Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games, like Mario and Sonic and the Olympic Games before it, combines the plethora of sports associated with the events with the somewhat madcap world of Nintendo and SEGA mascots. This provides a welcome relief from the charmless sports games that are often released around these major sporting events; the vibrant and less-than-serious world of Mario and Sonic certainly adds something to the sports game formula, but does it work as a game in its own right?

I’d like to start by emphasising that Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games looks great. As a Wii game, it’s up there with Super Mario Galaxy, and as a DS game it competes with the likes of Mario Kart DS. I was impressed as well with the frame rate during the high-speed events like the Luge and the Bob-sleigh; it was never anything less than smooth, even with two players on screen at once. Of course, being a Mario and Sonic game, despite the abundance of white snow the game remains very colourful and enjoyable to look at.

The game has an abundance of events to play, which in video-game terms could probably be described more at ‘mini-games’. The game plays very similarly to Mario and Sonic and the Olympic Games- for those who have not played that, it feels similar to something like Wii Sports/ Resort, with many more games to choose from. Obviously they are all events themed around the Winter Olympics- Skiing, Snowboarding, Bob-sleigh, Curling, Ice-Skating, and Hockey all have their pace in the game, with Skiiing being the most common, with all the types you can imagine. Fans of the Winter Olympics will doubtless be satisfied with the amount of games available.

Alongside real-world events are crazy “Dream” events, which combine sports with, well, Mario Kart. Most of the Dream Events are races with power-ups (shells, stars, banana skins, and even Chaos Emeralds), and are actually a lot of fun. I found myself thinking that with a lot more track variety this could be the subject of its own game- then I realised that it was already out, and called Mario Kart Wii (or Mario Kart DS for those of us who prefer).

The games all have their own control scheme, and most suit the game well enough, but I couldn’t help but feel that most of the motion control elements just didn’t feel fun enough. For most games, you have to waggle to move and tilt to steer, which can get irritating for people who want to accelerate around corners and the like. The waggle controls started to become more and more irritating as I played more and more of the game, realising that very few of the games quite manage to feel intuitive. The ones that do tend to be closer to Wii Sports style games- for example, the Curling controls similarly to Wii Bowling, and as such is good fun to play.

On the DS, the controls mostly revolve around dragging the stylus to move, which meant that a lot of the time I couldn’t see for my hand. However, I was pleased to find that some events, such as the Snowboarding, use the buttons and not a tacked-on stylus control scheme. Thus, these games feel much more at home on the DS. Generally I think the DS game controls better than the Wii version, unless you have particularly big hands.

Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games is without a doubt best enjoyed in multiplayer. The large number of events and Mario and Sonic elements give it a Mario Party-like feel. There is a ‘party games’ section, but I found these games to be drawn out too much. You have to play events competitively, but then you are required to play another mini-game to cash in on your victories, which takes away some of the gratification of winning a good game of Curling. The multiplayer is certainly the best part about the Wii version when played on a event-by-event basis.

The DS version is more of a single-player experience, due to the nature of the platform. This isn’t necessarily to the game’s detriment; it’s still a jolly good sports game, and on the DS it’s one of the best games I’ve played in quite a while. That sounds like high praise, but unfortunately the DS has been a little stagnant this quarter. Still, I think he game is a very solid title.

Although I must admit I only had a brief encounter with Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, I feel that Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games has a lot more to offer. The Wii and DS versions are very good-looking, have a lot of mini-games to play, and the Wii version is a blast with friends. My recommendation is that if you are expecting to be playing with buddies, get the Wii version. If you’re looking for a good set of single-player challenges, get the DS version. Although the games have control issues in some areas and a lot of useless features (I don’t really see the point in a Snowboard customisation shop), they are certainly at least worth a look if you’re interested.

“Stalin vs. Martians” just about sums this game up. There’s not much to this game. That’s why there aren’t that many words in this review. Go ahead, hit the jump.

As I say, Stalin vs. Martians is not a complicated game. The basics of the game are true to the RTS genre; selecting your units and ordering them to fight is done in exactly the way you might expect. The thing is about this RTS, though, is that the “S” for strategy is missing. As far as I can gather, the best way to win is to select all your units and rampage across the map with them, collecting coins and the like to be able to buy more units and refill your health. Because of this, it’s really a difficult game. Since you can’t use strategy properly, it’s hard to take down the army of Martians that outnumber you heavily. There are a few types of unit, but it’s not really that impressive and they seem to behave too similarly to be of any use.

Aesthetically, the game disappoints. The sounds, while silly and fitting, sound like they were done at the last minute by one man in his shed, and the graphics seem like they’re from the Cold War era. Fitting, sure, but they really are quite bad.

The game’s redeeming feature is the complete insanity and silliness that it brings. The units have some pretty funny quips that they come out with, the loading screens (like the one above) are ridiculous, and the options menu has an option that does nothing but ask you if you like cats. In a way, the sheer amount of stupid humour in this game makes it worth buying. I certainly found it to be Stalintastic.

So, the gist of this review? Stalin vs. Martians is a simple game that is not very good, but is slightly redeemed by its silly sense of humour. My recommendation: buy it if you can get it for less than $10 or so.

Confession time: I’ve never actually played any of the Metal Gear Solid games. Well, to completion anyway; I own a copy of MGS2: Substance for the Xbox, but I’ve never actually played it past the the first level. I got confused towards the end of it, and I just never picked it up. When Konami announced Metal Gear Solid Touch, I thought it would be a great way for me to finally get into the MGS franchise.

I knew they’d worked hard on it, because they mentioned how Kojima actually scrapped the entire game and started from scratch halfway into development. Konami said it wouldn’t be a lot like the console games, and I didn’t expect it to, but with such a great legacy, how would Metal Gear Solid Touch live up to the Metal Gear games before it? Would it finally get me into the Metal Gear series? Hit the jump for the full review.

Metal Gear Solid Touch is set up like a shooting gallery, where you’re ducked behind a barrier, only to come up often to shoot strategically placed PMC soldiers, Haven Troopers, and Gekkos before they shoot you. The game gives you a life bar to make things fair, and adds a circular meter around your enemies’ heads, which is like a countdown until they begin to fire at you. It starts off in the yellow, and makes it’s way to the cautionary red, when you should probably begin ducking behind the barrier.

The controls are super simple- drag your finger across the screen to move the aiming reticule, tap the screen to fire, pinch your fingers to switch to the sniper, spread your fingers to move back to your M4, lift your finger to duck behind the barrier. They’re easy to pick up which makes it a simple game to pick up at any time. One thing I didn’t like about the controls was how sluggishly the sniper reticule moved. It’s easy to move the M4 reticule from one side to the other, but it takes a couple of drags with the sniper to aim at someone across the screen. This can easily be fixed by zooming out THEN moving, but it’s still a hassle to do so. It also took me a while to find out how to pause the game. Turns out that you just have to turn the screen from a landscape position to a vertical position, but Konami didn’t bother to mention this in the explanation of controls.

Some of the first things you’ll notice about the game are its graphics. They’re fantastic, especially for an iPhone game, and rival anything you’d see on a PSP or DS currently, but this could be because the models barely ever move. Snake only tilts to aim, and the PMC troopers only move when they fall. One of the second things you’ll notice is that there are missionaries in the game. You probably shouldn’t shoot them. I learned that the hard way.

MGST takes you into 12 missions across 2 acts, and Konami’s promising the addition of 8 more levels soon, too. The game has a story that (according to Konami) is similar to that of MGS4, even though the story is in no way essential to the plot. As a matter of fact, it’s all presented through text-based cutscenes that can be easily skipped. If you’re still annoyed by the story, you can play the Survival Mode of the game, which is just a straight shooting gallery, where you play until you lose. The main mode of the game has a rather lengthy boss fight at the end of the game with Raven, and it’s one of the only two boss fights in the game, the other being one with Laughing Octopus. The boss fights are confusing at first, as you have to figure out how to defeat them on your own, which is a nice change of pace from the usual “shoot the giant red spot on their chest” boss.

The UI of the game is very clean and minimal, with only a lifebar, a timer, a counter of remaining enemies, and a label showing which mission you’re in, tucked away in the corner. One of the cooler parts of the game is the way you procure extra life and different weapons. By shooting yellow chickens placed across the map (yes, chickens) you can get more life, and shooting green little frogs gives you either a rocket launcher or invisibility for a short time, though it’s much more common for rocket launchers to be present when Gekkos or helicopters are attacking you. It’s a case for PETA for sure, but still very useful.

If you get sick of the game, you can always take a look at some of the extras the game has. For those of you like me that don’t know much about Metal Gear Solid, the game has the entire history of Metal Gear Solid so you can catch up, complete with art from the games. There’s also Drebin’s Shop, which allows you to buy 3D art of characters for the Drebin Points you’ve accrued over the course of gameplay. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes for the game’s extras, and the 3D art is kind of lame.

Overall, Metal Gear Solid Touch is a great game, even if it’s not a lot like other Metal Gear Solid games. The shooting gallery format works great with the iPod touch/iPhone format, and the lack of an important story means more gameplay, less winded cutscenes. At $7.99, it’s a biiiiiiit pricey for a shooting gallery, but still something any iPhone owner should check out.

The world of Sonic is a world of fast platforming and loop-de-loops. So how well does it fare when inserted into the RPG mould? Can BioWare break the current trend of Sonic games and make something good? Hit the jump for the full review.

RPGs tend to be where you find the legendary stories. Their format allows for complex character development as well as epic quests, able to keep you on edge for dozens, even hundreds of hours. It’s something BioWare seems to have missed when developing Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. It may well be that the game is simply targeted towards a younger audience, or perhaps the source material wasn’t the best for narrative, but either way I was a little disappointed in the lack of depth.

Eggman has been defeated, Knuckles got kidnapped and there are some new enemies called The Mauraders causing trouble all across the land by stealing the Chaos Emeralds. That’s all you need to know about the story. Things do keep moving steadily, and you will find a few pleasant and inoffensive plot twists, but nothing truly ground breaking or engrossing.

Most of the game is played through the overworld, entering your standard RPG arena for combat. One annoyance with the game that is instantly apparent is the use of the stylus. You have no options on how to control your characters. While moving around the overworld, the d-pad does nothing, and you have to click where you want to go. Why you couldn’t have used both the stylus and d-pad is beyond me, and lead to a rather uncomfortable first few hours until I got used to it.

Each area provides you with some key objectives, as well as several (often diverse) side quests. Each rewards you with an item or two, as well as the accompanying experience. Some quests take the form of puzzles, which require people standing in specific places, or the use of a specific party member’s special ability.

Whilst attempting any mission, your objectives are always clearly labeled and the map has helpful stars indicating where you need to go. Often these locations can only be reached after passing an obstacle needing a specific skill. Your party consists of a maximum of four characters from an ever increasing group. Large gaps, for example, can be flown over by Tails, and boxes can be smashed by Amy’s hammer.

All these actions are accomplished through a rather mundane clicking of an icon which appears when you are next to an obstacle. It’s the same method you use to interact with people and other objects, unless they are proximity activated, such as the enemies.

Thankfully missing are random encounters, replaced with often avoidable over world creatures. Once in combat, the game takes a classic RPG turn-based approach. Characters take turns attacking and you are given the choice to attack a specific target, defend, or use a POW move. POW moves use up valuable POW Points (PP) and range in what effect they have. Some are powerful moves, while others identify key weaknesses or distract an enemy.

Each POW move uses a series of onscreen, stylus-controlled quick time events very similar to the ones found in Elite Beat Agents. Your accuracy determines just how effective an attack is. A similar system is also used when the enemy is attempting a special attack. If you hit all the right places at just the right time, you can cause an opponents attack to completely miss.

These quick time events do help break up the combat, which can become rather drawn out in places. Often times the combat feels tedious as amount of damage done can be negligible some rounds. Especially early on, you can find your characters missing a surprisingly large number of moves. It’s not uncommon for an entire round to pass, and to have 75% of your attacks miss.

The combat is further extended by the enemy’s annoying habit of occasionally fleeing. This pauses the battle and creates a side scrolling chase sequence. Each of your party members have their own lane and as the chase progresses, things are placed in the way which you have to jump over by clicking on your character. Failure to click in time results in you losing ground on the enemy. If you hit too many objects, the enemies get away. Catching up again simply drops you back in the combat, with an extra round of attacks on your behalf.

For the most part enemies will be easily (if monotonously) defeated, but occasionally some rather odd balancing issues crop up. Some minibosses will either miss you completely, or are able to KO you within a single round. When you’re used to most enemies doing almost negligible damage, it can seem rather frustrating and can result in several annoying reattempts.

The musical score sounds like classic Sonic, which is greatly appreciated, and the sound effects are passable. The game looks good too– there are a few pre-rendered scenes which add a nice touch, and character models are on par with the quality of the DS. Sprites are nicely drawn, and environments are pleasantly varied. Though if any of that last paragraph changed your opinion on Sonic Chronicles, you probably don’t play a lot of RPGs.

If you’re not an RPG player, but do like Sonic, then this game will likely appeal to you and I would recommend buying it. However, if you are looking for an RPG experience to sink hundreds of hours into, this game isn’t for you. A weak story and lack of depth in combat will definitely hurt the experience for veteran RPG players.

Overall, I would have to say it is an average RPG, aimed at those more a fan of Sonic than the genre. Sonic Chronicles is worth the money if you like blue hedgehogs, but worth a rent at best otherwise.

Health regulations held it back, but in the end nothing could stifle the return of WipEout; the futuristic racer accentuated by unnecessary punctuation. Gorgeous Britishness and stunning presentation underscore the virtues of this high definition remake.

And a remake it might be, but WipEout HD’s graphical prowess places it on a pedestal far from the reach of the PSP renditions it borrows tracks from. This is one stunning racer. Don’t believe me? Have a butcher’s hook at the vast gallery below, where you’ll find examples of what you can capture yourself using WipEout’s extensive photo-mode.

You’ll be snapping pictures of supersonic 60 frames-per-second racing on a selection of distinct tracks, such as the clinical cityscape of Ubermall, or the clouded serene skies of Sol 2. The textures are sharp and detailed, environments expansive and varied, and the lighting gives the whole scene a glorious crispness. In this high definition landscape, ships pop out like real life models suspended in a meticulously painted world.

From the minimalist styles of the main menu comes three choices; Campaign, Racebox and Online. The meat of the game can be found in the Campaign, where 8 grids of increasing racing goodness can be found. As you progress medal and PSN trophy hunt, tracks, vehicles and ship skins will unlock; unearthing a cornucopia of content for a downloadable game priced at a meagre £11.99/$19.99.

Each grid comprises a veritable honey comb of single races, time trials, tournaments and zone mode. Though apparently muted due to epilepsy concerns, the latter is a WipEout classic made beautiful. Stripping the geometry of detail, zone mode instead paints the world in colours that vibrate to the music and change palette in a supersonic sweep whenever you effectively pass zones. The goal? To travel as far as possible at increasing speeds before your ship explodes due to the escalating scrapes and crashes you’ll endure.

Your success depends on skilful driving, exercising the analogue sticks to steer and R2/L2 as route sharpening airbrakes. Motion sensing does make an optional appearance, whether to steer or pitch your craft, but as intuitive as this is, nothing can beat the responsiveness of retro pressure sensitive analogue controls.

Where speed is your enemy in zone mode, it’s your friend elsewhere. Time trials are self-explanatory, consisting of careful route planning to meet every boost pad possible. More excitement comes when you’re pitted against A.I. crafts in single races and tournaments, where a healthy helping of weapons are gathered from the track. Whether you’re shooting, draining enemy energy, dropping mines, or blasting an earthquake to destroy those ahead; you‘ll have to suffer similar thwarts from enemy craft. The visuals, responsiveness, framerate, and even the sultry received pronunciation of the female announcer, all help make these racing battles a truly epic experience.

As is common in the series, the speedometer and intensity of combat reaches new dimensions when you advance the Campaign, but this might just be one of WipEout’s disappointments. Ultimately you’ll be racing the same time trials on the same tracks, operating vehicles whose speed is only relative to your current Campaign position. The gameplay certainly becomes more addictive and volatile until your eyes burst from the kilometres per hour, but new weapons or modes would have made the game feel progressively fresh.

Still WipEout HD is a generous package, with more than the Campaign on its side. Racebox is your arcade fix, empowering you to mould your own racing challenges and letting you embark on local multiplayer. However, with both the screen and framerate chopped in half for two player split-screen, it’s not quite as blissful as the good ole single player.

Originally borked (but since patched) for those blessed with more than 50 PSN friends, online multiplayer is both effortless and unremarkable. Up to eight players can duke it out in single races or tournaments: but that’s your lot. No other challenges come your way; not even the Eliminator mode present on the PSP. Then again, online is as visually arresting and responsive as the single player and we have it on very good authority that new tracks and even modes are on the way via downloadable content.

WipEout HD doesn’t stray from gameplay traditions, but it’s now refined and tightened to Formula 1 standards. Evolution rather than revolution might be the case, but this is an easy pill to swallow for a conservatively priced downloadable game. This time the title is encrusted with more than just crazy capitalization, now stating the obvious; HD. But the high definition visuals are what launches WipEout into this generation. And when you do eventually pull yourself away from its hypnotic universe, like Amy Winehouse going cold turkey, you’ll be overcome by uncontrollable shakes, a numbed mind, and a burning desire to inject yourself once more.

WipEout HD Image Gallery

41 Photos

 

The latest Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game hit seems to be FunCom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.  With already an impressive 700,000 subscribers, AoC appears to be a worthy challenger to the MMORPG throne on which World of WarCraft currently sits.  I spent the past 30 days with Age of Conan and my avatar, Bewbs, chomping the bandwidth of my otherwise smooth-running PC, and I’m now ready to tell my tale.  Prepare to hear the lamentations of my womens.

I find myself on a slave ship in a pretty blue bikini.  My name: Bewbs.  My game: a magic-casting Tempest of Set.  I look around, check out my sweet holding cell and awesome shackles– Oh snap!  My boat just totally crashed!  Lucky for me, I survive and wash up on shore, free from my slave master… for now.  So, now what do I do?

A nice man gives me a quest that basically leads me down a series of paths that ends at the town of Tortage.  Along the way, I rescue some chick and kill the dudes that captured her.  She promises to repay me when we get to town and hints at sexual favors.  Sweet, lesbian action!  Or not… That lying bitch completely disappears from the town, or she’s just very well hidden.  Trust me when I say that I really wanted to see where this was going and searched high and low for my “payment”.  By the time I left Tortage 20 levels later, I had still not received my reward.  What a gyp!

At this point, there’s a couple of things I want to talk about.  For some reason, the loot system in AoC involves money bags that are dropped by whatever I kill.  Why the fuck is a gorilla carrying around a money bag, and would a gorilla actually store his bananas in one?  Also, why is it that I can’t loot any bananas from the bunch of bananas sitting next to that tree, which is next to where the gorilla I killed just came from?

It’s very confusing to know what you can and can’t loot unless you mouse over everything.  Lootable chests look very similar to the hundreds of other non-lootable chests, and occasionally there will be some random thing lying on the ground that you can pick up, like a broken bottle, that you would never know you could pick up unless you happened to mouse over it.  Dumb!

I also have a problem with some of the quests and the way monsters respawn.  I had a quest to go get some rocks, but the area where the rocks were was overrun with bats.  I would kill a bat, grab a rock, and the fucking bat that I just killed had already respawned and attacked me!  Not only that, but the rocks take forever to respawn!

The very opposite was true of a quest where the goal is to kill a certain number of a particular creature, in which case they don’t respawn instantly like they do in places where you don’t want them to respawn.  Multiple people trying to accomplish the same quest at the same time often resulted in a lot of swearing, name-calling, and keyboard-smashing, and they took a lot longer than they should.

Perhaps this was done on purpose to help facilitate the Player vs. Player combat –  get everyone pissed off at each other so they’re more likely to want to fight.  Great job, FunCom.  You’ve succeeded.  That’s okay, though, because AoC seems really geared towards PvPers and seems less focused on PvE content anyways.  Not to say that the quests and dungeons are necessarily bad, but they pale in comparison to pretty much every other MMO since EverQuest 2.

Let’s get a bit more technical now, shall we?

The first thing you will most likely notice upon playing AoC is that it runs like ass. Anyone who didn’t purchase a top-of-the-line PC in the past year or so will likely find AoC unplayable. I have a 5.9 out of a possible 5.9 in the Gaming Graphics section of the Windows Experience Index that features in Vista. If you don’t know what that means, suffice it to say it means my PC is a gaming beast. Even with my killer rig, I only manage to eek out 18 to 20 frames per second on high settings.

The problem I have with this is that the graphics are not awesome enough to justify the hit in frame rates you take to get them. Turning down the graphics makes the game run smoother, sure, but then it looks even worse (obviously) and takes away one of the supposed selling points the game had in the first place. The only standouts are the water, which looks watery, and the character models, which have nice skin and musculature (and boobs).

The art direction itself might be a turn-off to some, but a much-needed revolution for others. This is not high fantasy. Even though there are mythical creatures and magic exists, the world is highly grounded in its realism. You will not see glowing lightning helmets and swords that are twice the size of the people wielding them. Trees look like trees, rocks look like rocks. There is no Mushroom Kingdom. For better or worse, this is very much not World of WarCraft.

Even ignoring these visual issues, the gameplay itself is fundamentally flawed.  The combat engine and realism are touted as the next big thing and a feature that sets AoC apart from pretty much every other MMO out there.  Unfortunately, I find them both to be lackluster, and at times, exceptionally irritating.

Instead of initializing an auto-attack and supplementing with your special abilities, AoC makes every swing a special ability.  More along the lines of Diablo or another hack-and-slash RPG, you need to click a button for every single move you make.  This serves to make combat more involved and exciting, as opposed to EverQuest where you click on your auto-attack and then go make yourself a sandwich.

This is a feature that I am both excited and disappointed with.  As you increase in levels, your directional attacks can be chained into combos and special moves.  The idea is great and works pretty well in practice; however, classes that do not rely on melee attacks don’t get much use out of the system, and thus, half of the players in AoC aren’t experiencing one of the main draws the game had going for it.  A better system of attacks should have been put into place to accommodate the caster classes, like throwing mini fireballs or something.

The constant combo attacking also seems unnatural with a mouse and keyboard. World of WarCraft players that have become significantly adept at spamming hotkeys (like Rogues) may be more adjusted to this style of finger finagling, but it just didn’t do me very well. FunCom is planning on bringing AoC to the Xbox 360, and it feels like the interface was designed with a controller in mind. I would actually be very interested to check out the game again on console and see how it compares.

On the realism front, AoC does a few things right, but an equal number of them are so very not right. In line with the realistic combat system, AoC offers a robust collision detection system.  The cool thing about this is that any swing you make will actually damage any enemy that happens to be caught within the arc of that swing.  Yes, that’s right — this system will allow you to damage multiple baddies with one swing of your massive two-handed +1 Broadsword of Level-Grinding.

This realism is also good in that swinging a massive two-handed +1 Broadsword of Level-Grinding actually damages the flesh it collides with. No longer does constant meat-chopping result in a flawless corpse. Instead, AoC is soaked in blood and dismembered body parts — if you really don’t like the look of that guy, cut his fucking head off. The opening cinematic even features a Monty Python-like scene where a dude gets his arm cut off but still decides he wants to keep attacking.

Bonus: King Conan upskirt shots!

The problem this collision system presents, though apparently intentional, is that people always get in my fucking way! Traipsing around town, I would constantly find myself unable to get through a doorway or go down a narrow alley without running into jerkwads that functionally roadblocked my path. I was even asked to give some criminally minded player some cash before he would get out of my way. Thankfully, all I had to do was show him my boobs and he was satisfied.

I also fairly consistently found myself getting stuck on corners and trapped behind tables. I then turn into a spacebar barbarian, jamming the jump key while spinning in every direction, just trying to navigate my way around a stupid bench. This issue is compounded by the low frame rates most people would be getting, and even at a decent 20fps, I still found my stuttering animations helped get me stuck on shit.

The one thing FunCom did to help alleviate some of this frustration is make it possible to shift through people if you are crouching… like a tiger. Crouching makes you “harder to see” (I put that in quotes because I never noticed what difference being “harder to see” made — I still get attacked by enemies from about the same distance). Unfortunately, it also makes you move slower than Stephen Hawking with a dead battery. This is great when people refuse to move (though flashing your tits is faster… if you have tits, that is), but it doesn’t do anything to keep that barstool from grabbing your knee and not letting go.

Along the same vein, I had an issue with mountains, even small ones.  There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to where you can go and where you can’t.  On the beach, I walked up on the rocks, which were no more than 10 feet high or so.  Upon getting to the top, I couldn’t walk down the other side of the rocks.  This made absolutely no sense at all.  I could go back down the way I came, walk around the rocks, and then walk up the other side of the rocks and stand on the same point I was standing before.  I just can’t, for whatever reason, walk over the peak of the rocks. Dumb!

On very large mountains, however, I ran into the opposite problem.  I could walk over the peaks of some areas, only to find myself unable to walk on a flat fucking surface and ending up stuck.  Momentarily stuck, that is, as turning once again into the Spacebar Barbarian would usually lead me to clip through the mountains and fall to my death.  I did, however, once fall about 200 feet and take no damage, but I landed in the middle of a group of enemies and they killed me anyways.  Glorious.

Continuing with the realism aspect, all of the animations in the game have been motion-captured. Again, the poor frame rates take away from the smoothness you should be noticing here, but the mo-cap animations are even present during conversations (which are also fully voiced). Talking to the head mistress at The Bearded Clam (tur-hur!) occasionally results in a slutty, can’t-stand-not-having-sex-this-instant kind of idle animation. Kinda hot, actually.

The animations should be considered a plus for AoC, but they instead detract from the overall experience. Much like Two Worlds, the transitions between the animations are jerky and unnatural, resulting in the whole uncanny valley effect that’s been a hot topic these past few years. Some of it just looks downright ridiculous. It’s strange to say this, but AoC actually suffers from bad acting, and I’m not talking about the voice work. Take a look at this video and see if you notice it (the first minute is just scrolling through the environment, but it gets better):

Being that this is an MMO, a lot of the aforementioned problems could be fixed via patches, which have been coming out on a weekly (if not more often) basis. Age of Conan was riddled with bugs and practically unplayable for about a week out of my 30 days, mostly due to a memory leak that would consistently crash my game after 20 minutes of play. A lot of these issues appear to have been dealt with, or at the very least the game was playable.

The classes themselves are being constantly tweaked. I noticed a few benefits, like removing the cooldown timer on my main attack spell, but some of the other classes were supposedly destroyed. Some people claimed their class is now completely worthless and decided to stop playing the game until it was fixed (but people say that after every patch in every MMO, so take that with a pound of salt). This ongoing change is one of the many factors that makes scoring a game like this significantly more difficult than any regular, non-persistent game.

Ultimately, the enjoyment you get from Age of Conan greatly depends on what it is about MMORPG’s that you’re into. PvP is very much the high point here, so fans of that type of gameplay would be well rewarded for putting the time in required to get to the end-game warfare. Reaching the level cap and then participating in full-scale guild vs. guild combat, fighting over land and resources, is really the heart of AoC. The traditional questing and level-grinding is not done as well here, or at least is not as fun, as the competition.

I do think FunCom has taken steps in the right direction by offering a mature-rated MMO, filled with the blood, guts, language, and sluts, that adult gamers have never had the option to experience before. I’m sure the game will get better over the years as the details are polished and patched, but as it stands now, Age of Conan really only has a somewhat particular audience. My 30 days are up, and I’ve decided not to continue my adventures in Hyboria. With the impending console release, however, I’m excited by the possibilities that may await me should I choose to return.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

In the not too distant future, videogames have become routine.  The marketplace is controlled by commercial enterprises, publishing the same fast paced action year on year.  FPS game follows FPS game, bald space marines give birth to bald space marines, EA merges with Ubisoft.

Yes, in the not too distant future, videogames haven’t changed at all.  What’s worse? We’re none the wiser.  Feeding off of these adrenaline pumping experiences, we praise them for their apparent innovation, their direct and exciting plot, their “next-gen” graphics. We’ll feel happy with the cards we’ve been dealt, comfortable in our past time, but for all our contentment we’ll never know how it could have been. Never know how it should and would have been if we had taken notice of Solid Snake.

Our only hope to free ourselves from cookie-cutter experiences pumped out by profit driven companies, is to learn the lessons of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and build a safer future for interactive entertainment.

Although Solid Snake is inexplicably aged in this final mission, MGS4 takes place only 5 years after MGS2’s Big Shell incident. His façade in distinct contrast to his contemporaries, sOLiD Snake is thrust onto a Middle Eastern battlefield. Like Haze’s attempted portrayal, the world’s wars are infected by Private Military Companies. Price-tagged PMC soldiers fight other PMC’s –- aimless battles seek only to support a self-sufficient war economy that has graduated from the Oil economy’s downturn.

Enhanced by nano-machines and trained by FPS videogames, post-modern PMC soldiers sign up to avenge the death of their loved ones, but without political or patriotic goals, they compete as if they’re still playing a videogame. And whoever controls the game, controls the battlefield. And whoever controls the battlefield, controls the world.

The man with his fingers on the trigger is Liquid Ocelot. As head of Outer Heaven, the mother PMC company, he has achieved total real-time battlefield control, puppeteering PMC’s by manipulating the life numbing nano-machines injected into their bodies. Disguised as one of the opposing militia’s hired PMC operatives, Snake enters this “cleaner, safer battlefield” with the aim to assassinate Liquid Ocelot and end his insurrection.

The ride to reach this point portrays a presentation significantly ahead of its contemporaries. Indeed, it was apt to call videogames “interactive entertainment” when discussing MGS4. As I’m sure you’re aware, the game has its fair share of cinematic cutscenes. These are expertly directed, containing some of the most impressively choreographed combat sections you’re likely to see in any cinematic medium.

What’s particularly stunning is the way cutscenes transition seamlessly into gameplay, using clever pans and real-time rendered cinematics. Other techniques are used to make sure you’re never taken out of the game world: playing through mission briefings with the Mk.II, Snake’s health bar is shown at pivotal moments, brief flashbacks occur when you press X, you can regress Octocamo to its default state by shaking the controller, in addition to more refreshing and original methods which I’ll leave for you to discover.

Yes, you’ll always feel part of the game world even though there are a staggering 9.5 hours of cutsceness. However, contrary to the popular exaggeration, this isn’t more than spent in gameplay. There is more gameplay than cutscenes –- for me around 15 hours gameplay, the longest in the series.

Versatile, expansive and varied would be the best way to describe MGS4’s gameplay. In fact, add fine-tuned and engaging, and you might be closer to an accurate portrayal. If you ever had a criticism of previous iterations, it would be control complexity and the birds-eye camera that would top the list. With age comes wisdom and Snake’s maturity certainly signifies solutions. The camera is now set behind Snake, with L1 providing an over-the-shoulder view for more accurate aiming, triangle to look down the sight, and R1 to shoot.

Even with a generous helping of CQC (Close Quarters Combat, which you can learn by watching the embedded video), the controls remain relatively simple. It may at first feel counter-intuitive to use both L1 and R1 to shoot, where other games automatically enter an over-the-shoulder view during combat, but the control system makes the best of unpredictable player actions and will certainly become second nature as the game develops.

New gear enters Metal Gear Solid with more velocity this time around, increasing the gameplay’s depth exponentially. Expanding on Naked Snake’s camouflage in MGS3, Otacon has created something more competent than dressing up mid-mission — a Stealth Camo Suit that dynamically “morphs” to the texture, pattern and colour of the surface you’re pressed against. The ease with which this can be performed is somewhat of an overlooked gem — without it the game would reduce to shadow jumping, as opposed to dynamic hide-and-seek.

MGS4 discards the closed corridors of MGS1 and MGS2, forgoes the tight forest walks of MGS3, and places you in a wide, brightly lit battlefield. The Camo Suit transforms every inch of this environment into your hiding place — at 90% camouflaged you can even survive a PMC’s close stalking as his feet brush past your head.

Another new piece of kit is a robot created by Otacon and Sunny –- the Mark II. Full of character, this little beauty can be used by Snake to shock enemies, defuse traps, and collect weapons during even the busiest proxy battle, thanks to its inbuilt stealth camo.

Rangebar’s Take	9.8
Let me get straight to the point. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the best game on the Playstation 3, hands down. If you don’t have a PS3 yet, this is your number one excuse to finally get one. With an incredible story, graphics that go above and beyond, cut-scenes that make some movies look bad, and action packed gameplay, MGS4 is one of the best games I’ve played. And I’m not even a huge fan of the series. Even without playing MGS3 and only half of MGS2, I still found an inner passion for this game. I’m not sure what it was, but MGS4 kept pulling me in and I kept coming back. One of my favorite things about the game is its attempt to tell the story of the MGS series all the way from the Philosophers, to the Patriots, Big Boss and Solid Snake himself. Even without playing the previous games, MGS4 does an excellent job of explaining what the heck’s going on. It’s sad to see the series come to an end like this, when I just fell in love with it, but if there isn’t a fifth installment I’ll just have to enjoy the past ones. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is truly a special game and a must own for any gamer.

Once you really get to grips with the controls, the stealth battlefield experience is quite the revelation. Of course you could, despite Otacon’s advice, blast your way through. Yes, it’s advisable to stay stealthy, but with the new reformed control system an action orientated play-through is certainly possible. But take note, the more combat, the more Snake will stress, thus reducing his Psyche. This will actively slow him down, lower his aiming accuracy and even responsiveness. Take a break, sit in a box, or use a pick-me-up item to gradually return his abilities.

Rather than going all out action or being stealth exclusive, I personally chose a pick’n'mix approach. In fact, since any direction you take feels natural, you may be unaware of all the options available to you: befriend the Militia and battle by their side; snipe the streets from higher ground; crawl through the shadows and tranq. your enemies; or rambo it out using a combination of heavy shooting and CQC.

The variety of gameplay that has been so prominent in the series has now migrated into every moment of the game; you have the tools and the moves to create your own variety whenever you like. This could backfire for action-orientated gamers, since their experience may shorten to create an unhealthy balance of cutscenes to gameplay. Then again, these gamers might just spend a lot of time choosing and modifying their weaponry.

Unlike previous iterations where weapons were discovered gradually, Snake is now on a battlefield littered with weapons from downed soldiers. Problematically, each weapon is ID-Tagged — if your Tag doesn’t match the weapon’s ID, it’ll be locked from use. You’d think this would be a clever way for Kojima Productions to limit Snake’s weapon use, but instead he can collect ID-tagged weapons and pass them over to the gun-launderer Drebin for modding.

Moreover, if you already own the weapon picked up, you can sell it to Drebin for currency to buy from a selection of over 70 modifiable weapons. Now each battle has a myriad of possibilities for every play style.

It is MGS4’s choice that may at first intimidate, but it is ultimately what makes this game trump its predecessors. Once you discover your style of play, experimentation can overtake, pushing the want to replay the game from start to finish. And, thankfully, you can skip the cutscenes.

Geoff’s Take	10
My disappointment with Metal Gear Solid 4 is that it has an end. Not only an end in and of itself, but an end to Metal Gear Solid. This disappointment I freely accept, because of what is gained—a wonderful, truly amazing experience and closure. Metal Gear is an anomaly. I cannot imagine how I would react to any other game doing what Metal Gear does, but Metal Gear is unique. The story is more than just a quasi sci-fi, anime, film-inspired drama. There are ideas and emotions that are palpable and important: War, violence, technology, control; the human struggle to achieve, to be remembered, to find peace and personal happiness; the passing of knowledge and memory from one generation to the next, their dissemination throughout society; the pressures we feel, our potential. Never has the game’s emotional impact and connections to its characters been more poignant. Passive only if you don’t consider thought to be an activity. The core Metal Gear sneaking gameplay is immensely satisfying, but never before has there been so much diversity and depth. The resolution of the story belies its often previously perceived incomprehensibility, and while it does so with tidy ease, it is satisfying. Play MGS4. Give it a chance, and if it does not win a part of your heart as a game that tries more than most, then at least you can see its technical achievements and be educated about what it attempts—even if you think it fails. One of the most wonderful experiences I’ve had with a videogame. All the sweeter to savor in its finality, and the variety of its many parts.

As if this wasn’t enough, MGS4 is a visual feast, leading the way on the PS3 in art direction and graphics. Artistically the game shines with a variety of visually distinct environments, including the stark and bright middle-eastern battlefield, and a real-time night to daytime transition (some might call it a “sunrise”) as you climb through an Amazonian landscape.

When the art is peppered with beautifully crafted character models, billowing smoke effects, dust/blood settling on the camera lens, and impressive lighting and shadowing, it’s hard to ignore how stunning the game is in its visual fidelity. Although you’ll find higher resolution textures in other games, it’s the subtleties and attention to detail that will impress.

MGS4 will visually exceed your expectations for a console game. In fact, ignoring the gorgeously rendered cutscenes challenging Hollywood CGI in its presentation, there are some latter gameplay sections that will knock you off your sofa with the technical achievement, making it incredibly hard not to crown MGS4 the graphical king.

The sound design similarly impresses, with 5.1 warzones making love to your speakers — the distant whirring of a helicopter is joined by the popping shots of your P90, the overwhelming screams of PMC’s and Militias in combat, a Gekko’s demented mooing, the sound of a rocket whooshing past your head, let alone the blockbuster soundtrack that makes every scene so emotive. Paired with great voice performances from David Hayter (Snake), Debi Maye West (Meryl), Patric Zimmerman (Liquid Ocelot), and Lee Meriwether (Big Mama), to name but a few, it’ll be easier to ignore some of the less exceptional voice acting.

What do you have to suffer to enjoy this presentation? A large initial install and 3 minute installs after every Act. However, these hardly affect your enjoyment. A 4.6GB install is understandable for a 50GB game, and due to good data management it only takes 10 minutes to complete. Moreover, the install is actually enjoyable, consisting of a witty and ironic harking to cinema warnings.

Act installs occur after such meaty gameplay and cinematics that an interval is warranted. However, MGS4 can get away with this due to its moderate stealth pacing and cinematic core, and is thus inadvisable for the fast-paced action game. Where loading does affect MGS4 is in short 5 second loading screens during gameplay transitions, or more damningly, chase scenes. This should have been ironed out, since the pace and excitement of these scenes can be somewhat dampened.

Thus, Metal Gear Solid 4 isn’t perfect.  It has its failings, and the narrative could disorientate new series players.  If, however, they embed themselves in the folklore and background of the series past, MGS4 will thoroughly reward them. Each character is fully fleshed out, explored and taken to their magnificent end.

What extends MGS4 to an ambitious and original result is that the game is a tragedy involving a character stepping ever closer to his death. For long time fans this is almost unbearable.  As Snake’s place in the world continuously becomes more hopeless, you’re always wondering if the next Act is his last.  The impact with which this tragedy is delivered is due to MGS4 taking full advantage of a videogame’s virtue to immerse players in a virtual world.  This results in some truly heart-wrenchingly beautiful and tragically inspired combinations of cutscene and gameplay.

Moreover, as you’ll discover, what has always been Metal Gear Solid’s overriding success is that no character is evil or morally good.  There are no clearly defined villains.  Uncommon to most filmic narratives, not a single character can be rooted to one end of the moral spectrum. Solid Snake may be the traditional Hero, but MGS4’s magnifying glass shows that even the most villainous characters are trying to be the Hero.  All are attempting to live up to their interpreted ideals of The Boss.  That you can find Hero’s in the most unlikely places is MGS4’s legacy to future narratives.

You may have noticed that I have refrained from mentioning the online portion of the game.  The fact that MGO is even included on the disc is a gift.  Its certainly not as perfect as its cinematic brethren, but when it shines, it shines bright — modes such as Sneaking Mission and Team Sneaking top the experience. MGO is the perfect place to show off the skills you mastered as Snake.

As Solid Snake’s final mission comes to a close, MGS4 fights its way to the top of this generation’s offerings. The polish is undeniable, from the art direction and graphics, to the gameplay and cinematics. What the game ends up being is a masterful example of what the videogaming medium can achieve — if ever there were a case for videogames being art, MGS4 is it. This fact and the vast list of successes, drowns out the negatives to result in an overwhelming experience.

Solid Snake’s conclusion ushers us to forget about his exploits, to move on from the history within the Metal Gear Solid universe.  We can no longer yearn for a sequel to fill in the gaps.  MGS4 gives you the conclusion and completes the cycle. It’s time to live for yourself.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

Cake Mania 2 was recently released for the Nintendo DS, and it is basically an update of the original Cake Mania. Once again, players are thrown into a bakery and must make custom cakes for demanding customers. If you’re a casual game or puzzle fan, you’ll probably be salivating at the chance to make cakes at a frantic pace.

There are some twists this time around. In the story mode, Jill’s dream of revitalizing her grandparent’s bakery has fizzled, and she wants to move onto better things. Coincidentally enough, she receives two requests – her friend from college wants help with a city bakery and her ex-boyfriend wants help with a bakery at his undersea amusement park. So players get to decide Jill’s fate – will she work for love or for fame.

Once again, the bakery starts out barren. Each challenge has two goals, bakery goal and superstar, where Jill must make a certain amount of money before the month ends. That money can then be used to buy new bakery accoutrements or upgrade existing equipment.

There’s also a new Endless mode, where players can just bake cakes endlessly. Since the first Cake Mania DS game pretty much ended after you beat the story mode, this is a welcome addition to casual players and fans of the game.

Despite being a casual game, Cake Mania 2 is definitely not for beginners. In fact, you’lll probably have to have played a bit of the first Cake Mania to figure out some of the more intricate cake combinations. Cake Mania 2 will not hold your hand and help you in the kitchen – it will leave the stove on hot, and allow you to figure out that fire burns.

This is demonstrated in two ways. First, is through lack of tutorials. You make one cake with the help of the game, and it’s a simple one too. After that, you’re thrown into work. The first assignment isn’t too bad initially, but after you buy three ovens, you’ll start getting requests for 2 layer cakes with decorations, without any explanation how to make one.

Then there are the chapter descriptions. They will occasionally hint at a helpful product for the coming level (like the TV). This is nice, except it comes up after the utensil buying section. So you’ll find out right before the level starts that the upcoming customers can be appeased with a TV, and you won’t have one.

Cake Mania 2 really does improve over the first DS Cake Mania game. It is more challenging, attempts a deeper story with the ability to guide Jill the baker’s fate and provides the Endless cake mode where you can bake as much as you want. On the other hand, it betrays its casual gaming fans and roots by offering little in the way of explanations or tutorials and jacking up the difficulty level.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

After moving houses just a few short days ago, and with no internet to speak of, I was settling down to a nice relaxing week away from the daily buzz of the net to get some quality time with Beijing 2008, which Sega kindly sent me to review. However, it appears Microsoft had other plans. Read on for my full review of System Error – E 74.

Unlike the highly popular and successful Red Ring of Death or its sequel, Disc Read Error, System Error – E 74 (SEE74) is a surprisingly hard title to get hold of. To get yourself a copy, you need to have an older model Xbox 360 (1 or 2 weeks old should do) as well as a game you want to play. In my case, my review copy of Beijing 2008 and my Xbox Premium.

Simply insert the game you want to play into your Xbox and, with a bit of luck, nothing will happen and you get a single flashing red light and an error message. If this happens, congratulations, you’re now playing SEE74.

The story crafted into SEE74 is one of mystery, sadness and dragons. An epic tale of a system error gone too far. Left along in an uncaring console to try to find itself in the ever changing and patching world. 74 began as just an idle error code, alone for months in hibernation as the console world changed around it.

The game starts as 74 is awoken by an unknown force. With nothing more than its message written in several languages, it is the player’s job to help 74 track down its fellow errors and solve the mystery of why it was awoken and why it was chosen over the others.

With several surprising plot twists and an ending sure to make even the toughest gamer well up, the story really is one of the finest examples of the power of video games as a story telling medium to date.

Graphically, SEE74 is a little on the disappointing side. Using simple text and only a few different fonts, the designers really did limit themselves. Displaying the message “System Error. Contact Xbox Customer Support” in 11 languages feels very standard for this generation and leaves a lot to be desired. The hardware accompaniment of a single, flashing red light is nice a touch and clearly a subtle reference to SEE74’s inspiration, RROD.

In-game soundtrack is again on the poor side. The loud internal fans do a good job of reminding the user where they are, but a little more would have been appreciated.

The gameplay feels very similar to RROD, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The game takes the classic “Ring customer support, give all your details, turn it off, turn it on, repeat”. However, there are a few differences experiences players will defiantly pick up on. Once you get to the later levels of customer support for example, it becomes apparent that your warranty will not cover 74 and you will have to pay to get it fixed.

The Customer Support AI is solid, if a little buggy from time to time leading to occasional frustration. You will also be asked for a lot of information which will cause you to have to switch between your phone and your inventory several times. The interface here could use a little more polish, but remains practical and doesn’t detract from your game

The story of little 74 is stunning and truly the games strongest point, however you will feel a little let down that the presentation is not up to the same level. The bugs with the AI are noticeable but bearable and although frustrating, won’t detract from the overall experience of the game.

With that in mind I would have to recommend this game as a rent, even with its top notch story, you probably won’t want to play it more than once.

After a solid two weeks with Dark Sector, I feel fully qualified to make this statement with absolute certainty: I played Dark Sector. That’s honestly as objective as I can be, but if you want to know my true feelings of the game, please continue.

For anyone not in the know and/or recovering coma patients, let me explain what Dark Sector is. Dark Sector is a third-person shooter/body part dismemberment simulator (except in Australia, where you instead throw rainbows at people who react with sprays of chocolate and hugs). Sounds awesome, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. I’ll explain…

Let me first start by saying that Dark Sector is by no means a bad game. That being said, let me go over the things I didn’t like about it.

First and foremost, it doesn’t feel right. That’s a highly subjective thing to say and something a good many people will disagree with, but I’m sure many people will completely agree with me on this as well. Hayden Tenno, your avatar in the game, feels sluggish and slightly unresponsive at times. Then at other times, he does exactly what I’m trying to make him do. This inconsistency baffles me, and while it isn’t a design flaw, there are plenty of those as well.

My biggest peeve is that I have to look straight down to smash open an ammo box at my feet, which results in me kicking it instead of doing my usual glaive-swinging melee move. Of course I can just throw my glaive at the box, or even shoot the box (I’m a genius, I know), but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to stare straight down if I want to kick it.

In the grand scheme of things, these control issues are relatively minor. It still says something about the polish of the game in that it could have used perhaps a bit more of it. There are, however, other control issues that a lot of reviewers seem to have a problem with.

A lot of people complained about the cover system, which I totally disagree with. Compared to Gears of War, Dark Sector’s cover system is superior, though both games are inferior to Rainbow Six Vegas. Like Gears of War, Dark Sector’s running and covering mechanic both work with the same button. In Gears of War, sprinting into a wall made you press against it and take cover — Dark Sector requires that you push the button again to take cover.

While all the whiny kids out there will complain about the extra work involved in hitting the cover button again (the horror!), Dark Sector’s system prevents you from sticking to walls that you are intending to run past. This is a problem that frequently pissed me off in Gears multiplayer (among other things — I’m looking at you, mister shotgun), and has lead to me never wanting to play GOW multiplayer ever again (which Chad can attest to).

Speaking of multiplayer, Dark Sector’s multiplayer is a bit of a letdown. You basically have a choice between VIP and Team VIP. Infection (VIP) has one character as a tricked-out Hayden while the rest of the fools play as sorry-ass hazmat soldiers. The entire point is to kill Hayden, in which case the round ends and you become Hayden. This means that while you are a hazmat soldier, you have only one enemy, and instead of working with the other hazmat players to bring Hayden down as intended, you are competing to get the kill shot. You are basically encouraged to kill-steal.

Epidemic is the same thing except you have two teams, each with one Hayden, and the point is to kill the Hayden on the other team. This mode is highly preferred over Infection, but it still begs the question: Why is there no deathmatch mode where all characters are beefed-up bad-asses?

Another letdown is the story. I don’t mean to say the story is bad, but it really is hard to spot the story enough to tell whether or not it’s bad. There is apparently a lot of history prior to the game’s opening, a history that isn’t fully explained. A comic book that was supplied to me by D3 does give a brief history lesson on Lasria and the unexplained outbreak of the infection, but Hayden remains a mystery.

Finally, the icing on the cake is that the book is only 7 pages with 2 additional pages for the credits (although it’s in 3 languages, so it’s actually 25 pages total). Not counting the table of contents, end user license agreement, and customer support information, the actual instruction booklet is a measly 3 pages. Three pages! Maybe I’m alone in this, but I like sweaty, meaty manuals with big muscles, not these pamphlets we get nowadays — it just feels cheap.

Now that I’ve said all that, you’re probably thinking that I didn’t much enjoy the game. Well, you’re wrong. Despite its shortcomings, Dark Sector is actually a pretty good ride. It is basically the equivalent of a Michael Bay flick — lots of action and explosions with little or no story. Dark Sector’s explosions are mainly of the arterial kind, but the action keeps you interested despite the fact that there is little context to it.

There were so many jokes I thought of for this picture that I couldn’t decide on one…
I compromised by making no joke at all.

The biggest draw would obviously have to be the glaive. Soon after Hayden becomes infected, he gets attacked by a guard and defends himself by birthing a giant ninja star from his hand, slicing his assailant’s chest, and then decapitating the poor motherfucker that walks in a second later. Awesome…

You soon learn the ability to pick up items with your glaive, and eventually you can steer your glaive after throwing it and cut off some limbs in slow-motion. This is one area where the PS3 version had a slight bit of extra cool in that you could use the tilt-sensing to steer the glaive, much like in Heavenly Sword. I personally found the analog stick to be more accurate, though, but that’s just me. I also find the 360 controller more comfortable in general since I’m not 12, nor do I have the misfortune of having little girly hands… but again, that’s just me.

The glaive is also used for a majority of your finishing moves. Wear down an enemy enough and they glow red, meaning you can finish them with a melee attack. These finishers consist of anything between gutting your foe to chopping off his arm or leg. Sneaking up behind enemies also nets you a one-hit kill, and is especially effective in multiplayer.

I also liked the art direction of the game (though I liked the sci-fi Hayden of the early version better), and the graphics themselves are pretty stellar. You may be fooled into thinking this is the Unreal Engine, but it’s not, and it actually runs much smoother. There is no graphical pop-in like in Gears or Mass Effect, and the load times throughout the game are generally only a few seconds.

I also liked how the game starts in black and white and pulses into color when you get infected. The controls after waking up are pretty neat as you stumble around all drunk-like. Clever girl…

Overall, Dark Sector is a good-not-great little game. It was entertaining, like a videogame is supposed to be, but it’s not going to win any awards or hold any special place in history (other than “first next-gen game” even though it came out after so many other next-gen games). If you’ve got a thing for decapitations, however, this game is for you — Dark Sector gives you more flying head than Paris Hilton on an airplane.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

If you’re wondering whether or not you should pick up God of War: Chains of Olympus for the Playstation Portable, ask yourself these simple questions:

1. Did you play either of the first two God of War games?
2. Did you enjoy them?

If you answered “yes” to both these questions, go out and get yourself a copy of Kratos’s latest adventure. Go on! The internet will still be here when you get back. For those uninitiated into the world of hacking, slashing, gouging, piercing and general fatal maiming, hit the jump for more.

I was concerned about how well the game would translate from the Playstation 2 to the PSP, but have no fear. The game isn’t a port, but a draught of awesome, wrought from the same essence of excellence that made the first two games so unforgettable.

All the familiar parts are there, albiet in a miniturized form, which is both good and bad. Good, because if you take awesome and condense it, it should still be awesome. Bad, because there must be some sort of God of War playbook which the makers copy meticulously. But we’ll get to that.

Perfect for the sadist in you.

The fast-paced, savage combat– the backbone of the series’ success — returns in fine form for another round. And, in a stroke of genius, the enemy’s weapons light up before attacking, which is a huge help when trying to figure out when to block and when to roll on the small screen. It doesn’t feel cheap – only helpful. You still have to get out of the way of that giant yak’s ten-foot sword yourself.

A few control tweaks have been made to make the game work on the PSP, such as rolling requiring use of both shoulder buttons and the analog stick, but adjusting to these minor differences shouldn’t take more than the first level.

The timed button presses are back, keeping players on their toes and the action blood pumping. However, executing analog button prompts requires some aggressive thumb work, and I’d still like to be able to watch the kill animations without having to look out for buttons, especially on boss fights. Maybe in God of War III.

Speaking of boss fights, the trend to include an absurd number of unique and badass bosses that started in God of War II has fallen a little. The list of Greek legends for Kratos to kill must be getting short. It seems that they couldn’t pack quite as much ancient Greek ass-kickery into the PSP version, but the bosses that do show up are not slouches, and will require some serious finger dexterity to dispatch.

Kratos doesn’t need as many Gorgon Eyes or Phoenix Feathers to upgrade his health this time around (plus they’re ridiculously easy to find) and there are fewer abilities to gain along the way, meaning players need less experience to max out all the elite skills. But don’t think Kratos can sit back and let it all come to him either.

The game only takes about 5-6 hours to complete, depending on personal play style and difficulty level. It’s certainly not a very sizable game, but then the PSP isn’t exactly big either. So it works.

The first two God of Wars managed to bring breathtaking visuals and killer action together like some kind of homemade napalm that just brightens up your day. The PSP obviously doesn’t have the system resources to accomplish what God of War II did, but for a PSP game the environments are plenty impressive.

Only once or twice while I was playing did I notice the graphics and think, “Oh yea. PSP.” Now, this may seem odd, but playing Chains of Olympus essentially felt like playing on a tiny PS2, and its not hard to see that the developers really know how to work the hardware.

All the staple ingredients are in the mix, so why does this God of War have a faint taste of stale? Because Chains of Olympus doesn’t offer anything new. For any veteran of the series, every puzzle will be easy, every enemy’s attack pattern won’t take long to figure out, and every treasure will be in plain sight.

The two major differences in Chains of Olympus are the plot and the secondary weapon. Yes, weapon. You only get one. And this is one of the points where this game actually outshines previous iterations. In God of War II the three secondary weapons never compared to the Blades of Chaos in usefulness or fun, and thus never saw much use in battle.

The Gauntlet of Zues, Chains of Olympus’ secondary weapon, is a smashing good time. It allows Kratos to introduce a giant godly fist into opponents’ faces – a love tap that sends baddies careening across the screen in a flash of blue light and a crunch of bone. Beautiful.

It’s the most satisfying (and useful, pouring on thick helpings of whupass) weapon in the game’s history aside from the standard blades. Here’s hoping it makes another appearance in God of War III.

The plot plays out pretty much the same as in Kratos’s other adventures, but with a twist. It’s a prequel, setting up the events that lead to Kratos’s decision to kill the Gods rather than serve them. Of course, another member of the Pantheon dies in the end, but I won’t spoil who.

The story also ties in neatly with God of War II for those who are uber nerds like me and felt they were missing something in the little chat Kratos has with Atlas in the underworld. Well, never fear. Questions shall be answered.

God of War: Chains of Olympus is the perfect little appetizer to whet one’s appetite for the upcoming God of War III on the Playstation 3. It takes all the best parts of the series and brings them together into a miniature, portable version.

Like a cup of soup to go, except instead of broth and vegetables you get blood, mayhem, upgradeable weapons and killer… well, kill sequences. It’s Cream of Kratos soup, and it always goes down smooth.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

If you felt a little cheated by the cliffhanger ending of the original Rainbow Six Vegas, you may be surprised, frustrated perhaps, to find out that Vegas 2 doesn’t pick up immediately where the previous game left off. In fact, it’s set before, during, and after the events of the first game.

The opening level acts as a game-setting prologue, taking place five years before the rest of the story. You play as a new character known simply as “Bishop” who can be customised to your liking. This includes setting up your own armour, clothes and camouflage as well as deciding on whether you want to play as a male or a female.

Anyone familiar with Vegas 1 will recognize this from the multiplayer mode, and essentially it’s the same system, only now you use the same character both online and off. It’s only one of a bevy of features new to the game, ranging from a re-worked cooperative mode to a handy new sprint mechanic.

Anyone who hasn’t played Vegas 1, or tactical shooters in general, may find the game initially pretty tough. After the opening level the difficulty quickly increases to the point where you feel death is an ever-present possibility.

While this adds to the intensity of the game, and forces you to play a little more conservatively, even in comparison to other tactical shooters, it does seem as though the developers have created the game with experienced Vegas players in mind. Yet after a few levels spent adjusting to the difficulty the game is very playable, and in fact the increased difficulty adds to the drama and intensity of the whole package.

As mentioned above a new sprint function has been included in the game. While this sounds like a minor upgrade it actually has a real impact on the game play. In comparison to the original the game now feels a whole lot quicker, as the time spent traveling around the maps is greatly reduced. Used correctly, sprinting can be a lifesaver when diving from one piece of cover to another, or putting distance between yourself and the enemy so you can reload your weapon.

For every second gained through sprinting however, there’s at least a second lost due to the stupidity of your A.I. teammates. Jung and Michael return from the first game and they are somewhat of a mixed blessing. They are devastatingly effective in combat and can clear most rooms without you setting so much as a foot in the doorway.

But, when moving across areas devoid of enemies they quickly turn from killing machines to a major hindrance. If you don’t micromanage their every move they all too easily become stuck in small rooms or between objects that they can seemingly walk right by, such as parked cars. I also experienced a few issues with them not responding to my commands to launch grenades into rooms full of enemies. It took five or six repeated attempts to get them to react at all, with my own character dying in process.

Graphically I found it incredibly difficult to notice any big improvements over Vegas 1. Some textures on walls and floors look impressive, and the way blood splatters from enemies is extremely satisfying, but generally the graphics look dated and are somewhat repetitive. Call of Duty 4 raised the bar of expectation for modern day shooters and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 doesn’t come anywhere near it.

On the other hand, the sound design throughout the game is excellent and does a far better job of drawing you into the game than the visuals do. Also, the music is remarkably varied, ranging from heavy electronic beats to dramatic intense classical pieces. As in the movies of Stanley Kubrick, there is just something so appealing about the juxtaposition of killing bad guys while listening to classical music.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 introduces a new experience system called A.C.E.S. (Advanced Combat Enhancement Specialization). Essentially this breaks down the type of experience you can acquire into three categories, based on the method used to take out your opponents. Marksman points are awarded for accuracy and range, CQB points for short range kills and use of gadgets (such as grenades), and assault points are gained for blasting enemies through cover.

As you gain experience in each category you will unlock new weapons specific to each. For example, levelling up your marksman rank will earn you new sniper and assault rifles, perfect for those long-range shots. While the system generally works well enough, it’s impossible to earn experience points in two sections for a single kill.

This means that if you shoot someone at close range with a headshot, you cannot earn both marksman points (for the headshot) and CQB points (for close range) at one time. Instead you will earn just one of these, chosen seemingly at random by the game. The true innovation with this system however, is that it encapsulates both the single and multiplayer elements of the game. This means the weapons and attire unlocked in single player are immediately available in the multiplayer, and vice-versa.

Of course Rainbow Six wouldn’t be the success it is today if it wasn’t for the strength of its multiplayer modes. Co-op play returns to the story mode, but not without it’s problems. While the co-op story now allows players to play through the entire campaign, including all the cut scenes and conversations, it only supports two players as opposed to the four-player support in the original Rainbow Six Vegas.

This seems like a step in the wrong direction as your team is now made up of to players the two A.I. characters that accompany you in the single player story. Only the host can control these two, which is extremely frustrating if the host is killed, as there is no one to give them commands. It would seem logical that in this situation the second player would be able to give orders to your team mates, this is not possible however, so they merely wait until the host has respawned.

Co-op terrorist hunt makes a welcome return with full four-player support. Even compared with the steeper difficulty of the story mode, the enemy A.I. in terrorist hunt can be brutal to the point where even thinking about playing on your own is ridiculous.

As for the adversarial multiplayer modes, there are now five match types to choose from, all supporting up to sixteen players. Joining Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are Team Leader, Total Conquest, and the self-explanatory Attack and Defend.

Team Leader is a squad-based game in which one member of each team is designated the leader. The objective is for each team to successfully get their leader to an extraction point. Sounds easy enough, right? The twist is that if your leader is killed your team can no longer respawn.

This means the leader normally takes a back seat to the action while your team either clears a path, or hunts down the opposing leader, giving your squad a distinct advantage. Victory can also be achieved by eliminating the opposition completely.

Total Conquest involves two teams struggling over three controls points spread across the map. Once a single team has control of all three points they must hold them for a set amount of time to achieve victory. As always the multiplayer modes in Rainbow Six is what is going to keep you coming back for more, and with thirteen maps there’s plenty to keep you occupied.

One last point to make on the multiplayer is that after every ranked match the game dumps you all the way out to the main menu. This is due to the fact that you cannot play ranked matches against the same group of players twice in a row, to prevent cheating. This is reasonable, but what is frustrating is that it would have made a lot more sense to put you back at the match selection menu rather than the title screen. A small gripe I know, but an annoying one.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a fantastic game let down by the fact that it takes too few risks; it feels all too similar to the original game. The vast amount of content on offer means it’s a game with a huge amount of replay value, and the new multiplayer modes spice up an already established and much-loved part of the game.

Fans of the original Rainbow Six Vegas, and tactical shooters in general, will probably be able to look past its flaws and soak up its many strengths. Conversely, if you aren’t familiar with the previous game you may find it a little tough going early on, and even wonder what all the hype is about. In essence, this game is total fan service.

In order to meet the expectations of newcomers and hardcore devils alike, the first next-generation Devil May Cry had a lot to live up to. It would be wrong to reform for the casual audience, but Capcom have made some successful changes to make it more accessible to the less proficient gamer.

In the end Devil May Cry 4 brings the series to more gamers than ever before, using perfect artistry and impressive graphics to create the canvas for an addictive and challenging experience that is only marred by some unfortunate flaws.

Introducing a new character is always difficult for a series, especially when this character takes centre stage in the narrative and game design. Capcom have pulled it off with Nero. Though his connections with the Devil May Cry universe are a bit slim, his gameplay mechanics are a joy to pick up and play. Yielding a bit fat sword, a pistol and a demonic arm, he doesn’t need to cycle through weapons or play styles like Dante. His play style is much more streamlined, but lacking it is not. Nero’s mechanics may make it easier to jump in and button mash, but to achieve stylish heights you’re still going to have to hone your skills.

As per usual Devil May Cry has a Gauge measuring how Stylishly you dispatch enemies. Amazingly the Style gauge starts at D and goes all the way up to Triple SSS’s; a feat you’re not going to accomplish unless you’re a very talented gamer with a deep knowledge of the gaming mechanics. To reach these heights, you’ll not only have to learn combos, you’ll have to master Nero’s intricacies.

Firstly, Nero’s Devil Arm (of underdeveloped origin) is extremely useful and essential to his gameplay. It gives you the ability to snatch enemies from a distance whether in the air or on the ground, allowing you to continue your combo spree. A secondary devil arm function is the Buster, a move that varies between enemies, such as a slam-dunk on Scarecrows, a spinning tail throw on Frosts, and empowering boss finishers.

It is in mastering Nero’s devil arm that will see you reaching SSS status, since it helps you to continue your contact with enemies in large environments, extend your time in the air, and enable you to cancel other combos, all helping you to maintain your style rather than letting it crash and burn through combo repetition.

Nero’s Devil Bringer is not a disability

The most hardcore aspect of Nero’s fighting mechanics is instant revving his Sword, or “Exceeding”. Kitted out with a motorcycle throttle, Nero’s sword has the ability to increase the power of his slashes to great and spectacular effect. You can charge up the sword by continuously tapping L2/Left Trigger until the gauge fills up to a total of three lanterns, which can be achieved fairly quickly if if you get the rhythm right. However, doing so is largely useless since you cannot perform any other moves while you are revving.

The maximum utilisation of the throttle is probably the most difficult aspect of Nero’s combat, but is sadly the only way you’re going to achieve immense style heights. The secret is instantly charging your sword by tapping the rev button at a very precise frame during an attack, which when mastered, can increase the power of every move and make Nero a God amongst demons.

Playing as Nero thus has considerable depth for hardcore players, and newcomers will enjoy his gameplay without too much difficulty on Human mode, as opposed to Devil Hunter. Plus, if you’re struggling, Devil may Cry 4 will take pity on you and reduce the difficulty; enemies will be less active and you’ll take less damage. In this regard, Capcom has succeeded in making their 20 level epic accessible to the masses.

Stepping into this next generation Sparda-influenced universe sees you treated to action packed cutscenes brimming with attitude, and a storyline that’s more about style than substance. Set in and around a town called Fortuna, where its people worship the demon knight Sparda, after watching Dante murder the leader of The Order that governs the land, Nero goes on a mission of revenge, encountering beasts and demons on the way.

Charged with moments of great betrayal, Nero’s mission turns into one of passion as he tries to save his love interest Kyrie, and eventually Fortuna itself. Although the plot is slim and Dante’s involvement is distant, it’s slick presentation is sufficient enough to motivate you to reach the next massive battle.

And you won’t only be stepping into this world as Nero, you’ll also get to strut yourself as Dante, in a switch that might just take your fingers by surprise. It’s going to take you some time to adjust yourself to Dante’s play style, accidentally switching weapons when you try to rev his attacks. But don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it, and what great and exciting talents Dante has.

Gilgamesh makes you gleam with delight

Retaining the four fighting styles from DMC3 (Trickster, Royal Guard, Sword Master and Gun Slinger), DMC4 takes Dante a step further by allowing you to change styles on the fly. Dante will also earn a number of weapons throughout his missions; from the powerful Gilgamesh, to the morphing Pandora – all of which will take your battles to another level of creativity that puts Nero to shame.

However, Dante’s involvement in the game may disappoint. His levels take you back through Nero’s areas, even subjecting you to the same bosses: bosses that don’t feel as epic without Nero’s finishing Buster move. And even though the layout and enemies of these levels are altered, there just aren’t enough surprises to make it feel entirely fresh. We can only hope that Dante gets stuck into the next Devil May Cry, because he still has the most exciting play mechanics to be found in this genre.

Devil May Cry 4 puts its competitors to shame in the amount of content it provides – the replayability is immense. The game has six difficulty levels in all, yes six, which are only fully unlocked after you’ve completed the game six times. Once you’ve fallen in love with the gaming mechanics, backtracking will not concern you, since it’s now all about getting the highest score. Expect to break some controllers, since the higher difficulties won’t take pity on you – you might never be the same again.

Combine the difficulty levels with an integrated combo/ability upgrade system, hidden challenges, and the survival mode Bloody Palace; you’ll be coming back to Devil May Cry 4 for a very long time, especially when you can show off your talents via the online leader board. Devil May Cry 4 is one of those rare games where you’ll feel richer after you’ve purchased it.

Frosts aren’t a match for Nero’s buster!

Graphically Devil may Cry 4 isn’t the console defining game it might have been, nor is it a weakling. The character models are impressively rendered, the environments are vast and clean, and the bosses are a sight to behold. Textures, lighting and 60fps framerate sufficiently complement the beautiful and varied art of the game: for example running towards the stark white erection of Fortuna tower is breathtaking (O.K that sounded much better in my head).

If there is to be one graphical complaint it has to be the flickery, low-resolution shadows. Capcom might have thought they could get away with low-res shadows being sunlight glimmering through the trees, but with other games achieving sharp shadow maps in jungle environments, it really is an unnecessary distraction.

Devil May Cry 4 is thus the sequel everybody was hoping for, and opens the series up to whole bunch of new gamers. Apart from the almost unforgivable backtracking and the limited presence of Dante, there are still some last-gen shockers that let the game down.

Firstly, the camera is stuck in the past. Capcom do try to give you cinematic angles and the best possible view, but there are some moments where the view switches abruptly, sending you in the wrong direction. Enemies can be hidden behind the camera and at worst you might be stuck on a “camera switch location”; jumping between views as you try your best to dispatch enemies. With slower transitions and a camera less reliant on preprogrammed player location spots, one of Devil May Cry’s annoyances could be improved.

Nero and Dante do not open doors, but they do encounter a hell of a lot of them. Even if they are too badass to open them, subjecting the player to a disorientating blurred transition only acts to take you out of the experience. Why can’t they break them down or just…open them? You might say the transitions are there to cover up loading between areas, but the transition animation is so quick that a “Now Loading…” screen can still occur afterwards – this an old fashioned trick that needs to die.

Loading is another aspect that needs work, and even though Capcom have tried to reduce it as much as possible, other games are doing much better without making you install 5GB’s of data on the Playstation 3.

More Dante please!

Finally, it’s the mission structure that needs to be updated. Being presented with a mission screen at the beginning and end of every level is just too much to endure. All you want to do is sit down and play, enjoy the story, and not be stopped in your tracks at every step of the way. Hardcore players might welcome this disjointed nature, who will be upgrading their moveset at the end of every level, but it shouldn’t be compulsory.

The failure of this mission structure is even more apparent when you try to carry on where you left off. Instead of clicking on a “Continue” button to jump straight back into your last position, you must enter a “Mission Select” menu – obviously set up for those who are aiming for score highs. And note, manually saving during a level does not save your position, but only your orbs and style points – this has led some people to leave their consoles on for hours on end just so they don’t lose their position in the game: no joke. And lets face it, on the harder difficulty levels, you won’t want to lose your progress when you take breaks for fear of your fingers falling off (say that fast three times!)

These final criticisms show that Devil May Cry 4 is very much its father’s son. It inherits all the good traits, but also the bad – bad that might have been forgiven before the release of the current generation of consoles; now we have higher standards for how a title should be presented.

Then again, Devil May Cry 4 still manages to trump the majority of single-player action games – it’s a long game sporting vast and enriching content. Whichever console you buy this beauty for, Capcom’s latest offering might just be your most valuable purchase of 2008.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

To coincide with the European release of Unreal Tournament III, I gave it a spin to find out whether it’s worth your cash. I’m a hardcore console gamer– always was, and always will be. So when Midway announced that Unreal Tournament III was going multi-platform instead of staying PC exclusive, I was one happy camper.

I always thought of Unreal Tournament as one of those games that stayed exclusive to a platform just because of its evolution on the PC, or maybe because the developers just couldn’t see that type of fast-paced FPS played with a joypad. If you’re new to the series like me, some things will be apparent the first time you pick up a controller. The first thing you will have to get used to is the controls, since they are not mapped very well to the Sixaxis, and some buttons have no purpose, or are just duplicates.

The second thing I noticed is that the single player mode is extremely dull. There are six teams: Ronin, Thundercrash, Krall, Liandri, Iron Gaurd and the Black Legion. You play as a Reaper from team Ronin, and as the title suggests, all teams are competing in Unreal Tournament for the championship title.

Before each mission you are given a briefing, and also the illusion that there is actually an objective for what you are doing, but really you’re just playing “kill ‘em all”. Since Epic and the Unreal Engine were involved, I was expecting a cinematic experience with an intense story, massive explosions, and body parts flying around the screen.

In reality, you’re paired up with dumb AI and equally dumb opponents. To be honest, it’s like a dumbed-down version of the online play. The story is also as thin as rice paper, and while there are some nice cut-scenes to get you pumped up before each round, when you begin playing it is just a repetitive letdown.

There are no levels, just maps. The same maps in single player are used online as well, and if you are ever bored enough to complete the single player, you won’t find anything new online (unless you’re playing a user created map).

The single player may be a letdown in nearly every department except one, and that’s visually. This is where Epic really shows how they can work their magic with Unreal Engine. Everything has a unique look, whether it’s a shiny wall dripping slime or your favourite gun charging up with bio waste, it’s all a pleasure to the eyes.

Each team has a different look and there’s no surprise that Unreal Engine compliments them all. Every colour and texture has been looked after in this game, and visually it is one of the more impressive-looking games on the market today.

Once you grow bored of the Campaign mode, the online mode is definitely worth the money you paid for this game. Before I went online, I had a look around the options menu and found a nice little feature that enabled me to install the game on my HDD and cut out all the loading times. This was a great help and emphasized what Mark Rein was saying about how he wanted all the perks of the PC version left intact on the console version.

I’ve always heard that Unreal Tournament is a series with online play that is hard to rival, and once I selected online multiplayer the fun times started to roll. When you begin, you may select and customize your character, then jump straight into the servers.

Be careful, though, because all of the perks of the PC come with the bad. If you jump into any game near full capacity, you’re 99% sure to find lag. Not a little lag, but a full-blown 10 second delay, where you won’t know who you killed or who killed you.

In other words, it’s unplayable. I learned this the hard way, but soon found that the un-ranked games are less full and a good game can always be found there.

Another PC perk, and the best of them all, are the mods. These are user generated content for the game itself, and just like on the PC it’s all free with no strings attached. Mods can come in any shape or form, such as weapons, maps, or new perks. They are not limited to what the developer can think of, but what the community wants.

I got around to installing one mod and it’s as easy as pie. All you need is a memory stick and two minutes of your time. If you can’t be bothered to do it, that’s no problem either– if you join a game using mods you will automatically download them to keep.

And some mods can really elevate the game to another level, with new third person camera angles (an over the shoulder Gears of War look) and new game modes – some of which you wish were in the game from the outset.

There is also the use of keyboard and mouse, if you wish to call that a mod. It’s just plug-and-play, but after using it I still prefer the Sixaxis, mainly because it’s not very practical stretching the USB cables and trying to get comfy in the couch. I didn’t want to sit directly in front of my 32” LCD and burn my eyes out of their sockets, but for some players, keyboard and mouse support is a godsend, especially if you buy yourself a wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

So far my online experiences have been nothing but great, but I have noticed a few things as I’ve continued playing. Apart from the lag in ranked games, which can make the game unplayable, there is as yet no voice chat. This can be a killer to anyone starting a clan or just looking to find online friends to play regularly with. A ranking system would be a god send as well.

A combination of great online play and a ranking system kept me coming back again and again in Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament III has the online play factor but a ranking system would really help with the whole “I need to get just one more rank” factor of the game.

Unleashing the game on consoles for the first time meant UT3 had two roads it could go down. It could change completely for new fans and adapt to the console life, or stick to its roots and keep all the older fans while making some new ones.

So does Unreal Tournament III make the cut? Yes, since the fact that this game has so much going for it in the multiplayer department makes it easy to overlook the lag and poor single campaign, which in all honesty could have been dropped. I played this game religiously online and loved the visuals. It also shows what consoles can do if the developers put their minds to it, with lots of mods and no load times. Forget the campaign mode and get online!

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

It would be predictable for this review to start with, “The Playstation 3 needs some killer A-class games to justify its price tag, and Uncharted is it.”. But I won’t (even though I ironically just did start with that…hmm), because it simply isn’t true. No one game should justify the purchase of a console, but Uncharted is a AAA title and it should tempt you to buy a PS3. Naughty Dog’s first PS3 game is the definition of epic, and will make you say “wow” out loud more often than a pubescent teenager in a strip club.

The Naughty Dog team is known as one of the most technically proficient developers in the industry, pushing each of Sony’s systems to it’s limits. From Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation to Jak on the Playstation 2, Naughty Dog have always been at the top of their game. However, it is only with the arrival of the Playstation 3 that they felt they could fulfill their desire to create believable human characters in a realistic setting.

Through this new technology, Uncharted promised to bring a human intensity and realism never seen before in a video game. And though some may insult the game with “Dude Raider” catch phrases, I’d say it just about delivers on its promise.

Uncharted tells a compelling story of an ordinary man (not a buffed up, heavily armoured blokey bloke that is so common in games these days) in extraordinary circumstances, that’s not only set in the jungle, but in a pre-Incan temple, derelict U-boat, abandoned Spanish colony, and more.

The lead, Nathan Drake, believes he’s the descendant of Sir Francis Drake and in search for proof, things go awry. In discovering a 400-year old clue in Sir Francis Drake’s coffin, Nathan finds himself on a hunt for a fabled treasure, but instead ends up stranded on an island hunted by mercenaries. Outnumbered and out-gunned, Drake and his companions must fight to survive as they begin to unravel the terrible secrets hidden on the Island.

Sounds like a pretty great blockbuster movie plot, doesn’t it? It also sounds slightly generic, but the way the story is delivered in cutscenes and during gameplay is spectacular. Heavenly Sword started to perfect the way a story should be told in a game, with very expressive, life-like characters, but although the facial animation and performances were stellar in that game, the delivery in Uncharted is even more immersive.

Here, the cutscenes aren’t a side spectacle from the game, they are more embedded into the gameplay experience. Much of the story is told while you’re in the game, since you are accompanied by Elena and Sully who provide incidental chatter as you traverse (with accompanying facial animation), smoothing off the transition from cutscene to gameplay.

With characters so endearing that deliver witty one liners (“This is like looking for a bride in a brothel”), a sound track to rival the movies, and a story that twists and turns like the best of plots, this game is going to drag you through at a hell of a pace. And trust me, you won’t be kicking and screaming.

While we’re on the subject of the game’s pacing, lets just say that Naughty Dog’s age and expertise shows here. It might be a bit over the top to say that Uncharted is the best paced game you’ll play this year, but Uncharted is the best paced game you’ll have played this year. Starting the game, the narrative and gameplay build up is quite gradual, leading you through the story with platforming and simple puzzles, but then things pick up. From here on in, lengthy and exciting gunfights are built up to a crescendo and then reigned back by rest periods of exploration, cutscene, or a simple puzzle.

Plus, when you think things are starting to get a bit similar, Naughty Dog will throw you into a completely different environment, or into one of the vehicle sections in the game. The level design here is second to none. Each environment is so well designed and varied that most developers would be happy to use just one of them for their whole game, and as you get to the latter part of the game you may be able to think of some games that do indeed take this design philosophy (Gea…Resi… ok, no names).

But Naughty Dog has created such a wide variety of environments, from jungles, to forts, underground caverns, to… well we’ll keep that a secret – you’ll want to shoot through them just as much as sit back and marvel at them as Drake places his hands on his hips (I looked for a picture of Drake with his hands on his hips, but no can do, so this will have to suffice).

As for the graphics, let’s get some minor criticisms out of the way first. The framerate is generally very stable, and even surprisingly so when other games on the market struggle to keep up with lesser graphics, but there are a few moments of tearing. Now, my advice to you is to play the game in its intended 720p resolution, rather than the later added 1080i (to aid those with televisions that don’t support 720p), to make these moments of tearing few and far between.

Second, at the beginning of a couple of the levels there is some texture pop-in. This means the high-resolution textures haven’t loaded onto the objects yet, and “pop” onto them. I shall now tell you why this doesn’t really matter. It could be criticized as something that takes you out of the game, but since the game’s environments are so detailed and compelling, they usher you back in oh so very quickly, making you forget it ever happened.

Plus, there is no loading in the game. Zero loading, nothing at all after the initial load. Want to skip a cutscene and carry on playing? You’ll be put right back into the game environment. Keep on dying? Well you’ll respawn at a handy automatic save point, immediately. So if we have to suffer a little bit of texture pop on a couple of the many levels, then so be it. I’ve seen worse.

Moreover, the textures in the game are a step up for consoles. Every surface is painted with a collection of distinct textures, meaning a wall not only has a brick texture, it has a dry moss texture, a shiny painted surface, sections broken off revealing the cement below, and it’ll look wet if it’s by water. The wet effect is very convincing for the game’s visual style. This layering has in a sense been done before, but not to this extreme, or with such a strong artistic vision.

You see, before Uncharted most textures would reveal a repeated pattern when you get up close, making all textures very similar and even pixelated when you got closer. But Naughty Dog went to the trouble of painting all their textures by hand (usually textures are photographic based) creating as many as possible so they could layer them on top of one another and make every section look unique. Oh and a common cop-out by developers is to have low-resolution ground textures, but not here, they are just as good as the rest.

Uncharted has great textures. So what? Well Gears of War is lauded as a graphical show piece mainly due to both its artistic vision and its high resolution textures. Uncharted, however, trumps Gears of War, for the sheer amount of unique texture surfaces, even when in similar dark sections.

Uncharted also has the best graphics you’ve ever seen on consoles for many other reasons. Your HDTVs are going to be flooded with water– the best looking and moving water you’ve ever seen. Naughty Dog put a hell of a lot of effort into this, and it shows. The reflections and the movement of the water when Nathan is swimming in it makes you want to lick your television, though that’s because of Nathan and not the water (Ooh, Saucy).

Oh, and Nathan gets wet quite realistically, with only the parts of him that touch water getting wet. It must be said though that the water splashes don’t hold up as well as the water itself, looking more like 2d sprite effects, something which Naughty Dog should tackle in their next game.

What helps make the water and everything look so good though is the lighting. Watching the reds and oranges of a sunset glint on the water and merge into the reflections of the green jungle is a triumph of modern graphics engines. The lighting continues to impress in the jungle, filtering through the many leaves and foliage, casting shadows on the forest floor.

Shadows that are crisp like potato chips, unlike other games that have jaggy or flickering shadows. And since the jungle is living and breathing, the plants and trees sway in the wind and cast moving shadows over the ground and Nathan himself. All this is a marvel, and continues to impress even in the tombs, where torches and flames create ominous shadows over ancient carvings.

When we look to Nathan Drake we can see an “every man” character, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt that gets dirtier throughout the game. His clothes wrinkle dynamically to his movement and heavy breathing, and his face animates realistically during combat, from fear to anger.

What makes him an every man? Some might say that if Drake can scale walls, wield an AK-47 and kill pirates with relative ease, that he can’t really be an every man? However, the description seems to influence his character design, his dialog, but mostly his movements, which see him stumbling during platforming and combat.

Naughty Dog’s animation system really comes up trumps here, with Nate changing from state to state fluidly. Drake has over 3500 animations that really bring him to life and make sure you seldom see him perform the same action more than once. For example, throughout the game you’ll be taking cover, which will never induce deja vu because Drake has a multitude of cover positions.

What makes the animations even more impressive is that Naughty Dog can layer animations on top of one another. This means that when Drake is running he can dodge bullets, jump over obstacles, reload and show fear on his face all in one smooth movement. It’s very satisfying and convincing during combat and traversal, putting Uncharted at the top of the animation game, alongside Assassin’s Creed.

One minor problem with Drake’s animation is that he begins to move slightly before his walking/running animation has started, giving the impression that he’s stepped on a banana skin every time he sets off. However, this isn’t too noticeable unless you’re looking at his feet, which you won’t be.

Onto the most important factor of any game – the gameplay. Everything makes or breaks right here. And I’m glad to say, Uncharted makes it and wraps it up in a badass bow. The main bulk of the game is combat, which takes the form of cover-based shooting. Drake can take cover behind objects by pressing circle (the same button for rolling), so it’s both easy and intuitive. You can roll into cover, and from cover to cover, which all happens quickly and as expected.

Once behind cover you can aim and shoot at the many enemies. It’s also possible to shoot blindly, meaning Drake just pops his gun over the cover without looking. This is also helpful in run and gunning if you don’t feel you have the time to aim – taking on more prominence later in the game.

The shooting mechanics work gloriously well, with the level design helping enormously, since there’s a number of ways to kill your foes depending on your tactics. The AK-47 does feel slightly underpowered, but as you move on through the game, the guns increase in power and usefulness. There will be a lot of encounters, but what makes these fire fights so compelling is the enemy and companion A.I.

The pirates have been on the coffee that’s for sure (apart from the fat shotgun guys). They’ll take cover like you, and if you hang back too much they’ll either come charging after you, or they’ll throw a well placed grenade to flush you out. You’ll be on your toes the whole time, but the key to success is locating all the enemies, and being mobile. Don’t be passive, you must be active.

With the A.I. being so clever, and incredibly active in Hard (and Crushing), each firefight is going to play out differently – especially when you have a limited amount of bullets. You’re going to have to make sure you down the pirates quickly just so you can get their ammo to kill the rest.

Much of the game also sees you with Elena by your side, who isn’t a slouch. She’ll down enemies when your firing skills are lacking, and she’ll even push you forward if you’re being a coward. There’s many a time when you’ll shout “Elena slow down, you’ll get killed”, when actually she’s got herself into a much better position than you have.

To up the variety, Drake can also melee using a number of combos. Brutal combos, pure punch ups, and even stealth kills that come in very handy when you want to get your Metal Gear on. You couldn’t really ask for more, except for maybe the ability to whack enemies round the head with a stick or crowbar.

In our demo preview we mentioned that Drake cannot crouch. This is true, but generally isn’t a problem. The reason being that the combat sections are so fast paced and there’s always high and low cover to hide behind, that you seldom feel the need to squat, except perhaps when you’re on higher ground. Naughty Dog should definitely consider including this ability in their next game – as crouching and crawling through tight spaces would also increase Drake’s exploration and platforming capabilities.

It is these capabilities that make Uncharted such a well paced game after the action packed combat sections. These platforming sequences are compelling, accompanied by sweeping camera angles that induce vertigo and a sense of urgency. Although engaging and accompanied by spectacular views and stellar animation, this traversal can be a tad simplistic. Drake generally won’t miss a jump, and the traversal’s difficulty doesn’t really ramp up as the game goes on.

A similar concern can be placed towards the game’s few puzzles, which can be solved with a glance at Sir Francis Drake’s notebook (a nice addition). I myself would prefer a bit more difficulty in these sections, but then again this would conflict with the action pacing of the game. Furthermore, what makes you want to replay the game is the combat, and having to traverse some lengthy areas that throw you to your death would make you turn the game off quicker than you can say “Spaniard”. Thus, learning from the school of God of War instead of Soul Reaver for puzzles, and from Ratchet and Clank instead of Prince of Persia for platforming is fitting for the game, but I wouldn’t mind more challenge here. Moreover, the games finale could have been more epic if it incorporated some platforming to continue the battle, since it feels slightly simplistic, but I’ll leave that for you to discover.

The few vehicle sections in the game are generally impressive and satisfying. A Jeep chase is fast and exciting, with some of the most impressive visuals in the game (and thus of all time) as the trees fall down on your pursuers when you shoot at their trunks (the tree’s trunks, not your pursuers…there’s no time for swimming unless you’re Drake and sadly you don’t get to see him in his trunks).

The jet-ski levels are also godly to look at, with moving water reflecting the surrounding buildings, but when you have to stop to aim your weapon and avoid fuel barrels, the pace is not as exciting. Although being in control of both Drake (driving the jetski) and Elena (wielding the gun) is important, the ability to shoot whilst moving might have helped here, something which is solved in the final very creative jetski section. Nothing like this has been seen before and should be praised for what it does. Sadly, both many others (myself included) presume that you still have to stop to shoot in this chapter also, until we slip our finger across the shoot button. A signpost might have helped here.

What of the replayability? For a single-player game, this is the best you’re going to get. Naughty Dog has outdone themselves, giving you everything you’d want for your hard earned monies. The adventure lasts around 10-15 hours depending on how much you gawk at the environments, and even then the game underestimates how much time you’ve spent on your run-through.

To bulk this out there are four difficultly levels, which increase the A.I.’s cleverness as you move to Hard, and then to the insanely difficult Crushing. There are then medals to earn, such as 100 headshots, or 5 stealth kills, in addition to 60 treasures hidden throughout the levels. These can be a bitch to find, but when you have a llama or monkey rendered in real-time to show off for your troubles, who can complain?

To top this off, the medals and treasures tot up a score that will unlock new character skins, new rendering modes (black and white, an amusing next-gen mode), art work, behind the scenes films, and options to slow everything down, speed it up, or mirror the world. This latter option will mirror the levels (and cutscenes – nice touch Naughty Dog) making them almost brand new – creating an extra challenge after you’ve completed crushing, since the cover and enemies will no longer be in their expected places. All in all, the longevity for this single-player game is immense.

Before we conclude, lets make this very clear. This ain’t no Tomb Raider! Drake isn’t Lara Croft. He can’t do somersaults, doesn’t have disproportionately large knockers (oh well), and he doesn’t suck at shooting. The perfected cover mechanics displayed in Uncharted put it so much above Tomb Raider in this area, that mentioning them together just doesn’t make sense. The isolation felt in Lara’s world, isn’t felt here. You have companions, you have non-stop action, and you have a likeable character, with the English taking their rightful place as the villain, not the protagonist (that’s coming from a Brit). Plus Drake is far more attractive *wink*.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune succeeds in so many ways. It has the best console graphics to date, gob-smackingly good cutscenes, a modest yet twisting plot, an incredible soundtrack, perfect pacing, and combat that you’ll want to keep returning to. Only the simplicity of the platforming and puzzling, as well as the slow paced jetski levels hold it back from being a true masterpiece.

But if you don’t play this game, you really are missing out. You need to buy this game…right now. Because with games struggling to hit the wow factor this generation, Uncharted is one game that surely does, and should definitely be in your runnings for Game of the Year. So long, and make sure to mind your head on the way out. Drake, you devil you.

(Check out some more of Richard Diamant’s artwork for the game here.)

The notoriously critical UK Magazine has revealed its December edition scores. Another 10 is given, but not to a PS3 or Xbox360 game. Interesting scores this month, with Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect getting the same score. Find out after the jump.

Edge only gave out five 10/10 scores in nine years, but in the last three months there have been three additions; Halo 3, The Orange Box, and now:

Super Mario Galaxy – 10
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune – 8
Assassin’s Creed – 7
Crysis – 9
Mass Effect – 7
Call of Duty 4 – 9
Kane and Lynch – 6
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground – 6
The Simpson’s Game – 5
Zack and Wiki – 8
The Witcher – 5
Bladestorm – 8
Castlevania Dracular X – 7
Silent Hill Origins – 7
Hellgate: London – 6
Timeshift – 6
Mutant Storm Empire – 8
Guitar Hero III – 6
Beowulf – 5
Need for Speed: Pro Street – 6

As soon as we find out the magazines pluses and minuses about some of these games we will post them. So check back soon to find out why Bladestorm got an 8/10 and Mass Effect only got 7/10.

While you wait, why not have a read of our reviews here at Ripten.com, which stack up quite well against the very harsh Edge Magazine.

Source: Neogaf