters, lol. The rest is about to be history, starting with those screechy secretaries in C-Wing. Remember, it’s not murder if they don’t comply, it’s corrective assassination, and besides, those vibrant reds really liven up the place.

Crusader: No Regret is the sequel to Crusader: No Remorse, although apart from a couple of additions to the control set and an option to dial down the game’s violence-o-meter (seriously), the two games are more or less exactly the same. Imagine the original Fallout game without all the RPG stuff, replace the M72 Gauss Rifle with an XP-5 Broiler, swap the post-apocalyptic Californian tileset with a tyrannical megacorp moonbase tileset, and that’s basically Crusader.

Both games were built using a modified version of Ultima VIII: Pagan‘s engine, which looks kind of rubbish retro now but back in 1996, the developers had to include an option to disable explosions just in case your state-of-the-art 66 Mhz i486 DX2 couldn’t push all those pixels at the same time.

Even fifteen years on, though, and this game still rocks hard. And I don’t just mean in the “OMG IT’S REAL TECHNO IMPORTED FROM 1995” way, although that’s not entirely irrelevant. It’s got guns, gadgets, and buckets of gore – pretty much the holy triumvirate of video gaming. The 640×480 resolution also scales down rather well to a 10” netbook screen, making this the perfect game for the vicarious hitman on the go.

BONUS FACT: If the game is played on 25 December, a, um,  “special” megamix of the Christmas carols including “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Jingle Bells”, and “Frosty the Snowman” is substituted for the game’s regular soundtrack. So that’s fun.

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But heck, I probably don’t need to tell you that. What you will be interested to know is that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is without doubt the biggest departure in the series since its inception. That means they changed things, a lot of things, some traditional things even – but don’t panic! They’re good changes for the most part.

As usual, we’ll get the premise out of the way first, just so that we have some context to work with. This episode takes place in the province of Skyrim, which long time players will know is the homeland of the hardy Nords (kind of like Vikings). It’s a beautiful, mountainous country full of flowing rivers, pine forests and snow covered peaks. There are several large cities dotted around the place, with plenty of quaint, smaller settlements surrounding them – but don’t let the idyllic setting fool you, the place is actually in turmoil.

It seems that hundreds of years have passed since the events of TES IV: Oblivion, and the once benevolent Cyrodillic empire has been taken over by the High Elves and has set out imposing all kinds of restrictions, religious and secular, on every province within their auspices, including Skyrim. Naturally, some Nords rebelled against this and a civil war ensued. As the game starts out, you find yourself unexpectedly caught up in this war, already captured by the Imperials under suspicion of being a rebel and on your way to your execution. Luckily, fate intervenes not a moment too soon and you are able to escape after a dragon – a creature thought then to be mythical – attacks the Imperial stronghold.

Now free and able to go where you will, you can forge your own destiny as you see fit. Will you join the Nord rebellion and help them free their homeland for Imperial rule, or will you join the Imperials and fight against them? Then there’s the sudden reappearance of the dragons – where did they come from? Why? And what does it have to do with you? If none of this interests you, you can go and join the local Thieves guild and live a life of crime, or you can join the Companions, Skyrim’s native mercenary guild, and live by the sword. Maybe you’d prefer to join the Winterhold College and further your knowledge of magic, or simply loot dungeons for profit and adventure. You can also simply wander around, murdering everyone in sight and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, or you can try at least.

Sounds like pretty standard Elder Scrolls stuff so far, and it is. The major changes are actually to the gameplay itself. All the standard races are still available for players to create a character from, three types of Elves, four types of Humans, Orcs, the cat-like Khajiit and the reptilian Argonians, and they all have their innate strengths and weaknesses. Gone however, is the idea of classes. That’s right, no more of that Warrior, Mage, Witchunter, Thief typecasting bollocks here. You want to learn magic, then do it. You want to learn to sneak, swing a sword, pick a lock, use a bow – do it. Although, to be honest, we were never really restricted by the classes in the previous games either, we could still teach our characters to do anything we wanted – but it seems that Bethesda has finally admitted it by removing the idea of classes altogether.

What I can see bothering some players – although you have to be a pretty serious nerd to object – is the removal of the stats, you know, Strength, Intelligence, Agility and so on. Oh yes, it’s gone, sir or ma’am. Perhaps this was done to prevent some players from spending ages carefully levelling up to get the maximum benefits instead of playing the actual game. Now, the only real way to progress is to play properly. You still level up by using and increasing your skills, like One-Handed Weapons, Heavy Armour, Destruction Magic, Lockpick, Speech and so on, and when you level up you get to add 10 points to either your Magic energy, Health or Stamina. You also get a Perk point to add to one of the game’s skill trees – one corresponding to each skill. For instance, the Heavy Armour skill tree contains perks like “25% armour bonus for wearing all heavy armour” and the Restoration magic skill tree contains perks like “Healing spells heal 25% more” and so on. The more you increase each skill, the more perks you can assign to each, and the more powerful your character will become.

The game’s combat has seen an interesting change too. Instead of the old this-goes-here, that-goes-there system, players can now equip an item in each hand. A sword and shield, a sword in each hand, a sword and a dagger, a mace and a spell, a dagger and a torch, two different spells, or the same spell in each hand for double the effects – you name it. It’s an interesting idea and it makes a lot more real-world sense this time.

Had I the space, I’d go into even more detail about how the Alchemy has changed, and how the Enchanting skill has returned. I’d also discuss how much fun it is killing dragons and how much more structured the melee combat is. I’d also mention how good the graphics and music are and the immense attention to detail. Unfortunately, the game is just too big to decribe in the space of a single review. If you’re a role-playing fan, it’s your duty to buy this – Skyrim needs you.

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Long story short, I find myself in London, surrounded by more winter clothing than I normally expect to see this time of year. Spec Ops is the purpose of this trip, and I’ve just had the opportunity to spend an action-packed hour getting some hands-on time with a title that still upholds all the gameplay and narrative ideals that it did when I first saw it so long ago.

First, a quick refresher: Spec Ops is set in Dubai. Some time prior to the game’s opening, the extravagant city is ravaged by vicious sandstorms, forcing a mass evacuation. To help with this crisis, The Damned 33^rd (a US Army battalion renowned for its prowess both in combat and in humanitarian efforts) volunteers to provide aid. Led by Colonel John Konrad (Decorated Army Guy™), the 33^rd stands with their commanding officer when he decides to disobey the order to abandon the city as the storms continue to worsen. Instead, they stay behind to escort the last civilian caravan to safety. Those sandstorms can be total bastards though, and the most bastardly of them greedily swallows the 33^rd and their civilian chums long before safety is within reach, effectively transforming Dubai into the world’s most opulent graveyard.

Six months have passed since then, and Dubai has been silent. Cut off from the rest of the world by the incessant sandstorms, it’s assumed that the city is devoid of life. That is, until a distress signal from within the city is intercepted. Sent by Konrad, the broadcast results in a Delta Recon Team being sent in to gather Intel on Dubai’s status and locate any survivors before leaving to report back. That’d make for a very boring videogame, however, so things naturally spiral out of control as we’re led further down the rabbit hole in this intriguingly refreshing and curiously enigmatic take on tactical military shooters.

You take on the role of Captain Martin Walker (voiced by Nolan “I’m here too!” North), leader of this three-man recon team. You’re joined by Lieutenant Alphonso Adams and Sergeant John Lugo. It’s not long before you discover that the situation in Dubai is seven shades of strange – refugee insurgents and mutineers from the 33^rd battle for control of the devastated city, and Konrad has seemingly vanished. Broadcasts from the mysterious “Radioman” pepper your journey through this particularly gritty warzone. Bodies hang from lampposts, survivors skirmish over dwindling resources and mass graveyards turn this into a pretty nasty tour through well-designed environments.

On the surface, this all allows for fairly familiar third-person shooter action (complete with cover system), but uniqueness appears in a number of ways. As is to be expected, there’s a ton of sand in these here parts. It’s not just a visual reminder of where you are either, the sand plays a prominent role, and I might’ve even gone so far as to call it the “BioShock of the sands” in my first preview. It’s fitting, because Rapture’s watery depths aren’t thematically dissimilar to the role Dubai’s desert sands play here. Enemies can be taken out via strategic use of sand, and they’ll likewise attempt to do the same to you. For example, early on in the demo, a wrecked bus played home to sand within piled against its windows. Enemies taking shots at me from their perch below it stood oblivious to the potential death-trap resting awkwardly above them. Shooting one of the bus windows unleashed a torrent of sand that bludgeoned and buried these foes, freeing me up to deal with other threats. Moments like these are obviously scripted and strategically placed throughout the environment, and they’re much appreciated for the reprieve they offer in the more intense shootouts. Other moments from the demo involved my grenades accidentally shattering the glass of building windows, sending torrential sand that had piled against the glass pouring in to incapacitate hostiles. Grenades have a particularly cool effect when detonated in sandy environs. Not only do they murder foes in close proximity (as well they should), but they also kick up thick, sandy clouds that obscure vision and leave enemies blind, essentially making every frag grenade thrown a potential stun grenade.

Obviously the sandstorms themselves play into this as well. When they show up, they’re massively impressive – these environmental beasts that ruin your vision and completely change the situation you’re in. Enemies stumble about as they’re battered by the storm, and it’s not uncommon to accidentally bump into one of them, leading to a quick melee scuffle. You and your squad are forced to slowly, but desperately seek shelter as bits of the environment are torn apart and movement is severely hampered. The sound they make is monstrous, really hammering home their destructive intention. I’m curious to see what more will be done with these storms.

Sand-powered gameplay aside, there’s the narrative that gives Spec Ops its own defining aftertaste. It’s not just the Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness inspirations (which should give you an idea as to what direction the story is going to take if you’re familiar with either of those), but also the mature nature with which it handles player decisions. These aren’t binary moral choices between good and evil – these walk the line somewhere between the two, forcing you to make decisions that are both difficult and affecting, often leaving you feeling like a total d*ck no matter your choice. I’ll bet the game’s subtitle makes a bit more sense now. Your choices won’t alter the course of the storyline either. This is not a branching narrative, and these moments exist purely to enhance the experience and give it real weight rather than simply handing out points for being good and evil. Even the moment-to-moment, incidental decisions manage to somehow evoke a moral response. Downed enemies can be executed, for example, something I gradually found it more and more difficult to do, purely because my brain instinctively began questioning my actions, eventually reaching a point where I stopped doing it. This isn’t even something that has any effect on your game whatsoever, or something that was prompted by the game – it was purely a personal choice, possibly brought on by everything I’d witnessed up until that point and the resultant effect it was having on me. It makes me want to believe that the game is already succeeding in its attempt to truly reveal war’s hideous visage and convey the effect desperate times can have on desperate people.

Then there’s the setting. Dubai is an immediately iconic city, offering truly breathtaking opportunities for ludicrous level design. And it’s obvious by what I’ve seen so far that Yager is taking full advantage of the distinctive locale they’re letting us loose in. Standing atop a skyscraper, staring down at the city’s sand-covered remains as you’re ziplining your way to a nearby building is a beautiful thing. The stark contrast between extravagance and destruction, elegance and decay is obvious, especially when you start seeing some of the game’s harsher imagery within these opulent surroundings. From what I’ve seen, Dubai is going to make for a stunning playground, hopefully packed with fresh sights and sounds around every corner.

Even without all of this, Spec Ops is already a solid shooter. Those two years in hiatus have been good for my initial hands-on impression of the game, because everything on offer looks, sounds and feels polished, even in its incomplete state. The gunplay and weapons are satisfying, and there’s clearly thought that’s been put into the design of each combat area. Flanking opportunities and multiple paths have been inlaid within each zone, resulting in dynamic combat scenarios which the developers assure will always play out differently. It’s also thanks to the enemy AI, which reacts dynamically according to your squad’s actions. Speaking of your squad, you’re able to give Adams and Lugo context-sensitive orders on the fly. Orders to stun enemies are commonplace, leading your squad to move in and subdue entrenched forces so you can move in for the kill. You’re also able to order your squad to attack specific foes while you focus on others. The developers are adamant that this is not a game about squad control: you’re free to use the basic commands on offer as much or as little as you please, but they do want you to feel as if you’re this squad’s leader and your orders matter. It ties back into that all-important narrative, because making us feel emotionally invested in the squad is sure to draw a greater reaction from us as we see the effect the game’s storyline and your decisions are having on their morale and mental wellbeing.

Going back to the AI: it’s been coded in such a way that the enemy and friendly AI is always playing off one another, constantly acting and reacting based on the situation. Your squad (and enemies) will automatically move to better positions as battles evolve, and certain enemies are coded to behave in different ways. Knife-wielding berserkers, for example, will charge headfirst into battle, dodging and weaving during their maniacal charge as you panic and try to get a shot in. Shotgun-toting foes share similar, but slightly less aggressive traits, in that they’ll still use cover, but might occasionally lose their cool and try to bum rush you as a valiant final effort at bringing you down. In this Dubai gone mad, occasionally unhinged enemies are fitting, so it’s good to see that they’re included. Meanwhile, your squad seems perfectly capable of holding their own, switching weapons and tactics to match any situation, requiring zero babysitting and comfortably dispatching enemies without ever doing anything blindly stupid during the time that I played.

Unfortunately, we’ve not had the chance to see any multiplayer in action yet. The official word is “there’s multiplayer, but we’re not talking about it just yet.” It’ll be intriguing to see what’s done with it, especially considering some of the more outrageous environments I’ve seen, along with the game’s unique sandy elements thrown in. It’s got definite potential for fun times with friends. Still, even without seeing the multiplayer side of things, the hour or so that I’ve spent with Spec Ops’ campaign was more than enough to get me excited about spending more time with it. I haven’t covered everything I saw (I’ve been especially careful not to give away too much about the story and specific in-game moments, because these are definitely things you’ll want to experience for yourself without me spoiling them), but there should be enough here to get fans of third-person tomfoolery pretty excited. It’s a triple-A shooter with mature themes and a strong narrative focus, attempting to be comfortingly familiar while still treading new ground. It’s got a ton of potential, and we’re definitely excited to see what comes of it.

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For starters, what’s even going on here? Honestly, I’ve no idea. The game just kind of gets going, with no real narrative exposition whatsoever outside of some inscrutable references to this, that, and something else about something, and WHAT AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE DOING BECAUSE THERE’S NO PROPER OBJECTIVES LOG OR MINIMAP ICON, LOL. Remember Unreal 2?  Pretty much that, but without the flak cannon.

There’s probably a reasonable argument to be made that we’re all getting a whole lot stupider as a species (rantrantrantHalf-Life, etc.), but honestly, if I don’t even know why I’m driving around this planet or why I’m so much taller than everybody else, I’m not sure why I should care. I mean, do you know why games have become increasingly linear? Because non-linear games are kind of vague and, actually, a bit rubbish. All the nooks and crannies in the uncharted universe won’t make up for gigantic, bleeding plot holes and fifteen minutes of wandering around, wondering where I should be and why nothing’s happening and oh, haha, I was going backwards and didn’t realise it because this entire level is a copy-pasted reiteration of its first three metres, isn’t that clever, no it’s not.

At this point, I should probably confess – oh, scandal! – that I’ve not played the original Halo: Combat Evolved. This puts me, I think, at both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the first point then, I’m not blinded by a cloudburst of rosy-tinted nostalgia, and on the second, I’m not blinded by a cloudburst of rosy-tinted nostalgia. I’m sure it doesn’t help that the ad hoc engine put together to develop the game looks like it was imported from 1995, with knee-high obstacles and everything.

Which is all the more inscrutable considering that the multiplayer component is built into Halo: Reach instead, but included on the same disc. I’ve no idea, either.

The game features seven multiplayer maps, including six regular versus mode maps and one Firefight map, and bolts onto your existing Halo: Reach Service Record. There are also new Anniversary multiplayer playlists that support the original game’s grossly overpowered (read: totally awesome) magnum handcannon, as well as a cycle of the old/new maps that, if nothing else, provide a much needed respite from Team SWAT on Pinnacle.

It’s rather hard to recommend this to anybody but the most hardcore sentimentalists, and even then, you might find that it doesn’t quite reconcile itself with whatever it is you remember. For everybody else, maybe give this one a hyperspace jump unless you stopped playing games altogether in 2001 and want to get back into it. Slowly.

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The first one that filled my late teen years with pain and anguish was Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. This game is difficult to classify. It’s played as a top-down, 2D, real-time strategy game in which players control a team of six commandos, each with their own special abilities, across a campaign full of missions. What made it tricky was the unforgiving urgency of it. Say you had a mission to assassinate a key officer, grab some intel, and procure a vehicle for extraction. There was often a bit of creative leeway in how you approached each situation. You can use your spy to infiltrate the base to assassinate the officer and steal the intel, but you might want to have your sniper on a high point, far away, covering him. You can use your green beret to sneak up behind a soldier guarding a vehicle and knife him silently in the back and then dump his body somewhere it won’t be found. Or you might want to skip all this and have your diver make an undetected sea approach, sneak into the base that way and steal the intel instead. There are so many options, so many ways to accomplish each goal – and so many ways to fail.

Thankfully, the developers gave us some clever options to keep track of things. You can split your screen up into several cameras and have each camera follow a specific target – for instance, you could make one follow your green beret and make another follow an enemy patrol. It’s tricky, but it’s an essential skill. And while I have mentioned how hard it is, it’s an excellent game and sure to challenge any hardcore thinking gamer.

Also included in the package is the expansion to the first game, Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty, which gives players more missions to complete and a few new toys and vehicles to use. The sequel, Commandos II: Men of Courage, is essentially more of the same, but with a couple of differences. Firstly, certain items in the game, like character models, have been rendered in 3D while the backgrounds and other details are still 2D. The interface has also been streamlined and the commandos have been given more abilities, like the ability to swap equipment, and many fans consider it to be the best in the series. Commandos III: Destination Berlin went completely 3D, and many long-time fans didn’t like this – but I must admit, the more up-to-date, context-sensitive interface it employed made it the most easily playable of the three.

And last and most definitely least is Commandos: Strike Force. This was a complete departure for the series, making it a first-person shooter with a strategy edge. It also gave us only three commandos to work with this time: the sniper, the green beret and the spy. It’s kind of fun, but the problem is that it not particularly challenging as a shooter and the “strategy” elements hardly classify as such. You can finish most of each mission with one commando – except for the bits that require the skills of a particular guy, of course – and the lack of real dependence on their skills makes them feel more or less the same in the long run.

If you’re looking for a real challenge, something quite different to any other strategy game you have played, you might want to give this bundle a look.

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If you fall into this category, then F1 2011 from Codemasters might be just for you. I don’t know anything about the sport in real life, either, so you’ll have to bear with me. The game includes 12 teams, 24 drivers and 19 tracks which I assume are all based on real-world counterparts. Like any good racing game, F1 2011 gives players the option to create a racer and enter a lengthy career mode against the big boys. The way that this is set up is pretty cool. Players are approached as the “brand new driver” by a news reporter. This is where you input your name and select your difficulty setting by answering a few questions. After this, you’re shown to your office where you can access everything from league races to training to weather reports and even accept outside contracts that you can undertake if your performance catches the attention of other teams. There are plenty of championships to win here and F1 fans will be kept busy for ages.

If you’re in the mood for a bit more immediate action, you can take in a quick Grand Prix or prove your skills in the time trial mode and then upload your best laps to the worldwide leaderboard for a slice of humble pie. You can also go head-to-head with your friends in either split-screen versus or, thankfully, a LAN option (yes, even on the consoles versions). If you want to play against opponents online, however, you either need to redeem your first-hand-purchase VIP pass to activate the online mode, or you can buy a new pass online – which seems to be an increasingly popular way for developers to generate first-hand sales in a market where trade-in games can be bought for half-price or lower less than a week after release.

If you’re experienced in realistic racing games, then the driving physics of F1 2011 should come much more easily to you than they did to me. There are several difficutly settings to suit all tastes, from the easy modes that handle car tweaking and various driving actions for you, all the way to the expert mode, which lets you handle every aspect of the driving by yourself, right down to what kind of tires you equip and the adjustment of your rear wing – whatever that does.

All in all, while F1 2011 is a great and comprehensive game, I think it was made exclusively for hardcore racing game players or Formula One fans.

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The narrative leaps from a brilliantly realised pub brawl in London, across to France, Yemen and beyond as it explores the relationship between Drake and his moustached mentor Sully. While the story is enjoyable (throwing in many nods and jokes to fans of the series) the narrative is a little weaker in construction than its predecessor and the villains are less cleverly motivated, resulting in a climax less fulfilling than it could have been. Despite this, the cut scenes telling this story showcase the very best animation in the industry thanks to the fact that the voice actors are the ones in mocap suits, boasting nuanced animation traditional processes would simply not yield. Accentuating this is exceptional voice acting which is effortlessly delivered along with some of the finest facial animations to date.

Among Thieves introduced interactive action sequences that allowed people to play through what other games would shy away from, establishing a hook the series has that no other game offers. Uncharted 3 blows these out of the water with exhilarating sequences so incredible you might just lose your mind. In between these you will share your time between exploring and gunfights. Exploring is essentially the same as what has come before but the level design here is a lot smarter, resulting in more organic and logical environments. Unfortunately, gunplay seems to have been left behind and is indeed the weakest link. A lot of this comes down to two things: firstly, the free-form movement that is so enjoyable in most of the game is severely limited and jagged during gunfights, leading to a more jarring disconnect than should exist. Secondly, the enemy design is, to be honest, lazy. Rather than adding challenge through design, the game simply throws as many enemies as it can at you, resulting in deaths so frustrating I often began to scream. Fortunately, hand-to-hand combat has been greatly improved, leaving it the best way to deal with foes. Akin to Arkham Asylum, Drake can parry, dodge, counter and drop onto enemies with brutal abandon. Each fight feels tiring and the punches painful. There is even a tasty context sensitive implementation where Drake will use a bottle, frying pan or window to aid in combat if one is nearby. All of this feels more believable than ever before thanks to the uncanny animation on offer here.

Uncharted 3 is quite simply the most remarkable looking game you have ever seen. From the multiple levels of animation which have Drake breathing heavily, swatting flies, rubbing his neck, drying his hands on his thighs, grimacing at bullets, wearily stumbling from exhaustion and steadying himself on walls, to the stunning attention to detail, creasing clothing, scrumptiously gorgeous lighting and the finest water, fire and sand physics in gaming. There are times you will literally not believe your eyes. Uncharted 3’s real strength, and both developers and gamers need to acknowledge Naughty Dog’s incredible talent here, is the way in which Drake belongs in his game world. His eyes wander with curiosity, his hands feel out the environment, he steps backwards before turning, shields himself when running into a wall and comments on the environment and surrounding events. I believe this marks the beginning of the future of gaming, viz., the implementation of character into game-world. Textures can only get so much better, but when you play Uncharted 3 and go back to any other game available, you realise what a difference this integration makes and how static and lifeless everything else feels in comparison.

The campaign will take you about ten hours to shimmy through but it was such a blast that I dove right back in to hunt down each and every one of those shiny treasures. If multiplayer is your poison, Naughty Dog have on offer more than the slightly tacked-on affair that Among Thieves had. A modified campaign can be played through co-op including cut scenes, voice work and past characters. A survival co-op mode pits players against waves of enemies and while it may sound a little tired in this age of endless FPSes, the parkour inspired vertical level design and gameplay in Uncharted really help breath some fresh air into the concept. Multiplayer offerings are tweaks of the staples which have emerged over the years with Death Matches, Mission Objectives and Free-for-Alls in the mix. As with the survival co-op, the gameplay Uncharted boasts really bring these modes into their own and add a flavour unavailable elsewhere. Games are frantic, exciting and less predictable than some modes out there, with a generous XP, booster and loadout system allowing you to advance even when you suck, sucking you back in for more.

You have never seen a game like this before, nor thought it was possible on this generation of hardware. This is the spearhead of where gaming is headed, it is however, not perfect, and some aspects could be vastly improved. Regardless, it is so utterly and exceptionally well realised that it will make you reassess how you look at games. To do what Naughty Dog have achieved here justice I need to remove a 20% from every game I have reviewed prior. The bar has been raised, by a studio so talented it could be witchcraft, to the point where every other studio has to take note and pull at those socks or be left dangling, so far behind it will be embarrassing.

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Except at Skydrift. I suck at Skydrift. I suck at Skydrift so badly, I take sucking into a whole new category of sucking, which I’m now calling “ultrasupermegasucking”. So this review is written from the perspective of multiple on-screen explosions.

Basically, Skydrift is Mario Kart with jets. Or Blur with jets, if you’re 14 and too cool for Nintendo consoles. Or an arcade racer with power-ups AND JETS, if you’ve only just arrived from outer space and/or you weren’t paying attention.

Power-ups include a sort of turret gun, rockets, shields, a repair kit, a close-range shockwave detonator, and deployable mines. So far, so DeathTrack. You can also hold two power-ups simultaneously, and doubling up on the same one increases its effectiveness. Obviously, the big idea is to stockpile ordnances, and dump them on your opponents to knock them out of the race temporarily, and put you in front.

The game’s campaign mode features three different game types – Power Race, Survival, and Speed Race. The first one’s your standard GO-GO-GO mode, with loads of power-ups on the courses, while Speed Race is more or less the same thing, but with an elimination timer. If you’re in last place when it ticks down to zero, you’re out of the race, and the last man (jet) standing (flying) wins. Speed Race chucks all the power-ups, and has players zipping through a series of velocity-boosting rings instead.

Although none of this stuff is particularly innovative in the genre, and it all works well enough and – quite in spite of my ultrasupermegasucking at it – the game’s rather a lot of chaotic fun to play. For a bit, anyway.

Skydrift’s first big problem is that it has only six maps (and reversed versions, but that’s cheating), which quickly become very repetitive.

Skydrift’s second big problem is that it has no local multiplayer, an omission that’s all the more inexplicable given the genre’s instant appeal on this front. Online multiplayer is something, perhaps, but it’s just not the same when you can’t throw chips at the asshole who dropped a rocket on you.

It’s a solid, smart little racer, but with a pretty chunky $14.99 / 1,200 MSP pricetag, its lack of content and local multiplayer makes it more of a maybe than a must-buy.

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Single Player

“Safe” is a relative term in Modern Warfare 3, as the game attempts to do everything it can to convince you that danger lurks at every turn while simultaneously letting you know that everything will be okay as long as you do as you’re told. This is a game that wants to be played to completion. The formula has worked a treat with past Call of Duty titles, which relied on series of events that play out like scripted productions in which you’re allowed to run around with a high-powered assault rifle while the other actors await your next line – a backstage prompt occasionally helping you out if you’ve forgotten it – and nothing has changed this time around. Only this isn’t like the pantomime your mom dragged you to for a shot of culture when she felt you’d spent too much time in front of “that damned box”, MW3 begins with you crawling out of a ravaged APC in the middle of war-torn Manhattan; a comrade tosses you a clip of ammunition and tells you to kill anything with a Russian accent between here and your goal 500 metres ahead. Masonry falls about you from the high-rise buildings while enemies attempt to fill your head with bullets. Players on hardcore or veteran difficulty would do well to keep to cover, be smart with their movements and be quick about taking their shots. Those on lower difficulty levels are free to gallivant around like indomitable heroes during these combat sequences. Your AI squad mates will do their best to deal with the enemy but try to leave a few shots for you, which adds a sense of urgency to the combat, especially when the grenades start raining in your direction in the attempt to flush you out of cover.

During the single-player campaign, you’ll get to take on the roles of a few different players in Makarov’s attempt to spark World War 3. Each character is functionally identical but plays a different role in the saga, and depending on whether you’re fighting as a member of Delta Squad, Price’s ragtag group of international special operatives, the SAS, or as a few cameos in-between, the mission types range from straight-up run-and-gun to support to covert operations with their laughable stealth sequences. While the scripting is generally strong enough to carry the lack of innovation in MW3 and keep the action fun, one can’t help but feel that it’s too overpowering in the stealth sequences. As long as you keep your face glued to Price’s rear-end, stop when he says stop and pull the trigger on his command, you’ll sail through these. Thankfully, in the six hours of the campaign you’ll spend most of your time shooting bad guys and watching incredible action sequences unfold around you, so this blemish a minor one.

Finally, there’s the human emotion angle – the bit that those players who take the Call of Duty single-player campaigns seriously genuinely enjoy. I can’t make that claim because COD has always been about eye candy and popcorn action for me, but there are enough heartstring-tugging moments in the campaign to let you know that someone is still trying. With that said, the final mission is perhaps the most engrossing part of the entire campaign. It was the first and only time I felt attached to the characters and I regret not experiencing more of that attachment throughout the campaign – it certainly would have gone a long way to enhance the story and make the world more believable. When you’re simply following orders and everything magically happens around you because you’re standing in the right place on someone’s mark, that believability is somewhat perturbed. Not shattered, just, you know… ruffled a bit, especially when you attempt to perform an action that hasn’t been planned for.

Spec Ops

Once you’ve finished the SP campaign, Spec Ops is where you’ll enjoy most of the game’s replayability if you’re without connection to the rest of the world. It comes in two parts: Missions and Survival. The 16 missions are mostly retellings of important parts from the campaign, either from new perspectives or with different objectives, and rewards players for completing them either quickly or at all. Three challenge ratings exist for each mission and players earn XP for completing them. These experience points are for Spec Ops only, and give Survival mode one thing that the now-classic Call of Duty Zombies mode doesn’t have: unlockable content based on a persistent player level.

Survival mode is similar to Zombies and most other horde survival modes/games, in that infinite waves of enemies spawn in the attempt to kill the players. Survival is played in slightly altered versions of the game’s 16 multiplayer maps, which are divided into four levels of difficulty – each new difficulty bringing with it new enemy types that spawn at later stages. During or between each wave, you can access the three terminals scattered around each map to purchase ammo top-ups, weapons, equipment and air support (including certain perks, aerial bombardment and the like), using cash acquired from kills and bonuses. Much like the Perk-a-Cola machines and Mystery Box in Zombies, timing your visits to the terminals is a key part to surviving later rounds, and while the certainty and variety of the terminals’ contents somewhat diminishes the terror usually associated with “Box runs”, it’s still pretty unnerving to run out of bullets in the middle of a round and be forced to make your way across the map to the weapons terminal. As mentioned previously, Spec Ops has its own persistent player level counter which is especially important in Survival, as a higher player level gives you access to the bigger and better weapons, equipment and air support options, although you’ll always be able to pick up the weapons of your fallen attackers. Survival is certainly fun and will make for a good time with you and a friend in either splitscreen or online co-op, but its limit of just two players means that you’ll never experience the same level of frenzied chaos (and resulting hilarity) that four-player Zombies offers. It also lacks the history, bizarre storylines and tons of Easter eggs in Zombies, leaving Survival feeling cold and detached compared to it.

Multiplayer

I’d argue that the majority of Call of Duty players care more about the multiplayer component of these games than anything else, but I don’t have the stats to back that up. Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer isn’t here to rock your perception of the genre or change the way we play games, but rather to refine and improve on MW2’s and Black Ops’  multiplayer components, fix those things considered to be broken and please as many people among the current fan base as possible.

Within minutes of playing on any of the sixteen new maps, I felt comfortable and confident about routes through the environments and within a few minutes more I had a good sense of the places to be and those to avoid. In short, each map feels distinctly COD-like, but a number of changes to design subtly permeate the gameplay and you’ll only really notice them when you notice that you haven’t recently been shot by a camper abusing a horribly unbalanced section of the map (although, to be fair, there were a few instances when that did happen; one has to leave something for the campers to do). Another change is the absence of huge, sprawling maps, or particularly small ones. Each map feels just right in size and you’ll never be too far from the action, even if you’re the flanking type.

Many of the design changes centre around a focus on gun-play, and with that, melee attacks and underslung grenade launchers have been nerfed. You’ll still be able to insta-kill with the knife or with a direct hit from a noob tube, but splash damage has been reduced on the latter and the removal of the Commando perk and most lag-related “teleportation” has seen to it that the former is less of a concern unless you’re within kissing range on the battlefield. The perks have also been balanced, together with weapon proficiencies and attachments gained from levelling up individual weapons, to make each player feel like their play style has been catered for without putting anyone else at a disadvantage. Unless, of course, your play-style is a knife-wielding noob-tuber, in which case you’re out of luck. Oh, and the shotgun class has been moved to the primary weapon slot, which you’ll probably welcome if you’ve ever been blown apart by a surprise AA-12.

Most of the game modes have been left intact, with the only notable exception I spotted being the change in Demolition’s final round in the event of a draw, and the inclusion of a few new modes is most welcome. Kill Confirmed is similar to Team Deathmatch but requires players to confirm each kill by collecting the dog tags dropped by each slain opponent, and preventing enemies from confirming their own kills by scooping up tags from fallen allies. Only confirmed kills count towards the team’s total score. Not only does this make camping less effective (unless you’ve got a great team to collect the tags), but it encourages team work which otherwise tends to disappear in TDM. The other new game mode, Team Defender, is similar to Capture the Flag, in that there’s a flag, but the goal is to hang on to it for as long as possible, gaining points for your team as you do. If you die, the flag drops, available for anyone on either team to pick up and start scoring points. Again, this is a great distraction from TDM and manages to be a game mode focused on combat, but also requires a keen battle awareness and map knowledge from the flag carrier.

Another feature that must be mentioned is the restructured Killstreak reward system – these are now Pointstreaks, which are made up of points gained from killing enemies as well as accomplishing mission objectives like flag or point capture. This change alone is brilliant, and long overdue, but it’s made even better thanks to the segmented Strike Packages – essentially three separate categories of Pointstreak Rewards of which the player is allowed to choose one per loadout. The Assault Package is perfect for those who enjoy dropping lots of bombs and helicopters on people; the Support Package is my personal favourite, providing team bonuses like counter-UAV, ballistic vests for the whole team and V-22 Osprey -protected care package drops. Finally, the Specialist Package grants players up to three additional perks from those they’ve already unlocked, at 2, 4 and 6 kills in the streak. Each Strike Package further bolsters the idea of building loadouts that are suited for your style of play.

An admittedly unexpected focus on private, unranked games has also popped up, presumably to increase support for the pro-gaming scene as well as offer a few sillier game modes to multiplayer gamers. Gun Game and One in the Chamber return from Black Ops’ Wager Matches (sans wagers), to be joined by Infected, Juggernaut, Team Juggernaut and Drop Zone. Where the pro-gaming reference comes in is the player’s ability to customise each of these and the regular game modes with pre-defined loadouts and map rotations. This means that pro leagues will be able to define which weapons are allowed, force certain perks or remove them altogether, and determine which maps are permitted, in a certain game mode – most likely Search & Destroy. This custom game mode can then be saved and shared through Elite, so that a standard can be established and adhered to without the need for modding tools.

If you hadn’t gathered from the 2,000 words of poetic waffle above, there’s a lot that’s good about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. It has its downsides: the single-player campaign won’t change your mind about the series one way or the other, but it concludes an interesting-enough story in a manner that’s as entertaining as a triple-A action film, and requires the same mindset. Spec Ops should offer enough fun for a few hours or even longer if you find a decent buddy with whom you’ll tackle Survival mode, and the multiplayer component is stronger than it’s ever been. If you enjoy action-focused contemporary shooters and don’t feel the need to drive tanks and fly jets, you can’t go terribly wrong with Modern Warfare 3.

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In fact, a glance around the internet says they’re not just okay with it, they’re loving it! Raving about Frank West like he’s Julius Caesar returning from conquest and Chuck Greene is some kind of usurper. And then there’s the camera – which is another thing the fans seem to think should have been in DR2. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed taking photos in DR1 as much as the next guy, but I didn’t miss the camera in DR2. In fact, I was actually kind of relieved I didn’t have to take pictures and could concentrate on zombie killing. But, if you’re one of the people who missed the camera, you’ll be relieved to know it’s back.

Apart from that, though, it’s the same exact game, just with Frank West in place of Chuck Greene – not a different set of events, or a side of events we didn’t see during the original DR2 – I mean the same exact events with Frank West – a retcon, basically. A few of the story scenes have been redone, to change the story from Chuck trying to prove his innocence to Frank West trying to get another big scoop – but that’s it. Apparently there are some new bosses, new items and even a new area added, but it’s been so long I wouldn’t know which are which.

If you’ve played the previous DR2, you’ll know exactly what it entails. Frank must survive for three days, finding Zombrex to keep himself alive, following the main quest (or not) and rescuing other survivors (if you want to). There are thousand upon thousand of zombies to get in your way, the occasional crackpot boss to fight, and all the most creative and mundane tools in the world to take them on with. Frank can also take pictures of anything he wants, which are rated in one of several categories from horror to erotica. As Frank takes pictures and kills enemies, he’ll earn experience which allows him to level up, learn new combat moves, hold more items and become tougher. The online co-op still exists if you fancy some co-op carnage.

Anyway, I’m not sure when the whole world became so accepting of blatant recycling, like me, or at which point Frank West became a prodigal hero, but there you go. For the fans out there, this is Dead Rising 2 the way it was meant to be. Apparently.

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Even the heads of FROM Software were surprised by how much of hit Demon’s Souls turned into. It seems that saying their game is “too hard for you guys” panned out as an unexpectedly brilliant marketing move, as tons of gamers bought it to try in vain to prove the developers wrong. So, when developing the sequel, Dark Souls, the developers didn’t make it any easier. Players will still die hundreds of times – in fact, the developers bet their reputation on it. And this time, Xbox 360 owners are welcome at the party – and the resulting group therapy.

Players create a character to enter a troubled world plagued by the undead. In fact, you start out undead yourself – but unlike the rest, you haven’t lost your mind, and it’s up to you to save the world. It’s not going to be easy, though. Standing in your way are everything from rats and zombies to 20 foot tall minotaurs and castle sized dragons. The kind of character you create, the equipment you find and your skills will be a huge determining factor in how you tackle each of these creatures. For instance, beefy warrior type characters stand a better chance in fair combat, while nimble but fragile thieves can’t afford to fight fair and magicians and hunters do best at taking enemies out from a distance.

If you play online, you’re not alone. You’ll be able to read hints from other players written all over the game world, detailing possible methods to beat enemies, directions to hidden areas, or ways to find secret items. You can also return to life from your smelly, decaying form, which allows you to do various things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to – not least of all summoning another player to help you through a tough section. If you’re feeling particularly malicious, you can invade the game of another “living” player and attempt to kill them and steal their stock of items that allows them to return to life – and they can do the same to you, of course. The game also has a new “Pledge” system allowing players to pledge allegiance to certain factions, granting various benefits both online and offline.

Anyway, had I the space, I’d love to explain the game’s complexity to you in more detail, but hopefully I’ve given you an idea at least. Besides, if you’re interested, and you’re up for one of the biggest gaming challenges you’re ever likely to face, why not tool up and enter the world of Dark Souls yourself?

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Then weapons of mass destruction, guns, jets, firefights, the CIA, Arab fundamentalists, bombs in New York, barely disguised GO GO TEAM AMERICA propaganda, some sort of vaguely commie conspiracy, almost a nuclear holocaust, and man, I wish they’d just get over the Cold War already because it’s kind of getting a bit old.

Battlefield 3’s campaign plays like a series of My First Call of Duty Clone checkboxes on a list, linking one perfunctory plot point to the next in an ostensibly complicated, even convoluted plot that’s actually quite simple and really rather stupid when you think about it later. So basically, it’s exactly like Modern Warfare but – significantly – without whatever it is that makes the Modern Warfare campaigns heaps of fun. Instead, it’s just somewhat bland and, for the most part, instantly forgettable.

But whatever, it’s not like Battlefield has ever been about the single-player anyway.

Getting down to the big business then, and really, Battlefield 3’s multiplayer index hasn’t changed all that much since Battlefield: Bad Company 2, although Team Deathmatch has made its first reappearance since Battlefield 1942.  There’s also Rush, Conquest, Squad Rush, and Squad Deathmatch, but really, it’s all about Rush.

Oh, it’s always been about Rush. <3 <3 <3

Classes have seen some reorganising, with the Engineer and Recon classes more or less what you’d expect, while Bad Company 2’s Medic is now incorporated into Battlefield 3’s Assault class, and Battlefield 2’s Support class has been reinstated, but actually closely resembles Bad Company 2’s Medic in terms of weapon loadout and is able to resupply allies with ammo like Bad Company 2’s Assault class. It’s not as confusing as it sounds, either, and whatever your preferred playing style, you’ll find something to match.

There’s definitely some barrier to entry for rookies, though, and it’s not a point in the game’s favour. Like most military FPSes these days, it seems, ranking up unlocks new weapons, and more often than not, those weapons are much better than whatever weapons you had before. Honestly, it’s hard to feel motivated to keep playing when every time you think you’re getting somewhere, suddenly G36C. There’s a challenge, and then there’s a tediously repetitive, no-fun-allowed process of attrition, and Battlefield 3 sometimes skims dangerously closer to the second. I don’t know, maybe it’s all part of the Battlefield experience, but that doesn’t mean it’s one above some criticism.

As a kind of value-added extra, there’s also a two-player co-op mode, featuring a bunch of 15-30 minute missions that play out very much like the single-player campaign missions, but with one major difference – no checkpoints. It’s all fun and games until you’re turned to red paste on a wall somewhere in the final minute and have to start over.

Oh, yes, and the graphics are pretty good on console, even better on PC, etc. Everybody knows that already but if I didn’t point it out, somebody would complain, so there it is.

Gripes aside, however, there’s simply no reasonably denying that Battlefield 3 is, in total, a super package, and its squad-based multiplayer component remains totally unique in its class. Simply, nothing does a battlefield quite like Battlefield.

It’s going to come down to Battlefield 3 versus Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 this launch season, and the first contender is looking good.

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So maybe it’s not all that surprising that he finds himself shut up in Mayor Sharp’s new free-for-all madhouse, Arkham City. And maybe it’s by some state social worker’s mandate, but re-imagined in Wayne’s mind as a crazy conspiracy involving his psychiatrist, Hugo Strange, seen here instead as a narcissistic supervillain who wants to expose Wayne’s secret alter ego, and a garish, even psychedelic rogues’ gallery of psychotic clowns, assassins, and serial killers. Maybe everything that happens is the nothing more than the self-aggrandising delusions of a borderline personality disorder, glimmers from the dissociative fugues of a little boy, weeping over the bodies of his murdered parents in a blood-spattered alley.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Anyway, one thing basically leads to another, and Wayne ends up on the wrong side of Arkham City’s gate. Not one to let an opportunity to bust some skulls and fight some crime pass him by, Wayne arranges to have his Batstuff dropped off and gets busy busting skulls and fighting crime. It’s all in a night’s work for Bats, and besides, what else is a man in spandex going to do out on the town?

Much like its predecessor, Arkham City is a Metroid noir mashup of action, adventure, snooping and swooping, but with less emphasis on stealth and forensic work this time around. This time around, Batman starts out with most of his gear, unlocking only a couple of additional gadgets and upgrades along the way, a change which makes sense given that most of the game’s locations are accessible from the get-go too.

The game’s presentation is virtually faultless, with Arkham City realised in the kind of sombre, complex, even oppressive detail that bad dreams are made of. Which is only appropriate, given that the place is home to some of the most authentically disturbing characters ever conceived. Gothic buttresses crowd up against looming Art Nouveau and Neo-Georgian facades and lurid carnival billboards with a nightmarish coherence, the neon signs only lighting up the perpetually falling snow.

Brawling in the sequel is, again, deceptively simple at first punch; its basic hit, evade, stun, and counter manoeuvres belying a system of tremendous elegance and style that passes competence and rewards excellence. Add quickfire Batarangs, explosives, blasts of electricity, and when you pull off a 50+ combo, it’s more like painting an exquisite portrait of pain than anything so banal as pressing buttons on a controller.

That said, however, it does feel like the game relies a little too much on close quarters combat to fill spaces (and the XP meter), with a step in just about any direction on Arkham City’s streets putting you on the business end of a gang of thugs. It’s easy enough to sort it out or make an escape, but sometimes it would be nice to get from A to B or investigate some clues or just have a look around without being shot at. Repetition isn’t gameplay, it’s just repetition, and the way enemies respawn when you’re not looking sort of undermines the game’s sense of progression, not only by expecting you to do the same thing over and over, but also to do the same thing you were doing at the start of the game over and over.

Generally, the boss battles are an improvement over Arkham Asylum’s inconsistently difficult and frustrating encounters, although overcompensating at times by being just a bit too easy, and – with only two or three significant exceptions – simply not especially clever or memorable, quickly concluded and instantly forgotten.

Similarly, the story grapples from one plot point to the next with little to no real narrative substance or credibility, often seeming instead like a series of contrived excuses to run out another in an admittedly very impressive lineup of classic Batman baddies. It’s not a terrible story by any means, mind you, but rather disappointingly superficial for the most part – until the finale, anyway, which pretty much makes up for all of those previous shortcomings with one of the most shocking finishes you’re ever going to see in a video game.

Outside of the main storyline, there are loads of side missions – some of these, like the multi-stage Victor Zsasz’s dial-M-for-murder payphone relay run, are actually real highlights in the game – as well as four hundred (four hundred!) Riddler trophies to collect. And no mere novelty prizes these, but complicated environment puzzles that even The World’s Greatest Detective will have to stop and have a hard think about. For obsessive-compulsive completionists, Batman: Arkham City is several weeks’ worth of work, at least, and for everybody else, around 30-40 hours, if you’ve got the guts to go through all the challenge maps. There’s a lot to see, do, and kick in the teeth from your zipline on the way over.

It feels like cheating to say that Batman: Arkham City is like Batman: Arkham Asylum, but bigger, better, and more badass – although this might be the best way to describe it. Its few imperfections notwithstanding, it’s still everything a Batman game should be – dark, brooding, and awesome. Up until now, it’s been hard to imagine how Rocksteady could possibly outdo themselves, but here it is.

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Honestly, unless you have some deep-seated, psychological objection to all things on four wheels, then I really cannot think of any reason why you wouldn’t fall head-over-heels in love with this game. I certainly have, and I’ve never played a Forza game in my life.

From the onset, as Jeremy Clarkson provides voiceover commentary during the game’s introduction, it is clear that Forza Motorsport 4 has been made by fans of genuine motoring art. Clarkson himself is synonymous with passion for cars, so mix his reverence for the subject matter with that of the team at Turn 10 and you get something quite awe inspiring. Despite the melancholy tone of the introduction, there’s an overwhelming sense of revelry as meticulously recreated, digital cars glide around their equally intricate race tracks.

If some racing games are all about quantity, then Forza Motorsport 4 is all about options. You’re free to make the game as technical or accessible as you wish; newcomers to this driving simulator sub-genre need not be afraid of becoming overwhelmed. Conversely, veterans of technical racers will be right at home thanks to the myriad difficulty options that shirk the gaming standards of Easy, Medium or Hard. You can toggle traction control on or off and even opt for turning assist if you’re a complete rookie when it comes to realistic car handling. Braking can be done automatically or you can opt for ABS or turn off all assistance entirely. Then there are the line paths superimposed onto tracks; these are nothing new to racing simulators but newcomers to this genre will find them indispensable.

Customisation doesn’t end with sculpting your own level of difficulty, or rather realism. Once you own a car (and you will own dozens the further you progress in the Career mode) you can get right down to customising everything from the colour (standard, metallic and pearlescent paint jobs are all available) to what sort of clutch (stock, street, sport or race) you want in your drivetrain. And if you have no idea what I just said then fret not because the game has a Quick Upgrade feature as well. With Quick Upgrade, the game will scan all available parts and put together the most complete upgrade package you can currently afford. Convenient, no? Then, for the ultra car tuners amongst you, you can create a custom Tune Setup for your cars. You’ll even be able to upload them for other people to download, meaning the people who cannot tell their Front Caster Alignment from their Rebound Stiffness will still be able to squeeze the maximum out of their cars thanks to the hard work of others.

It’s not just custom Tune Setups that you’ll be able to share online; Forza Motorsport 4 has a phenomenally robust paint and decal customisation tool. You can spend hours creating vinyl sets and subtle paint tones for each of your vehicles, or you can browse other people’s creations and download model-specific offerings instead. If you create something particularly impressive you can even charge in-game credits for the download.

The Forza Motorsport 4 experience hinges on passion for cars, or rather passion for a particular make of car. I’ve always been a huge fan of Honda’s offerings and as such began to collect the various Hondas available in the game. Sensing my penchant for the Japanese manufacturer, the game started offering Honda specific races during my Career Mode playthrough. It’s a neat feature that really highlights just how personal Turn 10 wants this game to be for each and every player out there.

I could go into what the cars “feel” like while driving them, or how Turn 10 fed reams of test data (that had been captured by tyre manufacturer Pirelli) into their physics model, but it really wouldn’t do the game justice. The driving experience is loaded with subtleties that you initially don’t even notice because they so closely resemble the act of real driving that you almost expect them to be there. I’m talking about how your Xbox 360 controller will issue the most minute rumble as your car shifts to a higher gear, or how Turn 10 collaborated with Pixar Studios to develop the Image Based Lighting tech so that light reflection off the car’s body is executed in specific ways depending on the time of day during which the race takes place. It’s that level of fanaticism that permeates this title, and that makes me so undeniably awe inspired while playing.

Kinect implementation was publicised quite a bit in the months leading up to the release of Forza Motorsport 4 and while it definitely works well in some areas, it’s not quite as effective in others. The game’s Autovista Mode is a triumph, there’s no doubt, but navigating using Kinect is hit and miss. While it’s fun to be able to lean towards your TV in order to get a closer look at various parts of the cars, you’ll occasionally have to lean at awkward angles to get the view you want. Fortunately you’re free to use a standard controller if you wish.

As for driving using Kinect, the experience is a barebones one as the only thing you control is the steering. Still, you’re definitely not meant to play the entire game using just Kinect and Turn 10 seems to have implemented this control distraction for completion’s sake. Where Kinect implementation really helps is in using voice commands for menu navigation. With a single word you can jump from one menu level to another despite being numerous sub-levels away from your desired destination. It works seamlessly and is a perfect solution for navigating a fairly convoluted menu structure.

Turn 10 has created something amazing in Forza Motorsport 4. I’ve always liked racing games but have never really progressed past the more arcade-like Need for Speed games or the Burnout offerings. Weary of the finicky controls and elaborate customisation requirements I avoided the more realistic driving simulators. Forza Motorsport 4, however, is not a racing game to be avoided; it’s one to be rushed into with the sort of reckless abandon ordinarily afforded a new love interest. It’s a game in which becoming swept up in the unabashed worshiping of both past and contemporary vehicles is practically guaranteed. If this game doesn’t stir your inner petrol-head, or at least introduce you to the one you never knew existed, then you can consider yourself missing out on a truly special gaming experience.

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Or something like that, accounts do differ a bit.

Anyway, originally released back in 1994, SimCity 2000 was the second in the series, but also a significant extension of and improvement on the concept, and remains – arguably, perhaps – the best of the lot.

The premise is simple enough – build a city, and keep it going. But just like real life, it’s rather more difficult than that. At its most fundamental level, you’ll have to create dedicated zones for residential, commercial, and industrial sectors, and as it turns out, nobody much likes living in an apartment next-door to a heavy-duty manufacturing plant.

Once you’ve got that basic stuff down, it’s all about the bigger matters of managing crime, health, education, transport systems, power resources, taxes and public fund allocations, and the occasional nuclear reactor meltdown – sometimes all at once, and with everything in a state of constant flux just to keep things interesting. And just when you think it’s all under control and you’re making a profit, ALIEN ROBOT INVASION AND EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY DESTROYED.

The standard game is pretty open-ended, although time passes and technology improves along with it, until you’re finally able to replace entire blocks with so-called “Arcologies”, or humongous, self-sustained cities-within-cities. There’s also a number of scenarios included, that task you with achieving certain objectives with a preset city.

But all that aside, my absolute favourite thing about SimCity 2000, and maybe the best thing in any game ever (until UT2004’s Flak Cannon, anyway), is the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit toolset. With this, you’re able to create custom buildings from the existing template that you can place in the game. The SCURK also supports palette cycling, for simple, keyframe-based animation. The obvious next step is a dystopian metropolis, featuring gigantic neon billboards reminding citizens to comply, and punishment factories on every corner, but it’s really up to you.

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In a similar move to the recent Zelda release, Nintendo have remastered the madly popular Star Fox 64 for their new handheld. Fox McCloud is back for more with his team of Slippy, Falco and Peppy to save the Lylat System from the horribly evil, giant monkey head Andross.

You pilot your shiny Arwing through missions as you chase down Andross across the galaxy. Each mission boasts interesting enemies, multiple pathways, secret items and lively boss fights. The path to the final planet of Venom differs depending on your actions, and you can discover additional missions and vehicles.

The top screen harbours the action while you receive messages from animated mug shots of your teammates and foes on the bottom. The shoulder buttons allow you to swing silkily to the left and right while performing sultry barrel rolls as you avoid enemy fire and retaliate with vengeance. The 3DS’ gyroscope attempts to augment the circle pad control but as is usual with the 3DS and its finicky screen placement, using this with the 3D enabled fails; so either no gyroscope, or move with the screen like a dancing robot.

The graphics in Star Fox 64 3D are gorgeous. Sunlight reflects off of snow and the ocean sprays beneath your Arwing as the stars wink at you with promise from above. Similarly, the sound accentuates the experience, drawing you in with great effects like the cheesy chatter of your comrades who reprimand you for stealing their targets, sonorous lasers and a wonderful musical score.

Disappointingly, while charming to play, Star Fox is ridiculously easy and takes an hour to beat. There are multiple pathways to the end mission and an Expert mode, which do require additional playthroughs, but even so, this does little more than double the time. To make up for this, there is both Battle and Score Attack beyond the campaign. In Battle mode you can choose single player or Download Play with four buddies and take to the skies in dogfights to survive, score points or battle the clock. The 3DS’ camera will even stream photos of their handsome faces while you shoot them from the air. Unfortunately, there are only four maps and no online play, which would have really given this title some legs. Score attack lets you rack up points in unlocked missions with enemy hits, earning you medals to unlock more, but neither of these is quite enough to make this a recommendable product at full price.

While Star Fox 64 3D is a welcome addition to the 3DS library, it’s another remake, and one with very little substance by today’s standards. There is simply no excuse for the lack of online play nor the fact that it can be finished in less than three hours, trying every mode on every level. It’s polished and cleverly designed but lacks anything worth chewing.

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El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is a mouthful of a game, both to say and to describe. On the surface, it appears to be another typical Japanese action game – and it certainly has those elements to it – but there’s more to it than that. For starters, the game is based loosely on the Apocrypha, a collection of books that apparently used to be part of the Bible, but were excluded after their authenticity and relevance was (and still is) debated. It’s fascinating subject matter if you’re interested in religious doctrine and ancient religious texts. Anyway, the game focuses on a character called Enoch, a priest who is (in the game version) called upon to hunt down seven fallen archangels who are really screwing up things on earth.

Another thing that sets El Shaddai apart from other games is the unusual and hallucinogenic visual style. I don’t even know how to describe it, but I’ll try. It’s a mix of cel-shaded anime, acid-trip shading, illustration, cardboard cut-outs and really, really bad cosplay. The closest thing I can liken it to is a seriously pretentious art house movie that makes up for its lack of budget with excessive use of mind-boggling art. And also, I’m sure I’m not the only one who will question why angels and other characters from Biblical times wear designer jeans and suits, sport pansy J-pop hairdos and speak to God using cell-phones – but hey, why not? It’s a videogame, not a documentary.

The gameplay is also quite different. Rather than giving players a whole controller full of different commands to learn, El Shaddai is played with four buttons – attack, block, jump and purify. Using only those four buttons and the three different types of weapon that Enoch can steal from his enemies (the Arch, the Gale and the Veil) players can access a wide variety of moves to deal with the game’s multitude of bizarre enemies and bosses that all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Another interesting thing is that as Enoch uses a weapon, it becomes tainted with his enemies’ filth and loses some of is power, meaning that Enoch must find time to periodically “purify” his weapon to get its damage up again.

With seven archangels to bring to justice, all of whom have hidden themselves inside a massive tower behind legions of minions, you can be sure that there’s plenty of play value to be had here, and it will tax even veteran action gamers skills to the limits.

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First off, know that unlike Borderlands, Rage is primarily a single-player game. There are some competitive online multiplayer modes and a two-player co-op mode, but it’s not co-op through the whole game. Instead, there are a handful of co-op specific missions you can play, and a lot of the complexity of the single player game has been removed for this mode. I just thought I’d get that in there upfront so that anyone looking for another expansive co-op shooter can stop reading now. Yep, most of your time with this game will be spend tackling this huge, immersive adventure all by your lonesome. And there’s plenty of adventuring to be done.

The story goes that, as one of the chosen few selected to survive the meteor strike that would mean the end of the world, you were cybernetically enhanced and placed in cryogenic suspension in an underground “Ark” to await the day when you could restart the human race. However, you awaken a lot earlier than scheduled to find that the meteor didn’t completely destroy the Earth. It messed it up pretty bad, but humanity managed to survive – and they need your help to continue doing so. Turns out that there are all kinds of dangers out there like bandits, monsters, mutants and even an oppressive, self-appointed government called The Authority making things difficult for the small settlements of decent folk trying to rebuild something resembling society. A tough, cybernetically enhanced Ark dweller like you is just what these decent folk need to stand a chance at survival – and they’ll make it worth your while, too.

So, after waking up and being ferried to the nearest town, you’ll spend the first hour or two of the game following a linear path through several tutorials as you are introduced to Rage‘s various facets. There’s a main story to follow, and the missions are pretty clearly explained to you and marked in your mission log, so it’s hard to forget, but if you try to gun it through the entire mission, you’ll find that you quickly run into stiff resistance. You’ll need to do some side missions, courier assignments and maybe even a bit of gambling to earn cash and items to beef up your arsenal and your vehicles to make the going easier. The enemies you’ll face on your missions range from gun toting bandits and small mutants to power-armoured soldiers, sentry robots and genetically engineered abominations the size of buildings – so you’re going to need some pretty respectable firepower to take these guys on.

Luckily, you can amass quite an extensive arsenal of different weapons. Each weapon can accept different kinds of ammo, like buckshot or pop-rockets for the shotgun; standard rounds and fat boys for the pistol; and normal and armour piercing rounds for the assault rifle. There are also upgrades available for each weapon, such as stabilisers for the assualt rifle, and a laser sight for the Authority machine gun. You can also equip and use a myriad of support items, like bandages, grenades, wingsticks (boomerangs) and bizarre but cool things like little remote controlled car bombs, mini sentry drones that follow you around shooting enemies, and lock grinders that open locked doors to hidden areas. As you wander around, you will pick up all kinds of junk, which you can use to engineer these support items. You can also sell it to the various merchants you’ll meet to earn cash for weapons, ammo, armour or new item-creation schematics.

While you’re at it, don’t neglect to upgrade your vehicles. Driving plays a huge part in Rage, whether you’re driving to your latest mission objective, doing a delivery assignment or just looking for hidden areas in the wasteland. The wasteland is full of bandit cars kitted out with machine guns and rocket launchers – so you’ll want to stay competitive. The only way to upgrade your vehicles is to purchase upgrades with racing certificates, and racing certificates can only be acquired by winning races in the various racing leagues the game offers.

The scale of the game is probably starting to come into focus now, but that’s not the only impressive thing about Rage. The challenge is quite solid, and you’ll need to fight carefully to get through it. The enemies won’t make it easy for you. Bandits use coordinated assaults, hiding behind cover, flanking and lobbing grenades to flush you out of hiding. The mutants jump, strafe and roll to make it difficult for you to hit them. The Authority guys’ armour alone makes them tough, but some of them show up wielding shields, which makes taking them on from the front all but impossible. But when you manage to kill these enemies, it’s immensely satisfying thanks to the many hit and death animations they go through when you shoot them.

Apart from that, I think the visuals speak for themselves. The graphics are splendid on both a technical and an artistic level, and the characters are a joy to talk to and watch thanks to the attention to little things like idle animations. Everything in the game has been streamlined to make the experience as painless as possible, whether you’re gambling at a street game, crafting an item or shooting a house-sized mutant in the face. Anyone looking for a solid shooting adventure with hours of play value should look no further.

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Techland has been taking notes from games like Borderlands and Left 4 Dead, and the result is a gore-riddled, four-player co-op zombie apocalypse set on the sunny island of Banoi. While it’s safe to say that the game is undeniably good fun, it’s definitely not without some problems.

You’re given a choice of four characters before being let loose onto the blood-soaked sands. Techland wants you to play this game with other people, and if you start a single-player game you’ll receive onscreen prompts telling you when another player of similar level is nearby; hitting the “J” key will make you join them. Be aware that players can drop in on your game without invite unless you disable the feature in the main menu. This drop-in-drop-out feature works relatively well and you’ll have little trouble finding a partner. The party I played the vast majority of the game with varied from two to three of us. Drop-in-drop-pout was the norm during these sessions as we experienced disconnects nearly every time we played. That being said, the game will provide many watercooler moments and if you and your partners don’t shout a collective “ooooh!” at some point, then it’s likely you’ve lost some basic gamer mentality somewhere along the line.

Those wanting a single-player experience need not fret about this emphasis on multiplayer: you can quite happily do a solo run of the game and also have fun. This is largely thanks to the combat and undeniable satisfaction inherent in obliterating Techland’s zombies. Whether they’re bikini-clad, shambling Walkers or sprinting Infected, each of the six zombie types are a hell of a lot of fun to kill; I’m convinced this game has damaged my psyche in irreparable ways.

Weapons are weighty but there’s a tendency to steer players towards utilising melee attacks despite one of the characters (Purna) specialising in guns. You’ll never be short of weapons: axes, grenades, pipes, handguns, clubs, machetes; you name it, Dead Island lets you use it. Throughout the game you’ll find blueprints that allow you to modify your weapons: got a unique fireman’s axe that you pilfered from the wall of the hotel? Duct tape some wires and a battery to it to make it an electrically charged fireman’s axe. Nothing says “You’re not getting my brains you undead bastard!” quite like a 5,000 volt axe blade embedded into your attacker’s undead head.

The campaign is split across four different acts with each act set in a new location on the island. Don’t expect a Pulitzer Prize winning plotline however. While Dead Island claims to be open-world, it actually isn’t as you will encounter loading screens and you cannot walk from one side of the island to the other. Still, the area that each act is set in (with the exception of act IV) is massive and you’re free to wonder about as you see fit. Unfortunately you will be sent into lengthy indoor areas at times, which is a shame because the outdoor locales are where Dead Island shines the most.

Missions are given to you by NPC survivors but unfortunately mission variety begins to slip as you progress. You will be sent on numerous fetch quests (“we’re out of food and petrol. Waaah!”) and you’ll have to deal with a handful of escort missions that are infuriating thanks to terrible AI and dodgy path finding. Furthermore, while getting killed results in a financial loss and instant respawn, having an escorted NPC die results in you having to restart the mission. And they will die… often… because they are monumentally retarded.

Despite there being four different characters to choose from, they’re largely aesthetic choices thanks to overlaps in skill effects and all characters being able to use any weapon. None of them have unique missions; it’s all the same game regardless of which character you pick.

While you do get special weapons, other than having different coloured text in their names they’re very rarely that different to ordinary weapons. Modifying your weapons will add effects like electric or poison damage, but the overall damage increase doesn’t feel as if it’s doing anything, and maybe one in every three-hundred hits will actually activate the weapon’s modifier. Not that weapons are actually needed once you’ve unlocked Sam B’s tackle and curb-stomp skills; those (coupled with the over-powered kick) make him a veritable wrecking ball.

Dead Island is not without some game-breaking bugs as well. Clipping issues made restarting two different missions a necessity, and the game’s clunky menu and inventory system have some irritating glitches. Upon exiting a workbench (where you repair, upgrade and modify weapons) my character would occasionally activate whatever weapon he was carrying. This wasn’t a train smash until I started making grenades and Molotov cocktails. Strapping two deodorant cans together with duct tape suddenly became a life or death gamble.

Despite these glaringly obvious flaws, Dead Island gets a lot of things right. Its combat is intense and the throngs of zombies provide delectable cannon fodder for your (albeit slightly disappointing) modified weaponry. If you can look past the bugs and occasional design oddities, there’s an extremely enjoyable experience to be found in Dead Island. If you’ve got some friends to share that experience with, then you’re in for even more of a treat.

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In a moment of boredom, he decides to try on all six of the mystical Thongs of Virtue at once, and in doing so, and by some topsy-turvy, inside-outy convolution of video game narrative exposition, accidentally creates a nefarious doppelgänger, The AntiSpank. Nevermind the logistics of that, it’s back to the hero business!

If you’ve played either or both of the previous DeathSpank games, there’s nothing much that’s new here. You’ll still be trotting around, making grand declarations about inconsequential things, committing a casual genocide of the local monster populations, and stuffing loads of things in your pockets as you go from one toilet joke to the next.

And that’s basically the most immediate problem with The Baconing. While there’s some truth to that aphorism about things that aren’t broken, there’s another aphorism about familiarity and contempt, and it’s particularly relevant when that now excessive familiarity has been fostered in the space of about a year.

Next up, there’s a bit of a focus on combat this time around, and honestly, combat was never really this series’ big seller. More pertinently, maybe, DeathSpank’s combat is actually sort of tedious, and when most of the game is made up of “go there, kill this”-type mission objectives, it quickly becomes a slog. Compounding this issue is the The Baconing’s unreasonable difficulty spikes, resulting in the kind of frustrating die/reload/repeat gameplay that makes you want to go out and knife your neighbour’s car tyres.

Dear Hothead, just wanted to say that attrition is the opposite of fun. Love, everybody.

The Baconing isn’t a total failure, though. I mean, the dialogue and humour is as sharp as ever and authentically LOL-worthy at times, the world design inimitably charming and vibrant, and for all its repetitive monotony, the game plays well enough, but by the third trip through this place, you’d think they might’ve come up with something new. The franchise’s concept isn’t altogether broken, perhaps, but it’s in desperate need of a makeover.

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Epic took massive steps in delivering a more mature and competent story than the previous entries and succeeds in telling a moving tale of desperation which seeps into almost every pore of the campaign. Set two years after the sinking of Jacinto, humanity is splintered, on its last, weary legs and it’s up to you and your motley crew to save us all. Each chapter is drenched in a layer of anguish and the art direction has resulted in the very best environments of the series: varied, beautiful and tightly designed to accentuate the strengths of Gears, as the narrative shifts at an enticing pace between sombre exploration and chaotic firefights. Ah, the firefights.

These are the meat and gravy of the series and they make a glorious return, fine-tuned to perfection. Fans know exactly what to expect: you take cover behind anything you can and pop out, grimace-ridden, to release bullets of fury into the plentiful enemies intent on ending you. The new, yellow emulsion-bleeding Lambent foe steal some of the spotlight from our old friends, the Locust, and add a frantic texture to the gunplay as they relentlessly hunt you without fear of your weaponry, refusing to take cover. This forces you to approach battles differently as camping will simply not fly, and some of the new enemies are truly marvellous to duel. Despite this, the shooting sections start to feel tired and the game does nothing to address this repetitiveness, leaving an overwhelming sense of deja-vu floating through the air. In one fresh move mind, Epic have addressed the male dominated aspect by introducing Samantha Byrne and Anya Stroud as COGs, both well written, layered and capable.

Your arsenal also gets some newbies, including the brilliant Digger which launches a detonating creature through the ground towards your cowering foes and the Retro Lancer, sporting less accurate fire than your standard, but a bayonet with an accompanying charge attack. While each weapon packs a punch, the Lancer remains the chief weapon for most situations and none of the additions succeeded in luring me away from its abundant advantages.

GoW 3 is arguably one of the best looking 360 game out there. It is certainly the finest use of the Unreal Engine and hats off to eliminating the pesky pop-in textures it has become notorious for. It is not without its flaws though. Rampant clipping along with reflections of non-existent buildings, blurry draw distances and spelling errors throughout shatter the immersion. These are minor blemishes for sure, but stand out because the game takes enormous strides to soak you in its atmosphere. Fortunately, the sound is close to exemplary, with enemies flaunting shrieks that pierce your soul, orchestral music pulling at your heart strings and guns firing louder than God.

The burly campaign can now be played through in Arcade mode, where you receive points for each kill allowing a second play-through to feel fresh and interesting. Of course the campaign, in either Normal or Arcade mode, can be played cooperatively while the online multiplayer supports two to ten players. Horde makes a welcome return and is probably the most fun that can be had with the shooting mechanics the game offers. This time around, fortifications can be erected similar to Nazi Zombies mode in the COD series and money to do so is earned, along with experience, for kills. On the delicious flip side is the new Beast mode, which is reversed, enabling you to play ‘Horde’ as some of the Locust and Lambent beauties. All but one (Annex) of the versus modes from GoW 2 return, allowing you to enjoy Team Deathmatch, Warzone, King of the Hill and other staples, now with the inclusion of unlockable weapon skins, mutators and weapon exclusive executions.

Each of the ten multiplayer maps are refined versions of some of the areas from the campaign and are incredibly well designed, allowing for tighter, more focused contests to take place in Trashball’s football field to much larger maps, catering for more strategy driven skirmishes such as in the superb Drydock. With perk system levelling, ribbons, skins, weapon executions, mutators and others available to unlock, there is more than enough reason to explore the various treats Epic have packed onto the disk, and if multiplayer is your thing (now with dedicated servers) you will surely be coming back for months to come until the already-announced DLC drops.

GoW 3 is the most polished game in the series and in many ways, the perfect Gears experience. It boasts the very best the series has to offer with more content than the previous two titles combined. It’s impossible though, to ignore the fact that some of the spark has been diminished, and a lot of the game becomes a ‘going through the motions’ affair. For a series that forged something new with such fresh ideas, it cannot help but disappoint with its lack of innovation. This won’t bother everyone though, and there is no doubt that Epic have crafted and brilliantly solid game, with excellent gun play, devious enemies and impressive set pieces, succeeding in sending off their baby with a superbly composed swan song.

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The game tells a surprisingly capable story with the increasingly popular motion comic medium. It’s a dark tale involving corrupt police, prostitutes with hearts of gold and dirty, filthy… criminals, and although short, is thoroughly entertaining and it looks even better in 3D. Renegade makes use of the dual screen by having the bottom act as a 3D map to keep your bearings, while the top houses the “action”. The map works admirably and because the game does such a stellar job of failing to direct you, you WILL need it.

Each of the 20 Story Mode missions involves chasing a vehicular criminal in your car and crashing into them until they die (with the exception of a joyous ‘tank’ mission). Another cut-scene, another criminal. There is never any variation beyond either keeping up with a felon, or beating them to death with your ride by pushing either the left or right shoulder button to charge in that direction. You can fill your “Rage” meter to do this with even more fury (aka boost) by driving over bins and street lights: a pale and limited affair compared to the Burnout series’ stunt system. An entirely missed opportunity.

Driver: Renegade looks pretty damn good on the system. 3D makes judging distances easier and apart from some pop-in, the world has a decent level of detail and some handsome car reflections and road textures.The engine sounds are adequate and the voice acting in the Story mode is tasty, being not too serious nor too ridiculous.

Unfortunately this story only lasts 2 hours. Beyond it is the Career Mode, where you can tackle more than 70 events divided into 7 modes ranging from Rampage to Freedom Racing, but all of these are repeats of the formula from the Story: get somewhere quickly, or destroy another vehicle, with the most poorly designed racing I have played in a while, lacking a multiplayer/online component altogether. This leaves the Story Mode as the most compelling reason to play. In an odd move though, Ubisoft have included the bulk of the Story Mode cut scenes on the eShop for free, so there is really no compelling need to purchase the game at all.

The mature flavour of Renegade is important to legitimise the system in the eyes of “hardcore” gamers, but the actual gameplay is so severely lacking, it fails, and would have seriously benefited from some more development time and the inclusion of some on-foot sections, weaponry and online challenges.

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There was something wildly thrilling in taking on the role of Captain Titus in THQ and Relic’s newest foray into the third-person action genre. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has definitely managed to scratch an eighteen year old itch. Entire weekends spent rolling dice and measuring model movements in inches has been made into something more visceral, despite there being a few flaws.

If you’re expecting anything more than a symphony of gratuitously violent combat, then you’re going to be out of luck. If, however, you’ve gazed down on your Space Marine forces in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and dreamt about being in their little metal shoes, gutting enemies with Chainswords and curb-stomping stunned foes, then you’re going to have a blast with this game.

Combat is split between ranged and melee and you’ll seamlessly switch from one to the other. There is something utterly satisfying about unleashing a hail of bullets at a charging wave of three dozen Orks, only to charge at them yourself so that you can shoulder slam into the front ranks and unleash merry hell with your Thunder Hammer. It’s chaotic, visceral combat at its best and no other game since the original God of War has ever managed to make me feel this hardcore. Despite a ten to twelve hour long campaign in which the basic combat mechanic remains unchanged, I never found myself getting bored, but constantly found myself on the edge of my seat relishing the wanton bloodshed that was playing out on my screen.

The game does a good job of keeping you in combat as well; the only way to get health is to stun and execute enemies, and the only way you’ll do that is by getting up close and personal. While your Power Armour does have a shield that regenerates out of combat, your health will never regenerate unless you’re pulling off execution moves. It’s an extremely clever way of ensuring you play like an Ultramarine: no cowering behind cover; no retreating; only throwing yourself into the thick of it and advancing at all cost.

It’s all been good news so far and while there are more positives to point out (the constant trickle of weaponry and upgrades; the phenomenal sound effects; the jump pack sequences) there are some downsides as well.

You will hear Orks shout “SPACE MARINES!” about a gazillion times; it will piss you off. It will piss off anyone else in earshot of your game; my wife nearly went nuts. While we’re on the subject of repetition: characters and enemies have terrific detail, but the environments of the Forge World are too often lifeless and dull. You will traipse through miles of boring, generic corridors and factory settings devoid of targets, all of which seem as if they’re there to offer you a reprieve from combat or artificially increase the length of the campaign.

You have two squad mates with you (Leandros and Sidonus) and while they’re fairly well constructed characters, they’re dumber than mud and beyond useless in combat. They have a penchant for standing in front of your crosshair, blocking doorways and taking their time to enter a lift after you’ve hit the button. Clearly the two of them skimmed chapter 23 of the Codex Astartes; the one that says “pull your weight and don’t be a dumbass during particularly tense encounters”.

Finally, the game has some pretty crazy difficulty spikes. Certain enemy encounters actually force you to stick to cover, which completely goes against the game’s mantra of “cover is for the weak”. And just when you think you’re in for a monumental final boss encounter, the clash kind of fizzles into an anticlimax.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a good game. It’s not going to win any Game of the Year awards but it will net itself a legion of fans and might spawn a sequel or two. The combat alone is enough to get excited about and the fact that it’s set in a universe as deep and hallowed as Warhammer 40K means that there’s definite substance behind the sizeable helping of violence. You might, however, find yourself wondering whether most of the production time and budget went into developing the combat, as other areas of the game seem to have been forgotten about.

Multiplayer

The game features a robust multiplayer experience with two game modes: a standard 8-vs-8 team deathmatch and a team-based point control match. A third mode is coming soon as free DLC.

There are stacks of weapon unlocks, challenges to complete and character levels to gain in multiplayer. Of course the flipside to this is that you’ll find yourself horribly outmatched when you first start playing online. You’ll be running around with a knife and bolter gun while you’ll be facing players with jump packs, Chainswords and plasma cannons. Tough crowd.

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The second reason your should definitely check it out, is it’s available on Steam for $30 (R230).

Of course the main reason you should really check out Hard Reset is that it’s actually quite a good game. In fact, it’s almost a very good game, and if it were not for a few game design missteps and an incomprehensible storyline, it would be a great game.

Developed by Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Hard Reset is a sci-fi first person shooter. The aforementioned incomprehensible story is delivered by way of a budget friendly comic strip narrative. Put simply, it is a badly written and badly told story, and no matter how hard I tried I could not quite get my head around why I was shooting at the shiny robots, apart from the fact that it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

With that out the way, we can look at what makes Hard Reset work: gameplay. Put simply, Hard Reset is a very solid shooter with some unique, and some less unique ideas that make for a rather entertaining and sometimes brutally challenging experience.

Like many shooters before it, Hard Reset places a hefty focus on environmental damage. This is one of the less unique ideas, and it’s really nothing we haven’t seen from the likes of Bulletstorm, Bioshock, and countless others. Still, it works well, and even on medium difficulty the game demands that you consider your surroundings when in combat. Exploding barrels and terminals which emit powerful bolts of electricity in all directions when fired upon are your best friends when taking on often dozens of nasty robots at a time.

It’s not all about your environmental damage though, because Hard Reset has a weapon upgrade system that is more comprehensive than some AAA games that cost four times the price. You start out with a fairly traditional assault rifle and a more futuristic NRG gun which fires balls of plasma. As you collect credits by exploring and killing enemies, you can upgrade these two weapons. By doing so, you expand their capabilities, with the machine gun morphing into a shotgun and the NRG also drastically expanding its potential. As you play you come to realise that the two weapons have their own unique uses, and understanding the differences between them is an important element of the game.

Sadly, the storyline is not Hard Reset‘s only shortcoming. As previously mentioned, Hard Reset is not an easy game. This on its own is not a problem, however, the fact that you cannot save at anytime is a travesty, and indeed, a slap in the face to PC gamers. Often you will have to get through a handful of challenging enemy waves to make it to a check point. If you get through the first few waves but die on the final wave before the checkpoint, you have to restart from the previous checkpoint. This became immensely frustrating, and was easily the most annoying thing about Hard Reset.

The game also becomes repetitive quite quickly, and the scenery never really changes. This sense of sameness coupled with the lack of any character or story development leaves Hard Reset feeling like a solid and fun but ultimately soulless experience.

Still, it’s totally worth R100 if you’re a fan of action driven shooters.

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I’m embellishing a bit here. The fact is, Crimson Alliance’s “narrative” isn’t much more than a trashy fantasy madlib with the word “evil” somewhat overused, even by trashy fantasy madlib standards. I’m also using “standards” loosely. I guess the important part is that…

ONLY YOU, BRAVE [Please select one: WARRIOR / WIZARD / ROGUE], CAN SAVE THE WORLD.

Underneath its drearily clichéd presentation, however, Crimson Alliance is a pretty robust little hack ‘n’ slasher, even if it’s a rather simplistic one. As one of the three classes – and with up to three friends, local or online – you’ll be button-bashing your way through a series of locations and basically murdering everything in between the entrances and exits, and robbing them of their stuff on your way. Oh honey, it’s everything they promised in the hero recruitment brochures.

The game’s a regular isometric dungeon runner, with very linear level design, and the occasional not-too-well-hidden hidden area, with an environment palette that incorporates bold varieties of “subterranean vault”, “brigand desert”, and “battered urban” in a comfortingly familiar mélange.

Combat is a straightforward business of pressing X, B, Y, and A in any order you prefer, and as quickly as possible. The actual manoeuvres differ between classes – the Assassin, for example, evades on A, slashes on X, flings daggers on B, and stuns on Y.

There are also a number of one-shot pickups, including throwing axes and turrets, that are exceedingly useful for crowd control – something that starts to matter a whole lot later in the game, as well as the wave-based challenge maps.

Where Crimson Alliance makes its most significant departure from regular action RPGs, however, is its levelling system. Or, more specifically, its lack of any real levelling system. The only way to improve your stats is to acquire better gear, which can be bought from merchants or sometimes found in chests. None of the items feel at that special, though, and it’s kind of odd that you can’t sell off your unwanted weapons and armour, especially considering that all the best gear is outrageously expensive. Of course, you can buy extra gold from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, but that seems so vulgar. And by “vulgar”, I mean “you’ve got to be shitting me, I’m not paying real cash for fake cash”.

It’s not deep, it’s not innovative, and it’s not particularly clever, but Crimson Alliance is actually quite a bit of fun to play if you don’t expect too much from it. If nothing else, it’s filling the space between now and Diablo III.

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This is the stellar concept behind Pendulo Studios’ The Next Big Thing. It’s such a good idea in fact, that the game struggles to live up to its potential, but comes pretty darn close.

TNBT is a classic point-and-click adventure with gorgeous scenes peppering your eyes. You move the cursor about the screen, searching for things to examine, people to speak to and items to thieve and fondle. These stolen goods end up in your inventory to which you return in order to combine them and solve the various puzzles which tickle your brain. All of this is delivered with one of the most sumptuous art styles I have ever seen.

You play as Dan Murray, the ex-sportswriter who hates beetles, and Liz Allaire, the odd-ball journalist who is so refreshing a character in an industry saturated with generics. The voice work delivered by the actors is also percolating with charm, bringing each character to life in such a way that I can still hear their voices in my sleep.

Each area has a number of puzzles to sleuth and entices you to explore the detailed environments. Unfortunately, some of the scenes do very little to let you know that there is any more to them, resulting in me occasionally getting ‘stuck’ because I missed 2 inches of screen space I didn’t realise were there. In addition, as is unavoidable it seems in the genre, some of the puzzle solutions are incredibly vague, and while there is a hint system, it is only available on Easy Mode, so if, like me, you choose Normal, there is no way to use it without beginning anew.

The game is respectable in length, but there is very little replay value considering you can experience everything the game has to offer in one play-through. It would have been neat to explore the adventure from multiple characters’ perspectives during the same timeline, since the story lends itself to such an idea. You also only get to experience but a sliver of the brilliant world Pendulo have crafted, and I would have loved to have explored other locations, met additional monsters and unravelled more to the concept than I was allowed to.

The Next Big Thing has clearly been forged with a love for the genre by an incredibly talented studio who know their craft. Unfortunately they seem to have held back diving into the deep end of their own story, and as a result the game itself is held back from reaching greatness. Regardless, it’s a great ride which has me interested in what this studio have up their polygonal sleeves. We are in for delicious treats. Aya!

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Developed by Supergiant Games and published by Warner Bros., Bastion is an action role-playing game that essentially takes a highly developed formula and runs in its own direction with it. It presents us with a beautifully detailed and interesting world and injects it with robust yet surprisingly novel game design, ultimately delivering something which is not only a joy to behold, but also quite difficult to put down.

Players take on the role of The Kid as he wakes up one morning to find the world he lives in is literally crumbling around him. Seeking answers and safety he travels to the bastion – a floating island which remains unscathed from the mysterious calamity. The problem is that the bastion is not quite fully built and equipped, and The Kid must travel the ruined world looking for important pieces required to finish its construction.

I spent my first 20 minutes in Bastion just soaking in the stunning art direction and marvelling at the excellently delivered and paced narrative. However, games are meant to be played, not watched, and fortunately Bastion does not drop the ball when it comes to engaging you in the experience. The core gameplay, while simple, is addictive, challenging and satisfying. Combat requires a combination of dexterity and tactics, and the various combinations of enemies, abilities and weapon types make sure that things don’t ever get stale.

The Kid can equip two weapons at a time, and you can outfit him with one unique combat ability. This may sound a bit simplistic when you consider that many RPGs allow you to use various abilities back-to-back, but it works because Bastion‘s action sequences are generally delivered in fairly short bursts, and you can re-outfit The Kid after each sequence.

Adding welcome depth to the game is weapon customization. Throughout your travels you will acquire special parts which can be tacked on to different weapons in different ways, allowing you to upgrade and customize specific tools of destruction.  For example, you can increase your battle hammer’s damage output, making it well suited to taking out larger opponents, or increase your sword’s attack speed making it better suited to hacking through waves of smaller foes.

Each time you discover a new weapon, a new challenge stage is unlocked. Unrelated to the story, these challenge stages present you with various goals and depending on how well you perform you earn special items which can be used to further upgrade your weapons.

Weapon customization is not the only form of character development. As The Kid battles his way through the ruined world he will acquire experience points, and each time he levels up he is granted an additional tonic slot. Tonics grant The Kid special abilities, and can be acquired in a number of ways, including from the tonic shop which you must build in the bastion.

Supergiant games has managed to hit all the right notes with Bastion. The unique and beautifully hand painted world is brought to life alongside the charismatic voice of the game’s narrator who provides context and personality, and the gameplay is engaging and compelling.

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The protagonist of this inscrutable space saga is, appropriately enough, a flying saucer, whose mission mostly involves whizzing up, down, and all around what is presumably the game’s titular world, and getting things done.

Much like Shadow Complex, and the Metrovania catalogue of games, progress in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a matter of bolting exciting new things onto your intrepid little spaceship, and working out how to use these to move through obstacles in the environment. Of course, getting at these exciting new things is a series of increasingly complicated and occasionally ingenious puzzles in itself, and requires a bit of lateral thinking and a lot of wondering what the **** to do next.

The game plays somewhat like a twin-stick shooter version of Asteroids, with movement locked to the left stick, and interactions with your currently active tool or weapon on the right. And like most twin-stick shooters, it also comes with the inherent problem of fussy and imprecise aiming, an issue only partly mitigated by infrequent necessity, and then overwhelmingly aggravated by erratic enemy movement.

Relative movement vectors can also be temperamental, a problem which becomes instantly and infuriatingly apparent in a recurring puzzle that requires guiding a rocket through a cramped and convoluted conduit to hit a switch on the other end. If the rocket bumps into the wall two or three times, you’ll have to start over. That seems simple enough until you realise that pushing the stick over to the left might not translate into movement to the left. I couldn’t even explain why. Maybe that’s the “insanely twisted” bit.

While there’s definitely some fun to be had here, it’s hard to escape the too-obvious fundamental gameplay mechanism that you’re basically just getting stuff to get more stuff to get more stuff to get to the end. Which admittedly describes just about every game ever made, but Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet does a pretty sorry job of disguising it, and its lack of a clear narrative or any real personality only compounds this.

Old school ascetics will probably appreciate its “purity” of design, but everybody else is likely to find the game a little baffling and cold. It’s a good game, even great in moments, but falls rather short of what it might have been altogether.

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Street Fighter III: Third Strike is possibly the finest example of a 2D fighting game ever created, and I’m pretty thankful that I got to write about it, seeing how it was originally released in 1998, back when I never dreamed I’d actually be a games journalist. It’s the third version of Street Fighter III – in Capcom’s usual tradition of refining/recycling their products and adding in sprinkles of new content, a practice they’ve been called out on before, and probably will be many more times. But in this particular case, the end product they delivered was so slick, balanced and appealing that it was impossible to fault.

At a glance, SFIII:TS doesn’t look all that different to the previous two, apart from the long-awaited return of Chun-Li, a handful of new characters, and some new stages, music and menus – but when you get down to playing it in any kind of halfway serious fashion, the true brilliance of it starts to shine through. The characters feel appropriately weighty, the feeling of contact when strikes connect or are blocked is incredibly convincing and the game’s trademark “Parry” system, which allows players to deflect singular strikes one at a time has been refined to a new level of accuracy and pinpoint timing.

Each character has an arsenal of moves with various tactical applications, and some are much easier to use than others. For instance, Ken, Ryu and Akuma are as easy to use as ever with their simple combos and familiar moves that give them good command of combat in a 2D plane; but characters like Necro, Oro and Makoto, with their less direct or more abstract fighting styles, take some serious skill to master.

The game features arguably the most fluid animation ever in a 2D fighter – rivaled only by Mark of the Wolves. There’s plenty of high-res art framing the game and its menus, but the actual in-game graphics are the same ones we remember, just stretched to fit the screen, with various filters you can apply if you want. Unfortunately, Capcom also stuck with the game’s original hip-hop soundtrack, which is the only tragic thing in an otherwise brilliant package.

In addition to the online play, if you can stomach the lag, Capcom has also added in a trial mode where players can attempt to pull off increasingly difficult combos to earn points to unlock some awesome art, adding a bit of play value if the core game isn’t enough for you on its own. The download is about 600MB and I’d say it’s a mandatory purchase for any fighting fan.

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You’re Adam Jensen, former SWAT commander turned Sarif Industries’ chief security officer, and card-carrying member of the ultra-exclusive Trenchcoat and Goatee Club (“Bringing back 1998!”). As events get going, you find yourself on the business end of a black ops infiltration operation, and everything goes quickly from bad to so, so much worse.

Oh, it’s the oldest story in bleak, smoggy dystopian future history – global conspiracy and grasping, self-interested corporate scheming at the expense of real people. But quite in spite of its predictable narrative convolutions, Deus Ex: Human Revolution has turned out to be an extraordinary trip through the vents and email correspondences of virtual reality.

The world itself is realised with breathtaking conviction – from the slummy streets of Motor City to the slummy streets of Shanghai and back again, Deus Ex thrills every super-enhanced nerve. Rarely does a game manage to present such a compelling and authentically immersive space to play.

The backend systems do a pretty good job of keeping things together too. As a newly augmented human, you’ve got access to an impressive array of Sarif Industries-endorsed self-improvements, prominently featuring hacking, stealth, and physical boosters, which you can activate as you do stuff, gain XP, and level up, or simply buy the necessary Praxis Kits at your local LIMB clinic. Just don’t wonder why Sarif Industries didn’t max those out on your behalf and save you heaps of cash and personal endangerment, or you’ll break the fourth wall and you probably won’t much like what’s on the other side (chip crumbs, taxes, you).

Full frontal combat is serviceable enough, although the real Deus Ex experience is playing it subtle. In fact, if you’re not playing this on the hardest difficulty, and going for the no kill and no alarms Achievements / Trophies / whatever they’re called on PC these days, you’re not playing Deus Ex, you’re playing some limp-wristed pretender.

While not quite as sophisticated as something like Thief or even The Chronicles of Riddick, the game’s cover- and augmentation-supported stealth gameplay is based around enemy line of sight and senses, and makes for some brilliantly tense moments. The enemy AI is terrifyingly quick to adapt to changing circumstances, and even the best-laid plans can instantly turn to total disaster with just one peek over a desk at the wrong moment.

Alongside the standard ordnance register of pistols and rocket launchers, there are also a bunch of permanent but non-lethal conflict intervention negotiators, including a tranquiliser rifle and a stun gun for the long- and short-range respectively. If you’re able to get up close and personal, there’s also a hands-on takedown manoeuvre that’ll knock out or kill enemies (YOU DECIDE!), and the gentle kiss goodbye is implied.

Elsewhere, hacking plays a big part in Deus Ex, and perhaps for the first time ever, the designers responsible for putting this together have produced a mini-game that’s actually rather fine. The big idea is to link nodes on a network until you’ve cracked it, with some nodes transferring bonus XP or cash if you can capture them successfully. Each node captured increases the risk of detection, which when triggered starts a countdown that’ll boot you off if you don’t complete the hack in time. Some augmentations can make this process much easier, and there are also collectible one-shot software packages to help you out in a fix.

Hacking won’t just open doors, mind you, but with the application of specific augmentations, you can also control cameras, turrets, and enemy robots. In other words, it’s a fundamental gameplay mechanic that can dramatically alter emergent contingencies, and investing points in these augmentations is kind of a non-option.

Which brings me around to my one major problem with Deus Ex – the boss battles. At the end of each chapter, you’ll square off with some suddenly significant antagonist who just sort of turns up out of nowhere. If you’ve been gun-rushing through the game, this isn’t likely to be of much consequence, but if you’re all spec’ed out for ghost ops, these encounters can find you dismayingly unprepared.

After trying and failing for about half an hour to deal with the first boss in the game, I eventually had to reload an earlier save, and spend another hour or so moving back through the previous area and gearing up. I didn’t make the same mistake a second time, but the entire boss battle premise just seems so out of place here anyway.

This issue notwithstanding, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is an absolutely terrific game that shows its production budget on every neon-lit, inner-city billboard. In between its astonishing scale and clever, You Choose! gameplay, it’s like a template for how other games should be. Expect to see it grab every GOTY award this year.

Not sure what all the fuss is about? Catch up on all of Deus Ex’s history here.

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Deus Ex

In 2000, this relatively unassuming game showed up and proceeded to blow the minds of everyone who played it. To the casual observer, it appeared to be little more than another first-person shooter, which were practically a plague back then, but for those who sat down and played it, it was a gaming experience unlike any other.

The story alone almost sets Deus Ex apart from other games. Set in the not too distant future, Deus Ex is a tale about people trying to transcend the limits of their humanity using all kinds of ethically debatable, cybernetic enhancements called “augmentations”. There are veritable novels full of supporting fluff too, padding out the story and dystopian atmosphere with all kinds of conspiracy theory references involving the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, The Trilateral Commission and so on. Fascinating stuff.

The main thing that sets apart Deus Ex from any other game is the freedom and choice players have. First off, players get to choose how player character JC Denton develops his skills. He can focus on different kinds of weapon skills, lock-picking or hacking skills, medical skills and so on. Working for UNATCO, he’s also got access to the best in performance enhancing augmentations, which grant him all kinds of cool abilities like natural armour, cloaking, regenerating health, the ability to create a remote controlled spy drone, super fast running, and so on. There are also hundreds of different kinds of guns, melee weapons and grenades he can arm himself with – all upgradeable in different ways – and plenty of support items and shops he can make use of.

Now take all this and put it into one of Deus Ex’s massive levels, where there are multiple objectives to complete and hidden sidequests and bonuses to find – all of which can be tackled in any number of different ways according to how the player thinks and how they’ve developed their character and… well, I think you get the picture.

Another great thing about it is you cannot learn every skill or equip every augmentation. You can’t. YOU CAN’T! Don’t even try. There aren’t enough skills points or aug slots in the entire game. What this does is really polarize the way you play and adds a weight to each choice you make that is all but absent from games like, say, Oblivion or Fallout 3, where it’s possible to become good at just about everything.

Deus Ex: Invisible War

While it’s by no means a bad game, Deus Ex 2’s developers dropped the ball in a few places. The biggest fumble has to be in their efforts to streamline the experience, which turned into an exercise in tragic over-simplification. The skill system was yanked out entirely and there seem to be a lot fewer weapons, items and augmentations on offer this time round.

The game is also claustrophobic compared to the original’s huge areas. This can probably be blamed on the fact that DE2 was an early embracer of technology like rigid body physics, rag doll physics, traced shadows and bloomed lighting – which looked fantastic and actually added to the game in some ways, but was impossible to pull off on a large scale at the time.

If you can get over that, though, there’s another expansive, dystopian adventure full of choices to make, factions to join and subquests to lose yourself in. This time, players can create a male or female character (either way going by the unisex name, Alex D) and start out as a trainee in the prestigious Tarsus Academy, which trains augmented security agents. An attack on the academy frees Alex from his/her obligations and sets him/her free in a world where there are any number of lucrative opportunities for someone of their talents.

If I’ve piqued your interest, and hopefully I have, you can track down PC copies of Deus Ex relatively easily for R50 or less, and PC copies of Deus Ex: Invisible War for the same price (run DE2 with Win ’95 compatibility – it works that way, for some reason). A few PS2 versions of Deus Ex 1 have crept in lately, so that’s an option if you’re not a PC gamer. Deus Ex: Invisible War was released on the original Xbox, but as far as I know, it’s not backwards compatible on the Xbox 360, even if you can find a copy.

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Shadows of the Damned is an action-packed third person shooter I’ve had my eye on since it was announced for several reasons. Firstly, the game was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, the guys who made No More Heroes. Their approach is to celebrate the fact that a videogame is a videogame rather than trying to turn it into a Hollywood blockbuster. The game was directed by Shinji Mikami, who liberated Resident Evil from its stodgy survival horror roots and gave it an action game makeover with Resident Evil 4. And lastly, the sound and music was directed by Akira Yamaoka, whose magic touch will be familiar to anyone who has played the Silent Hill games.

Players take on the role of Garcia Hotspur, a Mexican demon-slayer with a serious pair of cojones. The lord of demons shows up and kidnaps his girlfriend, so he dives headlong into the Netherworld to rescue her. Armed only with his friend, Johnson, a former demon skull with a British accent who can transform into a gun, he must fight waves of enemies of solve all kinds of bizarre puzzles as he makes his way through the seriously disturbing demon world.

Most of the game is played as a third person shooter, and the crux of it all is light. Demons are afraid of it, so the demon world is dark, and the darkness actually hurts humans. Obviously, there are plenty of puzzles where Garcia must find a means to light his way, or even dash into the darkness quickly to achieve various goals. There are different types of enemies to fight, but they are invincible when they’re in the dark, adding a tactical element to the combat. Each time Garcia kills a boss demon, he earns a blue gem that enables Johnson to transform into a new weapon. There are plenty of secrets to find and mini-games to play too.

It’s safe to say that the gameplay is challenging and fun, but the whacky design, endearing characters and bawdy humour are a large part of the appeal. There are more penis and boner jokes than you’d believe – even your main weapon is called “the Boner” because it shoots demon bones instead of bullets, see? Funny. Some of the other highlights include a particularly amusing Evil Dead rip off, the utterly pointless story books you can read, and several hilarious conversations between Garcia and Johnson.

When a game goes out of its way like this to challenge our shooting skills and make us laugh our asses off at the same time, I have no trouble recommending it to anyone looking for a good time.

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Yes, that’s true. In case you didn’t know, RE:M3D is an appetiser posing as a main course, something to keep us going until the release of Resident Evil: Revelations next year. Capcom has tried to pad out the rather basic gameplay by introducing more than enough challenges and adding in some hidden items and a leveling system to give players some inkling of a reason to play for more than half an hour. Basically what you do is pick a character and fight through a series of increasingly difficult challenges to kill as many enemies as possible within a time limit for the best score. Seriously, that’s all you do in this game. You can also bring another player in, either ad-hoc or online, to double-team the challenges, which is something I’d like to do myself if I actually knew someone else with a 3DS.

There are several RE heroes and villains to play as, including the big names like Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker, and some lesser characters like Hunk, Jack Krauser, Barry Burton and my personal favourite, the adorable Rebecca Chambers. Each character has a different default weapon loadout and a unique set of melee attacks, which might have a mild effect on how you tackle each challenge. There are four different control schemes on offer, three of which ape the style of Resident Evil 4, where both aiming and moving are assigned to the 3DS analogue nub. My personal favourite, though, is the fourth, FPS control scheme similar to the ones used in Splinter Cell on the 3DS or MGS: Peace Walker on the PSP, where the analogue nub controls moving and strafing, the four face buttons control the camera and the shoulder buttons are used for aiming and shooting.

Graphically, RE:M3D is an exciting indicator of what we can expect from the machine. Not only are the visuals on a level surprisingly close to RE5 on home machines, but they’re in 3D, man! There’s also a short, 5 minute teaser of RE: Revelations to play in which we control Jill Valentine as she wanders around a monster-ridden ship.

If you’re hard up for some 3DS software – which is understandable – or if you’re just a raving Resident Evil fan who cannot wait for Revelations, then this might do you. It plays well, but you have to make peace with the fact that it’s not a real game, just Capcom tossing us a bone.

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So Activision has this little game coming out on 8 November 2011; it’s called Modern Warfare 3. You might have heard of it. During Gamescom 2011 I got the chance to play two rounds of multiplayer with different partners: a round of Spec Ops and a round of the new Survival Mode.

Both rounds were played on networked consoles so none of that split-screen nonsense. We each had headphones with microphones for voice-chat; too bad my German wasn’t up to scratch because my second partner’s English was a little rusty. Regardless, we somehow managed to last ten waves in Survival and I still maintain that the only phrase you really need to know when visiting Cologne is “ein Kölsch bitte.”

The Spec Ops mission that we played through was called Invisible Threat. I was tasked with clearing a number of IEDs from a section of road that was littered with debris and abandoned cars. Flanking each side of the road were tall office buildings and burnt out rooms. My partner sat on top of one of the buildings; I didn’t actually see him at all throughout the round, but he spotted the IEDs which then appeared on my HUD. He also provided covering sniper fire and was able to call in missile strikes when things started to get too hairy.

The mission was pretty intense as I ran from cover to cover, firing at the continuous waves of enemies streaming onto the street. Were it not for the plethora of headshots my partner was pulling off, I would have been killed in an instant. Disarming IEDs was as simple as finding them and holding down a button, which left me vulnerable for about eight seconds.

As mentioned earlier, Modern Warfare 3 will feature a new multiplayer mode called Survival Mode. Think World at War and Black Ops zombie mode just without the zombies and without having to continually replace barricades.

I played through ten waves of Survival Mode on a map called Paris Map, which featured tight cobbled streets with numerous buildings and stairways. Gun fights were close quartered and vicious. You begin Survival Mode with a hand gun but you can pick up weapons that are dropped by enemies. As is the norm in this sort of multiplayer mode, subsequent waves get harder and harder; at one point we were up against two helicopter gunships, which was tough as hell but a lot of fun.

Each kill nets you cash which can then be spent on new weapons and helpful odds and ends like sentry guns. Enemies spawn in groups at different locations on the map. Fortunately you can see them on your mini map, but it’s disconcerting as hell seeing dozens of red dots all converging on your position from every angle. Even worse is when those dots are heralded by the ominous sound of attack dogs barking as they approach. There were some definite butt-clenching moments during my hands-on time with this mode, and I look forward to getting straight back into it in November.

My hands-on time with these two multiplayer modes left me eager for more. I’ve always been more inclined towards co-operative multiplayer games rather than the larger competitive ones. It’s good to see that Modern Warfare 3 will continue the Spec Ops game mode that initially appeared in the previous title, but the addition of Survival Mode is the cherry on top.

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EVE Online has a certain allure about it, don’t you think? The game has been around for more than eight years now and has grown in magnitude to become one of the deepest MMO games available today. The only catch is it’s not exactly accessible to newcomers or those looking to dabble in a different online experience.

A few months ago I watched a friend playing EVE Online. I was captivated but at the same time put off by the Everest-like incline in the learning curve. I longed to get involved but had to admit that I never would; there was simply too much to absorb. If only CCP Games had some means of making their gloriously detailed universe more accessible to those with shorter attention spans and less time on their hands. Oh wait, they totally do! It’s called Dust 514, a download only MMOFPS heading exclusively to the PlayStation 3.

I was exceedingly fortunate enough to have the guys from CCP Games all to myself during a live demonstration of Dust 514. During my time with them they brought me up to speed on the key aspects of the game and showed me an online match with sixteen players taking part from the other side of the world.

The Tyrannis expansion to EVE Online introduced planetary interactions to the space flight MMO. Players began building infrastructure on the surfaces of planets in order to fuel their corporations. The planetary interactions were limited, but that’s all about to change with Dust 514 as CCP introduces conflict on those player controlled planets, and because all of the infrastructure existing on those planets is player made and player owned, they’re creating “conflicts with meaning”.

CCP Games is expanding the EVE Online target market with Dust 514. They’re aiming their game at people like me; people who are fascinated by EVE Online and who want a chance to experience the MMO in a more accessible fashion. In contemporary gaming, it doesn’t get more accessible than a first-person shooter on a console – it’ll even support PlayStation Move. Dust 514 will feature full interactions between EVE Online players on a PC and Dust 514 players on a PlayStation 3. I saw this in action during the presentation and I must admit it was a somewhat surreal experience witnessing a PS3 player requesting an orbital strike (using a wrist device called a Cortex worn by their character) from a ship that hovered in space above the battlefield; a ship being controlled by an EVE Online player on a PC.

Player sovereignty is a big part of EVE Online and that approach is being carried over to Dust 514. “This is where our design philosophy as a company really comes in; we don’t really like to direct the player that much, but rather we like to give the player a lot of freedom,” one of the developers told me. “Freedom to create their own role on the battlefield,” he explained further, “and decide how they want to play and how they want to set up either their infantryman or their vehicle to play in a style that suite them.” In other words, there are no fixed battlefield roles; it’s up to you to decide what role you’re going to play. You’ll be able to purchase and equip various modules for your character and even design your own vehicles to have dropped into combat via RDV ships. All of this will be done via the game’s Marketplace and your Merc Quarters, which acts as your personal home in the game.

Dust 514 will feature two areas: High Security Space and No Security Space or Null-Sec. High Security Space is where most players will choose to start out. This is an area for matchmaking and grinding, as well as earning skills and money. Some people might choose never to leave this area at all. Null-Sec, however, is where the heart of EVE Online meets Dust 514. In Null-Sec the various player-formed corporations battle it out for control of the multitude of planets in the EVE universe. There are thousands of planets and controlling them proves highly profitable for corporations as they allow the development of planet infrastructure. Infrastructure on a planet creates a network on the surface, which in turn creates economic benefits (such as clone factories) and defensive benefits (like orbital artillery to protect your infrastructure). All of this is player-built and owned, which means that when your planet gets invaded by a rival corporation, you’ll literally be fighting for what you’ve worked for and made.

Of course, those who choose to spend most of their time playing ranked matches in High Security Space could build themselves quite a formidable character. This could attract the attention of the corporations in Null-Sec who might choose to offer you wads of cash to fight for them during a planet take over or defence. You will, quite literally, be a mercenary for hire, which is possibly the coolest thing I’ve heard of in an MMO. Ever.

CCP Games is not fooling around with Dust 514. As it is, EVE Online is a massive MMO, so adding in a completely new game that ties into a universe with thousands of active players is a Herculean undertaking. CCP is literally throwing an entirely new target market into their amazing online universe. They are entering an uncharted area of online gaming by connecting their player-created ethos across two genres and two platforms, and I for one cannot wait to see what happens. Now at least I’ll be able to get involved and play a small part in shaping an entire online galaxy, one bullet at a time.

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Gamescom 2011 was Gearbox Software’s first real occasion to show off Borderlands 2. The game was outted by Eurogamer prior to Gamescom, but that did very little to quell the excitement amongst those attending the press preview sessions during this year’s show.

2K didn’t muck about when showing off their upcoming titles. Their preview rooms were more like mini cinemas than the poky little prefab nooks that other publishers utilised. In a darkened room that had been plastered with Borderlands 2 artwork, we ensconced ourselves on huge leather armchairs and said hello to what will be one of 2013’s most anticipated titles.

Yes, Borderlands 2 is still quite some time away and has a projected release of fiscal year 2013 according to Gearbox Software’s Steve Gibson. He also told us that work on Borderlands 2 began back in 2009 once 2K gave them the green light thanks to the stellar reception of the first game. However, Gibson insisted throughout the presentation that Borderlands 2 is not going to be your typical cash-in sequel, and that Gearbox has been busting their balls to create a sequel that not only retains what made the first game such a hit, but expands on those elements that gamers loved the most.

The game takes place five years after the events of the first, and will feature four new characters to choose from. Throughout our live demo we witnessed some single-player action with the new Gunzerker character class: a dwarf whose special ability is dual wielding any two guns in the game. We were also introduced to a second character, the new Siren for Borderlands 2 called Maya. Gibson explained that there are many Sirens in the Borderlands universe and that each of them has a unique ability; Lilith’s was her Phasewalk ability, but Maya’s is staying under wraps for now.

Enemy AI and world interaction has seen a serious overhaul from the first game. While the initial Borderlands had pleasing combat, it quite often felt a little hollow; enemies would stand taking damage as dozens of numbers spewed out of their failing bodies and there was little more to it than that. What struck me the most during our Borderlands 2 demonstration was just how much more cinematic and unpredictable combat had become. Enemies now react to bullets; they get wounded, they limp, they retreat and they seek cover and ways to flank you. In some instances there will be a boss character barking orders throughout the conflict; silencing him sends the remaining enemies into disarray. Enemies will climb crates, vault boxes and try their hardest to out-move you and make your life as difficult (and short) as possible.

Generally, encounters with enemies are more dynamic. We witnessed the player taking on a new enemy type called a “Nomad Torturer”. The encounter was almost like a mini boss fight, and the oversized bandit had a giant riot shield with a bandit Midget chained to the front. The Midget, for obvious reasons, was not thrilled to be there; shooting the chains that bound him in place allowed the little guy to escape and turn on his captor. His attempt at revenge was valiant but nonetheless futile; still, he was a good distraction that allowed the player to empty clips into the Torturer without fear of retaliation.

Speaking of clips, what would a Borderlands game be without guns? Gibson confirmed that the sequel will feature even more weapons than the first game’s ludicrous amount of seventeen million plus. What’s more, each weapons manufacturer will have a specific “theme”. For example: manufacturer TDR is the disposable guns manufacturer; instead of reloading your TDR weapon, you just throw it away and a new one materialises in your hands. Aim correctly and your discarded weapon could hit an enemy in the face, stunning it for a moment. Alternatively the new Bandit Weapons are homemade guns put together by, you guessed it, the various bandit factions in the game. Their theme is tons of bullets, so any Bandit Weapon you find will look as if it’s held together with chewing gum and duct tape, but it will hold a bazillion bullets per clip.

Borderlands 2 will feature more cinematics during missions and there’s definitely a renewed interest in story telling during the quests. What’s more, mini cutscenes are used to introduce new enemy types – a purely aesthetic but welcomed addition as you get a chance to see what you’re about to perforate.

What we saw of Borderlands 2 looked incredibly promising; it was that right mix of innovation and staple that sets the good sequels apart from the cash-in types. Of course, there’s more to look forward to including revamped vehicle physics; better quest eligibility in co-op modes and a truly open world (no more artificial boundaries like turrets that kill you for moving too far away from the playing area – if you can see the destination in the distance, you can walk there).

There’s still a long way to go before we get to return to Pandora in Borderlands 2 but for fans of the first game (of which there are millions) you’ve got a lot to be excited about.

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