I'll take your brain to another dimension, pay close attention...

I haven't forgotten to post again, truth be told I've just not been all that arsed about gaming over the last couple of weeks, so I've had little to write about.

I suppose the biggest news is my acquisition of a second-hand Nintendo 3DS, Which set me back a meagre £149.99, less than the proposed price cut and I'll still get the freebies from the Ambassador Programme. Also, the dumbassed previous owners had left an 8gb SD card in the machine, further sweetening my deal. If you're reading this by the way, I deleted your holiday photos.

The only games I've picked up, and indeed the only currently available 3DS games that I'm interested in, are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition (Yes, I'm fully aware that they are both games I already own, I'll buy what I want, you're not my real dad), and I'm saving Zelda for my week in Wales next week, but I'm suitably impressed with SSFIV. It looks better than I ever expected it to, with character models that look almost on a par with it's PS3 counterpart. The backgrounds don't hold up all that well, being made up of layered, stationary 2D sprites, and it gives the whole thing a look like one of those 3D picture box things from Art Attack. The backgrounds are also very low-res, but that's only noticeable in the cutscene before you fight Akuma in Arcade Mode.

As far as gameplay goes, it's about the best version of SFIV I've played (keep in mind I haven't had a go on Arcade Edition yet), must notably because it's got the unreasonably priced DLC costume packs bundled within. Also, the touch screen displays shortcuts to two of your character's Specials and their Super and Ultra, which takes the skill out of it somewhat, rendering them even easier to pull off than Mortal Kombat's all-too-accessible X-Ray moves, but it makes some of the ridiculously difficult moves like Zangief's Ultimate Atomic Buster actually useful, and the charge moves like Guile's Sonic Boom able to be pulled off without being overly obvious to your opponent.

So yeah, good game. The only other thing I've really been playing, albeit at a snail's pace, is Bethesda's Hunted: The Demon's Forge on PS3, and, well, it's alright. I commented the other week on how every game tries to rip off God/Gears of War, but Hunted is the first game I've played that tries to do both. The two lead characters are each equipped with a Bow for cover-based shooting, and a sword and shield for close combat, with sadistic elf Elara specialising in archery and tribal-covered meat head Caddoc majoring in, well, being a meat head. To be honest, the close combat is that dull, boring and most importantly difficult that I've spent just about all of my time behind the cross hairs of the bloodthirsty elf, partly to take advantage of Caddoc's seemingly unlimited reserves of health when under the AI's supervision, and partly because the ranged combat is pretty fun, infinitely more so than the tiresome swordplay.

Occasionally the game attempts to plagiarise a third genre too, the Dragon Age/Dungeon Siege archetype of RPG, with levelling up, short conversational segments and a magic system that is utterly pointless, as it brings nothing to the table. And to say it prides itself on it's split-screen coop multiplayer, it handles that woefully - the fact that even on a widescreen TV the screen is split horizontally, resulting in neither my wife nor I being able to see pretty much anything even on our 40" screen because our letterbox views were too tiny, is unbelievably under-researched, and to add insult to injury the already sub-par graphics are noticeably downgraded too. As this was my first impression of the game, I can't say I was too delighted.

But after a couple of hours with the single-player game, despite it's faults, I find myself strangely endeared. For a game so destined for failure, a surprisingly deep history has been crafted, reminiscent of that of the Dragon Age series. I keep hearing about towns that I'm unable to visit, and discover myself wondering what they look like, how the architecture looks and so on, and with every hint at the fate of the apparently all but extinct Elven race that Elara hails from, at the hands of the so-far-unseen Minotaurs, I yearn to learn exactly what happened and itch for revenge. Yes, Hunted is an okay game, but it's an okay game in a sea of excellent games this year and as such will fall into obscurity.

So, as a parting note as I head off to the Welsh countryside, I put forward a conundrum that has bothered me for some time: Why is it that Bethesda's grasp of the open-world RPG is completely unrivalled - nobody else even comes close to the experience of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 - yet they seemingly find it so hard to conquer any other genre?

Devil in a Blue Dress

So last week I commented on the nostalgia factor of Duke Nukem Forever, sequel to an excellent 15 year old FPS from my youth, and it appears we are developing a pattern, as my latest conquest has been Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to 2000's American McGee's Alice, which follows on from Lewis Carrol's famous fairy tales 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'.

Firstly, Disney this ain't, not even the Tim Burton version. It's very dark, and tells the story of an adult Alice, dealing with the death of her family in a domestic blaze and struggling with her own increasing insanity, of which Wonderland itself is a manifestation. Undergoing psychiatric help to cure her dementia, Alice is slowly forgetting her troubled history, and as such Wonderland is ceasing to be, existing solely in her mind. But when new evidence that her family was murdered surfaces, Alice must fight to preserve her memories and recall what happened that night, and in the process, save Wonderland.

Firstly, the game is as schizophrenic as it's protagonist. At times it feels a lot like a child's game, with old-fashioned style platforming gameplay reminiscent of the first Crash Bandicoot games, or more recently Spongebob Squarepants: Creature from the Krusty Krab. The second world in particular, which takes place underwater (ironically very similar in aesthetics to Spongebob's home town Bikini Bottom, with shades of BioShock's Rapture), revolves around talent scouting for cutesy performers to star in a musical play, and is so juvenile I started to question whether I was actually enjoying it. Then all of a sudden you find a room full of sliced up carcases of anthropomorphic fish, and find out that the show is only a ruse (without spoiling too much), and the story takes a darker turn. It was probably intentional, some kind of comparison between Alice's past innocence and darker current self, but it carries off like that a few times and just seems disjointed.

The action is much more up-to-date though, with the obligatory God of War style combat (it seems every game nowadays borrows something from one of the 'Of Wars', be it the God combat or the Gears cover shooting) performing for Alice as well as any other game, and with some Zelda style projectile weapons tossed in for good measure too. Falling to the lower reserves of your health bar gives you a Fallout-3-Nerd-Rage style rage power too, boosting your attack power exponentially for a short time. And all weapons can be upgraded too, in exchange for collectible teeth, no doubt some reference to the original stories that went over my head.

All in all, there is so much to like about the game. The setting is suitably magical and wondrous, and slowly descends into a Silent Hill style nightmare, with some at-times amazing visuals (Alice's hair alone looked jaw-dropping as each strand moved individually, especially in the aforementioned undersea level), and some great voice acting really drags you in - Alice sounds like a Legend Trilogy era Lara Croft, only bat-shit crazy. And from time to time the gameplay is broken up by little mini-games, from great retro Arrow Flash style scrolling shooter sections and awesome Limbo style physics-based 2D platforming, to ill-advised Guitar Hero bits and some god-awful pinball inspired levels, but the standard is usually high. If I was to sum it up using one other game for comparison, I would call it this year's Darksiders. Really worth a go, and with the (albeit very dated) original prequel bundled with the game as DLC on top of the unusually long campaign, you get a lot for your money.

Also last week I forgot to mention Mafia II, which my wife bought for me in retaliation to LA Noire being a bit limp, and was surprisingly enjoyable. Out of all of the non-Rockstar involved GTA clones, I'd probably rate Mafia II as the current best, with a Bully style evolving sandbox city changing with the seasons (and indeed years in this case) and very likable characters that you actually care for. Sure, the graphics aren't great and the story is a bit linear, but the grit of the story and some awesome montage cutscenes make up for those minor problems, and the speed limiter for when safe driving is a stroke of genius, especially as Empire City's finest  actually do enforce speed limits, unlike the flatfoots of Liberty City. And it's worth playing Mafia II just to hear Nolan North converse with himself in the street if nothing else.

Finally, rounding things up, it's finally paying off to be a Windows Phone 7 gamer, with fully achievement-equipped XBox Live Arcade versions of Angry Birds, Doodle Jump and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 hitting the OS in recent weeks, all of which are excellent ports. Speaking of Sonic, I played the demo of Sonic Generations too, and the 3D recreation of the Green Hill Zone from 1991, complete with the classic music, turned me into a 6-year-old again. I'll be watching that one. And I had a quick go on Outland on the PS3, which is trying to be a cross between Limbo and Shadow Complex and falls so hard in the process. PS3 owners, don't waste your cash, just wait for the port of Limbo due in the next few weeks.

I'm a 21st Century Digital Boy, I don't know how to read but I got a lot of toys

You know how sometimes life hands you a lemon and you make lemonade? Well, gaming-wise anyway, this last week life handed me a bottle of lemonade. Not that cheap shit either, I'm talking 7-Up. With Vodka in it.

Firstly, there's my new friend Dead Space. HMV, in it's infinite quest to make no profit whatsoever, had the Limited Edition of Dead Space 2 (The one with Dead Space: Extraction) on the PS3 marked at £24.99. I've not really had much time on it just yet, so more on that next time.

Secondly, I've upgraded from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3 on the PC. I played it on the PS3 at the tail-end of last year and was very impressed in the open-endedness of what was essentially finally a true Sims game on a console, but as far as it burns me to say it, the PC version is still far superior. Initially there's the mouse controls, instantly accessible to a long time Sims gamer where the Joypad controls seemed overcomplicated and baffling at times.

Then there's the memory limit, restricting how many items you can place in your digital self's home. It's plagued console Sims games since day one, but was always honest about what it was. It the console version of The Sims 3 it was disguised as a fire-hazard meter, a name which made me wonder if it was prevalent in the PC version too. I was very relieved to find it isn't. Then there's the seamless transition between the neighbourhood and house views, eliminating the need for a loading screen, and finally the already copious amount of free user-made costumes and hairstyles available for download, compared with the EA-sanctioned £7.99-price tagged packs on the PSN store, and I kind of wonder why I even bothered with the console version at all.

The only gripe I have with the game itself (other than that obvious things, such as pets and weather effects, have been intentionally left out to make way for expansion packs later on) is that the aesthetics of the characters themselves are a lot more serious looking, away from the over-emotive, hyper-expressive look of The Sims 2's titular heroes, and in turn make them less endearing to me. Plus, every male Sim I try to make ends up looking like Jack Black, and all the women look like Down's Syndrome sufferers, but aside from that it's great. The Sims 2 isn't quite obsolete yet, one of the big thrills of The Sims for me is having multiple households going, and in The Sims 3 you can only have one playable family in each neighbourhood.

The console version isn't different enough from it's PC sibling to warrant owning both, so my second HMV trip saw me re-homing it for £23 of store credit (they were selling the game new for £27 too, it's as if they don't actually want to make a profit), which I put towards Split/Second Velocity on the XBox 360 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift on the PS3, both of which were on a '2 for £30' offer. Split/Second is excellent, I find myself actually really looking forward to playing it, and by trait I'm not a fan of racing games. It's not as good as Burnout really, but it's still got that same level of over-the-top mayhem, and the adrenaline rush of beating your opponent by two hundredths of a second is incomparable to any other feeling.
 

I haven't tried BlazBlue yet, but I've heard great things and I was a big fan of it's spiritual predecessor Guilty Gear. I've mainly got it to bridge the gap between the upcoming Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, which I bought last Friday. I'm not going to say much about MVC3, as I'm building to a video review that I'm hoping to have ready for next week's post. In true fashion though, me and Raz7el had a showdown over PSN, and just like Dead or Alive 4 before it, I tanned him pretty soundly. I'm just trolling you man, we were pretty evenly matched. At least we both looked like we knew how to play, unlike when we stunk at Street Fighter IV over XBox Live.

Deadpool, as well as being a useful character, also provides genuine comedy to the game

And to bring it all to an end this week, I finally finished God of War: Ghost of Sparta on PSP. Without giving away too much, the moral of the story is that nobody gets to kill a member of Kratos' family but Kratos. Otherwise, he just gets angry. Well, angrier.

In your bedroom at night with the lights off and your headphones on... everyone can hear you scream...

Like I said last week, I've grown tired of Fantasy RPGs of late, and felt that the well-above-average Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga deserved my attention at a time when I can bestow it fully upon the game. I even tried the simple, accessible Fable II (not a typo, I've just played Fable: The Lost Chapters and intended to play the three of them in sequence), but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. The heroic adventures of Nobhead (descendant of Arseface) will have to wait.

All the while, the soundtrack to my RPG lethargy came in the form of The Smashing Pumpkins' whingey teen anthem 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings', a song (and band) I absolutely abhor, yet one that worms it's way into your subconscious like the T-Virus. The vessel for this song? The TV advert for Dead Space 2, a game that was so far off my radar it might as well have been Women's Murder Club or something. I've had the original Dead Space for so long, and it must be said I have never liked it, I just haven't ever gotten rid of it because of it's poor monetary value (I bought it for a tenner a couple of years ago, I'd be lucky to get £3 back on a trade-in). The reason for my disdain was the lack of positive reinforcement for your actions as a player, every little thing you did had a negative impact on the story, and every cutscene was just one of your companions telling you to go somewhere and do something, and the other, a bratty annoying bint of a woman, telling you it won't work. Then you do it, and it doesn't work.

But the TV spot for DS2 made me want the game so badly, for no reason other than that I couldn't get Billy Corgan and his group of misfitted pricks out of my head. And I felt like, as it is such a major player in the still fairly niche Survival Horror genre, I should really like it. So Divinity II took a temporary bow and my trusty 360 Elite became the subject of nightmares for a few days. And I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Bulbasaur used Vine-Whip! It's not very effective...

Actually, that's a lie. There's this bit where you have to shoot asteroids out of the sky before they hit you, and that had me on the verge of snapping my controller in two through sheer rage. But apart from that, it was excellent. None too original (Think Half-Life's Gordon Freeman complete with Gravity Gun, fused with Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland, on board Red Dwarf, fighting Zombies, directed by Ridley Scott and you're pretty much there), but that hardly matters when you are so preoccupied with being terrified that you daren't take your finger off the aim button to press a switch. Later in the game, the developers seemed to have forgotten that the game was supposed to be scary, with the whole endgame taking place in broad daylight, but that's just cleverly there to lure you into a false sense of security before chucking the ending at you, which had everyone I've spoken to who's finished the game collectively shit their pants.

So I'm on board for DS2 now. I'll no doubt pick it up in a month or so, I was planning on getting the 360 version to continue my night terrors, but the prospect of a single disk, a free copy of Dead Space Extraction and some armour for Dragon Age II (which my wife is to purchase on the PS3), I'm being swayed to the PS3 version, but I'll see. Speaking of Dragon Age, the Archdemon finally fell last night. I've got Awakening, Witch Hunt and The Golems of Amgarrak to do before DAII, but for the minute I'm enjoying the light-hearted and simple Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Here at 24HG, if you ask us what the manliest game in the world is, chances are you'd be told Ghost Squad. Sega's Wii Shooter does have you high-five the President after rescuing him from the clutches of an evil homosexual terrorist after all. but this week it's been surpassed by... EA's girl-friendly casual gaming champion The Sims 2?

Now, Ghost Squad may be manly. But it will never be Pyramid Head, Kratos, Barry Burton and The Punisher in a Hot Tub talking about Baseball manly.

Finally, I was asked over Formspring what I have against Bayonetta. Good question. One that I will answer the next time I don't have anything better to do, like oh, go and buy Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is what I'm going to do right now. Bye for now.

My top 10 games of 2010!

Foregoing the 2010 roundup (I'm going to stop unveiling my plans in advance, because I never keep them) as I found that writing about 27 different games and keeping the post down to a 'light read' size was proving difficult, I'm moving on to the official 24HG top 10 games of 2010! The only games that I've been halfway bothered about playing that have eluded my grasp last year are BlazBlue and CoD: Black Ops, but I doubt that either would have dented the list in any way (I do love fighting games but have trouble adjusting to new systems, and CoD really isn't my thing).

2010 has been an absolutely amazing year for games. I've revised this list a number of times, because the consistently great videogame experiences throughout the year, coupled with my tendency to back the underdog, have made choosing incredibly difficult. I think I've got it down though. So as with any great ranking list, I'll start from the bottom.

10: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - Climax Studios - Wii (PSP, PS2)

Shattered Memories was a game I played early in the year, close to it's release, and spent the rest of the year clinging on to the hope that there weren't that many games that beat it, because it deserves honouring too much. I know the number 10 spot suggests that I did take pity and slap it in regardless, but the game it beat to get this far was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and it is doubtless a much better game. Forgetting the Resident Evil inspired gameplay of the series so far, and adopting a Heavy Rain-esque approach to the series, this re-imagining of the original white-knuckle terror-fest succeeded in not only being the best Silent Hill games ever, but also one of the greatest Wii games to date. I just hope they can work the magic again with Silent Hill: Downpour this year, Homecoming was a travesty.

9: Darksiders - Vigil Games - PS3 (360, PC)

Darksiders is cruelly lumped in the 'God of War Clone' category too often, when in reality it takes the best bits from so many games and mashes them together into one expansive, original and utterly gorgeous work of art. Taking cues from Zelda, Soul Reaver, Fable, Portal and more, and throwing in a Mark Hamill led voice cast, Darksiders was something of a surprise for me, and had me hooked to the very end, despite the difficulty. An absolute must play, if you haven't already. It can be scooped up for less than a tenner now, you've no excuse.

8: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - MercurySteam/Kojima Productions - PS3 (360)

Before I get into the gameplay, LoS is by far the best looking multi-platform game there is. Reportedly no texture in the game was reused, making each new scene look breathtaking and fresh, also accounting for the game spilling over onto a second DVD on the 360 version. But aside from being a visual masterpiece, the game is also an incredible experience, bolstered by the strong double-act of Patrick Stewart (who's Oblivion references are hilarious) and Robert Carlyle providing the major characters' voices. The only thing holding it back is that the developers don't seem to have mastered the GoW formula in the way that others have, as the story and rebooted mythos have me craving more and the ending was phenomenal in the eyes of a gamer still pining for more Legacy of Kain.

7: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Ninja Theory - PS3 (360)

Bland at first, this Uncharted meets (once again) God of War soon becomes a masterpiece in storytelling and the importance of companionship. A retelling of the classic Chinese fable 'Journey to the West' (or the TV show 'Monkey' if you're a Sun reader), Enslaved puts you into the shoes of a loner known as Monkey as he is forced to escort a young girl named Tripitaka through a post-apocalyptic New York, all the while evading marauding robots and slavers. Led by the fantastic Andy Serkis, it's the unfolding narrative that pushed the game strongly into my affections, and it draws upon the tried and tested (yet surprisingly underused) Boy-meets-girl, blossoming friendship mechanic, as seen in the likes of Ico, Prince of Persia and to a lesser extent Resident Evil 4, which really endears you to the characters.

6: God of War III - Santa Monica Studio - PS3

And so the game that the last three have been leading up to... There's little to say about this game other than it carries on the solid gameplay of the first two games in the series (why fix something that isn't broken), augmenting it with breathtaking visuals and the most epic cutscenes and boss battles ever witnessed. Kratos is at his brutal best (some of the executions are stomach-churning to say the least) and this 'conclusion' to the story never once disappoints. I'm almost willing to put money on him making a comeback soon though, away from prequels and cameos, especially after the ominous ending.

5: Fable III - Lionhead Studios - 360

What came at first a slight disappointment at the changes made from the previous games in the series became a magical adventure that reeled me in like the original did years ago. With a refined combat system and a star-studded British cast with the likes of Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg and Jonathan Ross, the charming world of Albion has finally reached the industrial age, and tyrannical rule from a renegade King necessitates a revolution - and that's where you come in. Plenty of quests (every character in the game has the potential to send you on at least one quest, however simple), with far more variety than the last game, will provide the would-be adventurer with many a sleepless night, and the choices you have to make are far more impacting than any game before it. A 100% improvement over Fable II.


4: Red Dead Redemption - RockStar San Diego/RockStar North - PS3 (360)

I'll admit, the whole 'Cowboys and Indians' thing kind of put me off at first, and on their joint release day I opted to go out and buy Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands instead, but a few weeks later I subsided and my wife, in all her pity, bought me a copy of Red Dead. If I only had to say one thing about this game, it's this: IT'S BETTER THAN GTAIV. More likable characters, a more interesting open world, an even more shocking and emotive ending and more of the familiar RockStar humour and self parody make the game one of the most immersive and expansive titles this year. Couple this with the crazy-enough-to-work Undead Nightmare DLC that came out later in the year and you are on to an absolute winner. GTA needs an Undead Nightmare too though.

3: Mass Effect 2 - BioWare - 360 (PC)


The sequel to one of the best games of this generation came and, while it oversimplified the system and took the story in a direction that I wasn't too comfortable with initially, it still completely blew me and the collective gaming community away. The fact that it was the very first game I bought last year and it still holds such a prestigious place in the list is a testament to it's quality, and the fact that BioWare managed to make every single decision made in the first game impact the events of the second was nothing short of ingenuity. Looking back, the only thing I can think of that hampers the game is that the cast of characters aren't as fresh and emotive as those in the last game, and of the two that do return, why pick Tali? She's boring as hell. Still, incredible game, but with a sequel out later this year, I just hope EA can resist making it a yearly franchise.


2: Heavy Rain - Quantic Dream - PS3

Love it or hate it, you can't ignore the fact that there isn't a game in the world quite like Heavy Rain. Amazing graphics, a thrilling and brutally mature storyline and an outcome that nobody saw coming all make for a completely unmatched gaming experience, as down on his luck dad Ethan Mars struggles to find his abducted son Shaun, with the help of an investigative journalist, an aging private detective and Fox Mulder. The only problem I had with the game was with Mulder's magic future glasses, which dragged the sombre and engrossing story kicking and screaming back out of the realm of realism every time he put them on.

1: Fallout: New Vegas - Obsidian - 360 (PS3, PC)

Yeah, so what? So it isn't as good as Fallout 3, well, neither are Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption or REAL LIFE. Granted, FNV is absolutely infested with bugs, but not a single one made the game unplayable in my experience (well, apart from the one that corrupted all of my saves, but I only lost out on a few hours play), and it isn't a Bethesda RPG if it hasn't got more than it's fare share of glitches. Truth be told, no other game this year has swallowed up quite so many of my gaming hours all year. A lot of people were expecting more from the game, but it delivered exactly what I wanted: more of Fallout 3. The new party system was easy to follow too, and with such great companions (I opted for the robot dog/schizophrenic old lady trapped in the body of a Super Mutant combination) the fun was endless. Sure, getting stuck in the ground every so often is a bit of a ball-ache, but as long as you save often there's no problem. And if I learnt anything from Oblivion and Fallout 3, it's SAVE OFTEN.

So there you have it, I can hear the cries of disgust at my choices already. Ah well, life goes on. Looking to the future I can already predict that next year is going to see Bethesda snaffle the top spot again with the delicious-looking Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the horizon, backed up by future classics such as Uncharted 3, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3 and dare I say Mortal Kombat? Who knows? I'm looking forward to finding out, that's for sure...


And for those wondering where their games were, here's the rest of the games I played in 2010, in ranking order:

11. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - Crystal Dynamics - PS3 (360, PC, iOS)
12. The Sims 3 - Visceral Games - PS3 (360)
13. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
14. Bioshock 2 - 2K Marin - 360 (PS3, PC)
15. God of War: Ghost of Sparta - Ready at Dawn Studios - PSP
16. Alpha Protocol - Obsidian - PS3 (360, PC)
17. ModNation Racers - United Front Games - PS3 (PSP)
18. Perfect Dark - RARE - 360
19. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - PS3 (360)
20. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom - Capcom - Wii
21. Limbo - Playdead Studios - 360
22. Alan Wake - Remedy Entertainment - 360
23. Super Street Fighter IV - Capcom - PS3 (360)
24. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - Neversoft - 360 (PS3, Wii)
25. Dante's Inferno - Visceral Games - PS3 (360, PSP)
26. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Ubisoft - Wii
27. Just Cause 2 - Eidos - PS3 (360, PC)
28. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Beenox - 360 (PS3, Wii, PC)
29. Halo: Reach - Bungee - 360
30. Dead to Rights: Retribution - Volatile Games - PS3 (360)
31. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - LucasArts - 360 (PS3, PC, Wii)
32. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - Kojima Productions - PSP
33. Batman: The Brave and the Bold - Wayforward Technologies - Wii (DS)
34. GoldenEye - Eurocom - Wii
35. Metro 2033 - 4A Games - 360 (PC)
36. Bayonetta - Platinum Games - 360 (PS3)
37. The Whispered World - Daedalic Entertainment - PC

Is that a cartoon pig?

First things first:

Yeah, I left the price on intentionally. The more awake of you will remember I reviewed MW2 on the arse end of 2009 with full intentions of hating it, but actually ended up quite enjoying the game, as far fetched and Bond-like it was (which causes me to diverge and note that while playing GoldenEye on the Wii the other week, my immediate reaction was that it was like 'a shit Call of Duty'. Back on track). I had all intention to pick the game up once it hit the fabled £10 mark, but for that price with a pair of actual Night Vision Goggles I couldn't really pass it up. It was from Morrisons if anyone's interested, but I doubt you'll find any now. Our store only had four copies sent.

The goggles themselves are great. They look and feel a bit plasticky, after all they are made of plastic, but once I got the buggers on I was incredibly impressed. They are able to switch between long and short range, have adjustable eyepieces and manual focus, and even let you apply a green filter to your vision, just like in the movies. Now it's just left for me to find a suitable use for them, instead of following my cat around in the dark. I can't wait until I next go camping.

I've had a better time with The Sims 3 now I've learnt to cheat (press start and hold all shoulder buttons for those interested). The port is actually pretty faithful (I say without actually playing the PC version of The Sims 3), and the fire hazard meter is a lot more forgiving than on previous generation consoles: I was able to move into the biggest house in town and fill it with junk and barely even scratch the surface. Sure, I'm not getting any Trophies for my troubles, but it's hardly having a negative impact on my enjoyment of the game, whereas having to cope with poverty and finding a job while still trying to keep myself entertained and happy, well, it's a bit too much like real life.

I finished Fable III with my evil princess, and with a bit of patience (and leaving my XBox on all day to earn as much as I can) I think the next time I should be able to play through it as a benevolent character. I intend to do the trilogy fairly soon, as Fable III really got me in the mood to redo the first and, through my rose-tinted spectacles (I actually own some once, found them on a wall in Derbyshire, true story), best in the series. Been playing Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions too, which is a nice little distraction. A standard God of War clone, the game sees you step into the shoes of four Spider-Men from varying Marvel Earths to battle evil and reclaim fragments of a broken stone tablet with the power to undo all realities, all the while quipping to yourself in a typically carefree way.

It's mostly a standard brawler affair, with the occasional Force Unleashed II style freefall section in the Spider-Man 2099 bits, but the action is broken up by the Spider-Man Noir levels. Set in the 1930s, Noir sees an incarnation of Spider-Man as a darkly-dressed vigilante stalking the night, clinging to the shadows and striking terror into the cowardly, superstitious criminal element. Totally not like Batman. In fact, the Noir sections are nothing but a homage to Arkham Asylum, in which you swing around rafters silently picking off your enemies and fleeing to the shadows when spotted. Even the Spider Sense mode is a bit like Batman's Detective mode.

Having reached the Nolan North powered Deadpool level last night, and hearing the man himself deliver probably his best role since last year's Uncharted 2, I am inclined to think that I've possibly reached the highest point in the game, for me anyway. But at no point have I been bored with it, I just haven't been blown away. It's a solid game, and a lot better than Spider-Man 3. Actually thinking of picking up Web of Shadows at some point now. I heard you can decapitate Wolverine in it. Sweet.

And finally, I've conquered my fears of Fuck Off Dragons and restarted Dragon Age: Origins, the time the Ultimate Edition on PS3, in anticipation of March's Dragon Age II. A Dalish Elf this time, I'm determined to play all of the DLC too. I completed Leliana's Song before starting the main game, and it was pretty good, if a little shallow and pointless. It just tells how Leliana, our Orlesian Rogue, was betrayed by her mentor Marjolaine, as she touches upon in conversation in the main game, mainly through combat, which wasn't DA:O's strong point. It only took a couple of hours to finish anyway, and it was fresh and new, so I can't complain.

Alright, so, my Top 10 of '10 has been ultimately drafted, and I just have one more game to play from last year, so expect next week's post to be a bit of a 2010 recap of the 25 or 26 games that didn't get into the highest echelon, followed by the Top 10 the week after. I'll probably recap last year's 10 too, as it was never posted on this site. Bye for now.

Here you go, create another Fable...

Firstly, hope you guys had an awesome Christmas and New Year. I personally spent the former with God of War: Ghost of Sparta and the latter with Fable III, but I'm sure you guys have a much more bustling social life than I. Secondly, I've made a new year's resolution to get back into regular posting here at 24HG, so hopefully most Tuesdays will see a post from me. I tried a more lenient approach to posting, but I rack disciprine.

I'll start with a short roundup of a few of the games I've been playing but don't have much to say about, initially with the aforementioned GoW: Ghost of Sparta. There really isn't much to say about a GoW game that I haven't gushed before, but one thing that jumps out at me about GoS is the visuals, and that it's clearly the most gorgeous game on the PSP yet, and actually visually surpasses the PS2 GoWs, which is no mean feat. A stand out moment was seeing the rain actually run down Kratos' body (totally not gay), something that is rarely seen on a full-on next-gen game.

On Christmas Day I had a go with the gift I bestowed on my Nephew: Batman: The Brave and the Bold on Wii. It was a pleasant surprise, and a nostalgia trip in two ways: The gameplay harks back to the SNES and Megadrive Batman games, particularly The Adventures of Batman and Robin, and the writing style and humour are reminiscent of the 1960's Batman TV series. But most importantly, it was providing the 4 year old budding geek beside me with a better introduction to the DC Universe than I ever had, teaching him of characters like Captain Marvel, Catman and Booster Gold, who I didn't know anything about until my late teens. And that's why it's the most important game in the world right now.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has also been on my radar, and has somewhat restored my faith in the series. It's probably the best GH since GHIII, and the strongest setlist since World Tour, but the best thing by far is that some effort has actually gone into the single player mode, and it's not just a hub for online play like GH5 and Band Hero were. It's genuinely exciting to see what each character's warrior form looks like, and the unique ability each character possesses adds a new dimension to the gameplay. I'm not sure about the character-specific setlists though. I'd expect pop-rock queen Judy Nails to play songs from bands such as Paramore, Evanescence and Avril Lavigne, not Queen and The Cure like she has, and for resident goth Pandora to have My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy in her set is a bit criminal. There are differences between goth and emo, Neversoft. One cries and writes poetry, the other cries and self harms. Not sure which is which though.

Moving on to the big names, Fable III is something of a departure from the series so far. It still retains the same core gameplay, but with a few changes such as a refined combat and conversation. The former sees the melee, ranged and magical combat all assigned to a single button each, meaning that regular attacks, special attacks and blocking are all placed on the X button, but it actually really works well. And with the conversation, you actually have to snap to your recipient with the A button before engaging them, instead of just wandering into town and gurning at people until you draw a crowd like on Fable II. Also your hero speaks, a feature that really rubbed me up the wrong way at first as it drives a wedge between you and the character, not letting you fully see them as you because it doesn't leave you to put words in their mouth. I got over it though.

The most curious thing about Fable III is the apparent moral of the story is that being, well, moral will get you nowhere. A lot of the side quests have no positive outcome, and later on, without spoiling anything, every positive choice you make will cost you literally thousands of your precious gold, which you need to end the game in any way successfully. Historically I always have played through games like this once as a benevolent male, then on my second run through as a female who's a bit of a bastard (I'd love to hear what a psychiatrist has to say about that one), but the impending failure of my male hero drew me to up sticks and unleash the bitch onto the world early. Overall it's a great game, but it took me a while to get into it, and while it's better than Fable II, the first Fable still holds a very dear part of me. I'll say this about III though, no other game has ever seen me fight off a horde of Zombies side-by-side with Simon Pegg and Jason Manford.

Between Kratos and the Princess of Albion, I headed off to 15th Century Italy once more to spend time with my old mate Ezio in his latest outing: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. ACB is set directly after ACII, in terms of Ezio's timeline and the background events in 2012, and sees Ezio take the fight to Rome after the Pope's son Cesare destroys his Villa, and Nolan North and the Scooby Gang looking for a new hideout after being compromised at the end of the last game.

For the first couple of hours, the game is a near carbon copy of ACII, and honestly failed to impress me, but it really gets good when it comes to recruiting and commanding your own guild of hoodies; a touch of the L2 button while an enemy is in range sees them quickly dispatched by one of your own. The coolest instance of this was when my prey was passing by a hay bale, and was just swept into it in a split second without any of his colleagues or passing civilians batting an eyelid. Your yobs can also be sent on missions all around the world, presumably to hang around in shopping malls and intimidate old ladies, all the while earning you money and levelling themselves up to greater aid you in time of need.

The game rides on a high for quite a while after that, but falls at the final hurdle when it finally allows you full use of the Apple of Eden, which turns out to be a boring and poorly executed game mechanic, turning combat into a tedious waiting game as you are reduced to watching your enemies fight each other, unable to just draw your sword and sort them out yourself. Coupled with the suitably retarded ending that I've come to expect from an AC game, Brotherhood virtually kills itself in the last couple of hours. But for a while, in the middle of the game, it was awesome.

Last thing I wanna talk about is The Sims 3 on the PS3. I was delighted when I learned of it's release, because I've been wanted a true, undiluted Sims game on a console, and thought that this generation would finally be the one to run it. Well, the gameplay is there, albeit heavily adapted obviously, but the furniture limit that haunted the PS2 Sims games is there, to stop the console running out of memory, thinly disguised as a 'fire hazard meter'. Derp.

I also realised that The Sims is nothing without cheats, forcing you to play through hours of awful, dreary poverty before the game gets fun. A quick scan on GameFAQs shows me that there are in fact cheats for the PS3 version, so before I trade it in for Batman: The Brave and the Bold I'll give it another chance, fully cheat enabled, and see if it grabs me.

So, lastly, before I head into Sim City once more, the 2010 Game of the Year post is coming, along with a 2010 roundup of the rest of the year's games, or at least the ones I've played. I just need to get to grips with a few more of 2010's games first. I'll try and post before January is through. So, with that, I'll see you next Tuesday. Probably.

We don't speak anymore of War...

As an avid Mortal Kombat fan and an avid God of War fan, I saw last weekend's new trailer for the upcoming Mortal Kombat game unveiling Kratos as a guest character, and promptly went mad. Heading over to the old Mortal Kombat forum that I used to frequent a while back, I found that, to no surprise whatsoever, the franchise's 'fanbase' were less than happy, as they have been for every new MK release since I joined the boards, back in the days of MK: Deadly Alliance.

Upon telling them all they were overreacting, as a response to one guy trolling the threads with Kratos spam-hate and another hypochondriac claiming that this single character addition, who might I add has no bearing on the storyline whatsoever and is simply there as an Easter Egg, had sent the 'good' (obviously ignoring the sales figures and the fans' own reactions to the series for the past decade or so) name of Mortal Kombat 'down the drain', I was informed that I have 'no respect for the series' that I have followed since the age of seven, and have bought and still own at least one copy of each game in the series in some form or another. So, I feel prompted to write in support of Kratos' appearance.

Financially, we'll begin with. Kratos himself is a household name. He's starred in six of his own games over four systems (look it up, there was a GoW for Mobile Phones), and made cameos in others such as LittleBigPlanet, Modnation Racers, Heavenly Sword (in a fashion) and SoulCalibur. Despite being a PlayStation-exclusive series, each God of War game has drastically outsold the Mortal Kombat that was released nearest to it's own date. So really, it's an honour that such a high-profile name should make it into a series which has fallen so far, and the GoW fans it will draw into MK, which no doubt greatly outnumber it's own fans (who all seem to hate the games anyway), will help ensure financial success and spur WB Games into funding the continuation of the series. But of course, if Mr. Ed Boon wants to make any money out of the game, then he's instantly a sellout.

Right then, my second point. Kratos fits in with the Mortal Kombat universe. I'm hard pressed to think of another videogame protagonist that is as brutal and visceral as the War God himself, and MK seems to be trying to push the boundaries of violence and brutality with the new release. Not only that, but Kratos is on a mission to destroy the Gods, and MK features no less than three Gods as playable characters throughout the series. In SoulCalibur he was potentially wasted, because of the lack of gore, and he didn't fit in with the uber-clean and shiny look of an eastern-made game. MK has both bases covered.

It's come to my attention that since the Kratos bombshell dropped, Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein have showed interest in slapping a Gears of War character into the 360 version, which is sure to rub salt into the wounds of the pent-up masses. I'm hoping for the Cole Train, not only do I love him almost as much as Kratos, but his carefree, comic relief attitude is sure to ruffle the feathers of many a rectally clenched MK 'purist'. I can't wait.

So, as a little bit of fun, I set up a petition urging David Jaffe to include our beloved Kratos in every game he possibly can from now on. I would love to see him manually decapitating a Chimera in Resistance 3, applying sandal to Hig in Killzone 3, high fiving Lara Croft after helping her uncover some ancient Greek treasure or kicking back and relaxing after disemboweling the Grim Reaper for trying to interfere with his indoor barbeque in the next expansion pack for The Sims 3. You can view and sign the petition here, so go for it, just for a laugh. Get your pets to sign it too, and your gran, she loves a bit of dismemberment.

And to sign out, I thought I'd prepare a little something for you guys.

Not the biggest MK collection going, but not bad for someone who has no respect for the series. See you guys later.

Carry on camping! - 24 Hour Gamer hits the fields...

Yes, this last weekend has seen Me, Trev and our respective other 'alves Susie and Katie took to the North Yorkshire Moors with nothing but a few canvas sheets and grim determination on our side. As usual, gaming was involved, but the weekend wasn't limited to that alone. So without further ado, our weekend.

SATURDAY, 25/9/10: Here I am, Rock you like a Hurricane...

The ride over to Whitby went without fault, aside from the customary return to Sheffield 10 minutes into the journey to lock the front door, but that's a given. It wasn't until we were around three quarters of the way there that the sky turned a threatening shade of grey, and by the time we'd got there our moorland home for the weekend had seen a fair amount of rain and the wind was blowing at over 30 miles per hour, making tent-pitching a bit of a nightmare to say the least. We picked a spot behind a group with a large trailer-tent, hoping that it might provide a bit of shelter from the elements, and after three hours of wrestling with tents and a quick change out of our mud-soaked clothes, we headed into Scarborough, only to hit a fresh disaster when Katie's car dropped dead as we were looking for a parking spot.

Mechanic called and dinner eaten in a local pub (in which a guy at the bar was knee-deep in Just Cause 2 on his laptop), the four of us headed down to the sea front, where Trev and I quickly ducked into the amusements. Unable to coax Trev into a game on Guitar Hero Arcade, we ended up taking up arms against a bunch of not-extinct-enough dinosaurs in Primeval Hunt, a light gun shooter from experts in the field (if ever there were) Sega. The game is centered around hunting certain species of dinosaur in the way a big game hunter would hunt an animal nowadays, stalking them through the undergrowth and taking them down. Of course this comes with an element of danger, one example of which was when a boisterous Triceratops took offense to being shot up the arsehole and charged, and in the later hunts a few unwanted guests arrive in the form of the ever-present Spielbergian T Rexes and Velociraptors, the former of which arrived twice and were taken out with a rocket to the head from each of us.

The weapon in the players' hands in Primeval Hunt is a pump-action shotgun, which can also double up as a rifle and a crossbow in-game, and the guns feature speakers in the barrels to give realism. And to give the game a free-roaming quality, the arcade cab featured a touch-screen map near the shotgun holsters which we could use to pinpoint and travel to our prey. Overall it was an excellent shooter, really fun and the guns were as accurate as they come, especially for shotties. The game is screaming out for a Wii conversion, and the Shotgun layout is perfectly suited to the Wii Zapper, the front trigger of which could double up as the reload pump and the Nunchuck's Z button could be used to fire. Throw in DS connectivity for the touch-screen and they'd be on to a winner. I'd get it on release anyway.

After a quick stint on the 2p pusher machines bore fruit by dropping me a Mario plush and some creepy racist-looking Voodoo Doll, we headed off to get a taxi back too our blustery haven, where we were delighted to find that our tents were mostly still there, and after a brief bonding session with a lovely bloke in a camper van who pulled in next to us for the night (of who's luxury we were definitely not jealous), we spent a few hours drinking in Trev's tent before retiring to our beds, where Trev found that playing Half-Minute Hero in a monsoon isn't particularly possible, and Susie and I were kept awake all night by the drunk Geordie bastards in the trailer-tent.

SUNDAY, 26/9/10: Come with me if you want to live...

We awoke to find that the wind had died down quite a lot overnight, although it had had it's toll on our tents, both of which had suffered pole damage and ours was starting to come apart at the seams. Unfazed, we headed into Whitby early for breakfast, where we made a hasty retreat from the cafe we settled on after they undercharged us by about a fiver. The more astute among you will notice that on this day last year I was actually getting married in Whitby, so the wife and I had planned to have our dinner at the Magpie cafe, our favourite eatery in the town. But unfortunately, it's everyone else's favourite too, for good reason, and neither of us really felt like queueing to get in. So we carried on along the seafront, and Trev and myself once again found ourselves in the amusements as the girls had a walk down to the beach.

We found a dusty old Time Crisis 2 cab in the back of one arcade, and had a couple of goes on that, where Trev got his own back after my domination on Primeval Hunt by handling the game like a pro, after I waited ages at the start of the game for my 'turn', forgetting about the foot pedal that pops you out from behind cover, and then spent the rest of the game catching bullets and missiles with my face. We pondered the other machines, and looked for another Primeval Hunt machine unsuccessfully. When Susie and Katie returned, The ladies had a go on Ford Racing: Full Blown (which, once again, I've been instructed to mention that Susie won), while I once again donned my hunting cap for the more conventional Big Buck Hunter. The game has more or less the same premise as PH, just with more likely prey and a lack of touch screen. I chose to hunt the moose, and did pretty well, again sparking a stampede after shooting a buck up the arsehole. After passing all of the trials, I was treated to a bonus round shooting turkeys, of which only four out of the whole 25 escaped my pump-action retribution. The shotgun really is my weapon of choice.

Following that, my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary by taking up arms against the machine army in the excellent Terminator Salvation: The Arcade Game. The game is a standard lightgun shooter, but the weapon in your hand is where the game shines. A full-sized assault rifle with real recoil, it is weighty and effective, and during the game I picked up a chaingun, which actually altered the speed and intensity of the recoil. To reload, instead of shooting off-screen, you tap the bottom of the rifle's 'clip', as if you were actually slamming in another magazine. And under the barrel is a grenade button, where an attachable grenade launcher would be found. We didn't last long, but what we did see of the game was amazing fun, and the visuals were great, with so much happening on-screen at once. And the cabs were readily available all over Whitby and Scarborough, so if anyone chances across it, give it a go. Trev tried to gamble for a knock-off Wii-style console for a bit, but ended up settling for the minor prize he could have had from each go, and walked away with a Machop Pokemon toy.

A cream tea and a walk around later, and we headed up to the whalebone arch to have our photo taken, as we had done the year before following the wedding. The weather, cold, blustery and wet, was a stark contrast to the gorgeous sunshine of last year, so we quickly boarded a taxi back to the site. The wind was now manageable, so we built our kites and spent an absolutely amazing afternoon flying them on the field, before a storm I'd been watching in the valley below swept around and we had to dash inside. Once it had passed, we fired up a barbecue and before long we headed into our beds, where I finished off Def Jam: Fight for NY - The Takeover, then slept a little while before another storm beating against our tent put an end to my rest.

MONDAY, 27/9/10: Country road, take me home...

We awoke to good news, Katie's car was going to live and a new clutch could be affixed before the day was through. Both Tents had to be thrown away, the elements had been unkind once more and Trev and Katie's tent had let in a fair bit of rain. We packed our things and waved goodbye as Trev and Katie headed into Scarborough to get the car, and set off home ourselves through the thickest fog I have ever seen. Upon our return, we split the unspent holiday cash, which amounted to £100 each, and I spend my lot on Halo: Reach, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and a preorder was placed for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which if the demo is anything to go by is both beautiful and brilliant, a perfect marriage of God of War and Uncharted, with the same kind of decayed beauty as Gears of War. So that gives us something to look forward to over the coming weeks. Hasta luego, fellas.

All human life is here, from the feeble old dear, to the screaming child...

"I have to say, I was disappointed in this book. It was well written don't get me wrong, but it wasn't in the least bit funny."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a genuine quote from a review of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy on Amazon.co.uk. Christina Martin, the author of that quote, you are a special, special person. Of course it's followed by a comment pointing out the hand-clapping retardedness of the review, and sequentially a retort from Ms. Martin claiming to be a patron of sarcasm instead of a window licker, but when someone is that keen to cover their tracks after saying something like that, you have to worry.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Dante's Inferno, a game developed for release earlier this year by Visceral and published by EA, is a... well, I'm sure there's an official term for the genre, but if any game deserves to be called a God of War clone, it's this one. It's a videogame adaptation of Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy, and chronicles the titular Dante, now re-imagined as a Knight Templar, on his quest to reclaim the soul of his lost love Beatrice from the clutches of a decidedly well-endowed Satan, after his own sins condemned her to hell.

I'm not even going to try and sugar coat the God of War references, the game is God of War, just not as good. That's not to say it's a bad game by any means, it just lacks the epicness and polish of even the last generation second of Sony's trilogy, and just seems bland and incomplete in comparison. Hell, for instance, is really well-imagined during the first couple of levels, but after the Lust section (think phallically-shaped towers, writhing scantily clad whores who attack with concealed penises and a 100ft tall woman with mouths for nipples that lick their lips and lactate unbaptised babies), and the fleshy bile-filled Gluttony, the other circles just become routine and virtually identical to each other, and each of them seems to be a short walk followed by a boss fight, rinsed and repeated. When you do come to a puzzle, often the screen is so dark that it's frustratingly difficult to work out what to do as well.

It's hard not to make a Connection between Dante's Inferno and Assassin's Creed too, with Dante being a Templar, and the sect being illustrated as evil in this media too. Not to mention the fact that the short chapters set on Earth are in Acre and Florencia, major settings in AC and ACII respectively. Assassin's Creed II also references Dante Alighieri too, along with Marco Polo, which struck me as clever marketing on Ubisoft's part by drawing association with Dante's Inferno and Uncharted 2, two other major franchises. Who knows?

Be thankful for what this image actually doesn't show.

So anyway, Dante is a very average game, but enjoyable. To those of us who are owners of the XBox 360 exclusively, and no doubt won't admit their burning envy of their God of War playing peers, the game is a godsend. For me, however, it was a decent warm-down session after GoWIII's sensory assault. If I was to give my reviews a score, Dante would be somewhere around the mid-seventies.

Back onto Metro 2033 then, eh? I've come to the conclusion that yes, I do in fact like the game. It's just very hard work. The gas mask filters that were once a very scarce commodity eventually become commonplace, and the weapons gradually get upgraded (my assault rifle, for instance, began as a 'Bastard Gun', a cobbled together atrocity of a weapon which sprays bullets everywhere apart from where you're aiming, and I now carry a scoped AK 47). I've decided that it feels like a piece of Fallout 3 DLC, which at £40 is a little bit steep. I definitely recommend it, but wait until it depreciates in value a smidgen first.

Metro 2033 paints a considerably bleaker post-apocalypse than Fallout 3.

Finally in this week's short-but-sweet report, I've had a go with Invizimals on the PSP. The latest contender to the Pokemon phenomenon's throne, Invizimals comes bundled with the PSP's digital camera, which once equipped allows the player to search for the obligatory tiny battling creatures in one's own home, the bus, the toilet, wherever you want. Once an 'Invizimal' is found, the player catches it, usually by performing an act of animal cruelty such as shooting or hitting them with the palm of your (real life) hand until they submit.

Once captured, the domesticated critter can be forced into cutesified cock-fights with other Poke... Invizimals, which operate more like a one on one fighting game than the turn-based battles in Nintendo's established franchise, and works to a degree, but it's more based on timing than statistics.

And the whole thing is interrupted by filmed cutscenes featuring an annoying hyperactive Japanese 'PSP Scientist' and, who else, the mighty Brian Blessed, who's booming English tutorials give a similar feeling to the patronising tones of Stephen Fry in LittleBigPlanet. In short, Pokemon is awesome, the technology utilized is awesome, and Brian Blessed is awesome. Pokemon might be better, but this is a great alternative for PSP users.

If this picture doesn't make you want to go out and buy Invizimals you're dead inside.

So there you are, a theme! A poor man's God of War, Fallout 3 and Pokemon, right there for you. I know I said I'd play Lost Planet, but truth be told, I've spent too much time playing Red Dead Redemption for that. Yeah, thanks to the generosity of my wife, I have Rockstar's epic, but I'm neglecting to write about it just yet, as three days just isn't enough time for it to fully sink in. So I'm not going to bother closing by saying what to expect next week, because I never live up to it. Apart from Red Dead that is, you can expect that.

The power you're supplying, it's electrifying!

Once again I step up to the mantle with very little to write about. Who's stupid idea was it to make this a weekly thing?

Well, I had a bit more of a go with InFamous, and it still seems pretty shocking (pun intended). I noticed a very annoying game mechanic, where the main character, Cole, would automatically attach himself to the nearest ledge whenever I would jump. Yeah, this is standard in any vertical platforming game nowadays, but most usually just apply it to the ledges you're aiming at, not just any that happen to be near you. I was chasing some kind of visual memory of a target who'd been there previously, to find his current whereabouts, and when I jumped over a dumpster I ended up dangling from an adjacent bus stop and losing my quarry.

You'll survive that fall. Stub your toe and you're fucked.

Cole also has a bit of a Superfriends-era Superman thing going on, in that he seems to develop a convenient new power every time a scenario demands it. Upon finding a dead woman on the ground, Cole exclaims that he's going to try something completely off-the-wall, and touches her head. Hey fucking presto, he can read her memories, despite the fact that the brain is actually dead, holds no impulses and is effectively cat food now. Who would have known?

He also gets an ability where he is able to heal dying civilians by jolting them with his lightning powers. All well and good, if these victims are suffering from a massive cardiac arrest and need defibrillating, but they are mostly dying from a plague, and would probably actually not benefit at all from several thousand volts directly to the heart.

You know what, the more I write about it, the more I hate it. Fuck it, I'm shelving it. It's a ridiculous game, even for one of the Superhero genre. Cole, for all I care, can develop a hunch, and jump off a building, to see if he has a 'nosedive-into-concrete-and-survive' power. Oh wait, he did. AND IT WORKED. But about 3 bullets still kill him.

I also finally got around to trying my hand at the Borderlands expansion pack The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. Guess what? That's pretty dick too. I don't know if I've just tired of Borderlands or what, but the game that made it into my Top 10 of last year doesn't seem to hold the same charm any more. My main problem with Zombie Island is that it just seems like they've simply bogged you down with thousands of respawning enemies to add longevity to the game, as it seems to take hours to travel a few hundred yards.

This screenshot tells you all you need to know about Zombie Island

But the thing is, I can't remember exactly what I liked so much about Borders anyway. From what I remember it was simply just walking through boring, samey landscapes and shooting things, and that's exactly what's on show with Zombie Island too. Surely there must have been something more, but if there was, it's evaded me. Anyway, I think I'm done with Borders now, the rest of the DLC will probably go untouched.

Finally, I downloaded Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection Online on the PS3. It plays pretty much exactly the same as the PSP version, which is no bad thing as said version is just about the best Tekken in the series. Haven't tried it online yet, but I have had countless hours of multiplayer on the PSP version so I know to expect more of the same, just probably with more people who actually know what they're doing, and consequently more ass-kickings for me.

Speaking of PSP, I finally let go of my frankensteined PSP 1000 (Casing and inner components of a JP white console, screen and face buttons of a UK Black one) and upgraded to an absolutely gorgeous Radiant Red PSP 3000 (I'm boycotting the PSP Go, because it's shit). The console is taking some getting used to, with the tighter analogue nub and the smooth, handgrip-less back, and obviously it's a lot lighter and quieter than the Phat, but playing LittleBigPlanet on my TV was great last night, and the UMD movies are near DVD quality even on the 21" inch screen in my bedroom.

Isn't she lovely, isn't she wonderful...

So now, with the ability to play the games without squinting at a tiny screen and being able to hold the console in my lap like a controller, instead of enduring arm-fatigue from holding it in front of my face, some of my unfinished games like Resistance: Retribution, GTA CTW and Tales of Eternia might get some more play. And upcoming games like God of War: Ghost of Sparta and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will seem all the more special too. Bravo Sony.

I'm Super, thanks for asking!

It's amazing, that in this day and age, if a linear game takes more than six hours to complete it outlives it's welcome. GTA IV, Fallout 3, that's fine. They've got plenty of things tucked away for the ADHD generation to stumble across, and it's easy to poddle off and play something else for a few weeks and drop back into it if needs be. Yep, £40 is perfectly acceptable for six hours of disposable entertainment.

Take Darksiders for example. One of the finest games so far this generation, capturing the feel of absolutely classic games like Soul Reaver and Primal, and throwing a gripping and engaging storyline and at times jaw-dropping visuals to boot, but after 16 hours of game time, spread over the course of two weeks, it had dragged on a little bit too long.

So when I finally dropped the last enemy last night (enemy is the only word I could use which is still accurate and doesn't give anything away) and laid my pad down, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong, it is a fantastic game, but I was aching for something new.

"I'm a fuckin' Demon!"

But I will at least remember it fondly, and shit, I'm going to recommend it to anyone that will listen (I started that last night by passing the word on to my Elder Scrolls freak sister). As I said, the graphics are stunning in places, with vibrancy in colours on a par with Uncharted and Just Cause 2. And the voice acting is absolutely fantastic, with Mark Hamill and Moon Bloodgood leading the D-list way and Liam O'brien (me neither) doing his best Simon Templeman impersonation as the lead character. The boss fights mostly play out like N64 Zelda bosses, but it does have a go at the 'Epic Boss' style of God of War, without quite pulling it off. I also noticed that, when dismembering an enemy, the wounds are just hollow and red, no meat or bones, which is a bit of a letdown, but doesn't mar the experience and is only really noticeable in some of the larger enemies. Speaking of larger enemies, the end boss is a Fuck Off Dragon. But it's considerably easier to kill than the one in Dragon Age.

The preceding game on my shame pile turned out to be InFamous. For those who don't know, InFamous is a PS3 exclusive free-roaming Superhero game. You play as Cole McGrath, one of those annoying Parkour messengers who was unknowingly delivering a bomb to somebody when it went off, levelling half the city. Being at the epicenter of the blast, Cole naturally develops super lightning powers instead of getting vaporized. But when a plague breaks out, the city is locked off, and gang crime becomes rife. So Cole decides to become the people's protector. Or a public menace. yeah, the game has a karma system.

If you take the evil route, you actually become a Sith Lord.

Well, I've only played for like half an hour so far. Honest first impressions? well, it's a bit... shit really. Surprisingly ugly for a PS3 exclusive, and the fiddly climbing and jumping and hand to hand combat without any kind of lock-on function make it seem no better than Spider-Man 3. The only moral choice I had to make was when I found a food drop, and I could either let the citizens share it amongst themselves or take it all for myself, and sit atop my tower feasting, laughing at the starving peasants below and zapping anybody that comes near. Very black and white. So far, it's not a patch on Prototype, which I can't help but compare it to.

Moving on, Super Street Fighter IV arrived last week, much to my joy. This update to SFIV boasts ten extra characters, a new ultra combo for each character, the return of the car/barrel smashing bonus rounds, redone intros and endings and a bunch of extra multiplayer modes including 8-player team battle and a winner-stays-on type of affair, again for up to 8 players. So the fact that it wasn't just DLC is kind of justified.

Ibuki is a force to be reckoned with.

The characters are a mixed bunch. There's Adon from Street Fighter, and Cody and Guy from Final Fight (or all three of those from Street Fighter Alpha if you prefer), T. Hawk and Dee Jay from Super Street Fighter II, and Makoto, Dudley and the awesome Ibuki from Street Fighter III making a return, along with two all-new fighters. Firstly, Juri is an agent for the evil S.I.N. organization, using Taekwondo and drawing power from a 'Feng Shui device' in her prosthetic eye. Rather than give her the power to arrange furniture, it actually lets her kick fireballs at people, go figure. The second is Hakan, a Turkish oil wrestler who lubes himself up before each fight. I'm telling you, you can't make this stuff up.

Played a few rounds against Raz7el online too, and aside from quite a bit of lag, the game remains pretty tight. I also don't like to brag, but I handed his ass to him on more than a few occasions. Dan Hibiki is awesome.

Well, that's about that. Expect more of an opinion on InFamous next week, and a look at Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. See ya!

Party for two

After last week's mediocre gaming, the last seven days have come as quite a relief to me, as things have definitely looked up a bit. I started the week with survival horror title Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, opting for the Wii version over the PS2 and PSP, for unknown reasons.

Shattered Memories is a loose remake of the original SH on the PS1, one of my favourite ever games, and definitely my most replayed game ever. At my heyday I had a save file on my memory card which had saves before every single boss and all five endings, which took literally weeks to accomplish. The game's storyline was one of my favourites, and I pretty much committed it all to memory, so when the film was released and shat all over it, I was furious. Naturally, when I heard of the remake I was a little cagey.

I had kept an eye on the game throughout it's development, and with every new tidbit of information I grew less and less interested. First they decided not to include combat, then they changed the Other World from a rusted, blood and puss soaked hell, to a pretty tame Ice World, then they gave protagonist Harry Mason a frigging Cell Phone with a camera and GPS and all that, even though the original game was set in 1986, and by this point my interest in the game (and, after the completely unplayable Silent Hill: Homecoming, the series) had waned. Then they announced that the game was non-canon, and wouldn't have an affect on the greater story at all, which cheered me up a bit.

But what's the point in playing a story-driven game if it's story doesn't actually count for shit? Well, because it's fucking fantastic, that's why. The game begins just as it's source material did, with Harry regaining consciousness after a car crash and finding his young daughter Cheryl missing, and that's pretty much where the similarities end. The game swaps between two mechanics, the first being set in the real world. Solving puzzles is the order of the day, and there are some absolutely devilish ones too, and interspersed with these are some very Heavy Rain style exploration sequences (a comparison first brought to my attention by the pressing A to shout Cheryl bit at the start), were you have to use different combinations of buttons and movements to perform tasks.

Is that Katie Price?

The second mechanic takes place in the 'Ice World' and involves reaching a target destination whilst running from and evading the Raw Shocks, featureless creatures that relentlessly pursue Harry and latch on to him, lowering his body temperature until he passes out. Why the hell do I keep buying games on the Wii? Like Cursed Mountain before it, Shattered Memories requires you to fight off your enemies by performing different motions with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, and like Cursed Mountain, most of the times these don't work properly. It makes for some very frustrating moments.

All in all, frustrations aside, SH:SM is a fantastic game, one of the best on the console. It's absolutely gorgeous too (although the same can't be said for Harry, one of the ugliest videogame characters I've ever seen), with the worlds merging in real time, and the level of detail in the environments is astounding for a Wii/last generation title. Also, between each section the game psychoanalyses you, by making you take tests in a shrink's office, and changes itself depending on your psyche, which once more is impressive on a lower powered console. A return to form for the series.

I've also been getting to grips with Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony this week. Last week I expressed a disliking for it's predecessor The Lost and Damned, and can honestly say all is forgiven. Gay Tony goes back to the more tongue in cheek, humorous style of the GTAIII series, with comical over-the-top characters like GTAIV favourite Brucie Kibbutz's outrageous brother Mori, and Arab property tycoon Yusuf Amir providing out loud laughs as well as missions. Also the dancing mini game from San Andreas makes a return, but apart from the ability to replay completed missions to improve scores, there's nothing new. That doesn't matter though, when you aren't being forced to endure the painful Bike physics all the time. It's well worth getting Episodes from Liberty City just for this, The Lost and Damned is just a flawed but playable bonus.

TBOGT returns to the series' outrageous roots.

And I've spent the latter part of the week knee-deep in Darksiders, Vigil Games' contender to the God of War throne, and it's so very nearly achieving that target. The game casts you as War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, awoken when the end war between Heaven and Hell begins on earth. As you arrive to sort things out, you realise that you three brethren haven't turned up, and the Angels decide that you've brought about the war early for your own reasons. After a 'brief' jury, War is sent back to earth a century later to prove his innocence, despite the complete extinction/zombification of the human race.

The God of War comparison is only really valid in passing, a few hours of observing the game will show that it has just as much in common with games like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the former with the ruined environments and visual style, the latter with the Crossblade, a huge shuriken that acts very similarly to Link's boomerang, and the targeting system for which is virtually identical. And the way that the Crossblade can take on any elemental powers it comes into contact with is very Dark Sector.

Zelda's comparisons don't end there, War has bound to him a companion by the name of The Watcher, voiced by the legendary Mark Hamill (yeah, he's doing the Joker voice, but it's still great), who acts as the Navi to War's Link, popping out occasionally to offer advice and hints. Oh yeah, there's bomb plants too.

I have to note that the difficulty is quite unforgiving. After getting trounced on the demo, I stuck the game on the easy setting, and am still getting my arse passed to me on a regular basis. It's not quite Ninja Gaiden difficult, but it's approaching it. I'll persevere, but a rather epic boss battle with Bat-Queen Tiamat has me currently well against the ropes.

well, wrapping things up, I've had a crack at LittleBigPlanet PSP this week, which is just as good as the PS3 version, but not really better. The features are a bit more limited and Stephen Fry is at his most patronising, but the physics and graphics are top notch. Also had a bash at Final Fight: Double Impact on the 360, which is a great port. I might splash out on it, as both Final Fight and Magic Sword are both excellent retro games. Oh, and MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 3! The teaser is great, especially with the appearance from Chris Redfield as he takes on the Hulk (let's face it, the only Marvel with bigger arms than Chris) at the end. It's Super Street Fighter IV next week, but it's hard to be excited now I've seen that. I'll link to it here, but don't be surprised if they take it down as I believe it was leaked early. Bye for now.

This! Is! SPARTA!

Last week I hit a milestone in my life. I turned a quarter of a century old. Officially, by mathematical terms, I'm pushing 30. So, I decided the best course of action was to have a midlife crisis and blow about £200 on videogames to drown my sorrows, and resurrecting my Shame Pile.

First things first though. For my birthday, which was actually last Thursday for anyone interested, my wife bestowed upon me God of War III and The Saboteur, both on PS3, and Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, and the cat (allegedly) bought me Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the PSP. I dove straight into God of War III, naturally.

The game starts immediately where we left off, with Kratos leading the Titans in an assault on Mount Olympus. A few betrayals and a lot of blood later and Kratos finds himself back in Hades, and his quest for vengeance truly begins.

I can't really go into things any deeper, as the story hurtles along at an alarming pace and the spoilers flow thick and fast. The gameplay though, is the usual God of War affair, solid fighting, over the top gore and intermittent puzzles and platforming sections. Kratos has picked up a few new moves this time, like the ability to mount and ride larger enemies and lasso flying enemies to cross gaps. He also picks up a few new weapons along the way, most of which are variations of the sharp things on chains theme, but the most effective of all being two huge metal gauntlets, a lot like the ones he used in Chains of Olympus.

I recall a while ago reading a post on Twitter by Mortal Kombat's co-creator Ed Boon, saying he was motion capturing new finishing moves for Mortal Kombat 9, and that he was worried that he was 'going too far'. Seeing what God of War gets away with, I highly doubt it. I've mentioned before the head-ripping and disemboweling, but that's only the icing on the cake. Again, I don't want to spoil too much, but it's the first time I think I've seen eye-gouging in a videogame. And I even felt like looking away as Kratos dispatched with dear old brother Hercules...

The last thing I really want to talk about is the visuals. Graphically, GoWIII is a triumph, pretty much the most beautiful game I've ever seen. After playing Heavy Rain a month ago, and Uncharted 2 just before Christmas, that compliment is given far more weight too.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines was my back-up title this week, for when the wife was on Oblivion. The PSP-only game serves as a true sequel to the first Assassin's Creed, following what Altair did next, namely stalking the Templars to Cyprus. Not much really happens, apart from our hero repeatedly bumping into Maria Thorpe, the Templar that got away (and evidently from a flashback in ACII, future Mrs. Ibn-La'Ahad, if she can pronounce it).

It's strongest point is that, unlike the two AC games on the DS, Bloodlines looks and plays like a proper AC, more specifically the first one. Being set in the same time period, and in a similar locale, the architecture is more or less the same. The gameplay has been somewhat simplified, shaving a few of Altair's moves off to cram it all into a UMD, including, bafflingly, his diving assassination move, which is one of the most useful moves in the other game. The free climbing though, one of the series' major positive points for me, remains unchanged.

Another good aspect of the game is that the boss characters are unique, not just reskinned guards like in the other games. They fight with signiature weapons, like a ball-and-chain, or sharpened fingernails, and also trigger different counter moves.

I suppose the worst thing about Bloodlines is the fact that the city streets aren't as bustling as the ones in it's parent games, but that is fully understandable given that the game is running on a machine with a fraction of the power of a PS3 or an XBox 360. Overall, it's a very good game for the system, harshly received because it can't live up to it's expectations.

Okay, I'll keep it brief for the remainder. Next on the newly formed Pile of Shame was a game I missed out on but have always been interested in: Velvet Assassin. Oh good god, it's bad. The game is a 'True Story' about an MI6 spy behind enemy lines in World War II. She conveniently loses her equipment at the start of the game, and quips about how it won't hold her back, even though it does. It really fucking does. A quick look on Wikipedia shows that this World War II game about a British agent was actually developed by a German company, Replay Studios, which might explain why she's armed with a toothpick and a nasty look, and the Germans are all superhuman cyborgs or something. Either way, sporadic checkpoints and trial-and-error gameplay make this game completely not worth playing.

And I've spent a bit of time getting to grips with The King of Fighters XII on PS3 this week. A look at some YouTube videos shows just how impressive this game can look in the right hands, but I was brought up on the simpler Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat 2D games, so it was distinctly more boring while I was playing. Admittedly though, the hand drawn two dimensional graphics were absolutely beautiful, although a bit pixelated compared to Super Street Fighter II HD Remix. A highlight for my immature mind was being told to 'choose my member' at the character select screen. I can't give the game a bad write up due to my own inadequacy though, and I'm sure that in the capable paws of a seasoned fighting game fan it's fantastic. But it's not exactly going to get in between me and Super Street Fighter IV in a month's time.

Check back next week for Just Cause 2, GTA Chinatown Wars and The Saboteur!