Will Preston

Just like Hollywood, the videogame industry has got the reboot bug. Aging titles like Tomb Raider, Doom and Goldeneye have all been given that extra coat of next-gen shine in the last decade with more titles yet to be revitalised. Most of the time the new vision is faithful to the original and lovingly crafted to the point where you wonder if the guy behind it was an avid fan himself. But with most video game being consolidated into fewer over-arching genres, you’re more than likely to get another Call of Duty clone that wears the skin of that old memory like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. So what happens when you take a futuristic squad strategy game from the 90′s and give it the first person treatment?

Before he started to make empty promises, Peter Molyneux was ahead of his time when it came to innovative games. With titles such as Populous, Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper under his much needed hat by the time Y2K became an international concern, Molyneux proved what you can accomplish if you move away from the mainstream. One of his better portfolio pieces lay dormant for a long time before anyone decided to dust it off. The cyber-punk classic Syndicate put you in the role of an owner a growing corporation in the future with the intent of world domination via hostile takeovers. Extremely hostile takeovers. And now we finally have the 21st century remake.

The year is 2069. There are not nations, only corporations. Cybernetics, wireless technology and weaponry have reached an ungodly level where a fully armed individual can hack computers with their mind, fire bullets around corners and act like an unstoppable one man army. It isn’t hard to imagine what a fully funded multi-national company can achieve in this dark future. The big companies are set to battle for world domination and have enlisted their own private army of genetically enhanced super soldiers known as “Agents”. You take the role of Agent Miles Kilo of Eurocorp as you give put the murder and executions into mergers and acquisitions.

One of the first things that screams out when playing this game is its similarities with Deus Ex 3. It’s a futuristic shooter which gifts you with cybernetic abilities. In this world, the iPhone is a thing of the past. There is only DART, a neural chip inplant which gifts its user with access to the dataverse (the internet, basically), making all handheld electronic devices unnecessary. Eurocorp implants you with the new DART 6 chip giving you access top more than Facebook and Wikipedia. The first skill your taught is to override another user’s DART chip, and their mind, to turn on your enemies before taking their own life. Think a crude form of mind control that is alarmingly effective. But that’s not all you’re armed with.

But what is a shooter without things that shoot? All of the old weapons from the original game have been restored, with a few others thrown in to give variety to your killing career. You start off plugging away with uzi’s, assault rifles and grenades, but it’s not long before you’re causing merry hell with flamethrowers, pod-rocket launchers and even a portable minigun capable of sawing your enemies in half – literally. One of the more bizarre items in your arsenal is the new gauss gun. Instead of being an overpowered laser blaster, as they usually are in these games, the gauss gun locks onto a target and changes the bullets path, allowing you to curves shots without having to leave cover. It made some of the more annoying boss fights easier to manage.

Surprisingly, the game’s visuals look like a lot more work went into than your garden variety FPS. The same can be said about the gameplay – it looks and handles like Battlefield 3. Running through a gunfight, sliding across the floor before breaking the neck of a trigger happy foe is as easy as paying with chip and PIN. Fire fights flow without any major problems and using the mix of bullets and DART control never happens the pacing. The boss fights do get frustrating, especially when you’re on your 50th attempt at following their pattern before a mistimed slide puts you into the path of yet another homing missile. But there’s only a handful of them, with only a couple that really test your nerves.

After you complete the main story in under 8 hours, there’s still co op mode. Now this mode really does pay tribute to the original game. Taking a similar set up to Left 4 Dead, you’re part of a 4-person team that has to go into an enemy facility and steal/assassinate/destroy whatever your boss tells you. Using teamwork, you can split your skills amongst you and heal each other should things go awry. This mode has two great things going for it. One is the COD-esque upgrade system and the other is that each level is a re-imagined mission from the original game. Saying that there’s a sense of nostalgia with this, is an understatement. There’s 8 long missions, a lot of upgrades to work on and it never gets dull. This is worth paying the full price on it’s own.

Syndicate is a remarkable sci-fi shooter that doesn’t taint the memory of the 90′s classic. Whilst it features yet another campaign mode that can be obliterated in a full Sunday, the co op mode will keep you coming back for more again and again. There are enough amazing set pieces that makes the main game worth returning to for a mop up of achievements. The only thing that would make this game perfect would be more co op maps and possible a team deathmatch mode with police and civilians thrown into the middle of combat. With Deus Ex, Syndicate and Hard Reset creeping up on the FPS market, are we witnessing the revival of cyber-punk in videogames? If this is the result, then plug me in and update me.

It won’t be a few months until the final batman film is out in the cinema, so we’ll have to do with a videogame instead. Oh cruel fate, thy name is Christopher Nolan. Rather than watch Christian Bale use all the power of his Welsh hissing to simulate the embodied voice of fear, we’ll have to become Batman ourselves. Those of you who played the previous title, Arkham Asylum, will be glad to know that Batman: Arkham City is neither a carbon copy nor a massive step away from the perfect gameplay formula. In fact, the game has improved in just about every single way possible.

After the breakout in Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, Bruce Wayne (Batman without his mask on) has stepped up into the world of politics to stand against the creation of Arkham City. Similar to the film, Escape From New York, Arkham City is a walled off and isolated area of Gotham that has been converted into a massive prison. Just like the cult film, criminals are simply dumped in and the door is locked behind them. Unfortunately, Bruce is arrested for an unknown crime during the games opening and is sent into the criminal complex. Waking up in a cell, Wayne encounters Hugo Strange, the prison’s warden. He mentions a sinister Protocol Ten before leaving to fulfil something equally nasty. Before you can say “Adam West”, Wayne escapes and finds his batsuit, ready to tackle the prison island.

From the moment you get out into the open, the game looks stunning. It is winter in Gotham and the city seems to go on into the distance like a sprawling metropolis. From the street to the highest factory chimney, there is an astonishing amount of detail. Most of the city is a ruin after being converted into a sprawling penitentiary, with derelict buildings, ruined freeways and crumbling landmarks. The size of the game is a bit of an illusion though. Once you’ve glided from one end of the island to the other, you soon learn that it wasn’t the big chunk of Gotham you first expected. But there’s still a huge area to explore. And to fight in of course.

The best aspect from Arkham Asylum was the flowing fighting system, and nothing has been ruined. Taking on around ten thugs in an average fight is one off the most exhilarating experiences you can have with a game pad. Just like last time, you build up a combo by attacking enemies whilst leaving your lycra ass unscathed. Watching Batman bound from one guy to the next in a flurry of acrobatic attacks starts to resemble a manly game of pinball, rather than a mass punch up. New moves have been included to add variety into the beatings, including beat downs and double takedowns. A beat down involves stunning a particularly tough enemy and pummelling them with what can only be describe as an inhumanly fast string of punches. The double takedown is pretty much self explanatory: You take out two guys at ones, usually by bashing heads together.

As well as the amazing take on Gotham City, Batman’s friend and foes have had the same polish put upon them. There are some old faces returning, including a sick and dying Joker, but there are a surprisingly large amount of new faces poured in. One of the first you’ll see is an old favourite, The Penguin. Rather than being the quacking, flippered mutant that we’re so used to, this new Penguin resembles a cross between Ray Winstone and Bob Hoskins. He talks like them, as well. No mutations. No army of mind controlled birds. Just a black market dealer with a slightly pointed nose and a heart as black as…well a penguin. Two Face appears in a guise similar to Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight Film. That lidless staring eye still sends shivers down the left side of me. But one character deserves a designers award.

At certain point during the game, the action flips from Batman to another (sort of) ally. No, it’s not Robin, although he does make a brief appearance. Whipping from rooftop to rooftop, Catwoman is your Batman away from Batman, and this is the best looking Catwoman yet. Rather than donning stitched PVC, Miss Kyle wears a biker-esque cat suit with some cute ears and some snazzy tech goggles. The cat suit is unzipped to just about the right point, so during cut scenes I accidentally found myself at here ever so slightly exposed chest. Not out of loneliness, you understand; just admiring the fine rendering. Playing as Catwoman is just as distracting. With her own fight moves and gadgets, fighting as her takes a slightly different pace. Also, instead of the grappling hook, she swings with her whip into the side of buildings, before scaling the wall at a pace that puts Ezio Auditore to shame. One vital skill is her ability to crawl on ceilings. Not really like a cat, more like a spider, but it get’s the stealth sections done with less hassle.

The main story can be completed in an intense weekend (the kind that involves a strict itinerary for eating and sleeping), but there is still a fortune in side missions, challenges and various treasure hunts set up by The Riddler. Batman Arkham City plays more or less the same as the last game, but with an entire city space to fly and fight in, it’s the best Batman experience next to seeing The Dark Knight Rises next year. Now if they could at least put a Batmobile section in the next game.

We’ve been hanging on a cliff for two years now. “Which cliff?” some of you might ask. Well, back in 2009, Russia invaded America, and the corrupt US general involved got the closest view of a knife, killing him in the process. Now we have no idea when peace will glide over and sort this mess out. Before you start to panic and slide through the news sites, don’t worry: it’s just a game. Modern Warfare 2, 6th game in the long running Call of Duty franchise, gave us a taste of what to expect if the USSR invaded the USA (hey, it’s been a long time coming). Now, the imaginatively named sequel, Modern Warfare 3, skips the starter and goes straight to the main course: World War 3. It’s the end of the world as we know and it plays fine.

After a series of teasing trailers, everyone was getting excited about the locals in the game. From Manhattan to the Champs-Élysées, from Westminster tube station to Somalia, it’s a globe trotting quest of nuclear proportions. Each level has it’s own feel to it and, just like a Hollywood movie, has very memorable set pieces. In New York, you take a chopper ride through wall street before taking a Russian sub in the harbour. In London, you speed into a truck chase in the bustling underground. I won’t even spoil what happens in Paris, but think Team America. Each level has a stunning amount of detail and brings World War 3 into shocking reality.

Continuing from Soaps unfortunate incident with someone else’s knife, the story flips between a handful of groups. After catching up with the remains of Task Force 141 (Captain Price still has the ‘tash), we’re onto taking control the American Delta force, then gunning with the British SAS, as well as tasking the role of a Russian bodyguard. After the invasion of America, The Russians begin to invade Europe like a red blitzkrieg. However, the Russian president is seeking to end the war. This is hampered with the appearance of series villain Makarov, who still wants to see Russia rise to take over the world. It plays out like the summer blockbuster epic that you’ll be watching over and over again. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, and, if you’re already attached to the characters, you’ll cry.

Whilst it’ll take around six to eight hours to get through, it’s still a fantastic example of how far cinematic gaming has come, as it makes you feel like you’ve been warped into a film. Of course, by this point the series has moved away from pretending to be a realistic shooter. It works better as the ridiculous Michael Bay style explosion gauntlet that throws realism away in favour of providing a dazzling spectacle. Just like Modern Warfare 2, there was a controversial scene that left a rather awful taste in the mouth. Without revealing much, it involves a chemical attack on jolly old London. Whilst it’s not as breathtaking as the nuclear attack in Call of Duty 4 or as uncomfortable as the airport massacre in the previous game, it still fills you with dread whenever you replay the level.

Thankfully, the game doesn’t handle with dread. The controls are just as effective as they always have been. Not only this, but it runs as smoothly and is flowing as ever. Apart from a few new weapons and upgrades, there is barely any new changes. As always, the visuals have had their yearly wash and scrub to keep up with graphic demands. The levels do have a large feel to them, but you’re still restricted to the linear tourist route. If anything, the gameplay has become simpler and more streamlined. The vehicle sections split up the action before it gets too repetitive. One of the new vehicles can only be described as an unmanned robot tank. Armed with a chaingun and grenade launcher, you use this mechanical mayhem-bringer to clear the path for your venerable team to get through. Death from above fans will be glad to know that the AC 130 gunship returns to rain fiery death to everything within it’s reach.

Once you’ve gasped at the games ending and wiped the sweat from the pad, You’ve still got Spec Ops mode to conquer. Not only has a ranking system been included, a Horde-esque survival mode has been added. just like the previous Spec ops, you can complete them with a friend and they focus on various scenarios that have taken place throughout the main game. Each mini mission is challenging and will keep you coming back over and over again. The Survival mode also breathes longevity into the game. Starting off with just a basic pistol, you are trapped in one of the games maps and an endless supply of soldier, dogs and helicopters try to hunt you down. Think Nazi Zombies, but without the Zombies…or the Nazi’s, if we’re being pedantic. Weapons become unlockable as your rank increases, and the enemy forces become tougher and larger. It’s the ultimate arcade experience.

And who could forget the multiplayer experience, as well. Call of Duty’s legendary multiplayer returns yet again with this years edition. Gone are the unfair kill streaks that allow over-skilled players to end the game at the flick of a nuclear switch. instead the streaks have been balanced out, and acquiring them isn’t so unforgiving. The pace is still as fast as ever and you need to be quick on your feet as well as being quick on the draw. As far as the levels go, they are just as varied as the previous games with major set pieces ripped from the main game. The multiplayer is still fast, manic and explosive, even if there has been barely any significant changes.

Modern Warfare 3 delivers an action-spammed experience as usual. With a memorable campaign mode and the new survival game, this is the one Call of Duty title that you will keep coming back to play over and over again.

Only Christmas has managed to beat 2011’s most anticipated event. It’s not an election, it’s not the second coming and (thank goodness) it’s not the next Richard Curtis film. Yes, Battlefield 3 has been making more men quiver with anticipation without the aid of Jessica Alba. “What’s to be that excited about” you may say in a mature and cynical tone (possibly whilst flicking through a copy of the Evening standard). It is a typical shooter and is not really breaking any major gameplay boundaries it sure does look nice. But looks aren’t everything, right?

The most obvious thing to get excited about this new release are the mind-blowingly real visuals. Again, you cynics out there might say that they can’t be that much of a dramatic leap, but you’d be surprised. The animation and movement flows smoother than the evening’s first pint of Guinness and is just as refreshing. There are moments where you think you’re watching the action unfold from the viewpoint of a particularly brave cameraman. It’s the most convincing virtual experience you can get this year and there’s not much more that needs to be said.

The gameplay has hardly changed, but then again it aint broke. A gun catalogue the size of the Pentagon is included in the game with all the various attachments thrown in. Because just using your gun to shoot people get’s a bit vanilla after a while, of course. So it has a lot of guns; a standard expectation of any shooter. But Battlefield doesn’t draw the line at the boomstick bargain basement. They’ve been shopping at Napalm Neddy’s Military Vehicle Dealership too.

From jeeps to tanks, from choppers to jets, just about anything with a steering wheel can be used. Coming up against a tank when the only thing protecting you is the destroyable wall right next to you is an experience like no other. At times, the amount of vehicles on a multiplayer map can disrupt the flow of gun fighting, but if you had the sense to get a tank in the first place, you wouldn’t be moaning. In fact, why not take control of a fighter jet and provide countless airstrikes whilst pretending you’re Tom Cruise.

As expected, the multiplayer mode on this new game is expansive, incredible and very in-depth. But what about the single player? I have to say, I was quite surprised to find at how interesting the campaign was. Granted, it borrowed (stole, if you will) a lot of set pieces from the past couple of Call of Duty games, but it’s still good in it’s own right. But just like Call of Duty, you’ll have this licked in a particularly anti-social evening. There’ also a co-op mode included within. Just think Spec Ops from Modern Warfare 2.

For some promises that seemed too good to be true, Battlefield 3 has managed to keep up its end of the bargain without sparing anything. Modern Warfare 3 is going to have hard target to aim for as it seems that this years shooter is a hard one to frag. This is the only shooter you will need until Battlefield 4 get’s released with its patented Better-Than-Reality engine.

Back when the first Deus Ex game was launched on the PC back in 2000, multiple paths and choices in video games was something still restricted to the RPG circles. Fast forward to now and most mainstream games have chosen to take the multiple choice path. Will this concept lose its charm, or is it in need of some much needed expanding? With the release of the latest in the series, Deus Ex Human Revolution (eight years since the disappointing sequel The Invisible War) comes hope of a near perfect action RPG.

Whilst this is labelled as a sequel, the game takes places several decades before the first game. Somehow, everything looks more flashy and futuristic in 2027 than the grim dystopian landscape of 2050. Maybe it’s a plot inconsistency, or just the latest graphics engine pluming its feathers. The cyborg champion of the day is Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT security chief who is forced to undergo cybernetic surgery after being caught in the crossfire of a terrorist attack. His mission for the rest of the game is pretty straightforward: find those responsible.

I will admit, I wasn’t really expecting the story of narrative to top the original, but it is still heads above a lot of the recent shooters that have come out on the market. Not that it’s a hard thing to do, but still. Eidos have obviously tried to capture the amount of depth that the first game had to it. The worlds are extremely detailed and explorable; Walking around Detroit was actually pleasant for once, but turn down the wrong alley and you could be faced with a random gun fight, or even worse; random side missions.

I’m not saying the side missions are bad, but imagine trying to read a book when another smaller book plops onto the page for your attention. Oh sure, you can abandon your current read to quickly skim through this new novel, but it begins to feel like the flow of the story suddenly stops. However, on the second play round, I welcome these random excursions with open arms. One of the finer points about them is that they can be quite in depth missions.

At one point in the game, I took time out from the main quest to help an undercover cop investigate two rival gangs. Should it have been any other game, the side mission would have involved a typical three stage affair with little imagination. But in this game, it felt more like another level in its own right. I had to make my own choices on how to deal with each leader of the gang, as well as make a shady meeting with a corrupt cop. I forgot that I was supposed to be tracking down the terrorist group from the beginning of the game.

To help you get through the game with less hassle are the cybernetic upgrades. As with the first Deus Ex game, you get experience points throughout and can improve a large variety of skills from hacking a computer to jumping several metres into the air at the drop of a hat. The only weird change that has been made is the energy system. Now to perform special moves and hand to hand combat, you need to have a charged battery primed and ready. Gone are the varieties of melee weapons. Instead, you take out enemies with a variety of close quarter combat moves. Luckily, it never gets boring.

As well as these defining features, elements from a few other games have been craftily woven in. From the stealth mechanics of Splinter Cell Conviction to the interrogation matrix of LA Noire, it is pretty clear that Eidos were trying to pack everything they could without breaking the seams. Unfortunately, the game is surprisingly short with four endings that require almost zero effort to achieve. By the time I had reached the final level, I was feeling a little duped.

Whilst the game does boast a multiple choice narrative, Deus Ex Human Revolution feels a little too restrictive. The boss fights throughout the game remind you that, unless you made the choice of upgrading yourself for combat rather than stealth (or whatever you actually wanted to do), the whole experience is going to be that little bit harder. But whilst there may not be large amounts of paths to take, the journey is fantastic on all of them. Not quite the original, but the best long awaited sequel yet.

Well, it’s been just about twelve years that I’ve been waiting to kick ass and possibly chew bubble gum. Twelve long years. In that time, we’ve seen many shooters come and go and come again as remakes. Twelve long years. I first remember playing Duke Nukem 3D round an old friends house for the first time. It’s unflinching violence and sexy sexist content was like nothing seen before outside of Japan. It was near the millennium when I first saw footage of Duke Nukem Forever. Even then it still looked awesome. So it’s now 2011. I’m no longer the bright eyed awkward child I was back then. As I slip down in my cynical coughing youngish body, one thought strikes me: How long has this level been loading for?

Yes, I had my suspicions that the Chinese Democracy of video games wouldn’t be perfect, but really. There’s enough game developers on board to re-enact the Normandy beach landing and have enough left over to provide the catering. And these are good developers for first person shooters at that. The trailers made the game to look a little bit better than my experience of it, but that could be due to the fact that I’m playing it on an Xbox 360 rather than a PC. So therefore, I’m technically playing a PC port, which doesn’t fill me with much joy as it makes me want to buy that quad core fat bastard computer that tempts me in my dreams with its promise of 8 gig of RAM and an optional blowjob port for lonely nights.

 

So the graphics are looking a little dated in places, but in a word it could be best described as adequate. The Duke looks great in his modern incarnation, but the thing is that it all seems like one massive update on the 1996 original, which still remains on my best games of all time ever list. All the weapons included in game are pretty much remakes of the ones in the previous outing. This is both a good and a bad thing. Whilst it’s a joy to see the freezethrower and the shrink ray feature, the rest just feel like they were bought along for no reason other than to complete the set. But at least the devastator is still as breathtaking as it was all those years ago.

Not only that, but most of the enemies seem to be making a return, It’s like some kind of reunion that’s almost becoming a remake altogether. The only major difference is that the pigcops seem to act like scaled down hulks with guns. They wouldn’t be such a problem to kill if the aiming didn’t handle so horribly. In know the Duke has the firepower like an artillery cannon, but does he have to aim like one? Whilst the frantic running and gunning from the original have been kept intact in this new version, it could have been made more bearable if you had the same smooth aiming in a more modern shooter like, oh say, Call of Duty. There I said it.

 

One aspect I do like are the boss fights. Not only have they included an element that they’ve decided to abandon in more modern shooters, they’ve improved on them. Once you’ve strafed away your ankles dodging their fire and filling their heads with enough rockets to rearm Libya, you have to perform some kind of button bashing move to finish them off. It’s like a fancy pat on the back for taking down the big guy and I feel this has been left out of too many Call of Duty games. Why can’t they make us fight a giant robot or something instead of shooting a normal sized man to end the game? Kids today!

The humour and nudity have been kept intact, though. At one point, you enter a dream sequence in some kind of titty bar. And I mean a real titty bar. Not the nipple covering dives that GTA throw at you. This is probably the first and last time I see nipples rendered that well, which, ironically was the best rendering I saw in the entire game. It’s not as if we were looking at anything other than the boobs were we? As for the humour, it’s still there, but at times, seems to go a little too far in the wrong direction. Hit and miss at best. I would like the use the rest of this remaining paragraph to say that I haven’t tried the multiplayer and have no intention of doing so.

 

Judging the game on single player merits entirely, it’s a bit disappointing, but there are some good moments. The main problem is, it’s a game that only fans of the 1996 game would really get the full benefit of. The guns are there, the tits are there and we got a whole horde of aliens, but old Duke has arrived too late to the party and everyone’s paying attention to Battlefield 3’s lovely looking evening attire. In all honesty, you could save yourself the money by just renting the game and spending the rest of the money getting Duke Nukem 3D on Xbox live.

Monday Morning. I’m investigating the scene of a possible homicide. After driving like a Nascar berk through a highly pedestrianised part of LA without anyone batting an eyelash, we arrive at the ticker taped clearing with gawking rubber-neckers in tow. The body of an unidentified woman (naked) lies in a possible rape position. It’s the rendering of her netherings that catches my eye. Inspecting the body by rotating her arms until my hands rumble, I’m given more clues about the murder. Clues to the crime aren’t so much dotted, as they are conveniently placed.

Again, a rumbling rotation reveals even more clues on the scene. A shaky bystander is being questioned by police. After snapping out of the trance brought on by the creepily realistic face movements, it’s up to me to believe everything she says or nail a dead otter to her head with the words ‘Liar’ written in mud. Her eyebrows tell me she has something to hide, but what? I wave the bloodied rope in her face in a vague effort at getting her to admit to the murder of Mrs Gleason, the bank robbery last week and the unauthorised eating of my sandwich back at central precinct. This all leads to nothing, so I’m forced into doing the whole thing again at the next crime scene.

 

Whilst most of the gameplay in LA Noire tends to follow a familiar pattern, there’s no doubting at how atmospherically thick it is. I mean, there is a point in some games where you never forget you’re playing a game, but thanks to some fantastic acting and the brand new motion capture technology that Rockstar have been Chinese Democracy-ing for the past seven years, I was convinced at times that I was watching a new TV series in a similar vain to Mad Men. I believe we have now reached a milestone in graphic technology in mainstream gaming where the lines between reality and a virtual environment will tangle like Alan Moore’s beard. It does require in depth gameplay and fluidity to make the escapist experience in this medium possible, but effort on the visual front does help the eyes pop out into the fantasy.

As far as I’m concerned with LA Noire, it is the most well presented console game to date. Now that I’ve got all the shameless felating of the game visuals out of my system, I can get round to talking about the game itself. In short, it’s practically an adaption of LA Confidential. It’s the late 40’s, and Cole Phelps has been promoted to the ranks of detective within the world’s friendliest (sarcasm) police force. The course of the game takes you through several cases which you need to solve through a strung together series of point and click style searching, shooting, driving and fighting. Rather than stick to the sandbox style of play that Grand Theft Auto influenced just about every game out at the moment, LA Noire goes for a more separated approach. You’re never out of a mission, but you can free roam the city to an extent. Just don’t expect to go on a rocket launcher fuelled rampage that Rockstar usually fires at you. You’re a cop remember. Protect and Serve, is the LAPD’s motto.

 

Although the Euphoria engine still makes your character walk like he’s carrying too many Tesco bags full of oranges, the cars handle the best in any sandbox game that I’ve played. And they look bloody nice too. Marv from Sin City was right when he said that modern cars look like electric shavers in comparison. Noire-esque incidental music playing whilst tailing a suspect really completes the image. I’ve already bought myself some nice braces for my trousers. The trilby is next. Even the story has the potential to trump other top gaming narratives so far. There are a few twists that I can’t mention for health reasons and the dialogue is just perfect in places. As I said, a very well presented game.

 

The only possible downer is that there’s no real free roam in the Grand Theft Auto sense and there’s no multiplayer to laze into. But can that be a bad thing? Although it does limit the replay value, it makes the focused single player more fulfilling, like a well stuffed sandwich. Although you already know the outcome of each case, there are still many alternative ways to end it. Some with surprising results. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to listen to jazz in my trilby whilst talking like James Cagney. Being single is great.

It’s not often that my social life is politely asked to leave the party because it might interfere with my crippling videogame habit. You’d think so, but it really isn’t. My bastarding social life has pulled me out of the party on many occasions, but I have no idea why. Was it because of the promise of people and fresh air, or was it because the party (metaphorical party full of videogames, that is) wasn’t that impressive to begin with? Of course not. The party’s always buzzing, but I often leave before eleven. Games just aren’t as harmfully addictive like they used to be. Even some of the more addictive ones by today’s standard fail at turning me into a pale skinned reprobate. It’s sad times for all.

However, I found hope. I say I found it: it found me and wouldn’t let me go. Not even for a poo. It’s not often I review indie games. Actually, I don’t think I’ve reviewed any indie games so far, but I think we’ve now reached the point where some of the better games are coming elsewhere than the main publishers. Minecraft is a game from Mojang, but the thing is, there’s no real object to the game. So is it a game? Yes and no. It’s a game the same way that Sim City is a game. There is no concrete objective, but it’ll keep you busy. I’ve spent entire days on here so far. As soon as I retreat to my room, I’m back on and working away.

At this point, you might wonder why I refer to it as work. The game revolves around resource gathering and building. There’s a survival element as well, which pushes you to gather more resources. Or it would if there was more pressure to do so, but the makers are intending to work on that. This is a beta game after all. Each new game starts off in a randomly generated landscape featuring hills, rivers, mountains, trees and vast underground caves. All rendered in fantastic Lego Duplo blocks. But that didn’t put me off. Each block you can see can be manipulated, and considering the size of the map, anything is possible. That horrible crushing feeling of freedom occurs right about now as a million and one things to do crowd into your head, each pushing for space at the front of the queue. But there’s no time for that now! First thing you need to do is build some shelter.

This was probably the hardest bit of the game for me. As it’s a beta game, there are no helpful tutorials that more mainstream games saturate you with. I had to find the nearest wiki site and familiarise myself with learning to build items and all the things I can possibly make. To this day, I’m still learning new things, partly because the game gets updated occasionally and new things get added. Once you have a few goes at building a house and all of the relevant house based paraphernalia, then you can start on bigger projects. But you’ll need to learn about where to find the materials. So you wander the countryside looking for a resource stuffed mine, but before you find a gaping stony hole to penetrate, the sun buggers off before turning into Jason and the Argonauts.

So it turns out that time passes in this game and darkness attracts monsters. Fine. You can learn to make a sword and take them on. You have your zombies and arrow firing skeletons to deal with, but then there’s another thing causes a swearing heart attack at the first possible sighting. One of the most bizarre monsters I’ve ever seen out of the Final Fantasy series: The Creeper. Otherwise known as the Suicide Shrub, this green bastard walks at you with its dead face and does its best impression of Libya. That’s right, it blows itself up, taking out anything nice you’ve made nearby, possibly killing you as well. During one unlucky afternoon, I was building a bigger house (the other one had lost its pizzazz, so it was relegated to shed). Night fell down and I forgot to block any entrance to my new house. This didn’t seem like a problem, but at the next moment one of those green dildos walked in and blew apart half my house. Luckily, you can make doors, but I forgot to in this case.

Minecraft is a fantastic idea that has been executed brilliantly. As we speak, I have a five story building that I live in, with a boat house, farm and a network of mine cart tracks that allow fast access to all the mines that I’ve discovered so far. And I’m still playing it obsessively. You can buy the beta version right now for just over a tenner, but it’s not a question of money, it’s a question of time. Can you provide the ample time out of your life needed to play this blocky behemoth? This review has taken far longer to do, thanks to Minecraft’s seductive gaze and not because of my social life, for once. The full version is out at the end of this year, so why not download the beta now and build that Cliffside mansion you’ve always wanted, until some green fucker vaporises the well constructed entrance hall.

I’m not the one to complain about the atmosphere of Renaissance-era Italy, but there is a reason why Thomas Cook does four night breaks and not four month ones. In Assassin’s Creed 2, I pretty much got the jist of this time period, with its fancy architecture and snazzy puff pants. So there should be no need for this to be covered further. Well, not unless there is something really important that was left out. And what could be more important than minor plot progression and a surprisingly good tacked on multiplayer?

Yes, it seems that the Assassins Creed series is going to hang around the life of Ezio Auditore until the number 87 bus arrives to take us to the next major period of human history. Ah well, better find something to do in the meantime I suppose. Following from the last game, Ezio escapes the Vatican in Rome after unleashing a massive spoiler that I don’t have the heart to ruin for everyone. Aren’t I nice. This leads to his home villa being turned into a rather Italian language version of Helms Deep, which provides the game with a well timed revenge plot. Don’t worry though, the sneaking comes later. Ezio and co set up new digs in Rome and sets about renovating the city without a permit whilst training chimpanzee sounding assassins, just in case he gets a stitch during a particularly routine contract.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood almost a dull carbon copy of the previous game if it wasn’t for some redeemable features. First off is the combat. Two major things have been overhauled for the 16th century assassin. Instead of taunting armed guards until they swing at you, Ezio can take the Eric Cartman method of kicking the opponent in the balls to effectively drop their guard. Seriously, the amount of times I abused this new skill, it was little wonder why the guard force didn’t research into some kind of armoured spiked codpiece to come between my toes and their dangly parts. The other good fighting technique is also a bit of a handy timesaver. Instead of having to work away at each person until you can execute them, you can perform chain executions. Providing you don’t get hit in between of course. It does get a bit embarrassing when the rest of the group of attackers stand and watch whilst I dervish my way through their skulls, as if they have come to accept death at my unforgiving hand.

Alright, so the AI hasn’t improved that much since the last game. In fact, they have done bugger all with it, which is a shame. One thing that seems to feel a bit lacking are the graphics. Maybe it’s just me, but the visuals in Brotherhood seem to be a bit washed out in comparison, almost as if they’ve been left in the hot Italian sun between releases and it’s yet to hydrate itself in time for the launch. The same could be said about the horse riding. That sun must have tired them out I guess as I can only manage a modest gallop instead of the Lone Ranger levels of speed that the last game seemed to spoil me with.

But, ironically, one of the games new improved features could be its downfall. I mentioned the chimpanzee sounding assassins earlier. Well after a certain point in the game, you start your own Rome based creed, as if starting something like this is as easy as setting up a group on Facebook. You find assassin’s on the street (as you do) and then assign them to missions, which train them up in the process. When not dealing with cross-European slaughter, you can whistle the assassin’s in to dispatch the enemies for you, which can take all the challenge out of the game. Why bother burning calories to move the thumbstick AND press the X button to take out one person, when multiple enemies can be annihilated by pressing the left bumper and walking away. The text adventure style mission management of the assassins is a bit addictive, although it doesn’t really offer too much of a challenge and becomes tedious once you’ve mastered it. Not that it takes long to master.

And then we come to the multiplayer. It’s never a surprise for major games series to cave in and design an online multiplayer mode for their fans to screech at each other on. Brotherhood’s multiplayer redeems the game by being original and clever…and based on an idea that I had around ten years ago. But I’m not going to sue. Funnily enough, it’s the multiplayer mode that features more stealth than the single player for once. You assume the role of one of eight types of people and are then thrust into a crowded place where all the NPCs are one of the eight types of people to play as. And you’re mission? To find your target and kill them, but before you are killed yourself by another assassin. It’s pure gaming deception at its finest. You gain points for killing the right person, with bonus points awarded for stealthy stabs, rather than my favourite method of running and screaming. Assassinating take a lot of skill, considering that there is a lot more pressure to blend in and throw potential pursuers a red herring. It’s tense, tactical and tickles me every time I get my man.

Whilst it’s not really that much of an improvement, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is worth the full price for the multiplayer alone. The single player is restricted to one city and can be licked in a week of intense play, despite the abundance of side missions and hidden items scattering the streets. Now where is that time travelling bus? I was hoping to get off at my next stop: Victorian London.

Despite trying to make it seem like I’m a sociable kinda guy on my Facebook profile, I never usually court popularity. It just isn’t my style. When a popular game/film/whatever comes to attention, I will scrutinise it as much as I can based on the fact it’s popular. That’s how untrustworthy I am of general human judgement. The first Mass Effect was a game I felt in two ways about. I really enjoyed the moral choices (You know, the ones that are now obligatory with every role playing game out there) and the ability to shape my man’s face into the redundant mess that resembles yours truly. But the main problems with the game got in the way too often. The combat AI for your teammate’s always favoured the charge-in-all-at-once-in-a-compact-rabble option which scuppered any indoor combat, the frame rate dropped to that of a PowerPoint in most levels and there was way too much item management.

This put me off even talking about playing the next game in the series until its price had dropped to a point where I could write it off in my budget as a small trip to the pub that never happened. Even with the promise about all things that make me cry about the first game being shooed away for the second one didn’t convince me until it dropped to a tenner. So here I am going against my refusal to play Mass Effect 2 and having to gorge on my words. The game starts off with Commander Sheppard (unisex space adventurer) dying heroically (or cowardly. You make the choices in this game) and being brought back to life Fifth Element style, except without the white latex body tape and flat breasts. A unique feature to this game at the start is you can import your likeness from the first game. Which I did before making several changes that turned my character to resemble a cross between myself and a particularly wide-mouthed Seth Green. Still it’s nice to look at myself running around in a game even if I do have to squint to make him look more convincing. Oh, and I used this moment to rid myself of a ginger beard, since there seemed to be a future law banning the use of razors onboard space ships. Never before have I been so committed about facial hair.

After the rebuilding process, I run head forward into my first combat, and it has improved. Well it’s still sub-Gears of War, but what isn’t these days. You have full command over your squad, but since the team mate AI from the first one has been repaired, this just seems a bit patronising considering they handle themselves far better than I could. Made me wonder why I was at Commander Rank in the first place. The vehicle sections are gone, which is a shame, but not surprising; it seemed like I was the only one in the Solar system to enjoy them. Instead you mine planets using some kind of space ultrasound before launching of probes. In a Freudian way there’s something very spermy about the whole affair, but less interesting. It’s simply a case of rubbing the planet to find things. One thing that didn’t need improving was the quality of voice acting, but BioWare decided that people should move and make gestures whilst talking. This made conversations seem less dull and made me smile on occasion, even if the subject was about interplanetary agriculture with an alien with a monotonous voice.

The story itself involves yet another threat to the galaxy, with Shepherd’s loyalty to his new boss being questioned every now and again. Mass Effect 2 is a very well executed game, but despite coming on two discs (far cry from the 4 disc days of the Amiga 500), it’s not that big a game. Sure, there are a large amount of choices in the game, but there are barely any locations to visit. You can travel across the many arms of the Milky Way, but most of the planets are unavailable to land on (and therefore only useful for “resource rubbing”). So it’s a small game that lets you travel the whole galaxy.

There’s no doubting that Mass Effect 2 is a big improvement over the first, but nothing has been done to make the combat more compelling. The levels are too samey and most of the weapons fell the same. But it has a great depth to it that can really pull you in, should you find yourself in the mood. If you’re in the mood for “resource rubbing”, that’s fine too, you pervert.