The essential PS3 party games for that perfect family Christmas 2009

Christmas is an interesting time for most – it’s pretty-much the one point in the year when everyone insists on big family get-togethers, regardless of how well the family actually gets on. You might be the sort of person who literally yearns for Christmas so you can catch up with all your close family members, or you might be the type for whom the Christmas holiday is more or an ordeal, looked on with the kind of enthusiasm most reserve for visits to the dentist, or filling in a tax return. Whether you embrace the Festive period with the enthusiasm of Tiny Tim however, or feel that actually Scrooge had it spot on before the meddling ghosts showed up, one thing that’s always welcome when you’re ‘confined to quarters’ with all available family members, is some kind of family entertainment.

Now in the ‘olden days’ (back when telephones had wires attaching them to walls, and you could count the number of television channels on the fingers of one hand), family fun would generally have been limited to board games, card games and charades (note to younger readers – ask your parents about the last one).

Now though, with a spot of planning, and some careful purchase of pre-Christmas shopping, your versatile PS3 can actually provide you with myriad ways to amuse the family, be they young or old, and thus assure a stress-free Christmas for all. What follows is Gamesweasel’s recommendations for a fun-filled PlayStation 3 Christmas – get your PS3 Christmas deals in now, before they all sell out.

• Buy a Playstation 3 120 GB from Amazon – $299.99
• Buy a Playstation 3 250 GB from Amazon – $349.99

Singstar

Suitable for: Family members of all ages

Once upon a time karaoke was something that people did in bars. Then in 2004 Sony came up with the idea of Singstar and suddenly those who were too nervous or too self-conscious to belt out their favourite pop hits in front of strangers could do so in the comfort of their own home. With the two Singstar microphones, and loads of Singstar titles now on the market, there’s something to suit just about everyone’s taste (well, except perhaps those who only really like opera music – but I’m sure Singstar: Opera is just around the corner).

Singstar started on the PS2, and is still going strong on the older platform, but next-gen PS3 owners benefit from a few extra tracks on each new release that PS2 owners miss out on. Should you be really into your Singstar, then it’s worth noting that the backwards compatibility of the PS3 also means that owners of the new console can still use the older Singstar games too.

The list of Singstar titles now available is literally too numerous to list all of them here, but particularly recommended would be the most recent release, Singstar: Take That, a compendium of the most popular hits from the well-known boy band; Singstar: Motown, also recently released, and featuring a range of tracks which will keep mum, dad and probably the grandparents happy too; Singstar: Queen, featuring, as the title suggests, the well-known hits of Queen; Singstar: ABBA, one for the ladies; Singstar: Boy Bands vs Girl Bands, something to keep the kids happy when they get bored with Take That; Singstar: Singalong with Disney, something to keep the younger kids amused (and all those ‘big kids’ who’ve watched too many Disney movies); and last but not least, Singstar: Anthems, which contains a selection of those songs that for one reason or another, everybody knows! With so many different styles of music available to keep everyone happy Singstar is one of the top PS3 games for Christmas 2009.

• Buy Singstar Bundle including 2 microphones from Amazon – $56.99
• Buy Singstar ABBA from Amazon – $39.82
• Buy Singstar Pop from Amazon – $17.25
• Buy Singstar Pop 2 from Amazon – $28.89
• Buy Singstar Queen from Amazon – $36.99
• Buy Singstar Singalong with Disney from Amazon – $26.99
• Buy Singstar 80’s from Amazon – $29.82
• Buy Singstar 90’s from Amazon – $26.50

EyePet

Suitable for: Keeping the younger kids quiet while the older relatives are busy

I remember when I was at school, at one point all the kids went crazy for a ‘Virtual Pet’ called a Tamagotchi. Technology back then was fairly limited (at least when it came to toys) so this was simply a small egg-shaped piece of plastic with a monochrome LCD screen, on which a tiny ‘pet’ could be encouraged to grow, and it was the job of the pet’s owner to feed it and play with it via a very basic series of commands. It was ridiculously primitive, but everyone loved it. Quite what kids back then would make of the EyePet is anybody’s guess. Taking the same concept – of a ‘virtual pet’ – and then transforming it into something so far from the original idea as to be practically unrecognisable, Sony offers today’s kids something quite special.

Using the PS3’s EyeToy camera, the EyePet shows you a live image of your room, on TV, then inserts the pet into the room, where you can interact with it. It jumps around the floor, climbs onto your shoulder, lets you pet it, feed it and play with it, and kids are going to absolutely love it.

It worth pointing out that the EyePet isn’t perfect – it’s a little tricky to start with, getting used to trying to touch something that only exists on the TV screen, and the interaction is sometimes a little iffy as you find yourself putting your hand through your pet, but on the whole it’s extremely well-realised, and even adults will find themselves sucked into thinking of the little fellow as real as he bounces around on the screen, responding to ‘almost’ your every move.

EyePet is a reminder that long before Nintendo released a controller that you have to wave around, PlayStation owners were enjoying motion-sensitive, controller-free gameplay through the innovations of the EyeToy camera.

• Buy EyePet – game only from Amazon – $39.99
• Buy EyePet Bundle including camera from Amazon – $56.99
• Buy Playstation 3 Eye from Amazon – $29.99

Buzz!

Suitable for: Family members of all ages

YouTube Buzz Quiz TV Review

As they’d done with karaoke, Sony took the concept of gameshows and brought in into people’s homes. Under the beady eye of sharp-tongued virtual host ‘Buzz’ (voiced by Jason Donovan) between two and eight players compete in a variety of different rounds to show whose knowledge is best. The basic game usually comes with four buzzers, so those with big families might need to shell out for an extra set to play with up to eight, but it’s worth it when the whole family is clustered round the TV, buzzer in hand, trying to out-Buzz everyone else.

Again a Playstation game which started on PS2, Buzz really came into its own on Playstation 3 where the addition of wireless buzzers and better graphics and sound made things that much more fun. Most recently, Buzz! Quiz World was released for the Playstation 3, but also available is Buzz! Quiz TV and Buzz! Brain Of The UK. In addition to the quiz options there are a variety of games available aimed at younger gamers who perhaps aren’t quite coordinated enough yet to manage a proper controller. Buzz! Junior Monster Rumble was popular on PS2, and should now be available for download for PS3 from the PlayStation Store.

• Buy Buzz! Quiz World – game only from Amazon – $36.99
• Buy Buzz! Quiz World bundle with 4 wireless buzzers from Amazon – $59.99
• Buy Buzz! Quiz TV bundle with 4 wireless buzzers from Amazon – $59.99
• Read and watch our Buzz! Quiz TV review

Guitar Hero, Band Hero and Rock Band

Suitable for: All but the youngest family members, and those with zero coordination

YouTube Beatles Rock Band

Always wanted to be in a rock band but haven’t got any musical talent? Well now you can be, with your PS3. A game series that started on PS2, Guitar Hero kicked things off with its unique ‘guitar controller’ which allowed musically untalented music fans everywhere to ‘rock out’ in the style of their favourite guitar heroes (hence the name) and then Rock Band took things to the next level by adding more instruments and a vocalist to the mix – cue many drunken post-pub ‘band sessions’ for those who could afford all the kit.

The concept is simple: you hold the dedicated controller, and use the fret buttons (or the drums in the case of the drum kit) to create the notes as they race towards you on the screen. Hit the buttons at the correct time and the tune continues, hit them at the wrong time, and that part of the track, be it lead guitar, bass guitar or drums, stops until the next note appears. A virtual crowd cheers or boos your efforts on the screen, and good performances are rewarded with new tracks to tackle and other bonuses while lousy performances earn you insults and leave you with your ‘Rock God’ reputation in tatters.

An idea that started with the awesome Guitar Hero, ‘Band Hero’ is the most recent release for the PS3, and one with a rocking track list which should offer something for most family members to try.

The Beatles: Rock Band, meanwhile, is a must-have for those fans of the Fab Four with the cash to afford the complete kit, and family get-togethers are probably one of the only times when you’re going to have enough people available for an entire band. If you can’t quite stretch to the newest games, then it’s well worth taking a look at some of the older Guitar Hero titles which are still available (Guitar Hero 5 has not been out long and for more tracks it’s worth checking out Guitar Hero III and Guitar Hero World Tour). Even if your cash can’t stretch to enough instruments for an entire band, it’s well worth just trying a version of the game with the guitar only, as strumming along to your favourite rock tracks is great fun, and can be almost as much fun to watch – get your uncoordinated uncle to have a go at it on after lunch on Boxing Day and you’ll see what I mean.

• Buy Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock from Amazon – $39.99
• Buy Guitar Hero World Tour from Amazon – $39.92
• Buy Guitar Hero 5 from Amazon – $56.99
• Buy Guitar Hero Aerosmith from Amazon – $15.99
• Buy Band Hero from Amazon – $59.99
• Buy Rock Band from Amazon – $17.95
• Buy Rock Band 2 from Amazon – $99.00
• Buy Beatles Rock Band from Amazon – $49.96
• Read and watch our reviews of Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 and Guitar Hero Aerosmith
• Read and watch our reviews of Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and Beatles Rock Band
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When you play videogames on a ‘professional’ basis it’s easy to get jaded about them – on the whole your average videogames reviewer probably plays, on average, roughly ten times the number of new titles each month that an ‘ordinary’ member of the games-buying public does and many of these games are just rehashes of old ideas – so when a new title arrives which causes you to get genuinely excited, then it has to be something special. And Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, is exactly that.

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

In these days of ‘super consoles’, it’s easy to forget what videogames used to be like. Back when games consoles didn’t have enough processing power to run a good-sized Nuclear submarine, and it wasn’t possible to create the massive virtual worlds for the gamer to run around in that you see today, games had to be smaller, and simpler. The upside of this was that the developers had to focus on making the gameplay so addictive that the graphics and the sound and everything else wasn’t quite so important. As a result, game concepts tended to be more straightforward than they are today.

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

You’d have to have been living on a desert island for the last few years (and one without an internet connection at that) not to have heard of Halo. The first game showed the world the real potential that lay ahead for console online multiplayer gaming (and for a while, at least, silenced the multitude of PC owners who’d been ranting on for years that you ‘couldn’t do proper multiplayer deathmatch on a console’) as well as introducing the gaming world to the Master Chief, one of the coolest and most instantly recognisable characters to hit the videogame console since the delectable Ms Lara Croft graced the PlayStation, many years before. I’ll admit, that like most of the gaming community, I was sucked into Halo’s world, its action and its storyline, and I loved every minute of it.

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

I recently watched Charlie Brooker (of The Guardian’s Screenburn column and BBC’s Screenwipe) in his new show Gameswipe, in which basically his career came more-or-less full circle, he having started off as a games journalist, made it into TV, and then come back to reviewing videogames again. Mr Brooker managing to make the leap from games journo to TV ‘star’, despite having many of the traits of your average videogame journo – lack of film-star looks (when watching him on TV, you can’t help feeling that somewhere back in his family tree a Cabbage Patch doll had an affair with a trout), a wit best described as ‘acidic’ and a tendency towards borderline obsession – is an encouragement to other games journalists that one day we too might escape the world of late-into-the-night lonely reviewing sessions and perhaps scale the dizzy career heights to achieve that dream of our own late-night BBC3 show, or occasional celebrity panel show guest spot. Gameswipe, for me though, also highlighted an interesting fact about games genres: there are LOADS of them.

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

If you’ve got a Nintendo DS then you’ll almost certainly already be familiar with Professor Layton, and if you’re not, the chances are you’ll have a friend or relative who is. You may even be one of those many, many people who, last December, spent the weeks in the run-up to Christmas scouring shops both online and off in search of what turned out to be one of the most wanted (and, seemingly, least available) gift items of that year – 2009’s Furby no less – the rather excellent Professor Layton And The Curious Village. On the subject of Christmas shopping, let me give a word of warning here – should you be trying to get the new Professor Layton adventure for your loved one this Christmas, don’t make the mistake I made last year when I was trying to get Professor Layton And The Curious Village for my other half. Finding that it was out of stock EVERYWHERE, and not having the time or the determination to camp outside GAME 24-hours-a-day on the off-chance that they might get a new delivery of stock in, I instead naively ordered a copy from a Hong Kong-based website that claimed, just three weeks before the big day, to have copies of the game in stock, and guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. I failed to read the small print that stated that ‘delivery dates might be changed, no refunds once order taken’ and so needless to say, barely had I parted with my cash than I received an email telling me that in fact the game wouldn’t be delivered till February of the following year (and in the end, the game arrived mid-March!) The moral of the story? Don’t believe everything you read on too-good-to-be-true foreign websites – stick with reputable, reliable online stores like Amazon!

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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Related: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box UK release date, Review of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Tags: Professor Layton And Pandoras Box, Professor Layton, Pandoras Box, Diabolical Box