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?

An error has occured. You have been signed out of 24 Hour Gamer UK (80710A06)

Aw man, I went and did it again didn't I? Forgetting to post and shit*. It was only like three months this time though, cut me some slack. I'm just going to summarize what I've been playing since we last met.

I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.

I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.

LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.

The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.

Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.

It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.

Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.

Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.

*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.

Puff the magic Dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the Autumn mist in a land called Honalee

Overtly, for me anyway, 2011 is the year of the Fighting Game. With Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, it's definitely the best year for the genre in a long time. But if you sift through the fisticuffs, there's also an abundance of a genre fast becoming one of my favourites: The Western RPG. Coming to a crescendo with the mighty (we all know it's going to be amazing, why even speculate?) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim later in the year, we've got lesser beasts such as Two Worlds II, Arcania: Gothic IV and Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga to tide us over. But, while they might be met by the eyes of the masses as mediocre shadows of the upcoming social-life-destroyer, one game still stands strong.

That game, for those still paying attention, is the sequel to Bioware's epic, official 24HG Game of the Year 2009, Dragon Age: Origins; Dragon Age... er... II.

Set almost immediately after the first game, DAII sees you in the shoes of a Blight refugee known as Hawke (who can be male or female and have any first name you choose, but must be human. The Dragon Age Commander Shepard if you will), trying to rebuild his/her life in a foreign city after his/her former home was destroyed by the pesky Darkspawn, bumping into lusty Pirates, surly warrior-giants and the most pleasant blood-mage (an art in the DA canon where a mage bonds with a demon to boost their own powers, basically the classic view of satanism) you'll ever meet along the way.

But the thing is, that's it. The story never really goes anywhere, you just waltz into a city, pick up the compulsory rag-tag band of misfits and generally doss around doing stuff for people, and then shit suddenly hits the fan and it's over. And while we're focusing on the negative points, DAII is one of the laziest games I've played in a while. There's only one (admittedly expansive) city and a small handful of wilderness areas, as opposed to the wide variety of settings in the original. The city is littered with warehouses to explore, and each is identical to the last, the same goes for the wilderness and caves, and it makes for some incredibly repetitive gameplay. They've also not bothered with the finishing moves in combat this time, just opting to have your enemies fall apart when you kill them, and while this looked alright in Fallout 3 where the limbs would sever in the middle of a thigh or below the shoulder, leaving a jagged rip in the flesh, DAII's enemies fall into smooth segments, like when you shoot somebody with the grenade launcher in Tomb Raider II. And that looked shit 14 years ago.

But aside from that, the game really excels. The visuals have improved no end over the washed out, low res textures of Origins, to the point that they could even be considered impressive. The combat system has been refined, sped up and simplified in the right areas, and crucially been made real-time in the console releases, and your party members, much like in Mass Effect 2, have been given much more individuality in their appearance (be it Pirate lady of ill repute Isabella's swashbuckling gear or emo elf Fenris' lyrium tattoos). They also have a lot more unique abilities, in Origins your two mages, Wynn and Morrigan, could end up playing exactly the same, or even have their roles reversed should you choose to do so. In DAII, Anders is a designated healer, Merril is a damage dealer and Bethany is an all-rounder.

Mentioning Anders and Merril brings me to my next point, there's a lot here for the nostalgic. Anders himself is now possessed by the spirit Justice, both of which were party members in Dragon Age: Awakening (they were actually my two favourite characters in the game, but now they are one person they, or rather he, seems to have become a self righteous prick), and Merril was a temporary party member in Origins if the player followed the Dalish Elf storyline. Anyone who played the demo will have come face to face with the Dragon-morphing witch of the wilds Flemeth too, sporting a sassy new look, and a bunch of other familiar faces also show up, but I won't ruin things for you there.

I don't like ending things on a low point (once again, as with last week's Dead Space 2 review, I seem to have unwillingly slated the game), DAII does have the 'can't put down' factor and is the closest thing to a Game of the Year for me so far in 2011, but it throws a big middle finger skywards when it comes to consistency in it's continuity. A lot of the races have altered, take the elves for example. In the last game they were just people with pointy ears, and spoke unanimously with an American accent. They are now much smaller and are painfully thin, and their facial structures have changed to resemble the blue guys from Avatar, and while the city elves still retain the Yankee lilt, the wild dalish elves have adopted an Irish tongue (apart from Merril, who is voiced by the unquestionably Welsh Eve Myles, star of BBC's Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood). The Qunari have also metamorphosed beyond recognition, from basically being black guys with white hair in Origins to their new look, resembling Kain from Soul Reaver. It's natural progression as a higher budget is available, I fully understand that (look at the Klingon in Star Trek after all), but for someone like me with borderline OCD over details like this, it kinda twists my melon.

Overall though, it's a great game, more suited to a console gamer than it's elder. But, under the mocking eye of the behemoth that is the upcoming Skyrim, Bioware really shouldn't have cut quite so many corners.

Am I following all of the right leads, or am I about to get lost in space?

I've decided on a self-imposed gaming hiatus, in a bid to free up some time to get this site up to date, so I'll hopefully be posting quite a bit in the coming week or so. There's so much shit I want to write about, and it seems that every time I fire up a console something is added to the list, so there comes a time when one just has to sit back, catch a breath and put pen to paper, so to speak.

I'll start with Dead Space 2 I guess, it was the first game I played during the 2011 annual laptop disaster so it's only fair. I was extremely late to the party with the first Dead Space, not only picking it up late but developing an irrational hatred of it about a third of the way in (I think I was intimidated by the apparent difficulty of the game at first, it seemed like ammo was very short in supply and the enemies just keep on coming, but things loosened off a bit later on) and shelving it. I corrected myself a few months ago and discovered what an absolute joy the game was to play.

Dead Space 2 then, is more of the same in terms of gameplay. I opted for the PS3 version for the perks of Dragon Age II DLC, Free Dead Space Extraction and not having to swap the disks, and I kinda regret this choice. Firstly, the controls are far better suited to the 360 pad, the chunkiness seems to fit with the way Isaac moves on screen. Playing the game in daylight (I only have a 360 in the boudoir) subtracted from the horror of the experience, Extraction is virtually unplayable without a Move controller, and to top it all off the DAII DLC is non-console specific, linking to your EA account and not through the PSN store or XBL Marketplace.

I suppose the biggest difference to the prequel is that Isaac, the main series' alien-zombie stomping protagonist, now has a voice, and consequentially refuses to shut the hell up. And suddenly this silent sentinel, this extension of your own psyche stuck in a deep-space hell filled with terrifying (albeit overly brittle) perversions of nature, suddenly has his own personality. And boy oh boy, is he a cock. He's informal, macho and at times bratty, totally the opposite of the Gordon Freeman archetype silent scientist, and what that conjures in the imagination.

But it's still a great game though, these aspects only lightly tarnish the refined Resident Evil 4 style engine, and the incomplex but engaging narrative. Being set in a colonial space-station set out like a city, as opposed to the Space Hulk/Nostromo/Discovery One/Red Dwarf hybrid of the first, the Bioshock similarities of the first (the uninterrupted gameplay and Isaac's aesthetic reminded me of 2K's opus the first time around) seem all the more apparent: echoes of Rapture are everywhere. There's also a bit of Silent Hill thrown in with cliched trips through a hospital and school, the latter throwing some relatively unmutated child-like monsters that could have been ripped right from the foggy ghost town itself if I didn't know better.

So original Dead Space 2 isn't. Visceral aren't really known for their originality though, Dante's Inferno anyone? There are a few new enemies and a couple of new mechanics, such as hacking minigames and being able to blow out a window to suck enemies into space, before closing it again before the vacuum consumes you (A bit like on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed actually), but it's mostly just a refined version of the original, gameplay wise anyway. I read somewhere that the game reminds the writer of Resident Evil 2, in that it's just like the original but bigger and better in every way, and I think that just about sums it up. Although as far as I'm concerned, Dead Space is still superior to it's sequel. Same goes for Resident Evil actually.

Mortal Kombat then. I've absolutely caned the demo since it became available to the masses the other week and to say I'm excited is like saying Hitler was a bit of an arsehole. The thing that is immediately apparent, once you've taken in the unrivalled violence and brutality anyway, is just how unique the game is; since the 2D fighting game revival we've seen Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue as the most dominant in the genre, and as far as first impressions count, all three of those are very similar experiences. Mortal Kombat still retains the feel of the series since Deadly Alliance, matching speed and fluidity with character-specific combos and signiature moves. The new X-Ray moves are wince-inducing too (Johnny Cage's actually made me want to go and have a little cry), and although easy to pull off, they require some expert timing; performing such a move consumes (sorry, konsumes) a full special bar, and they are very easy to evade it seems.

Finally, we've got the fatalities. It's been 5 years since we've had a real, true Mortal Kombat game (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon), and even that didn't have true fatality moves. 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was toned down to achieve a teen rating at the request of Warner Interactive, so said moves were far less grotesque, and as a result we've been starved of the privilege of a satisfying way to murder our aggressors since Mortal Kombat: Deception in 2004, seven whole years ago. The sheer brutality of the finishers on offer here makes it worth the wait. If the whole game maintains this level of intense violence and joyous gameplay, then the Mortal Kombat series is back where it belongs, as the second-best fighting game franchise on the market. Flawless Victory.

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.

No trust, all I got is lies, boring, alright...

Once more, such is the peril of playing RPGs, I haven't had time to play anything new and interesting. In fact, I only finished Fable last night, and I'm still knee-deep in Dragon Age, my newly acquired Angry Birds addiction has further hampered my productivity.

To avoid abandoning my weekly schedule and slipping again, like I did last year, I began planning this week's post almost immediately after uploading the last one. I had thought of possibly doing a 'what if?' post, detailing games I would like to see, however unlikely (my favourite of which being Batman: Shattered Dimensions), But scrapped that as the list became dominated with crossover fighting games. Then I had the idea of a look into the upcoming games that excite me, which initially seemed like a great choice, until I realised that between Mortal Kombat, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim, I could write and speculate for about a week without even considering the other impending releases.

I've been thinking about what I would consider Game of the Year for the years before I started this blog, so I decided to try my hand at Game of the Decade, taking the single best games from each year and ranking them against each other, only to abandon the idea when some of the games I wanted to include were far outshone by better but more obvious and boring games released in the same year, case in point: Animal Crossing and The Sims 2 were both released in 2004, unfortunately the same year as GTA: San Andreas. Piss. It was going to go to Oblivion anyway.

All is not lost though, I finally got around to downloading the Kane and Lynch and Legacy of Kain character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which were simultaneously better and worse than I thought they'd be, if such a thing is possible.

They failed to live up to my expectations in regards to how they operate. You can't just use the character to your content, pairing up Lara with Raziel, or, amusingly, Kain and Lynch. Kain and Raziel have to be together, Kane and Lynch have to be together, Lara and Totec have to be together. I was also hoping the characters might play differently, like the Vampires having their respective Reaver swords and being able to use Telekinesis, but to be honest I expected reskins of Lara and Totec and wasn't too underwhelmed when that's all I got.

But the great thing about the character packs is that they aren't just reskins. They have their own stories, which is why they can't be paired off with other characters. Starting a new game plays the ending from the main campaign, cleverly spoiler-free, as Lara bids farewell to Totec after a job well done and comments that the ruins she's leaving behind will likely never be found again. Famous last words, as the fantasy realm of Nosgoth shares an identical temple, and a meddling duo of Vampires once again releases the villainous Xolotl, who drags them to Earth with him, meaning that they must work together to return to their homeland. Or, if you like, Death Row's favourite miscreants Kane and Lynch will stumble on the temple a meager two days after Lara's departure, once again unleashing the demon unto the world, and adopting the heroic role to save the day.

The characters are fully voiced, bringing back the iconic double-act of Simon Templeman and Micheal Bell as Kain and Raziel, and Brian Bloom and Jarion Monroe are back as Kane and Lynch. There's also an air of humour to the game too, as every sentence that spews from the mouth of Kane or Lynch is littered with bleeped-out expletives for comedy effect, and Kain and Raziel's introduction is instigated with the Star Wars style line: 'Meanwhile, in another world... And kind of in the past...'. Made me chuckle anyway.

I personally can't wait to play through the LoK story, it's the closest I'm going to get to a new Legacy of Kain game for a while anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that they just re-used the character models from Legacy of Kain: Defiance, I was hoping to see how a proper, current generation Kain might look. Oh well, when it comes to being a Legacy of Kain fanboy, you get what you're given.

Last off, a glance to the right will show you our new Facebook page. Be sure to 'like' us on there. See you guys soon.

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.

When two tribes go to war! - 10 Crossover fighting games to keep you occupied!

With the newly announced Street Fighter X Tekken, the strongly hinted Tekken X Street Fighter and the upcoming Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the horizon, and the relatively recent and hugely playable Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe still on the shelves, it would appear that the Crossover Fighting Game genre is making a bit of a comeback. So if, like me, you're just counting down the minutes until you can bray Thor as Chris Redfield, or shatter the jaw of Kazuya Mishima with Chun Li's unfeasibly huge thighs, here's ten games in no particular order that might help pass the time.

 This is simply the greatest screenshot. Ever.

Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 (2001 - Capcom - DC, PS2, GCN, XB)

If you were to ask a fighting game fan what the best 2D fighter was pre-2009, it's a 50/50 chance you'd be told without hesitation to seek out this absolute gem of a game. Featuring 49 characters from across the board of Capcom and industry rivals SNK's respective catalogues and an accessible Street Fighter style fighting system, it's virtually unbeaten even now, nearly a decade after it's release. And it provided me, at least, with a means to get to know SNK's cast with a familiar control method, instead of admiring them from afar in the past.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000 - Capcom - DC, PS2, XB, PS3, 360)

The other half of those fighting game fans would direct you to this stroke of genius from a year prior. MVC2 featured an even larger roster of 56 fighters including three original Capcom creations and 28 of Marvel Comics' expansive roster of heroes and villains, and an over-the-top fighting system featuring screen-filling special moves, strikers and tag fighting and a higher y-axis for super-fast midair combat. It's a little bit rare and pricey to find on disk now, but was re-released on XBox Live Arcade and PSN last year with a shiny HD filter, so it's readily available without even leaving the house. Nope, you have no excuse.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008 - Midway - PS3, 360)

I was convinced my home was bugged for a while after this was announced, as Mortal Kombat and DC Comics are too of my favourite things. Almost a polar opposite to the last game, and 8 years too late really, this 3D fighter pits the furious, visceral Scorpion, Sub-Zero and co against the heroes and villains of DC comics, led by the iconic trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The game was derided by players for the unlikely setting (because MVC2 was far more believable) and toned down gore, but was actually a very solid fighter, the best in the Mortal Kombat series in years in fact. It featured a cinematic story-driven single player mode, a solid multiplayer only flawed by a certain Superman move, and some fantastic universe-bending artwork in the endings. And most of the people who sneer haven't even played it, so give it a chance.

 And before that, this was the greatest screenshot ever.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars (2009 - Capcom - Wii)

The latest in Capcom's versus series features a smaller cast of 26, but is the first to make the transition into 3D visuals. At first it seemed there was little chance of seeing this game released in the west due to licensing issues, but when it finally arrived we got an updated game with extra characters and a more refined system. Capcom draw on characters from games new to the Capom vs. series, such as Lost Planet, Dead Rising and Viewtiful Joe, And the Tatsunoko side is filled with legendary characters from classic 70's anime like Hurricane Polymar and Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (Battle of the Planets to us). The gameplay harks back to the MVC2 system, so if you're a Nintendo purist it's unmissable. But you really need a classic controller to get the most out of it, so things could prove pricey.


SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (2003 - SNK - PS2, XB)

Much like Namco is threatening to do, SNK released this retaliation to CVS2 using their own system and mechanics. Although it featured a drop in the roster count and was less in-your-face presentation-wise, SNK showed a willingness that Capcom hadn't by redrawing all of the characters' sprites, and drawing from a more fantastical cast including Metal Slug's Mars People, Red Earth's Tessa and Darkstalkers' Dimitri. I'll admit, I still haven't gotten my head around the SNK system, and they don't seem to have gotten the Capcom characters' personalities right in the conversation scenes, but it's still enjoyable, especially if you appreciate the art style.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008 - Ad hoc - Wii)

Still one of the best Wii exclusives, SSBB pits characters from all of Nintendo's franchises against each other, from major players like Mario and Zelda, to lesser known games such as Mother and Fire Emblem, and even some from 3rd party games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear. The game offers a unique fighting experience, focusing on ring-outs instead of KOs, the chance of which happening is displayed as a percentage instead of a health bar. Characters can also pick up and use powerups and weapons in the field, and the action is broken up by some absolutely beautiful FMV sequences. And it's another good reason to own that classic controller too.

 But before that one, this was the best. Ever.

SoulCalibur II (2003 - Namco - PS2, XB, GCN)

Though not technically a crossover game, SCII has one exclusive character for each system, all from other franchises. The PS2 version has Tekken's Heihachi Mishima, the XBox homes Image Comics' Spawn and the Gamecube version naturally features Link from The Legend of Zelda. Most of you have played a SoulCalibur game, so you'll know all about it's weapon-based combat and genre-crossing story modes, but for those who haven't, think Tekken with swords and ring-outs. If you're looking for something more recent, check out SoulCalibur IV on the PS3 and 360, which features Darth Vader, Yoda and Galen Marek from Star Wars, and SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny on the PSP, which plays host to God of War's Kratos.

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (2005 - EA - PS2, XB, GCN, PSP, DS)

Basically Marvel vs. EA, this game was largely forgettable on all versions except for the PSP, which dropped the scrolling fighter levels in favour of an experience similar to Power Stone and Ehrgeiz, and gave the Marvel Characters more of an iconic look. The EA side of things, the titular Imperfects, weren't classic EA characters, but rather a team of superhumans created by EA specifically for the game. Possibly not an essential purchase, but it is still the only fighting game that features Marvel characters such as The Thing, Elektra and (in the home console version at least) Daredevil, unless any of them make it into MVC3.

Jump Ultimate Stars (2006 - Ganbarion - DS)

A Japan-only release due to similar licencing hell to TVC, JUS would have fallen through the 24HG net had it not been for the absolutely monstrous character count; 305 (56 fully playable, the rest as strikers and support characters) of the protagonists and antagonists of the insanely popular (in the west also) Shonen Manga label, including Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach and One Piece, are crammed onto a single DS cart. The game plays similarly to Super Smash Bros., only with a completely baffling (especially so considering the Japanese text) card-based system. Even thinking about it makes my head hurt, but this is a grade-A fanboy wet dream.

MUGEN (1999 - Elecbyte - PC)

Apparently, to those pedantic competitive fighting game purists (read: wankers), MUGEN is an unbalanced abortion. But to the rest of us, it's a wonderful bit of freeware. Out of the box, so to speak, it's a basic 2D fighter with only one character, the generic Ryu-alike Kung Fu Man, but MUGEN offers those with a little bit of know-how to download and import a plethora of user created characters, some ripped from other games, some edited to become new characters, some created from scratch, and all with AI and a quality only limited by their creator's expertise. This is, however you look at it, the only place where you can see Sub-Zero decapitate Knuckles the Echidna, or Lobo stove in Thundercats' Lion-O's face. And that should be enough to sell it to anyone interested in the genre.

So, there are ten games to keep you occupied until Spring rolls around once more. There are more if you look for them too, like Capcom Fighting Jam (Capcom vs. Capcom), NeoGeo Battle Coliseum (SNK vs. SNK) and Spectral vs. Generation (Spectral Force vs. Generations of Chaos, me neither) all worth a play. So go forth, fight fans, and collide some worlds. Excelsior!

It's Perfect Dark here, where the angels scream...

The more awake of you out there may (probably not) remember me briefly slamming the DS version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars last July. I basically said that the top-down GTA template is long since deceased and the step backwards was an ill-informed one. Well, I couldn't be more wrong, it seems.

I picked up the PSP version a few weeks ago (or rather my wife did, as a birthday present for me from the cat, don't ask) during a brief blunder on Play.com where some bright spark deleted the '2' from the £24.99 price tag. It wasn't a game that I particularly wanted, but at the right side of a fiver I couldn't say no.

First thing I noticed while firing it up on the train is that the cell-shading that the DS used to disguise the awful graphics has completely gone, and the visuals have been tidied up a hell of a lot. Purely aesthetic I know, but I'd rather not have to stare at what looks like a very old Sega Saturn game if I can help it. I also blasted the DS screen, for being too small to tell what was happening in games like this (although in their credit, Nintendo have also realised that now with the DSiXL), and the PSP's larger screen really does benefit the game, allowing the camera to zoom out more and give you a better warning when you're about to wrap yourself around a lamp post. So there, the two major gripes with the earlier version are sorted.

The game accomplishes the feel of a true GTA game quite well actually (I hadn't had enough time with the DS version to notice, due to my instant dislike). Playing it had me wondering, how much actual effort would it be to take the storyline from CTW and recreate it as a 3rd person expansion pack for GTAIV? If we take away the side quests and mini games that is. Speaking of mini games, I wasn't all too comfortable with the drug dealing aspect of the game, and a quick scout around the Internet shows that I'm not alone in that feeling. Says a lot about people, that mowing down a line of Hare Krishnas is thoroughly acceptable, but selling crack to a deadbeat is pushing it a bit.

Moving on now. Perfect Dark, in my teenage years, was not so much a game than a religion to me and my friends. Late into the lives of the PS2, XBox and Gamecube, we would still fire up the N64 and crowd around the TV for a few hours of multiplayer action, trying desperately to achieve that fabled 'Perfect: 1' rank (I managed to get as high as 8, but I think one of my friends was at 3).

The game's prequel, Perfect Dark Zero was also a deciding factor in the XBox360 being my first seventh generation games console, and when I got my hands on it I was severely disappointed. It just wasn't the same, and it also made the crime of giving protagonist Joanna Dark an American accent when in the previous game she was English, which always bugs me (it was one of the reasons I didn't like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, but I do plan on trying that again fairly soon, for obvious reasons). I did however discover Oblivion a week later, which I'm still playing now, so my 360 purchase wasn't a complete loss. But needless to say I was delighted when Perfect Dark saw the light of day on the XBLA a couple of weeks ago.

The game remains wholly unchanged, save for the character models and on-screen weapons having an overhaul and the game being given an HD makeover. And that is most definitely a good thing. I must admit I did worry about the controls, as Perfect Dark and it's predecessor GoldenEye 007 were the definitive games for the N64's unconventional joypad, but it still retains the awesome feel of the original game. Clutching at straws, the only negative thing I can say is that all of the character heads have changed, and I can no longer use the character that looked a bit like Timothy Dalton in multiplayer. But Perfect Dark is still the only FPS where the multiplayer even slightly interests me, and the single player experience is probably only surpassed by Half-Life 2 in my eyes. A must have for any 360 owner.

And now, the main event. Just Cause was a game I picked up by chance for a few quid from CEX during a summer gaming drought a couple of years ago, and it ended up being a surprisingly enjoyable game, if a little shallow. After the main storyline's climax though, I quickly lost interest in the side missions, and the main character Rico Rodriguez's mullet and the way he ran like he'd shat himself became a little too noticeable and it ended up back on the shelf, quickly forgotten about.

Then the demo for JC2 resparked my interest a few weeks ago, and on the morning of the 26th of March I skipped off to GAME and picked up a copy of the Limited Edition, bizarrely the same price as the standard one.

Where games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row offer a free-roaming open world, Just Cause 2 throws an absolute playground of... well, for need of a better phrase, a playground of destruction (sorry EA) at you. Your grappling hook, which is one part Spider-Man's web shooter, one part Scorpion of Mortal Kombat's spear and one part the slime tether from Ghostbusters, is just licence to play around. Not only can you fly around the environment, jumping from vehicle to vehicle, pulling pilots from their helicopters' cockpits and causing general chaos, you can also attach things, or people, to each other. Hooking a luckless soldier to a gas canister and shooting the cap off to watch him shoot off into the distance and explode against a rock, or tearing a statue down by roping it to the back of your car, before dragging the head at full pelt towards a foe and pulling a handbrake turn, swinging the detached concrete skull at them like a huge mace and chain.

For those who haven't played the original, Just Cause and it's sequel are easiest compared to the Mercenaries series. Unlike Mercenaries though, the sequel is a huge improvement. That's not to say it's without disappointment though. A few hours in I tried the PS3 exclusive video capture feature, and after it had reached it's capture limit, all of the sound apart from the music had muted, and the right analogue stick had no movement. Luckily, before I deleted my last save file as a last ditch attempt to remedy the problem, I tried deleting my settings file instead, which worked. But the other day, after a mammoth session, the game decided to not save my game (even though I observed the on screen 'saving' message and didn't switch off until it had gone), losing me about five hours of game time. The final straw having been crossed, I cast the game from my PS3 and onto the bottom of my shame pile. But I will say this, Just Cause 2 is the only game I've ever played that features hijackable crashable Boeing 747s and a set of identical adjacent skyscrapers. Ssh, the Daily Mail hasn't noticed yet...

I have started The Saboteur, but haven't had much time with it yet, so check back next week for that, Dissidia: Final Fantasy and possibly (but not definitely) Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. And as a parting gift, check this out, 2100 Microsoft Points for £4, thanks to MarkySharky of VideoGameSpace. That should get you those Modern Warfare 2 maps for the price that they are actually worth. Or Perfect Dark, if you're more intelligent. Au revoir.

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!

And now I'm the best at whatever it is Wolverine does!

I'm just gonna touch on Uncharted 2 this week, because everyone with a PS3 has been banging on about it relentlessly and nothing I can say will be new and fresh.
I finished it, and all is well with the world. There was literally only one part of the game I didn't enjoy, and that was 'The' train bit. Drake kept doing a Lara and jumping in the entirely wrong direction, wrapping himself around the wheels or something, and It got a bit tedious doing the same thing over and over. All in all though, great game, great ending, worth a second playthrough. And, much like the prequel, a third and fourth.
After that I blasted through Halo 3, picking up a paltry one Achievement all the way through it because I played it on easy. So that's it, three games down and I still don't get it. They are all just average games, the multiplayer must really be special to generate this much interest. I might give it a go, although watching myself respawn for half an hour isn't my idea of entertainment. Halo 3 was my favourite of the series so far though, I still have ODST to play through, which is next on my list actually.
Then later in the week, I transferred all my data to my 120GB Elite hard drive. Everything survived the transfer apart from my Halo 3 save data, so now all I have to show for finishing it is my mere 5 Gamer Points. Shit.
After that was over I moved on to X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Uncaged Edition), again on the XBox 360. Now, I neglected to watch the film, I made it through X-Men and half way through X-Men 2 before wanting to kill myself. But in these celluloid abortions, the one saving grace was everyone's favourite pointy Canadian bad ass, so I was initially interested in a film based solely around him, even more so when I learned Deadpool was supposed to be in it. Then they cast Ryan Reynolds, the highest echelon of annoying douchebags as Deadpool and turned him into Baraka from Mortal Kombat, and my interest promptly blew it's metaphorical brains out.
I tried the demo of this by chance though, as surprise surprise there wasn't anything great on the PSN store that week, and the mix of God of War and Tomb Raider combined with the frankly surprising level of blood and dismemberment were a breath of fresh air, seeing as I was expecting yet another forgettable kiddy-friendly mass-produced movie tie-in.
The game offers very little in the way of variety, it's mainly just ripping people to shreds, a little bit of platforming then ripping more people to shreds, occasionally throwing a spot of "press X to not die" into the mix, but I'm yet to get bored. Actually between typing right now I'm having quite an epic boss-fight with a huge Sentinel in midair. Wait, "press B to not die".
One of the main things to note is the character damage. About half way through the game you meet these robot things with spinning blades on their hands, and the cuts they leave on your body look great, and watching them heal in real time is genuinely impressive. Some bits are silly though, like on a brief moment of losing my healing powers I was still able to explode myself and carry on going with half of my torso gone. And at one point poor old Logan got blood all down the back of his jeans, and had to go through a cutscene looking like he'd shat himself. And his magical vest that grows back after being shredded is plain lack of attention to detail.
And that's about that. I'm off to get a copy of Borderlands in a bit, which I'm looking forward to, paid for with money I don't have. Those game journo types who get games for free don't even know they're born. I think next week's blog will be very much centred around that. For now though, back to Wolverine.

No gun shooting, for Rudy tonight... No retributing, everything is alright...

I'm back!
Spent the last week in Scarborough, having been married and stuff. It was a great ceremony, and aside from a stupidly parked van and some obnoxious wankers in a pub, a great week. But oh, this blog is about videogames, and two weeks have passed!
The first week at home I spent mainly playing through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, trying to get it fresh in my mind before Uncharted 2 plops through my letter box in a couple of weeks. I don't care what anyone says, in my opinion it's probably the best current-gen game so far, speaking from a single-player perspective. In fact, only the XBox fanboys who are content to do the exact same things over and over again on multiplayer Gears or Left 4 Dead seem to have anything bad to say about it, and that's mainly about a lack of multiplayer, which will change in a few weeks. They seem to overlook the absolutely gorgeous graphics and animation, brilliant voice-acting and the fact that the gameplay, while doing nothing new, is among the best in it's field.
Anyway, ranting aside, I went to Scarborough armed with my PSP, and while I was there I got very much acquainted with Resistance: Retribution. At first I was unsure, with the frankly unconventional controls and Razzy-worthy dialogue and voice-acting, but it ended up dragging me in, and is actually more entertaining than Resistance 2. The main character, James Grayson, is a far cry from the solemn, heroic Nathan Hale: He's foul mouthed, racist and sounds like a mixture of Ray Winstone and Kano from Mortal Kombat. In the opening scenes of the game he stumbles upon his brother, Johnny, half way through being converted into a Chimera, and is forced to kill him for his own good. He then clicks his heels, tips his hat and sets off to kill all of the Chimera by himself, like a Cockney Punisher.
Well, a Cockney Punisher who occasionally slips into an Australian accent anyway. The accents are inconsistent throughout, at one point a soldier went from being Scottish to English and back again in one cutscene like an Oblivion hobo. The game was obviously acted out by a non-British cast. But the one-liners in the game did keep me entertained and had me struggling for a title to this post. My favourite was 'I will rape your skull'. God bless.
It also keeps the feel from the first Resistance, more of a wartime aesthetic, as opposed to the futuristic and very American feel of R2, which in my opinion was one of the things that lost the series' appeal. The other main things that R2 changed were the limited weapon capacity and regenerating health as seen in, well, every other shooter around at the minute, losing the series' uniqueness, and both are back to the retro styles in Retribution too, which is nice.
The game looks gorgeous too. In fact, if you have a PSP just buy it for fuck's sake. Unless you're french, that is; it's really quite racist in places. It's definitely one of the stronger titles on the handheld though.
One of the first things that my new wife did after the day was hand me my ass on Guitar Hero Arcade. Granted, she was playing on easy to my hard, but it was very one-sided. Realising afterwards that it is really just a port of Guitar Hero III, where the hard setting is slightly out of my comfort zone, we had two rematches with me on medium, both victories for me, and another on hard, hers again. Great fun. Afterwards we cooled down with a game on House of the Dead 4, which is strongly in need of a console port.
Also in the arcades we had a go on Outrun 2, which was great fun and reminded me that I still need to get Outrun Arcade on the PS3 or 360. Then we stumbled upon something else...
Paradise Lost is an arcade game from Ubisoft, sporting the artwork and environments from FarCry. You basically sit on gun emplacements and hold the trigger down while knobheads in Crocodile Dundee hats run into your line of fire and collapse into frankly weird shapes thanks to the sub-par ragdoll physics. The best part of the game, in fact, was the fact that in the continue screen you can alter the speed of the countdown by pressing the triggers and grenade buttons. And that is saying a lot. A bit of a read on Wikipedia tells me it is actually supposed to be an arcade version of FarCry. I suppose so. And Susie requests that I tell everyone that, for what it's worth, she had a higher kill count than me, and therefore won.
To wrap this up, my old XBox 360 came back, but the wife bought me an Elite anyway, along with Guitar Hero 5, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Ninja Gaiden II, Prototype, Red Faction Guerrilla and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which should keep me occupied for a while. Also got Halo 2 on standby too, as I have only played the first one up until now, and I'm quite looking forward to hopefully making a late discovery as to what the fuss is all about. Verdict next week.

By my balls, Girl, I thought you were dead!

I know I said I'd have a look at Golden Axe: Beast Rider, and I did. And it was OK at first, I really wanted to like it, just to voice the silent minority or something. Imagine playing God of War, and it's awesome. Somebody takes it away and gives you Conan, and it's still good but not as good. Same thing happens, you get Heavenly Sword, a bit poo really. Then there's Golden Axe.
The graphics are like a mid-range original XBox game, it has the same washed-out look as Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and the blood effect is lifted straight from Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, for those who haven't played it it looks like whole tomatoes are falling out of your enemies. The music is great, proper epic, Conan-style score, but with absolutely unforgivable voice acting it doesn't really help the overall sound much. And the difficulty curve is so steep you need climbing gear - the game doesn't believe in checkpoints. Enemies do this thing where if their weopon glows orange, the blow in unblockable and you need to dodge buy hitting L1, and if it glows blue it's undodgeable and you need to block with R1. Or is it the other way round? You forget because the colours have no significance to the buttons at all. And when 15 enemies are attacking, half doing one, half doing the other, what do you do?
Sega have been destroying a lot of their beloved franchises lately, this and House of the Dead springing to mind. I loved Golden Axe when I was younger, and while I do get nostalgic when *that* music comes on and the gnomes appear, and I have to deck some potions out of them, it still upsets me that a childhood friend has lost it's way so much. It'd be like seeing Carrie Fisher do a low budget Porno.
Aside from that, and I'll keep things brief, I tried Little Big Planet, and I can't do it. Although someone has recreated the whole of Resident Evil 4 on there, which was awesome. I've been back on Mass Effect again, and that will always be great, especially as this time I've talked Wrex down on 'the' bit, which greatly upset me the first time around.
And, after finishing 24: The Game last week I started watching season 3, and there's a bit where Jack says that he moved Kim (his daughter) into CTU (his office) because he wants her to be safe. Now Kim was taken hostage in series 1, had a run-in with a Cougar and kidnapped by a crazy guy in the woods in series 2 and taken hostage again in the game. CTU on the other hand, was compromised twice in series 1, blown up in series 2, and invaded by terrorists in the game. Putting the most unsafe person in America in the most unsafe place in America, where she is now working hand in hand with Sylar from Heroes. Good Going, Jack.