Sadly before my review of Family Game Night has hardly begun, I already have a complaint. It contains just four (yes 4) games. Battleship, Connect 4, Bob It and Operation are all digitally created here for your portable playing pleasure; so will the transfer from the real world to the virtual world suit these classic games? Whilst none of these games made my favourite list I have still enjoyed many a game of Connect 4 and Battleships during my youth; it must be said though that Operation and Bob It have never had the pleasure of my playtime, until now.

I’m sure most of you will have played some or all of these classic games in the past so I won’t spend too much time introducing them to you.

• Battleship is a strategic two player naval war game. Both players secretly position 5 differently sized warships on a large grid which represents the sea. Players then take it in turns to fire a missile to one square in that grid. If they’re very lucky they’ll hit one of their opponent’s ships and can then plan a strategy to sink that ship. More often than not a player will miss and fire a missile ‘harmlessly’ into the sea.
• Connect 4 is of course the simple game we all know and love where your job is to match four of your coloured Chips in a row before the other player. Players take it in turns to place their coin into a vertical grid either to build up a row themselves or try and block their foe.
• Bob It is the most unusual addition to the game because it is in fact a toy as opposed to a board game. It’s a musical toy that asks the player to perform actions on the device (such as pushing a button or twisting a handle) at an ever increasing speed until the player mucks up and does the wrong thing.
• Operation of course is the kids favourite title where players have to remove an awkwardly shaped piece from a game board with tweezers. What makes it fun is the game board is shaped in the form of a hospital patient. Once again players take it turns to remove a piece from his body without catching it on the side and setting off the buzzer, or killing him I suppose.

So how do the games transfer from the physical world to the DS? Well in my opinion it’s a bit 50/50 because I only like two of the games. Connect 4 and Battleship feel absolutely natural on the touchscreen; be it tapping on a grid coordinate to send your missile towards an enemy ship or placing your yellow chip right in the way of an upcoming row of 4 red chips. On the other hand Bob It feels a bit out of place with it getting you to pretend to twist a crank or shout into the DS microphone. Operation on the other hand has been revamped a bit from the original game and actually puts you inside the body with obstructions such as mobile phones stuck inside the guy’s body. The principle is still the same but it feels much more like a Wario Ware mini game that has been dragged out a bit too far.

Now even the craziest of board game fans may feel a little short changed by this display of contents; thankfully EA have out a bit more effort into the production with some neat extras. Firstly you can choose the difficulty of the cpu opponent (if you’re playing on your own) from Normal to Expert. Secondly each game has at least one extra play mode which can at times veer things away from the rules of the original. For example you can play Connect 4 with SuperChips; here you’ll have a much more exciting game against the clock as well as having special powered chips which can affect the gameplay in interesting ways. These include a bomb which will blow up the surrounding chips, a newton chip which pushes the bottom most chip in that column out of the board and a basic but lovely double score chip. Oh and not to forget in this mode you can connect more than 4 chips in a row with successive combos, great!

Aside from all this the most fun you’ll have in Family Game Night on DS is with another player, you can either take it turns on the same DS or if you have another you can share the game using Single Card Download Play or Experience the full game in multiplayer if you own two copies of the game.

Presentationally the game is pretty sweet, all of the games are pretty faithfully recreated in look and feel and the addition of Mr Potato Head of Toy Story fame as host rounds things off nicely. Whilst I didn’t like two of the games I know it’s all down to personal choice so there isn’t anything that negative to say about the game apart from the stingy offering of just four titles.

Hasbro Family Game Night does exactly what it says on the box. It’s a fun recreation of four of their most popular games on the DS and scores a decent 7 out of 10.

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Related: Rubiks World Review for Wii, Rubiks Puzzle World for DS

Tags: Hasbro Family Game Night, Party, Hasbro, EA, Nintendo, DS, Battleship, Connect 4, Bob It, Operation

First up instead of family party based like its Wii relative, Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics on DS is more of a story single player based affair. I suppose the fact that most people take their DS consoles all around the show and play on the go (unlike me) it makes sense for it to be a more solo experience. That isn’t to say there is no multiplayer fun; there is. It is just more of an addition rather than the whole premise and I’ll come to it later on. Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic games is split into three distinct modes; adventure, single player and multiplayer. Adventure is the bulk of the game so let’s start there.

As you’d expect from the title you take control of Mario and Sonic; however it’s not all about Speed Skating and gold medals here. If you’d have thought something as giant and complex as the Winter Olympic Games could go without a hitch then you’re a dummy because if you think about it just for a moment then you’d realise that there is just so much that can go wrong. In this instance though what goes wrong isn’t quite what you or I would have expected. Rather than the typical type of things like Olympic Athletes being struck down by food poisoning or being suspected of drug misuse, in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games things are much worse. Who else but the evil Dr Eggman and Bowser have decided to cause trouble. Instead of kidnapping Princesses or Stealing Chaos Emeralds; this time the nasty duo have concocted a more devious plan. They have kidnapped the special Snow Spirits that create the snow for the Olympic Villages; without them here almost all of the events will be impossible. After all you can’t Ski on grass can you?

So Mario and Sonic jump at the opportunity to save the day and are more than ready to take on the challenge. From here you take control of the two heroes as you explore a series of over world maps taking part in Mission Challenges (Olympic Events) against friends and foes. Every time you win a challenge against a friend such as: Tails, Peach, Knuckles and Donkey Kong. They join your roster and they then become available to compete in the next missions. Each character has differing attributes which may or may not make them suitable for a particular sport. Also every completed event sees you win a magic crystal that the Snow Spirits require to create snow and melt ice; you require five such crystals to unlock the next area. Whilst for the most part you’ll just be walking around looking for the next mission there are a couple of other things to do.

Hidden around if you search well enough are some little extra goodies; firstly you can find extra lives which will come in handy for the harder events, secondly there are scrolls that give you background information on the game characters, and thirdly, you will come across maple leaves which provide insight into actual true facts about the Olympics. As you can probably tell this is a just a fairly loose story mode aimed to make playing through each of the events a little more interesting than just picking one from a list. In a similar fashion to the Nintendo Wii version there are eight Dream Events which are a fun addition; these are similar to the traditional Olympic Games but spice things up with things like Rockets attached to your Skis. Whilst I’d agree all this makes things a bit more exciting I was however a bit disappointed by the quite awfully written dialogue. All of the characters you encounter along the way speak like cartoon characters aimed at Nursery school children, and as a semi-mature 27 year old I was a bit grumped out by being made to feel like a kid in what should be a universal feeling game.

So if you’re tired of adventure you can head into playing the games in a more linear single player experience aimed primarily at beating your best scores or into a triad of party games:-

• Bingo Bash is a basic mini game that gets you to match symbols on a card that correspond to those drawn from a random ball machine, of course on its own that would be dull but surprise balls await which can see you having to take part in a quick Olympic Event against the other players.
• Lucky Spin is another randomizer game which puts the four players up against an Event chosen by starting and stopping a wheel with each of the playable events painted on it. There are some items which switch things up a little but it’s still just a random game machine.
• Wild Card sees you compete in random events once more but this time you collect trading cards. The idea is simple; be the first to get 4 matching cards. What makes this exciting is you need to trade your cards with another player to get a full set; this of course gives them the opportunity to beat you to the punch.

Of course a game like this wouldn’t be much fun on your own and luckily there are some multiplayer options; what I’m sad to report is that you will require two or more Nintendo DS consoles to use the Wireless Single Card or Multi Card download play modes. There is no way to play together on one DS unless you count taking turns in the single player games. If you’ve got a friend with a DS you will no doubt have some fun because playing with a friend is always much more fun than playing with CPU bots.

Overall I did enjoy Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games for DS; it’s a nice looking title and actually pushes the graphical capabilities of the system more than its bigger Wii brother does. All of the games are very fun to play and you can control most of them via the stylus very easily; a few do require DPad and Button controls and they’re fine too. Because this version seems aimed at younger gamers for no real apparent reason, it does mean that it is much easier than I’d like; having a selectable difficulty mode for advanced players would have been a nice option. But in the end it’s still fun to play through regardless of its simplicity.

A title from Sega and Nintendo combined isn’t likely to ever be of poor quality and once again they come up trumps with a quality title. By no means is it perfect but in a world of very rushed shovelware it’s nice to see that a game like this isn’t just rushed out to earn a quick buck when so many other license games are. A solid but slightly lacking 6 out of 10.

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Related: video review of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Wii version review

Tags: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games for the DS, Nintendo DS, Sega, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, DS version, DS, Mario, Sonic, Olympic Winter Games, Party, Olympics

Tekken and Soul Calibur have always been my fighting games of choice. I even liked Mortal Kombat over Street Fighter in the past so go figure what that says about me. Anyway, Tekken 6 has hit the next-gen systems so does it deliver all that you’d expect?

Well, if you want a fighting game which you can pick up and play but also master if you put the effort in with a massive roster of characters to play as then I guess that’s a yes. If you want a fantastic campaign mode to play through as well then forget it because it’s rather bad.

In the story mode you play as a character called Lars who’s so tough he can punch people from the other side of a wall. You break into a corporation and then rescue a girl called Alisa who’s actually a robot. It’s more confusing than an episode of Lost and unfortunately the Tekken controls don’t translate to a run around and hit things mechanic. Combat feels clunky in this mode and it’s just no fun – however you may feel compelled to trudge through it as it’s the quickest way to earn currency for tarting up your characters and for unlocking new characters and locations.

The main modes you’ll be playing are the online and offline modes. Online modes can pair you up with anyone in the world for a quick scrap online and offline modes comprise of arcade mode, ghost battles, time trials, survival and my favourite, team battle. You can play these against the CPU or against a friend in the same room.

When it comes to looks, the pre-rendered animations are gorgeous as you’d expect but the graphics don’t quite beat those of the recent Soul Calibur. They’ve also been clever by keeping the Japanese voices in the campaign mode and using subtitles to stop things sounding silly.

When it comes to characters there are all the ones you’d expect plus new ones in there, including a massive dragon-type thing called Azazel. This thing is massive and it’s really tough to see what’s going on when you fight it as it almost fills the whole screen!

I’ve been playing Tekken 6 on the Xbox 360 and I can’t help thinking it will play better on the PS3 simply because the controller’s d-pad is better. If you have both machines, get it for the PS3. Tekken 6 gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: Street Fighter review, Soul Calibur review, Youtube Tekken 6 review

Tags: Tekken 6, Tekken, Namco, Bandai, Xbox 360, PS3, Playstation 3

I’ve never really been into the Motorstorm games which is odd as I much prefer fantasy racing over the more technical simulation games of say Gran Turismo or Project Gotham. I guess it’s because I’d just rather be playing an FPS or something. However, on the PSP it feels different and worthwhile because I don’t necessarily have to be sitting at home while I’m playing it. Motorstorm Arctic Edge takes the high-octane racing to some rocky, snowy mountains and once again you get to race bikes, snowmobiles, quads, trucks and cars over the terrain. Of course, your choice of vehicle means you have to choose your path carefully. You can take to the high ground and thin tracks on a bike or trudge through the deep snow in a truck and barge everyone out of the way in the process.

Festival mode has over 100 races for you to compete in. Some are just first past the post races, others give you bonus points for staying in the lead for a set amount of time or have you go through a series of checkpoints and try to finish with the most time on the clock as it constantly ticks down. The action’s fast and you can now cool down your boost meter by going over water and snow to prevent you from blowing up if you keep it activated for too long. There are only 8 vehicles on the track at once to keep things moving at a fast pace and the game is definitely easier than its console cousins.

The soundtrack is also great with the likes of Pendulum, Prodigy and Queens of the Stone Age providing some tunes you’ll definitely know and maybe like as much as I do. And once you’ve had your fill of the single player mode you can take the game online and play in Wreckreation mode where you can do time trials against developer ghost data or data you’ve downloaded and experiment with tracks and vehicles in free play.

Despite not being as pretty as the console versions, this is definitely my favourite Motorstorm game as the game style fits the PSP perfectly. It gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: Pure review, Project Gotham review, Motorstorm Arctic Edge review

Tags: Motorstorm Arctic Edge, racing, Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, PSP, Motorstorm, PS2, Arctic Edge, Sony, driving

Mario and Sonic’s Olympic Games game if you know what I mean sold like the proverbial hot cakes. Not only did it tap into the spirit of the Olympics but it also brought together two gaming greats as they competed along with their friends and enemies over track and field events – see what we thought of that back in our Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games review. Now they’re back competing over snow and ice but does the game get a chilly reception?

Well, the good news is that this game improves on the last one. You’ll notice straight away that all the events are unlocked from the start which is great news in terms of accessibility. The controls are also tighter and seem less random but this does mean that sometimes gameplay can be a bit too simplistic.

Events vary from figure skating and speed skating to ice hockey, curling and of course racing events as you hurtle down slopes and tunnels on skis, snowboards or even in bobsleighs. Of course, this one’s aimed very much at party play for the casual gamer so expect this to appeal more to non-gamers than the hardcore.

Once again, Sega have tried to implement gestures that fit as closely to the real thing. When curling you ‘brush’ the stone towards the target just like in the real game and when speed skating you thrust your arms to-and-fro to get your speed up. You can even use the Wii balance Board if you have one to distribute your weight left and right in the slalom or lie face down on the floor when doing the skeleton. You’ll need some space in your lounge to do this and it may prove just a little bit too much effort for your Nan, best she just uses the remote then.

On a negative note, it’s a shame there isn’t any Wii Motion plus support. Sega say it’s because they want the game to appeal to as many Wii owners as possible and that’s fair enough, but it would be nice to also support the thousands of gamers who’ve got the peripheral and can only currently use it on a couple of titles.

This game isn’t aimed at the likes of me but I know that families who own a Wii just for party games and the like will enjoy this one. It’s not my cup of tea but if you’re in the casual games camp then you’ll be pleased to know I’m giving it a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games review, Beijing Olympics video game review, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games review

Tags: Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Wii, Mario and Sonic, Olympic Winter Games, Mario, Sonic, vancouver, DS, Nintendo, Winter Olympics

I had my first experience of 3D cinema the other day when I watched Up. Once my eyes had adjusted I was initially impressed but then I sort of got used to it. It’s the same with videogames. Next-gen machines come out and everyone goes ‘whooo’ but then the bar has to constantly be raised in order to impress. It’s a pity then that not only does Up have average graphics, but it’s also a very average platform game that’s of little interest to me.

You mainly play the game as Carl and Russell as you move round the 3D platform levels attached to your floating house. Similar to the Lego games, you can play with a friend and must work together to get round the environment. For example, Russell can shimmy along ledges and use Kevin the bird to reach new heights, while Carl can use his cane to climb up ledges and keep wasps and spiders away with the screeching of his faulty hearing aid. In single player mode you hit a button so switch between them which sometimes works and can sometimes be frustrating when the AI takes over and moves characters precisely where you don’t want them.

Most of the time you’re just platforming and collecting coins and artefacts as you go. Combat is extremely limited to swinging your cane at things or picking up items to use against the inhabitants of the forest. Occasionally you also get a boss fight but the action throughout is all rather slow and cumbersome. What do you expect from controlling a geriatric and a boy scout?

To break things up a bit you can also take to the skies and literally dogfight with the talking dogs. For some reason this is also the first thing you do in the game which is odd as it’s set in a scene right near the end of the movie.

Young children may enjoy playing as the characters from the film but this doesn’t offer anything for the older gamer. It’s an average platform game so it gets an average score of 5 out of 10.

Get Up now and get Up
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Related: G Force review, Wii Christmas party games, Youtube Up review

Tags: Up, Up, disney, pixar, THQ, platformer, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP, DS, Mac OS X, Windows, Single player, 2 player, co-op, multiplayer, Youtube Up review

Last year’s Pro Evo was a big disappointment, so much so that I didn’t play it once after I finished reviewing it. FIFA was my footy game of choice last year so what can Pro Evo do this time to win my affections once again?

The first thing you’ll notice before you get into the actual game is the way the stats are displayed. Gone is the graphical representation and numbers up to 100 are back. So far, at least for me, so good. Presentation, at least in terms of player looks has taken a big leap too. Liverpool’s my team and players such as Gerrard, Torres and even Kuyt and Carragher look great. They look less ‘waxy’ than the FIFA games and far more photo-realistic. Player animations are a bit hit and miss though. Standard running and walking still looks a bit awkward but some of the animations when players poke out a toe to score a goal or fall over to get a cross in are sublime.

Like FIFA, Pro Evo also has full 360’ movement but the game still feels a lot more like an arcade game and therefore it’s easier to try to follow a set strategy for getting balls into the penalty area and score. It’s also worth upping the difficulty because I’ve been banging goals in against the AI left right and centre.

The Champions League is back and this time it’s a lot slicker and you can also take part in that, and the new Europa League in the Master League mode. You also have the ability to play as an individual but to be honest this feels like a blatant copy of what FIFA introduced a couple of years back (and since then of course, EA have expanded on it with Game Face and the like).

Commentary’s still a sore point and not much better than last year, and some of the chants from the fans are once again non-authentic and off-putting.

If you’re a fan of one of the licensed teams it won’t really bother you that the game’s not fully licensed, however, if you support a team that’s not in there you can always edit your own teams if you’ve got enough time in the edit mode.

Sorry Konami but despite a good effort, FIFA 10 is still very much in the lead. If you want a footy game where it’s easier to score that feels more immediate, I would definitely recommend this over last year’s effort. PES 2010 gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: FIFA 10, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 lineup, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 review

Tags: Pro Evolution Soccer 2010, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, PES 2010, PES 10, FIFA 10

The original Uncharted took me by surprise as I’d never heard of it when I put it in my PS3 and absolutely loved it from the moment I started playing. It goes without saying I’ve been looking forward to this sequel and a couple of years on it’s bigger and better than the last game.

This time, Nathan Drake’s on the search for Marco Polo’s treasure. Of course this leads him on a journey around the world with a few twists and turns in the storyline and of course some very different locales to visit. There are jungles, underground caverns, cities and snowy mountains to explore and the gameplay’s very much a mix of platforming and third-person shooting.

Climbing and jumping is somewhere in between Tomb Raider and InFamous. Nathan won’t usually jump into oblivion even if you try to tell him to and he can now hang and shoot at the same time and use riot shields to walk towards enemies and stay in cover. There’s also a new stealthy way to play which you’re shown how to use when you break into a museum. You can choose to take people out from behind without alerting anyone and can even get into fisticuffs and have a good face to face scrap.

There are also some fantastic set-pieces in the game too. Fighting a gunship, battling on top of a train and jumping from jeep to jeep during a car chase all spring to mind and the set-pieces and action blend seamlessly into each other to create something akin to taking part in your very own action movie. The story’s also well told and the voice acting and camera direction isn’t quite up to the standards of the Metal Gear games but they’re pretty close.

And once you complete the game you can go back into the chapters and try to find all the hidden treasure and play the game with tweaks you can buy including infinite ammo, one shot kills etc. There’s also multiplayer in there for good measure so the game should keep on giving for a bit even after you’ve finished the 10 hour story mode.

The game’s not perfect – there was a moment during the final boss fight when it glitched on me and there are some frustrating ‘instant death’ moments and difficulty spikes. Still, if you want to be taken on adventure that’s far more fun than any Indiana Jones movie, you need this game. Uncharted 2 gets 9 out of 10.

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Related: Uncharted Drakes Fortune review, Uncharted 2 wins best of E3, Youtube Uncharted 2 Among Thieves review

Tags: Uncharted 2 Among Thieves, Uncharted 2, Among Thieves, Playstation 3, Uncharted, Uncharted 2 Among Thieves review

Tales of Monkey Island Episode 4; The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood sees the Marquis De Sade finally get his hands back on Guybrush only to be robbed of his prize specimen by a baying mob. They want Guybrush to answer for crimes he’s supposedly committed and simply drag him off to the local courthouse to face trial and punishment. To say much more could easily spoil what is probably the most intriguing episode in this Pentology so far.

What I can say is that this adventure felt a little shorter this time around lasting about four hours, compared to the five to six of the previous episodes. I believe this is because the fifth episode will likely be a longer and more complex affair. I did get seriously stuck at one time and nearly had to resort to searching Google for the answer but as usual; after walking around and trying everything I managed to solve that one really tricky puzzle. Nevertheless Episode 4 features plenty of stomping around the Flotsam Island previously visited in Episode 1; many of the characters that you met before are still there as well as some new ones including the infamous Salesman, Stan from the original Lucas Arts games.

Because it uses the same engine as all of the other episodes, Tales of Monkey Island Episode 4 looks and sounds just as good as the rest; the quality of the dialogue is once again great with many laugh out loud moments. Die-hard fans may spot some more classic references and smile, sweet.

I award yet Another 8 out of 10 for Monkey Island here folks.

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Related: Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3 review, The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition video review

Tags: Tales of Monkey Island Episode 4, Tales of Monkey Island, PC, Wii

I have to confess that I missed out on the original game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, owing to taking a short career break, so the character of Nathan Drake, a charismatic fortune hunter, was new to me, and I didn’t know quite what to expect from the title. What I found was a game which is so immersive, so polished, so addictive and so beautifully programmed that it is very possibly that most sought after of all things: the perfect videogame.

I don’t mean that it’s going to be the best videogame that you EVER play, for if that were the case, well… you’d never ever need to play another game, and there are so many different categories and genres of videogames these days, and such a diverse gaming audience, that there are bound to be those who would prefer to play, for example, a flight sim, or perhaps a racing game. But what Uncharted 2 does, is to promise its audience a specific gaming experience, and then deliver on everything that it promises, with literally ZERO flaws – hence: it’s perfect.

For those who, like me, didn’t play the first Uncharted, this game has a lot in common with Tomb Raider, in that you’re touring the world, exploring ancient civilisations to hunt for clues to ancient priceless artefacts – in this case the ultimate quest is for a mystical gem which promises its possessor no less than world domination. Now I’ve always been a massive (some might say obsessive) fan of Tomb Raider, ever since the first game in the series back on the original PlayStation. I tell you that so that when I say that Uncharted 2 is, for me, the game that Tomb Raider could only ever hope to be, you’ll hopefully realise that I’m not just spitting out empty hyperbole, I’m speaking as someone that quite literally worships the escapades of Miss Croft.

From the moment that Uncharted 2 begins, with you in the role of the rugged hero Nathan Drake, finding yourself hanging from a derailed train which is itself hanging off a cliff on a snowy mountainside, you’re drawn inextricably into an incredibly immersive adventure that I personally found almost impossible to stop playing. In fact if it hadn’t been for the fact of having to feed my recently arrived baby daughter, plus the occasional need to sleep and eat, then I very probably wouldn’t have stopped playing this game till I finished it.

Everything about the game screams obsessive attention to detail – the lavish environments rival anything I’ve ever seen in a videogame title, up to and including the awesome sprawling cityscapes of Grand Theft Auto IV, in fact the GTA IV backdrops looking like a child’s drawings compared to the beautifully created environments in this game. The script – unusually – appears to have actually been written by professional script writers who feel that the narrative (consisting of both seamless cut-sequences and ‘in game’ dialogue) should be entertaining for its own sake, rather than used simply to string the various game sequences together, and the ‘acting’ of the characters, both in terms of voice-acting and physical animation, is of a standard which would put most ‘live’ big-screen Hollywood movie actors to shame. The extremely cinematic feel of the whole thing is further enhanced by genuinely brilliant camerawork which serves the dual purpose of creating appropriate drama and atmosphere, whilst also giving you clues as to what you should be thinking about doing next.

On the subject of what you should be doing next – I remember that I used to complain a long time ago in reviews about games being too ‘linear’. These days though I think I’ve just spent too long wandering the massive digital worlds that videogames can now offer us because when it comes to ‘massive sandbox’-type games, I almost shudder at the thought of trekking for hours through mammoth environments trying to figure out what I need to be doing. Thinking back, I guess I just got too excited about the expanding videogame horizons back then, because now, for me, videogames aren’t necessarily about being ‘free to roam’, they’re about being able to experience a particular adventure, be it driving a race car, fighting off marauding aliens or – as in this case – exploring ancient tombs. So for me, the linearity of Uncharted 2 is set just about right, and I actually like the fact that the action, the puzzles and storyline combine to push me along a specific path. Don’t get me wrong – you still have freedom to roam to a point, and you still need to figure out how to get through the game yourself, but you don’t ever seem to find yourself wandering around aimlessly searching for that one particular hidden switch which gets you to the next stage, the way you do in some lesser action-adventures. This is despite that fact that here, unlike in most other games of this type, the way you climb things, or solve puzzles, doesn’t rely solely on clearly labelled ledges and paths – instead the almost photo-realistic environment is just ‘there’ all around you, and clever lighting and use of the camera gives you hints as to what path to take. And should you get really stuck, the game seems to realise this, and offers you hints, each of which is slightly more pointed than the last to ensure you eventually get where you’re going.

Of course, in a game like this the hero is important, and our hero Nathan Drake has the athleticism of Lara Croft (if not the ‘assets’!) and the wit of James Bond, along with a lot of Bond’s marksmanship skills too. As a result, the levels offer a heady mixture of exploration, puzzle solving and gun battling in more-or-less equal measure, each aspect of which, surprisingly, works extremely well. I was surprised at this, because although I was expecting the adventure side of things to work well, I’ve found in the past that gunplay in third-person games of this type doesn’t always work so well, usually because the control system has been designed around the platform-adventure aspect of the game which doesn’t always lend itself that well to gunfights. In Uncharted 2 however, it all flows together exactly right – one minute you’re clambering around in an ancient temple trying to find the hidden puzzles, the next you’re battling heavily-armed soldiers in all-out warfare, and it all plays… just perfectly.

For those who live their lives online, Uncharted 2 also offers an online multiplayer option, or rather: multiple options. Several different game types exist, including a variety of team deathmatch modes, and also some cooperative adventure modes that allow three players at a time to tackle various levels from the main game. Refreshingly though, the developers don’t have you just playing through exactly the same levels as in story mode, instead they’ve been tweaked and changed with different puzzles inserted and small differences made to the layout which mean that while they might initially look similar, in reality your multiplayer experiences will be completely different to your solo ones.

All the multiplayer modes that I’ve sampled worked extremely well – the team deathmatch modes (limited to five players on five) reminded me a lot of Gears Of War, only actually more fun as you don’t have to rely quite so much on taking cover as you do in that Xbox 360 game. For me though, the three-player online cooperative puzzle maps were far and away the most fun, and – thanks to the variety of ways that you can complete each level and the fact that playing with different teams of people means that everyone tackles them differently – for me these offer endless replay value.

So it’s fair to say that I liked this game, yes? Now sometimes, when you review a game and you want to give it a REALLY good score, you worry that other people who read your review are going to disagree with you, and might feel that the reviewer is being overgenerous. In this case though, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is, for me, THE best game I have played so far this year on any console. I’d even go so far as to say that I think it’s actually the best game I have EVER played on any gaming format… ever, and I’ve played a lot of games over the years! I’ve finished the story mode once, and I’m playing through it all over again already, and I fully expect to be playing through it many more times over the coming months. That’s when I’m not teaming up online for some cooperative adventuring, obviously. Quite simply: this game is perfect. Everything about it is done exactly right, and if developer Naughty Dog isn’t already working on a sequel to it then I will be moving heaven and earth to see that they do. Not because I’ll ever get tired of playing this one you understand, but at some point I’m worried that I might actually wear the game disc out. And as for the score – do you really need to ask? I’m giving it the almost unheard of, once in a blue moon, absolutely spot on ‘Perfect’ 10 out of 10. If you play this game and you fail to find it absolutely, earth-shatteringly, ground-breakingly awesome, then I would say you should sell your PS3 and give up on videogames forever, because in the opinion of this reviewer… there’s something wrong with you. If you don’t have a PS3 on the other hand – this is your reason to buy one.

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Related: Uncharted Drakes Fortune review, Uncharted 2 release date

Tags: Uncharted 2 Among Thieves, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Playstation 3, Uncharted II, Uncharted, Among Thieves, PS3

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising was a revelation back in the day. Sure it was for hardcore gamers on the PC and it didn’t let you off lightly. You’d spend ages crawling on your belly through a wood then get shot in the head. Luckily you had quick save so you could take some of that frustration away. On the consoles of course you get checkpoints which I’ll come to in a second.

In this game the fictional island of Skira is being contested by the Russians and Chinese and you, as an American Fire Team leader, are helping out the Russians. Similar to the last game this is no Call of Duty. Enemy and friendly movement isn’t scripted but left to AI which makes gameplay very different every time you play it but can also lead to frustration when your team mates stand in the open to get fired at or enemies don’t seem to respond when shot at.

There are 12 long campaign missions to fight through and you can also play them co-op with up to three friends for a more realistic experience. There are also some shorter missions to play through in co-op which should extend gameplay further.

Play the game on normal mode and the HUD tells you where enemies roughly are in relation to you and waypoints suggest the best way to go. Of course you can play in hardcore mode where everything is turned off and you’re left to fend for yourself and make your own tactical decisions.

Checkpoints aren’t very well spread out though. You’d expect one after each objective but that’s sometimes not the case and you get sent back a long way if you die from a sudden shot to the head.

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising isn’t to everyone’s taste, especially not console gamers. The game would probably get a higher score if I was reviewing it on the PC but I think console gamers may get frustrated too soon. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Related: Call of Duty , Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising developer interview, Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising review

Tags: Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Codemasters, first person shooter

Dead Space was one of my surprise favourite games last year so I’ve been looking forward to Dead Space Extraction on the Wii – a prequel which charts where all the horror on the cracked planet and in the mining vessel the Ishimura began.

It’s an on-rails FPS but before you think this is just like Time Crisis or House of the Dead, let me explain to you why it’s very much not. Extraction has a much more considered approach in that there are times where you don’t shoot anything whilst the atmosphere builds as you’re taken for a ride through the eyes of a number of survivors in different chapters. You crawl up ladders, shuffle across service hatches and even make leaps of faith through zero gravity. The mining equipment from the first game is in use again as you hack limbs off the monsters and you’ve also got access to pistols and pulse rifles. You can also slow down enemies and the world around you at times using stasis and fetch weapons, ammo and items using a sort of sci-fi tractor beam type thing.

There are 10 chapters to play through and as you go, you unlock new challenge mode levels and comic books to watch complete with sound effects and voice acting. It may be short but it really is a new gaming experience for me and something I couldn’t put down until I finished the story mode. There are also choices of paths to take from time to time which may encourage playing through the story again and you can play the game in co-op mode and shoot the Xenomorphs with a friend.

The game’s got the best graphics I’ve seen on the Wii and although the action slows down occasionally when there’s lots on screen, it certainly doesn’t wreck the game. Another small complaint is the crosshair. Info about your guns and a Gears of War-style quick reload system are incorporated into it and as a result it’s rather large, sometimes obscuring what you’re actually trying to shoot. Still, it means there’s no HUD on the screen which all adds to the atmosphere.

If you want a game that really sucks you into the action and gives you the creeps at times, give this a go. You’ll definitely enjoy it.

Dead Space Extraction gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Related: House of the Dead, Time Crisis, Youtube Dead Space Extraction review

Tags: Dead Space Extraction, Dead Space, Extraction, Wii, on rails, shooter, Dead Space: Extraction, horror, EA

I will just mention that the majority of the Bomberman games have featured a single player story campaign as well as the full on battle mode mentioned above; the thing is that most people weren’t really too impressed with these story campaigns and so the last few games have seen it removed completely. Bomberman Ultra for PS3 is no different; there is only battle mode for either offline or online play. Similarly like Bomberman Live on 360 and Bomberman Blast on WiiWare; Bomberman Ultra is a download only title available on the PSN for just a few dollars. So nearly 20 years later there must be something a little bit different to make this version of Bomberman stand out from the crowd of its hefty back catalogue. Indeed one cool new feature is the ability to unlock costumes and create your own cool looking Bomberman avatar; it’s not quite as cool as using Mii’s like Wii game but it’s a nice touch.

Gameplay is pretty much as you’d expect from a Bomberman title; this is a fun and frantic bomb blasting battle with a whole host of pickups which can help or hinder your game. As you destroy the arena blocks, special items such as; Extra bombs to drop and Flame Boosters will appear. These have obvious and useful uses but why stop there when you can travel faster with roller skates and throw bombs with a power glove. With stacks of other items you can develop your own strategy which makes playing random people online even more interesting because their game style might be radically different to yours. One addition I am not too keen on are the Bomb Shelters; these huge view obstructing towers will protect anyone from a bomb blast; my problem is that they obscure too much of the battlefield and attract campers. Depending on the game settings chosen at the start; things like sudden death and the ability to take part after your death via the sidelines can spice things up when the timer is running close to the end and a number of people are still battling away.

Of course there is much more I could mention including the different game modes and different arena’s but the most important thing for me was the online multiplayer for up to 8 people. Sadly the part of the game I was most looking forward to is also the most disappointing. Now offline multiplayer is always a hoot for 4 mates and you’d think online with 8 players should double the fun right? Well yes in theory it should. The problem I found was that hardly anyone else seems to be playing online; if you’re lucky enough to find someone hosting a match it tends to never actually get enough players to start and the host gets bored of waiting and kicks everyone off. You could try hosting your own game but don’t be surprised if you only get a handful of random people to actually play with you, instead you’ll need to convince people on your friends list to buy the game if you really want to have fun with online play.

Bomberman Ultra is an extensive battle experience which delivers solid gameplay but doesn’t really push the boat out. Even though it runs in a super smooth 720p you could be mistaken for thinking this was a 32bit era title; it doesn’t feel like Hudson have really pushed themselves to make a next gen Bomberman quite yet.

Overall then a typical Bomberman game which should fit happily on most PS3 owners game library; if you don’t go expecting anything other than a fun retro Bomberman battle experience you probably won’t be disappointed. A well-deserved but must try harder next time score of; 6 out of 10.

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Related: Boom Blox Bash Party Review, Bomberman Blast

Tags: Bomberman Ultra, Bomberman, PS3, PSN

Once again it’s time for another EA Sports game with a new number on the end. This time it’s the turn of FIFA. When you first look at the game it doesn’t look much different but you’ll soon realise that they’ve ironed out all the things that made 09 great to make this version excellent.

First of all there’s the 360’ movement, meaning you’re no longer running at 45 degree angles. This makes for a more realistic movement of the players and coupled with the improved ball physics, some truly interesting and freakish goals that are sure to make you shout out or hold your head in your hands.

Manager Mode is the main season mode where you play through a number of seasons and make transfer and squad decisions. Be a Pro mode is back where you play as an individual and now you can make your own Virtual Pro. Using EA’s Game Face technology which is currently broken as I review the game due to high demand, you can put your face right into the game and level them up RPG style in custom games and even in the arena.

Following on from the Adidas Live Season comes Live Season 2.0 where you can download the latest games your club’s played and try to replicate or re-write history. It’s a shame you have to pay for this after a 5 game demo but hardcore fans will find it worth the extra spend. There’s also a set piece creator where you can modify and save set pieces for use in games. Again, only the hardcore will probably go this deep into the game but it’s a nice touch.

As ever, presentation is slick with some great player likenesses and some good ad-libbing from Martin Tyler and Andy Gray. I usually say not to bother getting the new version of an EA Sports game if you’re enjoying last year’s, but once again, FIFA’s come up trumps. Over to you Pro Evo. FIFA 10 gets 9 out of 10, if you know what I mean.

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Related: Fifa 09 review, Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 review, FIFA 10 review

Tags: FIFA 10, FIFA, football, soccer, FIFA Soccer 10, EA Sports, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, DS, PC

I must have something wrong with me because I’ve never rated the Halo games as some of the best FPSs. I think the weapons don’t pack a punch, the aliens can’t be taken seriously and the whole thing leaves me feeling pretty unmoved. However, ODST provides a different proposition as you don’t play Master Chief and in this spin off you play as some of the Troopers who drop down to New Mombasa to try and stop the Covenant.

What I like about this new game is the atmosphere. Dropping out of the ship at the start in one of your pods and landing in an empty rain-soaked city is a memorable gaming moment and as always, the soundtrack to the game is very strong and one of the best things about it. Because you’re a mere mortal you have to collect health packs at stations around the place and you can’t jump as high which makes you feel more vulnerable. You will have to take cover and wait like before though when your stamina drops or you’ll die pretty quickly. Your Trooper’s also equipped with an alternative display which, like in the Batman game, makes objectives, enemies and allies clearer to see and identify.

The campaign should last you only six hours and the game does feel almost like a bonus extension to Halo 3, however it does have a co-op Firefight mode which should keep you busy as you try to survive as long as possible as wave after wave of aliens attack. There’s also a bonus disc containing all 24 Halo 3 multiplayer maps and three brand new maps you haven’t played before so there’s more bang for your buck.

Because I’ve never been a Halo fan this game failed to excite me but if you can’t get enough of the game universe, it’s a worthy addition – it’s a shame it’s a full price title as it really does feel like extra content that should in some way be a bit cheaper. Halo 3: ODST gets 7 out of 10.

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Related: Halo 3 review, Halo Wars review, Youtube Halo 3 ODST review

Tags: Halo 3 ODST, Halo 3, ODST, Halo, Xbox 360, Microsoft, FPS, Halo 3 ODST review

In Raven Squad you play as two groups of mercs who land behind enemy lines to retrieve some data. Quite what that data is I can’t remember as this game bored me so much I almost fell into a coma. What they’ve tried to do is marry a first-person shooter with an RTS and the result is either a very poor FPS that’s sub-standard to nearly any other FPS I have ever played or an RTS so simple that you may as well be playing Cannon Fodder on the Amiga – actually go and play that because it’s better.

In FPS mode you can switch between your soldiers to use their special weapons and struggle with the dreadful AI that seems to just stand there whilst you try and fight the good fight alone. I quickly gave up on this idea and decided to play the whole game from above, but this too was a rather dull affair as I pointed around the map and watched my little fellas run about the same drab looking levels over and over again.

Oh, actually, one thing I did find very entertaining about this game. The voice acting (if you can call it that) is hilarious. If you know the UK comedy show ‘Allo ‘Allo then you’ll find the accents in this game just as bad as the awful French and German accents in that.

And just for good measure, if you want to get rid of your housemate, get them to play the game in co-op with you. They’re sure to leave the house and never come back.

Don’t waste your money on this, you’ll have far more fun hiding in your back garden with a spud gun. Raven Squad gets 2 out of 10.

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Related: Wolfenstein review, Quantum of Solace review, Raven Squad review

Tags: Raven Squad, SouthPeak Games, Xbox 360, PC

If you don’t like The Beatles you won’t enjoy this latest iteration of Rock Band. However, if you’re a massive fan or even know a little about them and think they’re pretty cool, you’re going to have a blast playing this.

Chronicling their rise to fame from playing in Liverpool’s Cavern Club right through to playing on the rooftop of Apple Corps, this game provides a magical mystery tour of the Fab Four’s career with some beautifully crafted visuals and of course most of the classics you know and love.

Playing the game is standard Rock Band apart from the 3-part vocal harmonies you can attempt with two other friends. You also don’t have to repeat playing songs to move onto the next chapter in the story mode. Between each chapter you’re also treated to some fantastic visuals as the scene is set for your next batch of songs to play through.

My favourite songs to play were the Abbey Road recordings, not necessarily for the songs but for the dreamy music videos that accompany them. Play through I Am The Walrus and Yellow Submarine and John, Paul, George and Ringo are transported from the studio into their Sgt Pepper uniforms and into some rather trippy sequences. They’re so good they actually distract you from looking at the fret board which can result in mistakes in the song.

And as a reward for getting five stars for each song you get bonus photos you can look at and little video extras. You can unlock more by then completing the challenge modes.

I play Rock Band on hard mode and usually fail the later songs as they’re quite a challenge. I never failed once with The Beatles Rock Band and that’s partially down to the fact that they never really hammered their instruments enough to make their fingers bleed. If you’re looking for a challenge, look elsewhere. If you want a lovingly created game that creates nostalgia in you, even if you weren’t around at the time, get this. You won’t be disappointed. It gets 9 out of 10.

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Related: Rock Band 2 review, Using a Wii Guitar Hero controller with Rock Band, Youtube The Beatles Rock Band review

Tags: The Beatles Rock Band, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Rock Band, The Beatles, Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band review

As you may remember, Episode Two ended with Guybrush on the trail of the Sea Manatee and the Giant Voodoo Sucking Sponge. As usual Guybrush didn’t exactly know what was in store for him because soon enough; his crew, his ship as well as himself are all swallowed and therefore trapped inside the belly of said Sea Manatee. Without wishing to spoil the four or five hours of playtime to be had here I can say that in this adventure you’ll bump into the Voodoo lady’s old flame Coronado De Cava who was previously on the trail of La Esponja Grande. After years stuck inside a Manatee you’ll understand that he’s not quite as sane as he once was.
If you’ve enjoyed the first two episodes then of course you’ll love to see how the story is progressing.

Just as with the first two episodes both the graphics and voice acting are a treat and as crazy and imaginative as usual. The whole series so far is a treat for point and click fans everywhere and I’m really engrossed in this series and can’t wait until Episode 4 is ready. Another 8 out of 10.

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Related: Tales of Monkey Island Episode One, Tales of Monkey Island Episode Two

Tags: Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3, Lair of the Leviathan, Chapter 3, Tales of Monkey Island, Episode 3, Telltale, Wii, PC, Monkey Island, Guybrush, Point and Click

Heavy Weapon, downloadable for the PS3 on the PlayStation Network, harks back to an era when gameplay was king. That’s not to say that it doesn’t look good – in fact it most resembles a deluxe-model late 90s arcade machine for visuals and sound – it’s just that the focus is very definitely on the gameplay.

The concept is extremely simple: you’re the commander of a meaty modern tank, with devastating firepower and one clear mission: to obliterate the enemy. You do this by driving through each horizontally-scrolling 2D level, taking on wave after wave of enemy aircraft (and, in later levels, the odd ground vehicle) and blasting them to smithereens. To simplify things further, the landscape of each level is constantly moving and your tank automatically keeps up with it, so you basically only have to worry about moving the vehicle left and right within confines of the screen via the left analogue stick, while you fire in any direction you like by pushing the appropriate way on the right stick.

At first this might take a little getting used to, as those whose coordination isn’t too good may well need to get used to moving the tank in one direction while directing fire in another, but as – aside from one other button which we’ll come to in a minute – the two sticks are the only controls you really have to worry about, movement and shooting should eventually be mastered by all but the most ham-fisted of gamers.

From the off, aircraft of all shapes and sizes fly across the screen above you and lob bombs, bullets, missiles and a variety of more exotic ordnance your way, and your task is simple: avoid all the enemy fire and blow them all out of the sky. It sounds straightforward, and it is. Every so often a friendly supply chopper motors into the field of battle and (if you can manage to avoid shooting it down in the chaos of battle) drops you some kind of handy power-up, like a speed boost, or a shield increase, or – most dramatically – a nuke.

The nuke is where the only other control button comes in – once you’ve got a nuke onboard, tapping R2 triggers an almighty (and very satisfying) explosion which wipes out any enemy aircraft or vehicles on the screen – for those old-school gamers out there, it’s basically a ‘smart bomb’ – which then provides you with a second or so of respite if everything is getting a little too hectic.

At the end of each level, you’re faced with a massive end-of-level boss, who, in the tradition of all 2D shoot-’em-ups, is packing seriously scary firepower and takes repeated hammering with your weapons to destroy. These bosses range from massive tanks through awesome airships to a slightly bizarre massive wrecking-ball-type contraption and a decidedly unusual robotic gorilla.

Successfully beat the boss, and before the next level begins you get the chance to upgrade your tank with various weapon enhancements, including homing missiles, rotating ‘shield’ orbs, lasers and a device that fires massive bolts of electricity at the bad guys.

And that, quite simply, is the game. It’s one of the easiest games to just pick up and play that I’ve encountered in a long time, but also one of the most addictive. Its real attraction lies in its simplicity; no complicated plotlines, no massive control combinations to learn, just level after level of ever-more-insanely-manic action, as new and ever-more-dangerous enemy aircraft appear thick and fast.

If you only like your games cerebrally-challenging and the kind of thing that you have to devote entire afternoons to because the gameplay is so complex, then this might not be your cup of tea. But if, however, you like the idea of a game that tests your reflexes to breaking point on the first level, and then proceeds to make each successive level more adrenaline-packed than the last, to the point that a lot of the time there’s often so much going on onscreen that you’ll have trouble taking it all in, then this is the game for you. It’s not a game you’re likely to be devoting months and months of solid gaming to, but at the bargain price of just six quid to download, it IS a game that you will go back to, time and time again, for a couple of hours of cathartic, madcap, no-complex-thought-required, highly enjoyable shoot-’em-up action.

If, like me, you’ve been into videogames from the very start, back before TV stars talked about them and long before it was actually considered ‘cool’ to like videogames, then the gameplay here will be familiar to you. If you’re a younger gamer, and hence missed out on what many nostalgically refer to as ‘the good old days of gaming’, then have a go at this and you’ll get some idea of the sort of games your mum or dad grew up with, and perhaps understand what the older generation are on about when they talk about how ‘once upon a time it was the gameplay that really mattered’. For me, Heavy Weapon will be a firm fixture on my PS3’s hard-drive for a long time to come, and that’s why I’m giving it an Almost Perfect 9 out of 10. Quite simply: miss this one, and you’re missing out.

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Related: R-Type Command review, Rez HD review

Tags: Heavy Weapon, PS3, Playstation 3, sideways shooter, PSN

Here’s something you don’t see every day, Square Enix making a World War II strategy game which covers real historical events and not a role playing game which involves pointy eared characters in some fantasy land. Order of War focuses on the end of World War II and is set in the 40s as you push back the German Axis from France or play as the German army trying to repel the Red Army from the East.

A couple of years back Company of Heroes did a good job of telling this story so how does this RTS shape up? Well it turns out that Square Enix seem to have made a rather good game.

In typical RTS style you point and click your way around the map, swooping round the objectives as you command your soldiers, tanks and artillery to push forward and hold ground. You can also call in air strikes and bombing runs when the situation allows it and of course have to play to the strengths of the resources you’ve been given. For example, foot soldiers can launch surprise attacks on artillery by moving through the trees or can entrench themselves for better protection.

I’m not very good at RTS games but it’s good to see the game also caters for players like me. In the early stages each level is divided up into smaller objectives and you’re shown exactly what to do. Your commander even sends in more troops if you’re running low. And if you need some thinking time you can pause the game and still give orders to your troops to get the upper hand.

You can watch the action from above or zoom right in, and at the touch of a button the game goes into cinematic mode where you can see the fight in great detail. A nice touch indeed.

The music is also excellent although the accents of your commanders can be a little over-the-top at times. With the single player campaigns and online and skirmish modes, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. If you’re a World War II boffin and you like your strategy games, then this one’s definitely worth a look.

Order of War gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Related: Call of Duty World at War review, Frontlines Fuel of War review, Order of War review

Tags: Order of War, PC, Square Enix, Company of Heroes

So Guitar Hero 5 is available in the shops and the good news is this doesn’t feel like just some more songs to jam along to slightly repackaged. It is in fact quite a leap forward for the game both in terms of graphical style and the way the game plays.

First of all let’s cover the track list. There are 85 songs on this and as usual, some you’ll know, some you won’t, depending on your musical taste. Queen, Muse, Nirvana and Garbage all appear amongst others and you can even unlock guest characters such as Shirley Manson, Santana and Kurt Kobain and then add them to your customised band line-up.

It’s also never been easier to get into a game. Party Play mode lets anyone just drop in or out of a song at any difficulty without interrupting the song which really adds to the accessibility of the game.

The on-screen graphics have also been streamlined. Gone are the big meters which crowd the screen. They are now incorporated into the fret display and the whole look of the band and venues looks a lot more authentic. They’ve copied the grainy look of Rock Band and the character animation and lip synching is really a sight to behold. Another great touch is the ability to play Guitar Hero 5 as your Xbox 360 avatar. You look a little out of place as you’re a lot shorter than everyone else but you can also customise a completely new character to look like you in the character creation mode.

It’s also great that you can play any song from the off in quick play mode and in career, you unlock new venues and songs even though you haven’t played all the songs in the previous category. You can also get more stars by fulfilling criteria mid-song like finger tapping all the tap sections of whammying the sustain notes.

Apart from there not being enough modern tracks for my liking, Guitar Hero 5 really is the ultimate band experience so far. Neversoft have really pushed things forward this time around and it’s tricky to say how they’d better this.

Guitar Hero 5 gets and almost perfect 9 out of 10.

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Related: play Guitar Hero 5 as your Xbox 360 avatar, Using a Wii Guitar Hero controller with Rock Band, Youtube Guitar Hero 5 review

Tags: Guitar Hero 5, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5 review

But to be honest, since then, each episode of Halo has left me feeling just a little less moved. Maybe it’s because each of them is hyped as the biggest event in gaming since… well, since the first Halo, but – for me at least – each then fails to quite live up to its promise. Oh don’t get me wrong, they all looked great and offered more deathmatch maps, new options, etc, but nothing quite matched the thrill of the first game, up to and including the recent Halo 3, which for me just couldn’t compare in either single-player campaign mode or the online deathmatch options to something like Call Of Duty 4.

All that aside though, I was still extremely keen to get my hands on the latest in the Halo series, Halo 3: ODST. Not so much a sequel as a spin-off, this game takes the focus away from the super-human, super-cool Master Chief, and revolves instead around the soldiers of the elite division of the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers – basically the USNC’s futuristic equivalent of the British SAS or the US Navy SEAL teams. If there’s a situation that’s too tough for the cannon-fodder UNSC grunts (who you’ll have seen massacred by the dropship-load in Halo 1, 2 & 3) to handle, then the ODST, or ‘Helljumpers’, are the guys you call.

Our story starts with the Helljumpers deploying from orbit aboard their USNC transport on a hush-hush mission via their signature single-person drop pods. Unfortunately, everything doesn’t quite go according to plan, and things get a little ‘lopsided’ just as the ODST deploy into action, when a massive energy burst close to the planet’s orbit sends their pods tumbling off course and out of control, with the result that the team winds up getting separated and crash-landing at a variety of locations. This means that you, the rookie of the squad (called, rather imaginatively, ‘Rookie’) have to spend a fair part of the game tracking down and locating the scattered squad members before the mission can continue.

What this basically amounts to, at least to begin with, is wandering through a very dark urban cityscape, battling hordes of the alien Covenant troops and trying to locate waypoints which trigger new instructions and various ‘cutaway-missions’ that let you play the landing from the perspective of each of the different squad members. Did I say ‘very dark urban cityscape’? Make that: very, very, very, VERY dark urban cityscape! Because in a lot of these urban levels, you really can’t see your hand in front of your face – it’s THAT dark. In fact the only way you can see anything at all is by making use of your helmet’s VISR, which is basically a low-light vision system coupled with a targeting aid that marks enemy targets in red and the ‘home team’ in green.

Now to begin with, these dark levels are quite atmospheric and eerie, as I’m sure they’re meant to be. As you wander through the shadowy world, with suitably tense incidental music to match the mood, it’s quite nerve-wracking… at least for the first 10 minutes or so. After that though, it starts to get annoying. You find yourself wishing for some decent lighting, as yet another shadowy Covenant soldier shoots at you from behind a shadowy obstacle in the shadow of a big shadowy building… you start thinking that it’d be nice if you could just have a gun with a big flashlight fitted on the end instead of the VISR, which gives about the level of illumination you get when you first turn on an energy-saving light bulb, before it warms up (ie: not much). This is particularly bad inside of buildings, where you often find yourself bouncing off the walls trying to find your way out, and the darkness gets to be so oppressive that when you eventually do get to a cutaway mission which is set outside in broad daylight, it’s such a relief that you almost don’t want to finish it for fear of then getting dumped back in the Rookie’s twilight world.

It’s not just the darkness of much of the game that left me feeling a little cold either, it’s the sense that everything in this game I’ve done before. I’m shooting the same aliens, using the same weapons, driving the same vehicles… to put it simply: it’s basically Halo, as I remember it, but nothing’s really new. Yes, it looks shinier (when it’s not pitch black that is) and yes there are new levels and new characters, but frankly, for me it’s just more of the same, and personally I’m starting to get a little bored with it.

So… am I gonna recommend giving this one a miss? Well… no, actually. And that’s for two reasons. For one, I know that while I might have reached my fill of samey Halo storylines and repetitive Covenant-blasting combat, there’s a massive section of the Xbox-owning public out there that hasn’t. They’re the ones who are buying the Halo books and toys, logging onto the fansites, even making their own Halo-themed TV shows, and for them, they’ll probably love every minute of this game. A game being very similar to something you’ve played previously isn’t a bad thing in everyone’s book – just look at the oodles of gamers who year on year buy each new EA Sports update, each of which is almost always essentially the same as last year’s instalment, just with slightly more polished graphics and some updated stats.

The second reason that Halo 3: ODST doesn’t get a negative review is that when it comes to Halo, the single-player (and indeed, two-player co-op) Campaign mode is only a small part of what everyone loves about the series. The other thing is the online multiplayer, and this is where Halo 3: ODST really delivers. A whole second disc comes in the box, and is packed with online features including 24 different multiplayer maps which takes in all the ones from Halo 3, the DIY Sandbox option and three brand new maps. In addition, up to four friends can play either online or via system link in a new co-op mode called Firefight, which is basically a cooperative ‘survival’ mode, similar to Call Of Duty: World At War’s zombie level which faces players with wave after wave of ever-more-demented Covenant troops.

And no matter how bored I might think I am with the single-player action and storyline of Halo, I simply can’t keep away from the online deathmatch mode, which is the reason that, while this game would probably get just an average 5 out of 10 on the single-player mode alone, it actually gets a deserving ‘very good’ 7 out of 10 rating for the overall package.

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Related: Halo 3 review, Halo Wars review

Tags: Halo 3 ODST, Halo, Halo O.D.S.T., Xbox 360

Where once you could pretty-much categorise any videogame under one of a handful of different types (such as the eight or so featured on Gameswipe), these days as the power of the machines, and the imagination of the game developer grows exponentially, we see game genres mix and meld, and whole new genres seemingly emerge on an almost weekly basis. One genre which has been around since almost the inception of the games console though, and which doesn’t seem to have changed a whole heck of a lot since it began, is the beat-’em-up.

The first beat-’em-up I can remember playing on a console (or ‘home computer’, as they used to be called) was ‘WOTEF’, or ‘Way Of The Exploding Fist’, which featured two small chaps in simplistic martial arts gear who could use but a handful of martial arts moves on one another. It was basic, and not much to look at, but still I was hooked. Of course, if you really wanted to play a PROPER beat-’em-up, then the place to be was the arcades, where a few big names were just starting out and the power of the dedicated graphics boards made for better graphics, sound and animation.

Now though, you’ve got to wonder why anyone ever goes to arcades (if indeed anyone still does) because we can have arcade-quality games in our own home, and that’s exactly what King Of Fighters XII is: an arcade-quality 2D beat-’em-up on your home console. Yes, if your every waking moment is taken up with thoughts of which button combination you need to master in order to perform that flying roundhouse kick, or overhead fireball attack, then this is the game for you. In terms of visuals, it proffers graphics exactly like you might expect a late-90s arcade cabinet to offer, with all the action taking place in one two-dimensional playing area, while the tried and tested ‘parallax scrolling’ technique is used on the backgrounds to give an illusion of depth.

There are 22 colourful characters on offer, each with their own range of different attacks, throws, special moves and ‘super special’ moves to master, and they get to duke it out across six different backdrops.

Control is simplicity itself to pick up – use the d-pad or analogue stick for directional control and the triangle, square, circle and X buttons for Heavy Punch, Light Punch, Heavy Kick and Light Kick – but a struggle to master, as each character has different moves and attacks specific to them, some of which require various lengthy sequences of pad and button combinations to pull them off. Combat consists of three-on-three ‘winner stays on’-style matches, where if you beat the first opponent, then your character gets a small energy boost and then stays in the arena to tackle the next guy. You can either compete against the CPU-controlled opponents, or go to head-to-head with a friend. And that, pretty-much, is all you really need to know.

For, unlike something like Resident Evil or Grand Theft Auto, there is not a huge amount to explain about this game – it’s about one thing: arcade-style, gratuitous one-on-one beat-’em-up action. Whereas some games try to draw you in with complex storylines and multiple twists and turns, with King Of Fighters XII, what you see is what you get.

So if you like colourful, detailed, zany characters, each with their own different skills set, bashing the hell out of one another, then you’ll like this. If not, then you won’t, simple as that. Where the longevity comes into it is with the special moves – with this game it’s not just about finishing the single-player (that can be done in about 20 minutes), no, you’ll find that hardcore gamers will spend hours trying to master the special moves. Why? Because they’re there. So like DS owners might find enjoyment in solving every clue in the latest Professor Layton adventure, hardcore KOF fans will get the same satisfaction in pulling off all the special moves for every character in this. Sound a little strange? Well if I tell you that back when I used to work on videogame magazines, I remember one memorable press lunch where the PR guy who’d taken us out, himself a confirmed Street Fighter addict, spent literally two whole hours discussing with two writers from GamesTM magazine the merits of just one particular Street Fighter special move, then maybe then you’ll understand just how seriously some beat-’em-up fans take their games.

For those ‘dedicated’ individuals (I resist the urge to say ‘sad’, because when you really think about it, it’s no more obsessive than your average football fan spending hours in the pub dissecting a particular tackle or goal attempt) this kind of game represents hour upon hour of top entertainment. For more normal… okay, let me rephrase that: for ‘less fanatical’ gamers, what you’ve basically got is a game which will be great fun to pick up and play with a mate for a few hours every so often, but which doesn’t really have the depth to keep you playing it for long periods – it’s more a ‘post pub’ activity that you’ll dust off every so often when you’ve got company. As a result, while it’s well recommended to the legions of King Of Fighters and Street Fighter 2D beat-’em-up fans out there, for your more casual gamer, I’d have to give it a fairly solid ‘good’ 6 out of 10.

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Related: Street Fighter, Professor Layton

Tags: The King Of Fighters XII, King Of Fighters, Gameswipe, Charlie Brooker, beat em up, Way Of The Exploding Fist, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

As soon as you load up WET you know exactly what you’re getting in terms of style. If you’ve seen Kill Bill, Grindhouse or any other exploitation movie, the style is instantly obvious. The game even has a flashy film grain effect over it throughout which you can thankfully turn off in the menu so it doesn’t give you a headache.

You play as Rubi Malone, a fixer who solves people’s problems. The pre-title action begins with you retrieving a heart in an ice box which is for some London geezer’s father. The afore-mentioned geezer then goes missing so you’re hired by “Mr New Heart” to go and find him. Of course, things aren’t that simple and you’re double-crossed, which leads to lots of shooting and stabbing people with your sword.

Bethesda make a big deal about you being able to shoot doing acrobatics and if you’re jumping, sliding or running up walls when you shoot, the game slows down so you can target more than one bad guy at a time. As you gain XP you can then buy more upgrades that let you shoot whilst hanging off ledges and swinging off poles too.

There are moments where you move through the levels and also arenas where you must destroy ‘spawn doors’ and collect multipliers whilst killing everyone in sight.

And to mix things up a bit there’s even a couple of sections on the highways as you jump from car to car and shoot enemies who are shooting back at you.

My problem is that I’ve just been spoiled by the intensely satisfying combat of the new Batman Arkham Asylum game. In comparison the combat here feels really clunky. It all goes a bit Max Payne as you jump around in slow-motion but for some reason the combat is rarely satisfying. Even slicing and dicing people at close range just doesn’t seem to feel like it ‘connects’. Even the platforming sections don’t seem to go that smoothly when you consider Rubi is a lithe young lady who should be able to string together her moves a bit more seamlessly.

Presentation, however, will please fans of pulp movie genres. There’s a great soundtrack, good voice acting and some genuinely well scripted moments. It’s a pity the gameplay doesn’t live up to more recent 3rd-person action adventures. WET gets an average 5 out of 10.

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Related: Madworld review, Batman Arkham Asylum, WET review

Tags: WET, Bethesda Softworks, W.E.T., Xbox 360, PS3

Just because a game’s for kids doesn’t mean it has to be hurriedly put together. Luckily, it seems that quite a bit of care and attention has gone into making Mini Ninjas which means kids are going to have a fair amount of fun with it. In the game, the land has been ravaged by violent storms and the leader of the town has sent his best ninjas one by one off to solve the problem. The problem is, they never came back so it’s up to Hiro, the youngest of the ninjas, to find his buddies and stop the terrible storms and the samurais from burning down the villages.

Combat’s a simple case of hitting, blocking and stunning enemies if they choose to block you. You also have Kuju magic available which can be used to find secret shrines or fight enemies with fireballs or tornadoes. You can even possess the little animals around the land to sneak past samurais or even attack them. Hiro also has a big white hat which can be used to guard against arrows or as a boat. It’s all very cute and colourful and running about the land feels very fresh if you know what I mean.

There’s also a fair amount of platform gaming as Hiro shimmies along ledges and balances on beams.

Once you find your fellow ninjas you can then hot-swap them into the battle and use their abilities. There’s a big chap with a hammer called Tofu or something and a little girl with a flute amongst others.

My problem with this game is, even though it’s for kids, it just feels a bit shallow and easy. Combat is rarely difficult unless you’re later in the game and haven’t levelled up enough so there’s no real sense of danger throughout the game. You sort of go through the motions albeit very slick ones with tight controls and smooth graphics.

It would also have been nice to have some extra 2 player game modes in there for more family fun. Still, it’s a good game and even though there’s swordplay, no-one dies. All the enemies you fight turn into frogs, rabbits and foxes etc when defeated. Mini Ninjas gets a good 6 out of 10.

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Related: Ninja Blade review, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword review, Youtube Mini Ninjas review

Tags: Mini Ninjas, Mini Ninja, Eidos, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, Mini Ninjas review

For a couple of weeks I was waiting for a fun little title to play on my DSi in bed and I was quite pleased when Build-A-Lot arrived for review. So the aim of the game is to progress from being a newbie property developer to America’s greatest (and richest) property tycoon. On the offset I agree that a property building game doesn’t sound that much fun; that’s because being a real property developer is quite a horrid prospect for most people. What you have to remember is that this is a game and as such, it’s been designed with fun in mind with nothing to bog you down. From the start Build-A-Lot throws you into the action rather than get you doing any of the boring stuff like searching for land, getting it surveyed and dealing with all the legal bullplop.

Meadow Dale is the first neighbourhood which acts as your tutorial; the Mayor gives you three missions that teach you the basics to the game. One of your first jobs is to build a rambler (a small family home) and that is as simple as clicking on one of the pieces of land that you own and clicking build house.

With another 7 neighbourhoods to play through (each with a more demanding Mayor than the last) you’d expect the game to steadily increase in difficulty and complexity. Materials become a critical factor, you can’t build houses or buildings without them and your initial budget is usually quite low, this doesn’t give you the option to buy in bulk which saves money. The only way to make money is by selling or renting your houses. Renting will provide more income long term whilst selling can get you a large sum quickly. Here it’s time for you to plan a strategy so that you can afford to progress. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you will not know if you’ve made the right decision until a few minutes later (i.e. when you running out of time to complete the mission). You’ll also need to build workshops to train builders and even deal with the tax man when he comes knocking for his share of your profits. The surprising thing is that even with more and more tasks to complete per mission as you progress, the game is stays fun. This is because Build-A-Lot cleverly evolves from a simple ‘tap here and build stuff game’, to an intriguing yet taxing micromanagement fest. This is something not really gathered that easily from the description on the box which made it a really nice surprise. It’s like going out with a good looking babe and finding out she has brains too, excellent.

Build-A-Lot is presented with nothing flash or fancy to get in the way of solid gameplay. Graphically it’s basic and doesn’t push the DS to its 3D limits in the slightest; this is purely a 2D top down perspective game with some pretty hand drawn art and a smidgen of animation here and there for good measure. The music and sound effects can and do get a little irritating; especially the constant sound of your builders at work. Luckily Build-A-Lot is one of those games that do not require sound, ideal for those times at a public library whilst your geeky friends read books.

It’s hard to categorize Build-A-Lot. It falls right in-between thoughtful strategy games such as Civilization and frantic strategy games like Diner Dash. You could say it has the brains of the former but the excitement of the latter.

I really enjoyed Build-A-Lot because it offered a good challenge without a crazy difficulty curve or some never ending style of gameplay. There are lots of things to do in the game without there being too many menus and icons scattered about the place, everything is straightforward and logical and that’s how I like it. There is no multiplayer mode or any online aspect to the game at all so if you’re only looking for a game to play with your friends then this isn’t for you. I don’t describe Build-A-Lot as a lonely experience because it’s sometimes nice to have a game which you can play on your own and in your own way. I spent about two weeks wanting to head to bed early just to play a couple of missions before I went to sleep, if only I could review Wii, 360 and PS3 games in bed too. As a bonus to the main game there is also a casual game mode which does away with the time limit and frantic action; here you can take as long as you like to turn the empty town into a neighbourhood the beautiful people will want to live in. You’ll still need to plan ahead but things aren’t quite as stressful as the main game.

Build-A-Lot for DS is a budget title that packs a premium punch. No it’s not a simple game for the kiddies but a game for the grownups who don’t mind their head hurting in a good way. I award it a rather good 8 out of 10.

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Related: Henry Hatsworth Review, Professor Layton and the Curious Village review

Tags: Build A Lot, Build-A-Lot, DS, Strategy, Puzzle, Property, Building, Nintendo DS

Anyway, I digress – you don’t want to hear about my shopping woes, do you, you want to hear about the sequel to one of the biggest Nintendo DS games of last year, right? Well, after unlocking the mysteries of the Curious Village and its unusual inhabitants back in 2008, Professor Layton, along with his plucky sidekick Luke, are now in England on the trail of a mysterious box. Well… it’s ‘mysterious’ to them – for the player there’s a small clue as to what the box might be in the title of the game! Called Professor Layton And The Diabolical Box in the US, for the UK market the game has been renamed Professor Layton And Pandora’s Box, a title that very possibly spoils one of the game’s big plot-twists. Title aside though, the gameplay is unchanged from the US version.

Our story begins with the Professor and Luke receiving a letter from one of Layton’s friends, an academic called Dr Andrew Schrader who states that he has got his hands on a strange antique called the ‘Elysian Box’, an item which is reputed to have killed everyone who has ever opened it! Dr Schrader ends his letter by saying that he was originally intending to not to open the Elysian Box until he had fully researched it, but then just decided ‘to open it anyway’. Which is basically the equivalent of a bomb disposal expert saying ‘I WAS going to check the manual to see which wire to cut’, but then I just thought ‘what the heck, let’s cut all of them!’’ Needless to say, the Professor’s friend doesn’t last long, and no sooner has he popped his clogs than Layton and Luke are setting out to solve the mystery of how Dr Schrader died, and what happened to the box, which has vanished from Schrader’s apartment.

Storyline aside, players of the first game will feel very much at home here. As with the first title, you must guide the Professor and Luke through the twists and turns of the story by using the stylus and touch screen to explore and examine the different environments. Tapping on different objects on the screen often brings up comments and observations from the Professor or Luke, uncovers hidden ‘Hint coins’, and – most importantly – opens up puzzles. These puzzles are essentially the backbone of the game, and come in a variety of forms, some mathematics problems, some logic puzzles, some ‘physical’ tests where you must use the stylus to manipulate objects on screen in some way. Some of these puzzles must be solved in order for you to progress through the game, some give you bonuses if you complete them, and some are there just for fun, and they range in difficulty from fairly easy to actually quite taxing. As before, should a puzzle prove a little tough, then up to three Hint coins can be used to purchase tips on how to solve the puzzle.

The puzzle segment itself has been slightly tweaked since the last game – as before you’re given a written explanation of the task at hand on the top screen (which it is essential to read carefully as often the clue is written in such a way as to deliberately mislead anyone who’s not fully paying attention) but what’s new for the sequel is the ‘Memo’ option. Clicking this button drops what amounts to a piece of digital tracing paper over the top of the puzzle, so you can still see it, but you can then scribble notes, do calculations, and generally figure things out before selecting your answer. In the previous game some of the puzzles offered an option a bit like this, but others didn’t, forcing you to do all the working out in your head, so the Memo option is definitely a welcome addition, and shows that even though Professor Layton And The Curious Village was a first-class game, the developers have still been looking for ways of improving upon it.

There are a few other small differences between this game and the first (like the Hamster minigame for example, where you must collect objects as you explore and then place them on a chess board in such a way that a fat hamster gets some exercise – actually as weird as it sounds, but no less enjoyable for it) but in the main the basic gameplay is more-or-less the same. This means that if you liked the last game, then you’re going to like this. It also means, however, that if you DIDN’T enjoy the last title, then there’s probably not a lot to excite you here.

That said – what’s not to like? I guess if I had to be really picky, then I could probably dig up a couple of criticisms… there’s Luke’s accent for example. He’d clearly NOT played by a ‘real boy’, but is instead voiced by an adult, most likely a woman ‘doing’ a child’s voice. And apparently the voice actor is someone who went to the Dick Van Dyke school of English accents, seeing as Luke’s switches from plummy, upper-class toff to ‘cock-er-ney’ street urchin mid-sentence. I personally used to find this highly irritating, but after a while it actually becomes quite amusing and in years to come will no doubt become a recognisable quirk of this game series much like the REALLY bad character acting did in the very first Resident Evil game.

Aside from that, the best I can do for negativity is to say that very occasionally the odd puzzle isn’t quite on a par with all the others. This can be for various reasons – there’s one where you have to study a painted scene for example, and the tiny detail of the painting is difficult to make out on the small DS screen (plus there’s no zoom option) which makes figuring the puzzle out more tricky than it should be. There are others where the ‘logic’ involved in figuring out the solution is not so much unbiased fact as the ‘opinion’ of the puzzle designer. Or to put it another way, the solution to the puzzle assumes facts that are not in evidence. For instance: you’ve got a fat guy and a thin guy, and the assumption (apparently) is that the fat guy eats faster than the thin guy, but this isn’t given as one of the facts of the clue, the puzzle-setter just assumes that this is a given (this isn’t one of the actual puzzles, just an example of the type of the slightly faulty logic that you sometimes come across).

On the whole though, the logic and presentation of the puzzles is impeccable, and considering the number of different challenges that the game throws at you (more than 150 in total), the fact that there are only one or two duff ones should really be applauded.

And, the odd ever-so-slightly ‘iffy’ puzzle aside, this game definitely builds on the previous one – it doesn’t fix what wasn’t broken, it adds a few clever new innovations, but it essentially just offers a lot more of the same, and it comes out on top because of it. Extra bonuses include being able to uncover codes in Pandora’s Box which unlock extra content in the Curious Village (and vice-versa) and you can bet that this is NOT the last we’re going to see of the Professor and his assistant either, because this game also has a special hidden section which can only be unlocked by playing the NEXT game in the series, so no prizes for guessing what Nintendo DS owners will be asking for come Christmas 2010!

All in all, Professor Layton And Pandora’s Box is a joy to play, will amuse all ages and sexes, both young and old, and will keep you puzzling for many, many happy hours to come. As such, it gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

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Soul Calibur on the PSP is pretty much what you’d expect from the fighting series. It has the usual roster of characters you know and maybe love including Voldo, Cervantes, Ivy, Kilik etc and this time the guest character is Kratos from God of War which is very in keeping with the series seeing as he has a couple of very big swords and that whip-type thing.

The game’s always had high quality visuals and they’ve done a very good job of keeping things looking great on the handheld. Characters are bright and detailed and environments are equally great to look at as you kick, throw and try to chop each other into itty bitty pieces. When it comes to game modes there is the quick match which puts you straight into a fight, a trials mode which pits you against opponents one after the other until you are defeated and a versus mode where you can play other people in Ad Hoc battles.

The main mode is called The Gauntlet and unfortunately it’s a bit of a let-down. It all feels like just an extended training mode. Battles only last a second or so and most of them just involve you blocking or hitting opponents the way you’re told to. And sometimes you’re not told what to do until after you’re defeated, making the whole thing tedious to play.

You can also create your own character from scratch or fiddle with an existing character to give them different outfits and change their weapons, poses and fighting stances.

This game really comes into its own if you’re playing it with a friend and to be honest, I don’t know that many people who will have a PSP and another copy of Broken Destiny knocking around.

If you already have Soul Calibur 4 or any of the others then it’s not really worth a buy. If, however, you don’t own it and want a good fighting game for the PSP, get this or the outstanding Tekken: Dark Resurrection. Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny gets a good 6 out of 10.

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Tags: Soul Calibur Broken Destiny, Soulcalibur, Soul calibur, PSP, Broken Destiny, Playstation Portable, Kratos, God of War, Voldo, Cervantes, Ivy, Kilik

So after a disappointing delay, Batman: Arkham Asylum has finally sneaked onto the shelves so listen up to find out if it’s any good.

The game begins with Batman bringing the Joker into Arkham Asylum and then he conveniently and easily escapes further into Arkham Island to cause mayhem as he formulates a toxin to turn normal goons into super soldiers. So Brucey baby swoops from ledge and kicks and punches people in the face to put a stop to it.

Combat is a simple matter of punch and counter buttons being pressed at the right time. Build up a big combo and you can do super moves that take out more than one bad guy at a time. If you want to be stealthy, you can swoop between high perches and glide down for a quick kill or even string up bad guys in style.

Batman also has all the gadgets of his utility belt at hand. These include exploding gel for getting through walls, remote control batarangs, grappling hooks and little gizmos for hacking into security.

As well as all the usual suspects you’d expect from the Batman universe, also expect lots of riddles from Edward Nigma to pop up in most rooms. When in detective mode which is used for counting guards and following trails, you can also scan areas relating to his clues. Succeed and you get more XP which can be used to upgrade Batman’s armour and weapons.

The thing that makes this a cut above other games of this genre is simply the fact that the Batman universe is recreated so well here. It’s dark, moody and gothic and certainly more akin to the comics as opposed to the TV series or any of the movies. Even the Scarecrow makes an appearance more than once as he induces you into a state of fear with some of his lovely poison gas. It’s creepy to say the least.

The game’s not massively long at around 7 hours but once you’ve finished the game, you can go back and try to solve all those riddles, or play the Challenge Mode which will extend play further.

I was hoping this would be everything it was hyped up to be and fortunately it is. My only gripe is I wish there was more to do once it was finished. So far, for replayability, Resident Evil 5 still gets my award. Still, with free DLC on its way, things are looking good! Batman: Arkham Asylum gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

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Tags: Batman Arkham Asylum, Batman, Arkham Asylum, PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Batman Arkham Asylum review

Okay so I know Tomb Raider Underworld has been out for a year now but I was never fortunate enough to get a copy – until now. So if you haven’t played the game yet, is it worth it? Watch and learn. Underworld follows on where Legend left off and begins with Lara escaping from her burning mansion. Even her friend Zip is trying to kill her and we don’t know why. Flashback a while and we see Lara diving for treasure in warm oceans and finding out some interesting facts about Thor’s hammer. From there she travels around the world climbing lots of cliffs, raiding lots of tombs and jumping about and shooting.

I really enjoyed Legend, so how does this compare? From what I remember, this one is less about combat and more about climbing and puzzling so in a way it goes back to the roots of Tomb Raider. Lara looks in fine form and even gets dirty and wet as she rolls about in the mud. Teenage boys never had it so good. I’ve of course played Infamous since Underworld came out and it’s fair to say Lara’s not as sticky in this game. She quite often falls when you’d expect her to grab onto a ledge and can also get stuck on things. The camera can also often point you where you don’t want to look and you end up making leaps of faith – sometimes to your doom.

Combat’s changed a bit too. It’s still a case of moving and shooting but you can now target more than one enemy at a time and throw sticky grenades. There’s also an adrenaline gauge that fills up when you shoot enemies. Click the R stick and time slows down, allowing you to kill your enemies in clichéd Matrix-style glory. It’s odd that you can’t pick up an enemy’s weapon though. When they die, it seems there gun disappears. Odd to say the least.

The story’s fun as always and things do look very nice indeed. Environments are rich and detailed but there are some clipping issues, texture pop-up and odd shadows now and again. There’s also a handy hint system and a map if you get hopelessly lost and can’t figure out some of the physics-based puzzles. Underworld is fun but it’s not the leap in gameplay I was hoping for. Tomb Raider Underworld gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Tags: Tomb Raider Underworld, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, Underworld, Xbox 360, PS3, PC

If you’re a Final Fantasy fan then you’ll be chewing your arm off to play Dissidia: Final Fantasy. Of course, don’t do that because you’ll have trouble playing it on your PSP. In a move similar to Super Smash Bros paying fan service to Nintendo junkies, Square Enix have taken a whole host of characters from most of their Final Fantasy games and put them into a fighting arena where they can battle each other one on one and earn tonnes of collectables. Tidus, Cloud, Cecil, Sephiroth and others all appear in the ultimate battle between good and evil.

It seems the gods of Cosmos and Chaos have had a bit of a falling out and Chaos is winning. So, in story mode you play through a number of ‘levels’ playing as a key Final Fantasy character on a sort of board game, choosing where to go and what to fight. Battles are fought in real-time in 3D arenas as you attempt to steal bravery points from your opponents. The more you steal, the harder your attacks. You can also pick up a special item that lets you do a super move and often it’s a race to who can get to it first.

Combat is fun and slick but sometimes the camera points the wrong way and when you try to lock onto an opponent, sometimes you end up locking onto special items and facing the wrong way instead. The story of each character’s destiny isn’t great either. For a series that prides itself in involving stories, it’s a bit disappointing to have some hammy voice acting and boring plot lines at times.

Still, if you’re into Final Fantasy there’s all the role-playing elements of finding and equipping weapons and items and tonnes and tonnes of collectables from extra playable characters to voice samples. There’s also enough gameplay here and more modes to keep you playing if you’re unfamiliar with the series. Dissidia: Final Fantasy gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Tags: Dissidia Final Fantasy, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, PSP, Dissidia, Final Fantasy, RPG, playstation portable, Square Enix, Tidus, Cloud, Cecil, Sephiroth, Dissidia Final Fantasy review

And now, at a time when videogames, and videogamers, are firmly out of the closet, and better graphics, bigger titles, clever marketing and some neat peripherals from Sony and Nintendo have managed to make gaming ‘cool’, the latest title in the Wolfenstein series has arrived, called simply ‘Wolfenstein’.

Of course, we now live at a time when the FPS genre is such a popular one that to stand out in the marketplace you have to have something pretty special. There’s not a first-person shooter out there which isn’t going to find itself being compared to Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and to a lesser extent, the not-quite-as-good-as-we’d-hoped-it-would-be-but-still-downright-awesome Call Of Duty 5. And with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 fast approaching, there are no doubt many people who are wondering whether it’s worth shelling out the readies for Wolfenstein, or whether the cash would be better off stashed in the bank (or under a bed – probably safer these days) until November to await the latest COD instalment.

So… to buy or not buy, that is the question. And should you just pick this game up and play it for half an hour, you’d be forgiven for thinking that saving your cash might well be the answer. For what the game basically plays like is a Call Of Duty clone, albeit one with less weaponry choices and – it has to be said – less ‘grittiness’ than we’ve come to expect from our wartime FPS titles. That’s not to say that the game looks bad – far from it – but it just looks a lot more like… well, more like a videogame basically, rather than the ‘interactive movie’ kind of thing that COD offers. I apologise now for the number of times I may refer to Call Of Duty by the way – I’ll try and tone it down from now on.

No, graphically Wolfenstein does look very nice, with crisp, detailed graphics and some nice meaty weapons with loud, authentic gunfire noise and a healthy recoil – which as any FPS fan knows, is important in this kind of game where shooting stuff is basically the main gameplay mechanic. And it’s not just guns that you have in your arsenal either. Deserving of a special mention are the hand grenades: you can almost FEEL the concussion wave coming out of the screen as the grenade goes off, while the blast wave throws bodies (or bits of bodies) and Havok-rendered objects all over the place – when one of these bad boys goes off next to you, you really do know about it!

So as far as in-game visuals go – no problems, and while the cut-scenes that introduce the story and connect the various missions together, as already mentioned, might lack the slick realism of COD, but they do serve to move the plot along nicely, and as you get further into the narrative you soon realise that ‘realism’ is not the name of the game here anyway.

You see, while you may start off playing what appears to be a standard WWII FPS, it gradually morphs into something else. As our hero, one ‘BJ ‘Blazkowicz’, American special agent extraordinaire, soon discoveres, the bad guys in this game (played in typically efficient style by some rather enthusiastic Nazi-types) have got more than a few tricks up their sleeves. Perhaps sensing that in the normal scheme of things old Adolf’s plans for world domination weren’t exactly going to work out, these chaps have started working on a plan to try and turn the tide of World War II in their favour, and they intend to do this through the use of some ancient technology they have unearthed which makes use of some very special crystals with, for want of a better phrase, ‘mystical properties’. This technology apparently used to belong to an ancient race called the Thule, and as you progress through the game you learn more about the Thule, more about the crystals, and – most importantly – more about what the Nazis have been doing with them.

Of course, it goes without saying that young BJ soon gets his hands on one of the Thule medallions, and with it he can enter a sort of shadowy ‘side-universe’ called the ‘Veil’. Nothing at all to do with curtains, the Veil actually allows BJ to tap into a mysterious power source which rather conveniently seems to be linked to the local water supply, and with this, he can – with the right crystal upgrades – perform such feats as slowing time, stopping bullets, passing through solid matter… and other handy stuff like that.

The medallion, and the crystals that grant the user the various powers, are gathered by BJ over time as he passes through the game, and with each new ability he gains, so – more often than not – the bad guys reveal a new trick they’ve been keeping up their sleeve, usually in the form of some new amped-up super soldier. This might be a heavily-armoured dreadnought of a guy with some kind of crystal-powered energy weapon, or a super-fast mutant-ninja chap with razor-sharp claws. Add into the mix a series of progressively more powerful, exponentially more outlandish ‘end of level-type’ bosses, and what you have here is a game which, while it starts off as a reasonably above-average, but fairly standard fare WWII First-Person Shooter, gradually morphs into the kind of cross-genre offspring you might get if Call Of Duty mated with Resident Evil.

By the time you get about halfway through the game, you’ll be tackling ‘normal’ Nazis and their super-powered brethren with aplomb, switching between the Veil dimension and the ordinary one with ease, and swapping from meaty, satisfying WWII machineguns to futuristic, crystal-powered energy weapons almost without thinking. And it has to be said: the more you play through, the better the game gets. I fully expect that any gamers who don’t put at least six to eight hours into this game initially will dismiss it as merely ‘average’, which is a shame as they’re missing out on something rather special. Set in a city which you can explore more or less at will, unlocking new areas with each mission, the game employs a Grand Theft Auto-style mission select system, so that at any one time you’ve usually got at least two different missions to choose from, and often more than two. You can choose which order you tackle the missions in, or simply spend some time exploring the map for hidden secrets and lurking Nazi enemies, which makes the game seem a lot less linear than some first-person shooters. You can even, should you so wish, replay completed missions mid-game, which is handy if you want to unearth all the hidden secrets like the enemy intel and the Nazi gold which can be traded in at the local black market stores to get upgrades for your weapons and your crystal-based powers.

So that, in a nutshell (albeit a fairly large one) is the single-player game. But of course, no FPS would be complete these days without an online multiplayer mode, and Wolfenstein is no exception. Offering only three character classes – Medic, Engineer and Soldier – with just three different game modes – Team Death Match, Objective and Stopwatch, and with a maximum of only six players per team, I would have to say that the multiplayer in Wolfenstein isn’t quite up to the standard of that in Call Of Duty, but that’s not to say it’s bad. The opportunity to utilise some of the different ‘Veil’ powers in the multiplayer, once you’ve racked up enough cash to unlock them, does give it a unique selling point over COD, and as the maps are generally quite small, the action is fairly fast and furious, but somehow the gameplay doesn’t quite match up to COD 4 or 5 for either the scale of the battles, or the sheer addictiveness.

Maybe it’s because whenever I played online, the only character class who really seemed any fun was the Soldier one, because the size of the levels, and the type of game modes on offer, didn’t really lend themselves to any kind of complex tactics, instead everyone just seemed to spend their time grabbing the biggest guns possible and running around blasting anything that moved! I have spent many, many nights staying up till who-knows-when in the morning because I kept telling myself I’d have ‘just one more’ Call Of Duty deathmatch game, and I just didn’t find the same compulsion to do that with Wolfenstein’s multiplayer. The single-player Campaign mode though, well that’s another story – on several occasions while working on this review I completely lost track of time tackling ‘just one more mission’ on the single-player campaign game.

And that, basically, sums up Wolfenstein from my point of view – if, like several of my friends, you live ONLY for online gaming, buy a title solely on the strength of its deathmatch mode, and will probably never even look at the single-player game, then I would have to say that you will be better off waiting for Modern Warfare 2. If, however, like me, you like a more than half-decent online gaming experience, but what you really live for is immersing yourself in a creative narrative and tackling the solo challenge of a really awesome single-player FPS, then you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth out of Wolfenstein. It’s a shame that there’s no two-player co-op option for story mode, but I guess you can’t have everything. Overall though, I’d rate Wolfenstein as an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Related: Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2

Tags: Wolfenstein, FPS, Xbox 360, PS3, PC

I’ve been waiting almost a year to go on another puzzling adventure with Professor Layton and his trusty sidekick Luke and I couldn’t wait until it came out here in the UK so I’ve imported the US version. Once again I’m having a thoroughly good time and that’s thanks to the same great gameplay as the first game Professor Layton and the Curious Village. This time, one of the Professor’s friends has apparently been killed after opening a mysterious wooden box, and they set off to find out what happened. During the course of the game they uncover many more mysteries and of course over 150 puzzles to solve.

These range from sliding puzzles, to riddles, to interactive puzzles where you must move and manipulate items. There are also observation puzzles where you need a keen eye – tricky on such a small screen. To add a bit more variety there’s also a pet hamster to look after. Treat him well and exercise him via a mini game and you get a nice surprise.

Once again the visuals and whole presentation are cartoony yet interesting and there’s more dialogue this time. It can jar a bit when suddenly the dialogue is replaced by just text but there isn’t all that much room in a DS card so developers Level 5 are forgiven.

If you loved the first game as much as I did you’d be a fool not to get on this right away. It’s more of the same and as the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I can’t put it down, so Professor Layton’s latest adventure gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

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Tags: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Professor Layton and Pandoras Box, puzzles, Nintendo, DS, Professor Layton, Diabolical Box, Pandoras Box, puzzle game

Another year sees another roll-out of all EA’s sports franchises such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and Madden NFL 10 is no different. Here we see a couple of new gameplay innovations along with the ones which worked from previous years.

First of all, let me say that the game’s presentation is fantastic. It really feels like you’re watching a football game on a Sunday and the player models and graphics make for a really great game atmosphere. It’s a shame the commentary doesn’t shape up so well but to be honest you can choose to ignore that, much like a member of your family trying to turf you off the console because they want to watch a rerun of friends.

I also like the fact there’s no calendar system in Franchise mode. Some of you will miss the opportunity to train your players between games but all I want to do is play the game so for me, this works.

When on the gridiron play’s also been slowed down a bit so it’s now a bit simpler to see a defender charging towards you and make a pass or dive out of the way in time. There’s also the new Pro-Tak system at play which basically means multiple players can now go in to take down a player and you get even more realistic action on the field.

SuperStar mode is also back so you can create a player and play through a whole career with your big muscle man.

If you’re new to Madden games you’re also going to have to look for the holographic training section in the game. Last year you had to play through it at the start, now it’s hidden in the menus. It is there though so if you’re not sure of the rules or how to play, check it out and get with the programme dude.

Online play has also been refined. There’s an online franchise mode and online co-op and everything’s been sped up to make sure your opponents don’t spend ages browsing through their plays before finally snapping the ball.

Once again, as I always say with EA’s sports games, the game’s good but I’d only buy this over last year’s Madden NFL 09 game if you really, really like American Football games.

Madden NFL 10 gets a very good 7 out of 10.

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Tags: Madden NFL 10, EA, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, Madden, NFL, Youtube Madden NFL 10 review

I know Project Origin’s been out for a while now but I never got round to playing it and things are quiet in the summer months so here goes my review.

Set just before the end of the first game, this tale of terror and gunplay begins in an office block as you try to extract Professor Aristide from an apartment. During your mission the massive explosion is seen which wipes out the crew in the first game and you’re then involved in experiments, flashbacks, lots of slow-mo shooting action and of course Alma pops up now and again to scare the living daylights out of you.

People have complained that this game’s more of the same, but that’s no bad thing. The action is slick, controls are tight, the frame rate is consistently high and the graphics are fantastic. The weird hallucinations you experience are once again suitably scary and there’s some shock moments in there that are guaranteed to make you jump if you have the sound turned up.

The game’s also not as repetitive as the first game. You may spend the first couple of levels wandering around an office block and a hospital but you also get to walk around the charred remains of the city and explore an underground scientific bunker. You’ll be using the slow-mo mode to pick off your targets once again, as not using it usually results in death. The enemy AI is super clever and the action’s thick and fast if you decide not to slow the pace down with the touch of a button.

They’ve also put a new cover system into the game where you can slide or topple over furniture to hide behind. Unfortunately, you won’t actually use it much as it’s far more efficient to just shoot your enemies in the face than try to tip over a plant pot.

If you like strong, story-driven FPSs then this is definitely worth checking out. There’s also a token multiplayer mode thrown in there for good measure but single player is definitely where it’s at. F.E.A.R. 2 gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Related: F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, Dementium The Ward review, Youtube FEAR 2 Project Origin review

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