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.

Dear Wanker. Sorry about the bang, send the bill to me arse.

Ever since I'd decided to get The Saboteur, I'd been planning on using Beastie Boys lyrics as that week's blog title. "Oh my, it's a mirage. I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage" it would say. Not too original probably, but it's so obvious that I couldn't not do it.

That was until I actually played the game, and heard the absolutely magical script. Delivered in his deadpan way, protagonist Sean Devlin spouts dialogue worthy of Shakespeare. Among my favourite lines were "You mean the guy smiling like a cat with a cream-flavoured arsehole?" or "In that case, fuck you arseways", but I decided to go with that one.

On to the game itself. You play as Sean Devlin, hard drinking, foul mouthed Irishman who hangs out in strip clubs and loves getting into fights with Germans, while staying in Paris. No, this isn't the 1998 World Cup, why it's World War II of course! But before you all groan at the prospect of yet another WWII videogame, give it chance. It's a bit different you see.

I don't think I've ever shot down a Zeppelin in a videogame before.

For a start, this isn't an FPS. It's not even a Real-Time Strategy game. And it isn't set on the front line, with you playing as Default Soldier #6 who manages to single handedly take down the Nazi regime all in a day's work. No, The Saboteur is a third person sandbox game, in very similar vein to Grand Theft Auto, and puts you in the role of an ex racing driver turned reluctant Resistance member when a prank on a German rival goes awry on the night that the Nazis invaded France, resulting in the death of his best friend. And so a tale of romance and revenge unfolds.

As well as aping Grand Theft Auto, The Saboteur also takes unlikely inspiration from Assassin's Creed, with nearly every building in Gay Paris being scalable. Although the climbing is more similar to that in Uncharted or the later Tomb Raider games, the sandbox environment brings AC to the front of your mind (helped along by the fact that there's a car called 'Altair'), and The Saboteur even has a go at viewpoints (although finding one serves no purpose other than ticking another box on your statistics counter), along with a Trophy/Achievement for Leap-of-Faith-ing from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

It also inherits Assassin's Creed's penchant for bending the truth historically. Every car in the Paris of 1939 comes as standard with Power Steering, a GPS device and not only a radio, but a radio that plays Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' every ten minutes, despite the song being recorded 26 years after the events of the game. A TIME RADIO.

In summation, The Saboteur is a silly, above average but forgettable game. It does nothing new, but does what it does do well, and is well worth playing if you fancy something new from the WWII template, or just a laugh-out-loud, not too serious gaming experience. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone into it straight after Just Cause 2, as I kept wanting to hijack Zeppelins and couldn't, but I enjoyed it anyway. Nolan North's french accent is hilarious.

Also this week, I finally got around to playing GTA IV: The Lost & Damned. I was waiting for the Episodes from Liberty City disk to be released on the PS3 (GTA always will be a PlayStation game for me), but now it's here the 360 version is selling for half the price, so for the sake of £15 I swallowed my pride and got it.

I'll get it over with shall I? TLAD has full frontal MALE nudity in it. An OLD MAN'S PENIS. I've seen it. It's even got veins on it. I wonder who got the job of rendering that one? It's really not that big a (stop laughing) deal, especially as every game I've played recently has been full of women who can't keep their clothes on, but I understand it was very controversial at the time. People, eh?

There, you've seen it. No reason to play it now.

TLAD is actually a bit disappointing. The story is so far predictable and the characters uninteresting. I'm going to predict, nay, I pretty much KNOW that Billy, the leader of your Biker Gang, is going to end up being the main antagonist. And Johnny Klebitz, your hero, is just a Biker version of San Andreas' Carl Johnson, the voice of reason during cutscenes and a thoroughly nice guy, who then goes around committing atrocities with reckless abandon as soon as the missions kick in. Doesn't really make him a believable character.

The new gameplay mechanics aren't really welcome either. By riding in formation with your gang, you automatically fix your bike and heal yourself, even to the point of actually growing body armour out of your skin. Then there's things like arm wrestling mini games and stuff, along with the standard racing and vehicle collecting side quests. I'll be honest, I haven't tried any of these, and don't feel the urge to, ever.

All being said, It's still GTA though, and GTA will always be great. I think I'm ready for a new city though, and after The Saboteur I'm hoping for some countryside (albeit minus the exploding cows) on Rockstar's next car-jacking epic, like they did with San Andreas. Everyone I've spoken to says Gay Tony is a 100% improvement though, so lets wait and see.

And that brings me onto my final (not a pun) game of the week, PSP fighting game Dissidia: Final Fantasy. The prospect of a fighter featuring the main hero and villain from each of the first ten Final Fantasy games (plus, bafflingly, a random guy from FFXII and a little... 'thing' from FFXI) is enough to send many an RPG geek into a coma. The whole game is fan service, with the intro sequence littered with gratuitous 'what if' shots of Squall fighting Sephiroth and loads of other fights that would probably be monumental if I knew who the fuck half of the characters were.

I dove into the story mode, and, like 95% of all Square Enix games it was overly complicated and so, so boring it made me want to cry. It slammed me into the boots of one of the nameless assholes from Final Fantasy 1 and made me fight a 'false warrior' (that's a pallet-swap of yourself, in layman's terms), then repeated with other filler enemies before sticking me against the respective foe of my character. Then it was the same again with the FFII character. Sensing I was in for a long trawl before I got to see any characters I actually gave a shit about (especially since they didn't include Luneth from the DS remake of FFIII, in favour of an unnamed 'Onion Knight'), I headed into the Arcade Mode.

Probably won't be though.

Arcade Mode was an improvement, simpler and more accessible. I naturally jumped straight into Cloud Strife's shoes, and I won't lie, performing an Omni Slash on Squall Leonheart was the most satisfying thing I've done in a game since slamming Sean Paul's head in a car door in Def Jam: Fight for NY. But it still failed to grab me. I suppose it's an okay substitute for Tekken or SoulCalibur, but I actually have Tekken and SoulCalibur, so it's pointless. But it is the closest thing we have to a sequel to Ehrgeiz, so I have to be somewhat grateful. Oh well, they tried. I'll just go back to hoping Ehrgeiz is released on the PSN, so I can play that on my PSP instead.

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!

Back, Sack and Crack.

Woe betide the gaming blogger who runs out of games to play on his Shame Pile. There is so little to write about this week, I'd considered not even bothering.

Well, apart from my new found love and appreciation, not only for Sackboy (I already loved the little guy), but for Little Big Planet as a game that is. I've spent probably most of my non-Oblivion time on LBP this last week, and truth be told I haven't even tried the level editor yet. It looks simple and ordinary at a first glance, but when you look at it from a technical standpoint, it's absolutely breathtaking.

You see, for those like me who have foolishly looked past LBP all these years, everything in Little Big Planet is based around some absolutely astounding physics. Each level (even the ones in Story Mode are created using the game's robust edit mode) is basically a huge domino rally, with the charming little knitted character as the catalyst, and everything that happens is basically down to gravity, or a complex system of pulleys and gears, all in a virtual sense of course.

My only gripe with the game is that Sackboy moves around like a wet turd on a polished floor, careering into his surroundings and straight off ledges, which makes some of the more precise jumps a nightmare to pull off. But believe me, as late to the party as I am, I fucking love the game, and plan on getting the PSP version very soon indeed.

For the last few days, there has been a copy of God of War III in my house. But, you see, I somewhat foolishly asked for it as a birthday present, and as a result have to wait until Thursday to play it. So. to sate my hunger, I fired up my newly acquired NTSC copy of God of War Collection on Sunday night, to see how well it had been 'remastered and optimised'. The particular copy has been somewhat communal among my group of friends, first the property of fellow (if a little sporadic) blogger Raz7el, then passed on to regular blog-commenter Paul in exchange for a copy of Dante's Inferno before finding itself in my clammy paws, so I almost feel obligated to pass it on once I've had my fill.

I've only had chance to try the original God of War so far, and I'm in no rush to play them before the chalky angry one makes his belated PS3 debut in my house on Thursday because I can pretty much recite the GoW storyline off by heart (Angry man becomes god's assassin, accidentally kills family, gets angrier, purposefully kills god (Nolan North, naturally), becomes god himself, is a little naughty, gets god licence revoked, gets even angrier, meets titans, sets off to kill gods, and dies and escapes hell about a hundred times in the process). As for the remastering? Well, the game is by default in 16:9 screen ratio now, which saves you about three and a half seconds in the options menu, and the games are displayed in 720p, which is really not that noticeable frankly. Last year, believing GoWIII to be nearer to release than it was, I played the first two on a PS2 using an RGB cable on the very same TV, and it was pretty much identical. But saying that, when you aren't forced to look at a Greek Soldier who was rendered out of about eleven polygons, the game still looks great, nearly on a par with some of this generation's equivalents (Hellboy: The Science of Evil springs to mind). Really though, if this was born out of love and appreciation for we, the fans, then Chains of Olympus should have been on there too.

Oh yeah, there's Trophies too, and the only reason I'm even mentioning this is because of a cheeky, not-quite-copyright-infringing dig at Metal Gear Solid: Rising, with a Trophy called 'Bolt Action' awarded when you receive the lightning bolt ability. It made me laugh anyway.

I implore everyone who owns a PS3 to buy this though, especially those who don't still have the games on the PS2. Sure, nothing's changed really, but saying that they are still both amazing games, and still better than any and all of their rival series. Plus, if the sales reach noticeable levels, they might give us the backwards compatibility we've all been fucking asking for for the past few years. At the very least, they might do collections for their other IPs, like Ico/Shadow of the Colossus or (I know it's not theirs technically but it's where it belongs) Metal Gear.

Anyway, all things going well, I should have something to write about next week, and one of those things should be the return of Kratos. See you then.

Wow, what a mansion! (AKA the 24 Hour Gamer DLC edition)

Okay, doing something a bit different this week. With the recent trend of affordable DLC hitting the PSN store, I thought I'd grab a bit and give it a write-up, especially seeing as my Shame Pile has dried up. So here I go.

I started off with the two pieces of episodic DLC for Ubisoft's masterpiece (and clear winner of most improved sequel of the last decade) Assassin's Creed II, entitled The Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities. The two pieces fit nicely into the conveniently skipped chapters of the main game's storyline, so it's possible to play them both as part of a complete playthrough as well as going back to them after the game's conclusion. At £3.19 a piece, they don't exactly break the bank either.

The Battle of Forli takes place right after Ezio officially earns his Assassin's stripes, when the fight with Rodrigo Borgia, the would-be Pope, went a bit wrong. It involves a siege on the palatial home of briefly seen countess of Forli (and, lets face it, a bit of a slapper) Catarina Sforza, during which two of her seemingly countless children are kidnapped, along with the Apple of Eden, an artifact of limitless power.

The chapter starts with an escort mission, where you need to get Catarina and fellow Assassin Niccolo Machiavelli safely to the castle's keep, and is frustratingly annoying. Both of your charges would much rather dance around catching enemy axes with their faces than do anything useful, so it takes a lot of patience and perseverance to get through the very first bit. Once you get past that small annoyance though, it's back to the usual standard of the game though, fun, stylish combat and satisfying kills. The last kill, which took place atop a tower in the centre of a restricted area was extremely gratifying for me, as my assault on the monolith went flawlessly, with me stealing around the grounds surreptitiously picking off guards when their backs were turned, before leaping up the bastion, taking my target's mace out of his hands and deftly planting it, with the greatest of care, into his arsehole.

While The Battle of Forli wasn't to the standards of the main game, The Bonfire of the Vanities was a disgusting disappointment. It sees you, with freshly cultivated facial hair, tracking down the captor of the aforementioned Apple of Eden, exiled friar Girolamo Savonarola, who has taken over Florence. He has stationed 9 lieutenants around the city, who must each have their day ruined before the big man himself.

One of these future corpses is stationed on a boat, and for some reason if any of his guards see you the mission is over, despite the fact that he really isn't going anywhere quickly on a moored sail barge. The single assassination alone took me over an hour of swearing and pillow punching to (pun intended) execute, as it appears that 15th century guards can see through walls. I came so close once, after a flurry of smoke bombs and throwing knives, only for my prey to see me standing BEHIND him. And this, this single insignificant murder, made me go from loving Assassin's Creed II, to never wanting to play it again.

I was much happier with the two extra chapters for Resident Evil 5, a game I wasn't too thrilled with to begin with. Both are available now for a measly £3.99 each, and offer about an hour and a half of genuinely great gameplay.

The first, titled Lost in Nightmares tells the story of how series staple Jill Valentine met her apparent demise at the hands of superhuman baddie Albert Wesker during the assault on Ozwell Spencer's stately mansion, as told through a flashback in RE5's main story. The plot though, is a thin disguise for a basic summation of the first Resident Evil, and feels like a big 'thank you' to the fans from Capcom. It has all of the favourites, from the 'Jill Sandwich' spiked ceiling, to the secret door opened by playing 'Moonlight Sonata' on a Piano, to the different shaped cranks used to progress. There are even a few stray Zombies dotted around too. The only real let down of the piece is a slightly sketchy boss fight with Mr. Wesker, but that's only a small complaint and doesn't mar the experience one iota.

The second part, titled Desperate Escape, tells the events of RE5's climax from the point of view of Miss Valentine, and her new acquaintance Josh Stone (not Joss Stone), of the West-African branch of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, or BSAA. Where the first pack was mainly puzzle based, this is all about action and does not disappoint, throwing all kinds of enemies at you. There are plenty of Executioners, Chainsaw Majini and Gatling Gun Majini to keep the action flowing, with mannable grenade-launcher emplacements dotted around sporadically, and ammo everywhere to keep the carnage up. The chapter climaxes with what is basically the game's mercenaries mode, with you holding position while waiting seemingly hours for an evac, which gets genuinely tense. Both expansion packs breathe life into a game that frankly got stale before it's own ending.

Finally, I finished off with the first chapter of the episodic Heavy Rain Chronicles, ominously named The Taxidermist. Way back during Heavy Rain's early development, Quantic Dream showed a technical demo of the game's heroine Madison Paige being chased around a house by a crazed killer, and that eventually became what I was playing. Currently unavailable commercially, I downloaded it freely with the game's collector's edition.

It starts off with Ms. Paige investigating a potential Origami Killer, an ex Taxidermist (hence the title) who turns out to be away from home when she arrives. Naturally, she breaks into his home and starts to snoop around. Upstairs she makes a grizzly discovery in the bathroom; the body of a woman in a bath filled with more blood than water, then in a large open plan room at the end of the corridor, more dead women, this time stuffed and placed in provocative clothing and positions, including, sickeningly, a nude one in a double bed.

The look of shock on Madison's face and how she reacts to everything she sees is fantastic, it really shows emotion that isn't usually conveyed in games outside of cutscenes. And it's mirrored in the player when the killer returns home, I've honestly never felt so tense as I tried, and ultimately failed to sneak out of his house, I could actually hear my own heartbeat. Long story short, things ended badly for poor Madison, but that was only one of a potential six conclusions, so it has replay value too. I'll definitely go back to it, and await future episodes eagerly.

Back to normal next week, and I'll try and dig up something to play and comment on before then. I might finally have time to give Little Big Planet a proper go. Until then.

Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind.

Where to start? Well, if I said that the last week had been a good gaming week for me, I'd be lying through my teeth. It started off well, with my re-discovery of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which has eaten up about 12 hours of time that I should have spent sleeping this week. I have played Oblivion before, about three times from start to finish actually, so I thought I'd mix things up a little this time. Playing as a Khajiit, an anthropomorphic cat for those who haven't played the game yet (although you really should, it's a very likely candidate for the best game ever made), I've taken it upon myself to make it my goal to hunt and kill every Argonian (lizard people, and historical enemies of the Khajiit) in the game world, after they've served any purpose they might have that is.

Aside from that, this is the first time I've tried playing the game with Light Armour, and only the second time using swords, as I usually go for heavy armour and axes or (my favourite) warhammers. And it's my first time out of the dungeon that I wasn't in the shoes of an Elf too, so a lot of the game is fresh to me this time. But that's the high point of the week over right there.

After the surprisingly great ObsCure, I was eager to fire up ObsCure II on the Wii, and was appalled. None of the atmosphere had survived, the creepy post-Gothic feeling of the original's high school setting had been replaced by a college frat house full of asshole stereotype douchebags with absolutely disgusting voice actors that they must have scraped up off the street. I commented on how Sum 41's 'Still Waiting' failed to set the scene in the first one, but the opening music to ObsCure II (god knows what it was) was comically inappropriate, actually cheerful sounding.

Then you get thrown into the gameplay, and the erratic animation combined with the standard sketchy-at-best Wii controls that make any attempt at a serious game (bar Resident Evil 4) a chore make the game virtually unplayable. The writers seem to have forgotten that our heroes found a cure for their infection at the end of the first game, because now they are having to take medicines to stop it spreading. Also, none of the returning characters look, sound or behave as they did before (our hero Stan has even stopped talking like Vanilla Ice), showing yet more lack of attention by the developers. And after a bad nightmare sequence that shamelessly ripped off Silent Hill and a run-in with the game's very first enemies who can tear about a third of your health away with one hit, it wasn't long before I switched it off. If I ever find it for a decent price on the PS2, I might be tempted to have a go at it with a normal controller, but as it stands I'm just not interested enough to put myself through it.

So I moved on to this week's main event, the infamous Rogue Warrior on the PS3. Rogue Warrior is a supposed true story based on the autobiography of former Navy Seal commander (and tourette's sufferer, if the game is anything to go by) Dick Marcinko. I'm not going to skirt around things here, this game is BAD. But it's not insultingly bad, like Haze, it's laugh-out-loud, piss-hilarious bad. I suppose, if you'd spend £40 on it, then it would be a bit of a kick in the balls, but I only spent £14.99 (I can only imagine how bad the person who sold it to Cash Converters felt, he can't have gotten more than a tenner for it less than a month after it was released. I hope for his sake he stole it).

I'm going to start with the script. Dick, voiced by muscular pensioner Mickey Rourke, must have said about 4 or 5 words before his first 'fuck' broke through, and then never looked back. Apart from the D-grade military action movie jargon I think I heard one line of F-bomb free dialogue in the whole game, and that was a reference to cunnilingus. At one point, close to death, Dick descended into one long, uninterrupted swear word, which went something like "fucknshitbastardcommiemotherfuckinfuck". That's quality writing right there. From his voice, you get the feeling that Mickey's heart wasn't really in it. But you also get the feeling that half of the expletives weren't actually on the script too.

Right, gameplay time. Rogue Warrior is a standard FPS, one man versus the whole of North Korea and the Soviet Union type of affair. It's cover system is like a happy marriage between Killzone 2 and Gears of War, and it feels great until you reload. If you leave cover half way through reloading, the action is cancelled. It's okay though, there's no reason to leave cover, because the enemies will just stroll over and stand at the other side of whatever you're hiding behind, happily firing round after round into the bulletproof barrier, allowing you to use blindfire and just poke your gun over the top and kill him without even aiming.

The enemies take cover too though, and I actually saw one throw a grenade at the cover he was hiding behind, resulting in the explosive bouncing right back and landing in his lap. So it's no surprise that Kim Jong Il's finest pose very little threat to you throughout the game. The only problem comes with the Shotgun carriers, who defy the laws of the world by being able to shoot the hairs off a flea's back at 200 yards. Attention to detail, nothing is spared.

Like with The Punisher on the PS2, I tended to favour the melee kills, which are triggered by moving close to an enemy and pressing the X button. This sends the camera out to a third person view so you can admire you suitably brutal finisher, ranging from turning an enemy's gun on himself to slitting his throat, to the frankly worrying move involving sticking your knife up a poor communist's arsehole. The mind boggles.

It's hard to imagine, that with the publisher of Fallout 3 and the developer of Rogue Trooper and Aliens vs. Predator, that an FPS with such a rich upbringing could go so wrong. Whoever thought it would be a great idea to let people play as a demolitions expert (the game's main aim is to plant explosives on missiles) was sorely mistaken. And who decided that 2 and a half hours was an adequate lifespan of a game was frankly insane. But at least it made me laugh.

And that's about it. I had a quick go on Madworld the other day, and it didn't really grab me. The visuals are headache inducing (reminding me of pictures I used to draw as a child, where I would only colour in the blood), and it seems to me that they had tried to come up with a valid storyline involving terrorists at the start of the game, but then abandoning it and leaving the cutscene in. One minute the president is addressing the nation over a terrorist attack and promising to send in a special agent, the next you're in a violent Running Man style game show. Then it's just hitting people until the game over screen. I'll have another go, but I don't predict I'll fall for it. Speaking of falling for things, I tried the Just Cause 2 demo last night, and I think I'll be bringing the full game home on the 26th. Even though I loved the original, for some reason I wasn't expecting much from the sequel, but was very pleasantly surprised. Gives me something to look forward to.

Check back next week for the DLC special!