With Playstation 4 only months away, Sony are pulling out all the stops to ensure their Playstation 3 receives the swansong it so richly deserves. When The Last of Us launches on June 14th, the system will receive exactly that.

NowGamer previewed two levels from the upcoming Sony exclusive and after a few playthroughs, there are a few things we could do without, but there are plenty of things we absolutely love.

The Last Of Us - What we Love

Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, it’s Naughty Dog game but no this isn’t Uncharted with mutants. The Last of Us has flashes of panoramic beauty that would bring a tear to Nathan Drake’s eye. The variety of backdrops are truly glorious to behold in High Definition. However, the abominations Joel and Ellie face will not only remind players this is a damaged, broken world on the brink of destruction, but also conjure up horrors players haven’t experienced since the Headcrab Zombies from Half Life and other such ilk. This is a far cry from Aztec temples and aggressive tribes.

It’s the evolving relationship between Joel and Ellie that really drives this game towards its greatest strengths, however. Joel kind of parallels Sully as a father-like figure to Ellie, but this goes much deeper than a hunt for a hidden artefact. Even in the fragmented levels we got to trial, Naughty Dog’s solid writing shines prominently. The ravaged planet brings Joel and Ellie together, and their dependence on and trust in one another becomes plain for all to see.

One interaction in particular really brought this home. Despite already using a gun, Joel collects a bow for combat purposes. Joel purposefully leaves Ellie unarmed as he wants to be the one protecting her and doing all the fighting. Regardless, Ellie is extremely insistent that she can look after herself and pleads with Joel to give her the bow, claiming she’s a good shot. Despite her nagging, Joel still refuses to put her on the frontline. His responses to her enthusiasm are ‘Stay back’ or ‘Take cover’

We know Joel has a dark past. Quite how dark is still open to interpretation, but after Joel recognises a bandit ambush before it happens, Ellie quizzes him, asking how he read the signs and saved their lives. Joel’s response indicates he may have been like them once and therefore knows their tactics. Ellie follows up her questioning asking if he has ever killed innocent people. To that, Joel offers no comment. Interactions like this make the dynamic of their relationship all the more interesting.

For a teenager, Ellie shows remarkable bravery. She’s not a scared little girl who screeches and wails at a mere glimpse of a fungus sprouting head. She’s hardened to this fractured environment and has adapted as well as can be expected to her circumstances, perhaps more so than Joel. That being said, Naughty Dog haven’t created a robot. Ellie is a very multi-faceted, three-dimensional character that still conveys naivety and a degree of innocence one would associate with someone of her age. One moment, you’re captivated, inspired by her strength. The next your heart sinks as she recollects her youth, playing arcade games and hanging out with friends. This is one AI companion you’ll want to look after.

Fortunately, The Last Of Us doesn’t rely on dialogue and cut-scenes to make a good game. Players need to be aware of tricks and traps, jump-timing, and puzzle solving. Perhaps most importantly, though, they’ll need to be prepared to focus each combat approach.

One admirable, unique feature is ‘Listen Mode’ which automatically puts Joel into a crouched, stealth position. When used, Joel can hear the slightest movements and visualise the location of his enemies, whether it’s through a wall or in another room. This allows Joel to plan attacks carefully, and the decision is your as to whether you shoot holes into his prey or beat their head in with a metal pipe. The range and quality of Listen Mode can also be levelled-up and further developed, but this wasn’t explored in the demonstration. If used correctly, though, Listen Mode can mean the difference between quelling an enemy in one hit, or entering a fully-fledged struggle to the death.

What makes The Last of Us so interesting is that enemies will adapt to the situation as much as the player. If you start shooting at a Creeper from long range, they’ll likely summon a fungi-head buddy to come help them out, or quickly dive into cover knowing they’re in trouble. This makes the need for approaching each combat sequence so important, more than most other titles in the genre.

Gun-handling and aiming is at least on-par with Uncharted, and is either a good or bad thing depending on your point of view, but the hand-to-hand combat really adds a unique, gritty edge to The Last of Us. Weapons have their desired impact and in certain situations, are more effective than using firearms and bows. Joel can use various littered environmental objects to fend off his foes, but also customise them with a surprising amount of creativity. For instance, one weapon I picked up was a pipe with a taped brick and pair of scissors on top. Approach any workbench in the game, and you can do much more. 

The Last Of Us - What We Don't Love

It’s not all good news, though. Even on a normal setting, the difficulty spike in The Last of Us is intense. While some enemies are easily thwarted, others show no mercy and won’t toy around with Joel. If he gets within arms reach of a Creeper, they’ll overpower him, take one swooping dive at his neck and bite right through, killing him instantly. I also found myself easily overwhelmed in certain situations as many enemies travel in roaming mobs. Instances such as these require a high level of patience to deal with, which brings me back to the point of preparing for each combat engagement wisely. For many people, this could prove to be unappreciated adversity to overcome. 

I also found some of the enemy AI was either too responsive or not responsive enough. One occasion I vaulted between cover points right in front of a bandit, yet he didn’t notice Joel and continued about his business. Another time I was crouched near a Creeper and as I moved towards him for the deathblow, he tore my head off unexpectedly. Yes, I was playing a preview build and code will have almost certainly been altered and improved, but these things can’t go ignored.

Unfortunately, there’s also a reliance on QTE sequences. The button tapping phenomenon has played a larger role in end-of-cycle console games than many would like, and while it’s not as present in TLOU as in Resident Evil 6, many melee opportunities rely on the player to warm up their Track and Field fingers. The accompanying cut-scenes are usually pretty satisfying, though.

It’s also disappointing that a second player can’t assume the role of Ellie. She makes for an excellent AI partner, yet the game refuses to allow for co-op. While it’s true many of the mechanics are engineered to support a single-player experience, a game like this could have also benefitted from a united front, especially with puzzle solving and creating distractions in combat. What with the addition of an online multiplayer component, it makes the omission even more baffling. Maybe next time?

The Last Of Us - Final Thoughts

On the whole, our misgivings are slight. The Last of Us is highly enjoyable and entertaining; both mechanically and narratively, it’s a title that could set benchmarks for the future.

The Last of Us could find itself winning many Game of the Year awards come December, depending, of course, on how the multiplayer is implemented and the rest of the story plays out. One thing is for sure, they’ve saved the best Playstation 3 exclusives till last.

There are some games that you can play and immediately understand the skills required, thanks to the familiarity of them. Play a FPS and you’ll strafe around opponents and instinctively reload behind cover, where you’re safe from gunfire. Play a RPG and you’ll know to use fire spells on ice creatures and vice versa.

Play MotoGP 13 and you’ll realise it’s one of those rare games in that it demands new skills from you altogether. There is no strafing, fira spells or dragon punching to get you out of trouble. Just pure, hardcore racing. And you’ll fail. A lot.

In what can be best described as a learning experience, your first few games of MotoGP 13 are more likely to be how-long-can-I-stay-on-this-bike, as you brace yourself for disaster with each corner that snakes into view on the horizon.

Corners make your bumhole pucker back up into your body with nerves and fear, your attempts to carve your way around at top speed seeing you overshooting the corner and trundling along the grass like a fool, before the laws of physics take pity on you and send you flying over the top of your bike after a panicked attempt to correct yourself.

MotoGP 13 - Skills To Pay The Bills (Well, Play The Game)

It’s not just that you need the usual racing game skills that we lack, such as not using other racers to slow down and a general air of patience and calm. It’s that it’s so different to other racing games, those old skills wouldn’t be enough anyway. You have to consider your position on the bike itself and shift your weight, remembering you’re on two wheels instead of four.

Every corner is a delicate balancing act, that leaves you fearful to push your luck and respectful of gravity. You also have to consider the laws of physics when trying to throw your bike around tight corners at extreme angles. There’s no powersliding or drifting here. You have to learn how to race the hard way.

This makes MotoGP 13 tricky to learn and there’s a multitude of racing aids that can be switched on to help you cope with the learning curve. But once you get to grips with the art of staying on your bike for more than three corners it’s an incredibly satisfying game to play, as you weave in and out of tracks, showing off your mastery of the game.

This won’t be news to MotoGP veterans who will have mastered the gameplay from previous games in the series but for newcomers, it’s an engrossing challenge. Realistic, difficult but fair.

MotoGP 13 - What's There For Fans?

So what’s here for hardcore MotoGP fans? As the official game of the MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 2013 championships, it’s stuffed with official riders, tracks, teams and bikes and official commentary from an as-yet-to-be-revealed MotoGP personality. You can play around with bike set-up options and testing the bikes.

We didn’t toy around with that but we’ve heard the physics engine for the bikes manages 300 parameters, with over 100 just for the tyres. MotoGP 13 has 300 physics! That sounds like LOADS of physics. It explains why it feels realistic.

We’re not huge fans of MotoGP itself yet that didn’t stop MotoGP 13 being fun to play – even the simple art of trying to stay on our bikes and eventually learning how to do so was engaging. But the one element that stood out to us is that you can discuss race tactics with team-mates, answer questions from the press and see your popularity on news feeds.

The NBA 2K series does this well, adding an extra gameplay element away from the actual playing-the-sport side. We expect similar great things from MotoGP 13.

Just as we expect great things from the final game. We tried out the split-screen setting when playing MotoGP 13 in the office and the fact that two players who aren’t huge racing fans could enjoy it speaks volumes.

It might have 300 physics, official tracks and licenses and everything else you want from an official game but above all that, it’s just fun to play. And isn’t that what matters?

"It’s not getting harder, it’s getting more fun" said Nick Cannon, Executive Producer, as he took a room full of games critics through the much harder and less fun technical aspects of FIFA 14.

Indeed for those who crave this year’s patch release, they’ll be happy to see the game take another half step towards total simulation football, but for those who play with a couple cans of non-descript Australian larger on a Saturday in with the lads, they’ll be frustrated and bemused.

FIFA 14 will undoubtedly be this year’s most anticipated worldwide game patch. The updates that we saw suggest that this year’s intonation delicately dabbles in the minutiae. This is to be expected from a game that is released yearly and is a sports simulation game, it’s not as if they can invent a new story to work around like Call of Duty. Or maybe they could? Imagine cut scenes of Arsene Wenger, crying, on his knees outside of Old Trafford, drinking from a brown paper bottle, shouting ‘WHY ROBIN, WHY?’.

Actually, that might work, unread this paragraph. FIFA 11 was the peak of all previous Fifa games, it squeezed every drop out of the old FIFA engine. FIFA 12 was ground zero for the new Player Impact Engine and FIFA 13 was the first in a long, long line of tweaks and polishes. FIFA 14 is the ‘this time it’s personal’ for said tweaks and polishes.  It should also be mentioned that FIFA 13 on Vita was a cynical cash-in that was a hastily made rehash on FIFA 11, which EA refused to talk about at this preview event.

Sigh. Anyway, here’s a roundup of the new features.

FIFA 14: Tactical Defending

Upcoming improvements include revised teammate intelligence and off the ball runs where teammates will spot more attacking opportunities than before and make more informed runs, whilst holding off defenders who could scupper the attack. And, for balance, defenders will have improved run-tracking, tighter man-marking and spot more opportunities to thwart an attack.

The controversial tactical defending system that some (us) are yet to master has finally been changed to accommodate itchy trigger fingers. Players will now have the opportunity to do an immediate second tackle should your first lunge at the opposition player completely miss, so recovery time from a failed tackle won’t feel so infuriating.

FIFA 14: Protecting The Ball

Protecting the ball, too, has been de-furiated. Nick admitted that the feature was mostly unused by players because of how difficult it was to master, now, however, players will be able to protect the ball, whether in attack or defense, by simply pressing L2.

We were shown a video of the master at protecting the ball, Didier Drogba, holding up the ball as he receives it and laying it off to a team mate. It wasn’t clear from the footage we saw but simplifying protecting the ball should mean that opposition players clambering into you won’t mean you’re automatically disposed anymore.

Shooting and attacking

The new shooting mechanic looks like it will be the first thread to feature in the EA complaint forums come this September. Players won’t just be able to shoot from any position anymore and have RVP pull off a near perfect shot. No. The accuracy, quality and strength of shot will be depend on the players body shape at the moment of shot or ‘snap’ as it’s known and proximity to the ball.

Previously, the computer would slide your player into place to make the shot. Now, the player will attempt to reposition himself in order to make the shot, which he won’t always be able to do to. It’s much more realistic but it’s going to be this year’s big learning curve.

The mechanics of the ball, too, are less linear now, we’re assured. The ball will take different flight paths depending on the type of ball, the spin and how it’s struck – curving and looping all over the shop. Expect your mate to make a lot of ‘NASA space programme’ jokes.

This does mean, however, that you can score some spectacular curving shots with a lot more power, Nick said he wanted to the player to experience the raw thrill of hitting the ball perfectly with an exceptionally powerful shot.

Build up play will be rewarded with better team movement so you won’t be stuck passing between the back four waiting for someone to do something. But we’re assured that for those of us who like to play with Championship teams, you won’t be penalised for playing long and direct (an actress said to a bishop).

If you don’t want to play over the top, skills have been “simplified” to just the right stick, so now you’ll be able to accidently pull off tricks by mashing just one button.

FIFA 14: Add-ons

Skill games and manager mode make both make reappearances with improved features such as one time pass shooting practice for skill improvement, and a new global scouting network that allows you to choose players based on attributes rather than skill points for manager mode.

Nick was surprisingly cavalier about FIFA 13’s problems that FIFA 14 aims to fix, which was refreshing. But we fear that the improved teammate intelligence and shooting mechanic will be discarded on next year’s cutting room floor with Nick saying in a FIFA 15 press press event ‘we’ve improved that annoying shooting feature…”. 

Remember Me, suitably, is an unforgettable experience. Blending Arkham City style combat, Uncharted platforming and a God Hand-esque custom combo system, it’s a game which knows its place in the action/adventure genre – but knows how to flip the genre on its head, too.

Combat starts off like the latest Batman outing; chain combos, hit X to dodge and watch the bad guys drop.

But progress results in fresh ‘Pressens’, essentially currency to build longer combo chains.

Each pressen has individual abilities – so added to combos, the move string can be tailored to do more damage, recover health or unleash extra powers more quickly.

It’s a little fiddly at first, but the extra layer of depth is a rewarding addition to an otherwise familiar combat system, allowing players to customise combos and adjust the fighting system to their own way of playing.

Platforming is very familiar. It’s just like Nathan Drake’s outings, except yellow arrows hint at (read: tell you) where to leap next.

Blending pipes, ledges, dynamic camera angles and Things That Break Suddenly, it’s definitely charted territory.

Remember Me’s main ‘thing’, though, is its Memory Remixes. Not Brain Training meets Skrillex, but a unique game-rewind puzzle mechanic which interrupts the platform ‘n’ brawl sections of action.

The objective is to alter a character’s memory in order to change the course of events in the story. This takes the form of watching a cutscene play out, before rewinding it and looking for ‘memory glitches’ that can be connected in order to change the scene.

For instance, we were treated to a memory of a man being cured of his experimental ailments by token evil GP Dr Quaid.

We’re told to change the memory to ensure the doctor kills him instead. Rewinding, we then remove the patient’s face mask, bindings and move the scalpel-bearing table closer to the bed, hit play and watch the scene unfold differently – the patient wrests his arm free and goes for the doc, who’s forced to make the kill.

How exactly these sections do weave into the story is yet to become clear, but it’s an interesting twist on an otherwise straightforward sci-fi plot (woman escapes neo-fascist control facility, goes on run in high tech city of the future on lockdown).

Worries? The voice acting is weak, taking an okay script and making it feel a little hollow and soulless. 

Main character Nilin also lacks individuality, looking like a cross between Faith from Mirror’s Edge and Trip from Enslaved, but with more spandex ass-and-cleavage-showcasing.

In fact, there’s much more character to the 2084 Neo-Parisian streets you clamber round than any of the actual, er, characters.

From malls to skyscrapers, every inch of the world is teeming with details, from tourists sipping coffee outside bustling java shops to skylines of glass and concrete jostling for attention behind streets of graffiti-lined alleys and groups of I, Robot-alike cybercitizens.

It all adds up to a title which treads old ground, but with a unique perspective and is sure to be one to watch this year.

Lightning Returns is possibly the most experimental Final Fantasy game that Square Enix has ever produced.

With the criticisms of Final Fantasy 13 leading Square to produce the eclectic 13-2 and its incredibly open and time travel set-up, the laser-like focus on series main protagonist Lightning in Lightning Returns is producing something very different to what has come before.

We join Lightning 13 days before the apocalypse and a reminder of the impending doom is imprinted at the top of the screen in the form of a ticking clock - the pressure’s constantly on.

Lightning finds herself wandering the streets of Novus Partus, a 500 year-old land that was created when Pulse and Valhalla merged at the climax of 13-2. It’s a modern bustling city and one that gives Lightning plenty of opportunity to explore, interact with people and hopefully, by the time that clock runs down, discover a way of saving the world.

There’s a much more ‘adventure game’ feel to Lightning Returns and it’s this time-sensitive setup that is providing Square Enix with the opportunity to create its potentially most diverse Final Fantasy game yet.

One of the first locations we saw sees Lightning exploring an area called Luxerion, which appeared to be a highly religious area, presenting a nice foreshadowing of the chaos of coming apocalypse.

Luxerion is apparently the first of four islands, each of which has been designed with its own unique flavour, side quests and geography. Side quests will form a big part of the action and the diversity of these will go a long way to ensure that Lightning is rarely repeating herself.

Lightning has to fight by herself but don't worry, she's got a few new tricks.

In fact, we saw instances during side quests that required Lightning to stealth her way into an area before the inevitable fighting started. It’s just one example of how Lightning Returns is differentiating itself, not just from the series at large, but from the previous games in the ‘Lightning Saga’.

It’s important to remember, too, but due to the impending apocalypse Lightning won’t actually be able to complete all of the available side quests open to her making the player’s decisions during the game-time even more important than usual.

It’s not clear whether players will be up against a clock quite as stringent as the one seen in Capcom’s Dead Rising series, but picking and choosing what Lightning does will form a big part of the overall puzzle.

Combat

As in every Final Fantasy game combat forms a huge part of the experience. In Lightning Returns though, players will only have one options in battle, Lightning. This not only forces players to think in an entirely new tactical way during fights, but it also gives them a single highly customisable character to play with.

What players choose to equip Lightning with will have a direct affect on how she performs in battle and seeking the world for the best armour and clothes should be at the top of your ‘to do’ list. It’s all about creating ‘your Lightning’ according to Square Enix.

The greatest departure in the series representation of combat though, is the ability for the player to move Lightning around the battlefield. This makes perfect sense considering Lightning is fighting on her own, but it also gives Lightning Returns an entirely different feel to the previous games in the series.

As she fights by herself Lightning also has three ATB bars, each with its own ‘style’ attached to it. This gives players the chance to swap between styles, much in the same way as the Paradigm shifts of the previous games, but it also means she’s never left out in the open and susceptible to attack.

These new style ‘Paradigms' (for lack of a better term) come with pre-set combat options and, with the ability to move around enemies, it creates an interesting half-way house between full-blown real-time combat and the deep strategy of the previous Final Fantasy games.

Lightning Returns’ combat is much more akin to Square Enix’s Kindgom Hearts games and with movement mapped to the left stick and action commands to the face buttons, there’s a distinct feel to the combat that's all of its own.

Characters

Lightning Returns’ full cast of characters has yet to be revealed, but here are a few we’ve already caught a glimpse of:

Noel Kreiss – Making his return from Final Fantasy 13-2, we’re not quite sure what’s happened to Noel. From what we saw he seems to be possessed by something and has taken to calling himself the ‘Shadow Hunter’.

Hope – Hope also makes a return with Lightning, but it appears that you’ll rarely actually see him. In Lightning Returns he takes on a similar role to Otacon in the Metal Gear Solid game, relaying information to Lightning and keeping the plot going.

Lumina – A new character for the series, Lumina shares a remarkable similarity to Lightning’s sister Serah. In fact, Square Enix was dropping some massive hints that there’s more to Luminous than you’d first think.

You can read NowGamer's exclusive interview with Square Enix's director Motomu Toriyama and series overseer Yoshinori Kitase to discover more about Lightning Returns.      

Given how its inclusion was a pathway to easy cynicism, there’s nothing surprising about how multiplayer in God Of War: Ascension plays out.

Sony has just released the beta showing off the online side of Kratos’ series and it’s exactly as you’d expect – hulking bald men smashing each other until they explode in a bloody cloud of red.

The way the beta begins promises something different and interesting. You step into an arena where you have to pledge your loyalty to one of the four gods.

Pledge your alliance to Zeus or Ares (the other two gods are locked out in the beta) who provide you with boosts to your magic and defence or attacking power and fire magic, respectively. Then you get to customise your character, though at this stage it’s more scrolling through the armour and weapons you have yet to unlock, and then you jump into combat.

It’s here that you realise for all the presentation that the beta opens with, it’s the usual God Of War fare once the game itself begins. God Of War is a series built on solid combat fundamentals and these translate well to multiplayer. There are quick attacks, heavy attack, launchers, evasive rolls, blocks and throws.

Team Favor sees you capturing one of the three shrines dotted around the arena to score points. Points are also awarded for opening chests and killing one of the members of the opposite team. The level itself is a series of linear pathways connected within a tight arena, forcing you to jump across gaps to get around the level.

That’s because the pathways themselves are dangerous places to hang around. Not only are they were players from the other team are likely to roam – winning a 1-vs-2 battle is almost impossible – but there are traps such as spike floors and fiery pits. These are switched on by nearby levers, which prime the traps and are activated when a player passes over. And yes, you can hurt players on your own team too, as we found out when we impaled a team-mate by mistake. Whoops.

The map in the beta also had a chained Cyclops lurking near the top, his fists slamming down on players who try to capture either of the nearby shrines. It’s a nice God Of War trademark, touching on both the mythology and the over-sized bosses the series owes a debt to.

Even better, you have a chance to slay the boss. The Gods throw down a weapon during the match, which can be captured by either side (it has a protective shield around it for the first five seconds, deterring players from waiting near its spawn when they know it’s coming). This weapon not only dominates confrontations against other players but can also be used to slay the Cyclops.

Throw the spear at its eye and the Cyclops will collapse on a nearby platform, so you can scramble next to its hand and follow the QTE prompt to finish it off.

All of which is a long way of saying Ascension’s multiplayer is very much a God Of War experience. It has the same combat, the same bosses, the brutality. There are three things that disappointed us about the multiplayer in God Of War: Ascension.

The first is the constant crashes, which force you to hard reset your PlayStation 3. We don’t expect these technical issues to mar the final game – it is a beta, after all – but it’s still taking some of the shine off the experience.

The second is that beginners are constantly playing catch-up, which may put them off the multiplayer side of Ascension before they really understand it. You unlock further bits of armour, weaponry and relics (essentially perks) by completing in-game tasks. It’s a variation of the rank-up system seen in so many multiplayer games but there’s a real imbalance at work here, as all the unlocked items make the player more powerful.

Newcomers therefore have to deal with players who are statistically more powerful than they are, as well as having the benefit of experience. Throw in the initially confusing layout of traps, shrines and Cyclops fists and it’s a surprisingly hostile environment to overcome. 

The final, and biggest problem, is that while it’s fun it’s not really different enough to stand out as something that will draw in those who weren’t previously interested in God Of War or those who drifted away from the series. Rather than Splinter Cell’s Spies vs Mercenaries, this is more like Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer – a cute riff on the gameplay but nothing spectacular or particularly unique.

It’ll be interesting to see the path God Of War: Ascension takes from here. Multiplayer has been billed as the big reason that Ascension exists and it’s not strong or unique enough to justify this sequel by itself. Will single player have its own unique draw besides exploring Kratos’ backstory and relying on us caring about the character enough to come back to the series for a fourth time.

BioShock Infinite can't help but impress. Columbia's vision of a city in the clouds is the perfect contrast to the dark depths of Rapture and it's disgusting inhabitants. But, there's more to BioShock than an impressive setting.

With its release date forced back (yet again), this time to March 2013, for that all-important last bit of ‘polish’ we've been given the chance to experience BioShock Infinite's opening levels.

Shown the game’s first four hours we were thrown into Columbia's beautiful and warped world.

It might be messed-up and troubled but it’s immediately recognisable as BioShock and yet, it’s also clear that there’s plenty more at play in the floating city of Columbia than Irrational Games has let on.

To convey just how BioShock Infinite is shaping up, we’ve broken down the game’s early hours into handy sections for you to mull over. Avoiding story spoilers we’ll give you a play-by-play of Irrational Games’ ambitious, artistic and complex BioShock Infinite…

BioShock Infinite: Booker's first steps

Avoiding the actual opening, BioShock Infinite truly begins with its protagonist's first steps on the floating city of Columbia. When Booker DeWitt steps into the serene world and into what appears to be a church. Drenched in Christian symbolism and explaining the core tenets of this new world, often described as New Eden, Booker steps into surreal scene.

It’s certainly a less violent welcome than what was experienced in Rapture and following the crowds all dressed in white, Booker has to be baptised before he’s allowed to enter into Columbia itself. Being the sort of ruff and ready type that just wants the job done, Booker obliges and is practically drowned by the strange grinning priest.

Where Rapture was a city on the brink of collapse, it’s main tumultuous events occurring long before the player set foot in that ill-fated bathysphere, Columbia is a living breathing city. Its occupants neither crazy nor deranged (except for their political values, perhaps, but that’s obviously up for debate).

The PC version boasts better visual design, but the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions both offer striking views of the city.

Booker’s first experiences in Columbia are slow enough for you to stop and smell the roses. Its beautiful and logic-defying scenery floats all around and Irrational eases you into this new world, both in terms of Infinite's narrative and the large range of new abilities you'll eventually use.

Characters talking on the side of the street relay information about the city and its problems. As in Rapture the world’s advertising and scenery do more to explain the situation and it’s a real joy to just explore.

Columbia is in the midst of a celebration and confetti, fireworks and happy revealers help paint a picture of a city perfectly content.

That’s also kind of the point, though. Left to your own devices Booker is able to explore what first appears to be a perfect world, almost heavenly, but it doesn’t take long before the cracks begin to show.

Discovering a stage and a bustling crowd, Booker is forced by the happy residents to step up and take a raffle ticket. Of course, his number is called and he's given the honour of having the first throw of ball at a couple tied up on stage.

The couple – a white man and a black woman, who have fallen in love – have to be punished by Columbia's strict race laws. It’s here that Booker is given a choice; throw the ball at the couple and remain inconspicuous within the crowd or, throw the ball at the MC, drawing attention and the wrath of the nearby guards. You’ll get noticed but you’ll at least have the moral high ground.

It’s up to you how you react to the blatant racism on display and it won’t be the last time BioShock Infinite throws some shocking imagery your way, but it’s the way the world around the player justifies its actions that is really interesting.

Just like in Rapture, the world has something very wrong with it and exploring what this means for its inhabitants and, ultimately the protagonist, is core to the series. Booker’s early hours in Columbia are filled with incidental detail and seemingly insignificant events that help paint a picture that will ultimately leave you cold.

And all of this stems from the Prophet, Comstock, and his vision for the perfect society. As beautiful as Columbia is it’s hard to forget that it’s ruled with an iron fist and unwavering belief in a higher power.

A call to arms

BioShock Infinite doesn’t rush into combat and though you’ll eventually have access to an impressive range of abilities and choices to fight with, you’re eased into things.

Booker’s altercation with the guards leads to Infinite’s first combat and you’re introduced to the melee attack and the pistol. With the Sky Hook attached to his left arm Booker is able to deliver a punishing blow and there are even moments, when an enemies health is low enough, that you can grab hold of them and use it to finish them in a disgustingly bloody fashion.

Without the insane occupants of Rapture to justify the constant need for combat, the Columbia police force form much of the early level's enemies. Booker is obviously up to no good and it at least makes sense to see what is actually a very busy world react in appropriate horror when a man wielding a gun approaches.

Combat evolves from these early encounters and you’re quickly given access to BioShock Infinite’s version of the Plasmid, the Vigor.

It seems Columbia’s technology has progressed along similar lines as Rapture and these Vigors account for much of the increased firepower available to Booker. In total you’ll have the ability to use:

• Two Vigor abilities which is eventually upped to four later in the game (and a select wheel helping you choose between them when you get more than two)
• Two guns
• Four Gear Slots

To give you a good idea just how BioShock Infinite balances its loadouts check out this one from later in the game.

The Vigors are different to the Plasmids, though and it's still how you combine them that's important. Murder Of Crows distracts enemies with a flock of pecking crows, but you'll be able to throw a fireball with Devil's Kiss and set them alight for added punch. Each Vigor comes with two different modes of fire giving them an extra tactical element, but you can't rely on them quite as much as BioShock's Plasmids.

The Gear slots, however, account for abilities found or bought within Columbia that offer a more supportive role during combat. Giving Booker a greater shock radius when he jumps from the Skyline for instance or even discharging fire when using the melee attack.

The Gear slots can be mixed and matched to your own preferences, but you’re also give a shield early on that helpfully recharges. You still need a medkit to fully heal, but you’re never totally out of the fight.

Vigor’s need Salt to work and like the Adam and Eve combo found in Rapture, you’ll be constantly topping up your supplies or looking around the levels for those all important blue bottles.

It's an evolution of BioShock's original combat and without Infinite's secret weapon it feels very familiar, but when Elizabeth enters the equation, things become very different.

Also, there are no Vita Chambers in Columbia, but with Elizabeth’s aid you’ll be partially healed when she brings you round, but so will all your enemies. When you die and Elizabeth’s not around, well, that’s going into spoiler territory.

It takes a while for Booker to actually locate her and he spends a great deal of time dealing with Columbia's bad guys on his own, but when Eizabeth is with you, death is only momentary as she rushes to your aid and brings you back to life, placing you a few feet from where you fell.

When Booker is finally given access to all of his abilities, combat becomes a frantic mix of high-octane roller-coaster escapes and explosive gunplay. Though the AI will react to you by hiding behind cover or simply rushing you, if you turn tail and escape to higher ground with the Sky Hook they will follow.

They have all the same abilities the player has open to them and though it might appear like they’re not as complex as previous BioShock enemies, they have much more opportunity to surprise you.

Booker’s no slouch when it comes to dishing out the pain, though, he was after all a Pinkerton and his dark past haunts him throughout the early hours of BioShock Infinite, but he’s not the main attraction.

When you finally catch up with Elizabeth, that’s when things really start to get interesting…

“The seed of the Prophet shall sit on the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man”

Andrew Ryan was at the heart of Rapture and its ultimate downfall, but in Comstock (or the Prophet, as he's constantly referred to), Columbia has a much more angelic and dangerous antagonist. Though Rapture had few redeemable characters, its Little Sisters were victims that needed saving, Elizabeth is much more complex.

Though she is initially caged, her role runs in tandem with that of Bookers and she forms the final piece of the BioShock Infinite puzzle.

Ken Levine describes Elizabeth as a '1912 nerd girl' who has read loads of books and has taught herself to pick locks and breakcodes.

Player’s experienced Rapture alone, but Columbia is viewed through Elizabeth. Part of what makes the floating paradise such a fascinating place to explore is because neither the player nor Elizabeth have ever seen it before. She’s been imprisoned her entire life and when Booker finally manages to make his way to Monument Island and into her golden cage, their adventure together is just beginning.

It’s interesting to see what she reacts to and what she has to say. BioShock Infinite doesn’t want you to follow her constantly and have her bark orders at you, she is a natural character within the world and she’ll react to what you're doing.

Elizabeth isn’t a hindrance, too, she can’t die and in fact she’ll often provide Booker with exactly what needs during combat. More ammo, a specific gun or even health, Elizabeth will call out and throw it at you after she’s found it lying around the environment.

Spending time with Elizabeth in these early hours, and you’ll eventually spend all your time with her, is fascinating on two fronts. Not only is she an interesting, well-written and performed character, but what she says means something within the context of the world. Booker will often respond with his own glib remarks, but her innocence and charm keep her from becoming an irritation.

Secondly, Elizabeth doesn’t ever stop the player from doing what they want. You don’t have to indulge her if she’s stopped to get some candy floss or dance with a group of people on the beach, you’re still in control and it’s this push and pull between character, narrative and player freedom that makes BioShock Infinite’s initial few hours very interesting.

Unravelling Elizabeth’s mystery could be more important than unravelling Booker’s and they could even be connected, but the greatest achievement in BioShock Infinite’s player/Elizabeth relationship is that it’s more fun to have her around than not.

At the very least she provides you with ammo and health when you’re in a pinch and that’s more than any NPC has ever done before.

“Girls just want to have fun”

But that’s not all, Elizabeth forms the final part of the combat puzzle and it’s her unique ability to open ‘tears’ into alternate dimensions that provide you with tactical options during combat.

What story importance this has is still a mystery, though.

It doesn’t take long before BioShock Infinite’s hub levels open out and you’re shown just how complex some encounters can become. Using the Sky Hook to avoid enemies or approach tactically advantageous platforms can keep things in your favour, but using Elizabeth’s abilities really gives Booker an edge.

You’ll find alternate dimension ammo crates, turrets, Sky Hooks and even guns (mounted on some poor alternate dimension- chap’s wall). There’s always something open to the player and it helps if you experiment when you’re faced with taking on one BioShock Infinite’s huge Handy Man.

Drinking a Vigor gives Booker a horrible vision as it takes over his body. Don't panic, it only lasts a few seconds.

Trouble in paradise

But, the success Irrational finds with Elizabeth’s characterisation doesn’t mean there aren’t a few obvious issues. We played debug in-development preview code but it’s difficult to escape the impression that BioShcok Infinite is a much more linear experience than its predecessor.

The hub areas of Rapture are replaced with the facade of a city (beautiful though it is) and the narrative pull constantly keeps players moving on to the next big event. There are optional side quests that appear when you discover a key, but the sense that Columbia has an accurate street map players can explore, like with Rapture, is lost. But, that does nothing to detract from Columbia's majesty.

Graphically, the PC version is leagues ahead of the PS3 and Xbox 360, too. Much as you’d expect. In the version we played (PS3, if you’re interested) character models looked less detailed and the overall resolution was substantially lower, but Columbia still looked impressive.

Considering what we played, it’s easy to see why Irrational would opt for an extra month of development to give BioShock Infinite some extra polish. The console versions seem to suffer in comparison to the PC one, but it’s important to note that the differences aren’t on a gameplay level, merely a visual one.

What polish Irrational can add with its extra time will be interesting to see when it’s released next March. But, until then we came away feeling like this was an interesting step forward for BioShock, but we are far more intrigued to discover what secrets Columbia and Elizabeth have in store.

On the loading screen for DmC, there’s a human silhouette against the white background, with another demon-shaped silhouette in front of it.

The human figures springs into action, slashing at the demon shape with a scythe, smashing it away with a sword, pulling it back into close-quarters with a chain, kicking himself high off its chest and spinning around in the air, pistol fire raining down below. It’s instantly recognisable as Devil May Cry. The flamboyance, the elaborate combo and the seamless chaining of Dante’s trademark moves. It's classic Devil May Cry.

Then the loading is done and we're in game. The silhouette fades away and another instantly recognisable character emerges – Dante circa 2012. Curled lip. Scrawny frame. Downbeat style. And yes, that black hair.

Two very different images, two very different reactions. But two very different games? Not necessarily, as it turns out.

Designing Dante

“What was very clear was they didn’t want to make Devil May Cry 5. They didn’t want to make something that looked like the previous four. They wanted a new entry point into the series with a different perspective, which is why they came to us.”

Tameem Antoinades, co-founder of DmC producers Ninja Theory, has started explaining how Ninja Theory designed Dante. Capcom wanted the studio to ‘imagine what Dante would look like if he was in a Hollywood movie’. Tameem talks of rock gigs visited in Osaka to see the difference between the flamboyance of Japanese fashion and about the differences between Eastern and Western characters.

“We weren’t really trying to design his costume,” he continues. “The starting point was never… well actually, at one point, when we first got offered the game, we started by just doing concept images of Dante. Trying to figure out how we’d do a Japanese Dante and it was very clear, early on, that Capcom didn’t want that. They said if we wanted to do a Japanese Devil May Cry, we would do a Japanese Devil May Cry but that’s not what we’re asking you to do. The concepts that we ended up doing looked pretty much like fan-art. There wasn’t anything authentic about it. But that’s what happens when you end up designing a costume rather than a character.”

Why Not Just Call It A Different Name?

Thus far, DmC’s life has been defined by the internet’s reaction to the Dante Ninja Theory ended up creating – a vitriolic, fierce backlash against the redesign of a character who had gone from white-haired flamboyance to dark-haired realism. Tameem doesn’t address the hair issue – the closest he comes is talking about the decision to drop the cigarette smoking from Dante’s persona, an initial attempt to capture the aura of James Dean – but the art team still finds it a sore subject.

“Some people say ‘oh it kind of looks cool but why not just call it a different name’ but it is a Devil May Cry experience, you know?” explained Stuart Adcock, Technical Art Director. “That’s always what we’re going for. So when some of the fans go ‘it looks alright but why call it Devil May Cry because it’s clearly not’, well if you play it, it’s a Devil May Cry experience.

We definitely weren’t counting on a reaction like that and going “here it comes!” but we were, to some extent, taken back and went ‘woah, shit, there’s a lot of people not liking this’. But for us, it never derailed us. We had a journey to tell with the character and if people could see the amount that had gone into it throughout the project… working with the actors, working with the story, getting every bit of his personality and his expressions across, they would think and understand that talking about the hair is such a black and white – literally – decision.”

“Especially when you consider that we do want to give the players these high-end experiences. One of them, of course, is when you start a character not how people know him to be, you have the opportunity to show an exaggerated version of that character in limbo [DmC’s alternate world]. If you start off like that in the beginning, where would you have gone with it? Would it have gone too far-fetched? It wouldn’t have fitted in the human world, We just needed a chance to tell that story.”

And that is that. Line drawn under the hair saga. After all, there’s an actual game to be played here too.

DmC: A Story Of Debt And Soft Drinks

Kyle Ryder wants to take over the world. So do most villains in most videogames, so there’s nothing special about DmC’s antagonist in that regard. But what is different about Kyle Ryder is he’s not trying to fulfil his lust for power through sheer force of numbers but rather, he wants to control the world through debt and a mind-numbing soft drink called Virility.

It’s an example of how Ninja Theory has updated the settings and characters to feel topical and relevant – there are shades of Anonymous in rebel group The Order, newsreader Bob Barbas is Bill O’Reilly with a comb-over and themes of consumer consumption, Big Brother and other modern day ills run deep throughout DmC.

“With the original Devil May Cry, it’s often seen as a very fantastic world with the hero and settings,” explains Hideaki Itsuno, Supervising Director on DmC. “Even though we tried to depict a more realistic world with the settings that were there, it was more of a fantasy which personally I think is fine and I enjoy.

But what we wanted to do this time is have this idea of making DmC more like a Hollywood movie and bring everything down to a more realistic, street-level, where you might be able to walk in the environments in the game. Or meet someone like Dante on the street. And Ninja Theory brought those elements – the fashion, the music, the design – to the game. That’s what we were looking for.”

There are two worlds at work in DmC. The normal world is where Dante is part of The Order, a cult led by his brother Virgil and medium Kat to take down Kyle Ryder. It’s where we learn about Dante’s past and his backstory, as DmC serves as an origin story.

“It was the best way to leverage the existing canon but not be hamstrung by it,” explains Alex Jones, producer at Capcom USA. “It would be very difficult for a Western company to tell the fifth instalment of a Japanese story. You don’t want to throw away all the equity that people have built up, so that was the way to go.”

But the majority of gameplay takes place in Limbo, the alternate world where demons dwell and even the environment is hostile towards Dante. Limbo is punctuated by messages being scorched onto the walls as he – DEBT! DIE! FUCK YOU DANTE! – while demon gates are now longer a glassy veil being thrown over doors until all the nearby enemies are defeated but the environment itself twisting to block his path.

It’s a gloriously abstract world that provides the perfect counterpoint to the sober reality of the ‘normal’ world that occupies most of DmC’s story and as a playground for Dante’s fighting, it’s perfect.

The Biggest Surprise: Combat

Yet the big surprise is how the combat feels like typical Devil May Cry. This was perhaps the biggest area of concern, given how Ninja Theory’s previous projects tended to excel in story and design but falter when it comes to combat – Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Journey To The West were exercises in button-bashing endurance more than they were tactics or finesse.

DmC has been supervised by Itsuno – director of Devil May Cry 2, 3 and 4 – and it shows through in the combat. He tells us precisely what Capcom’s role was: “When it came to the combat, just playing Ninja Theory’s previous games and even the prototype that they sent us of the early DmC, we took a look at that and we were like wow, their approach to action is definitely very different to what we’re used to! So when it came to getting the combat to the DmC feel, there was a lot of advice given. Even small things, very detailed things.

“Not just controller responsiveness, the input time and how the character moved but things like the linking motions, when the character stops what do they do and when they change directions and the combo branching of the skill trees. Even in those very detailed areas – even down to frames – we gave a lot of advice. That helped them get the combat to what we feel is the DmC standard.”

The face buttons are slash, launch, fire pistols and jump. Veterans will immediately find themselves in familiar territory and begin linking Dante’s array of slashes, flips and leaps together. His trademark moves have made it into DmC – Stinger, Rainstorm, Drive – but there are two new flourishes that will help DmC’s combat stand out with its own identity.

Heaven Or Hell: Let's Rock

The first is the different forms, Angel and Demon. Dante is in human form by default, where he has access to his Rebellion sword, but he can switch to the Osiris scythe-wielding Angel form by holding L2 and the huge, crunching Arbiter sword in Demon form by holding R2. Switching between three forms replaces the styles of previous Devil May Cry games.

“If you just have two styles, for example, in any given situation you think ‘well it’s not this, it’s that’,” Itsuno tells us. “That’s pretty easy to do. But if you have three, then it takes a little more thought and it’s a little more difficult to master. We recognised the difficulty there and though that was a good place to stop. Throwing styles on top of that would make things kind of crazy.”

The second new flourish is the pushing and pulling of enemies, using the ‘whip’ like moves found in Angel and Demon form. This is important on a practical and stylish level – it’s practical to move around enemies and remove shields, stylish because it helps extend combos.

They’re also how DmC manages to work in platform sections without feeling too simplistic, as you have to push and pull platforms in place to navigate gaping voids linking the limbo world together. Describing as a puzzle would be overly generous but it does ensure you have a satisfying element of control and that it doesn’t feel too basic.

It takes a while to unearth the intricacies. You can parry attacks by slashing just as you’re about to get hit, though it lacks the finesse of Royal Guard. What works better is learning the Angel and Demon dodges, done by holding the relevant button and tapping dodge just as an attack is coming in.

The window to nail the move feels a little big – again, it lacks finesse – but the reward is more obvious than the parry. A successful Angel dodge grants you temporarily invulnerability while nailing a Demon dodge momentarily powers up your attacks.

Too Easy?

One concern we have is that on default difficulty. It’s a little easy. We had one standard combo that was not only effective but also saw us climb up the style rankings without any real trouble (the style rankings are Dirty, Cruel, Brutal, Anarchic, Savage, SSadistic and SSSensational).

Sometimes you have to make adjustments for the type of enemy you’re facing – Frost Knights are only damaged by Angel attacks, Hell Knights are only damaged by Demon attacks. Sometimes you have to be nimble on your feet and evade depending on the situation. But even with those 'sometimes' situations, you can drift into autopilot on default difficulty. The ease of attaining high style rankings doesn’t challenge you to explore your moveset in the same way Devil May Cry 3 did.

There are different difficulty levels, that run from Devil Hunter (default) to Nephilim, Son Of Sparda, Dante Must Die, Heaven Or Hell and the brand new Hell And Hell. These should, at the very least, inject DmC with the difficulty boost it needs. Those looking to 100% DmC will also have to hunt out Lost Souls, Secret Doors (which contain secret missions) and the keys to open them. That's not an easy task.

It’s also worth noting DmC has Achievements/Trophies ranging from grinding endurance tests (slay 5,000 demons, collect 50,000 red orbs) to those that demand you explore every level (find all the keys, lost souls and hidden doors) to out-and-out skill challenges (complete all missions with SSS rank on Nephilim difficulty).

But one thing difficulty won’t be able to change is the layout of the levels themselves, which are fairly straightforward in design. There’s nothing like the twisting labyrinth of Devil May Cry 3’s castle, as backtracking is sacrificed for forwards momentum.

Whether that turns out to be a good thing or not depends on how Devil May Cry fans receive the change but the straightforward and often funnelneck design definitely adds to the feeling that it’s a little too easy to blow through the game. It's a concern for default difficulty but regardless, it's a concern.

There's no question DmC is shaping up to be a good game. It has the striking art style that Ninja Theory has built a reputation for, where it takes the familiar and finds new angles to twist it up into something new. It has the action pedigree of Capcom Japan backing it up, Itsuno bringing his experience and know-how so everything feels like a Devil May Cry game should.

The only question now is whether it will go on to become an excellent game and whether Devil May Cry fans and accept the new vision for Dante and his world.

We've also got a big Fuse interview with Brian Allgeier.

For too long, the talk about Fuse hasn't been focused on what it is. Rather, the talk has been about what it isn't.

Formerly known as Overstrike, it wasn't a PlayStation3 exclusive, as had been the case with Insomniac's previous titles in the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance series. Being published under EA's banner meant a multiformat presence but as is the way with angry forum dwellers with grammatically incorrect forum names, some were furious at Insomniac for this apparent betrayal.

Nor was Overstrike present at E3. While we saw Halo 4, God Of War: Ascension, Wii-U, Beyond: Two Souls and others strut their stuff, Overstrike was notable by its absence. Insomniac was quiet. Speculation began to grow as to what had happened to Overstrike.

Now Overstrike is back and reborn as Fuse, ditching its colourful, fantasy look for something more grounded, more realistic, more sober. Yet this too has seen talk focus on how its new look isn't as appealing or as 'Insomniac' as its previous identity was.

But now we've played Fuse and it all makes sense. This is why.

Back For Good

"We defined our characters, we defined a lot of our locations but we really hadn’t quite defined how all of our weapons work or how all of our class-based weaponry functions in terms of progression and the special fusion mode."

So begins the explanation on where Overstrike was during E3, when the title went dark. We're one of the last people to interview Brian Allgeier, Creative Director on Fuse, following Insomniac's presentation of this title but he tells this story as though we're the first to ask what happened to the title.

"So as we developed that, that’s something that a lot of time comes later in the development cycle as you get the chance to try out lots of weapon ideas," Brian explained. "We wanted one thing to really unify everything. Originally we had more of a story device called fuse, which kind of drove the story and acted more as a MacGuffin and I thought, this is really something that could tie into all of the weaponry and the progression and everything.

"So it made a lot of sense just to call the game Fuse and base everything around that. Once we realised that, we knew it was time to go dark for a bit and develop what this Fuse technology is. Once we had fully realised it, that’s when we knew we could come back out with the new name and the new gameplay features."

And this is where Fuse is at today. It's still a four-player co-op shooter and each character has their own specific role. Dalton Brooks is the tank with an energy shield to protect the crowd (that sends out force blasts if enemies keep shooting at it), Jacob Kimble is the damage dealer with a crossbow that can be fired through the shield, Nya Devaro is the sneaky one with a Warp Rifle and a cloaking device while Izzy Sinclair can heal the group and also packs a Shatter Gun to freeze guards.

Working Together

The unique abilities ensure that every player in the group will find a different way to contribute, which naturally encourages co-op among the group.

But point bonuses for working together is what will really bring players together to focus on teamplay. Killing someone through Dalton's shield doesn't just give that player points but also whoever is playing as Dalton. This bonus XP goes towards your skill tree, with further weapon and skill upgrades than can be unlocked.

There's also the Fusion meter, which fills during battle. There's a strategic element to the Fusion meter. Triggering it changes the attributes of your weapons but can also be used to revive any fallen players.

There are also environmental challenges that require co-op - one security grid requires team members to hop up onto the ledge and shimmy across, before they hit the buttons in sync to switch off the laser beams blocking their path.

The four end up face to face against an Enforcer, a huge mech enemy which flies around the tight arena, smashing through concrete cover and firing missiles at anything that moves. It's a brilliant encounter because the small areas forces the players to work together and uses their unique abilities in smart, inventive ways - distracting, healing, sneaking and attacking. It's a battle that shows off the feedback of the weapons - it's really satisfying seeing the Enforcer rock following the impact of the guns - and promises great things ahead.

So Why The New Look?

This is all a long-winded way of saying that co-op blood flows through Fuse's veins. Even when playing on your own and jumping between different characters, the AI will work to support you rather than fight to steal the glory. The entire game has been tailored to bring out co-operative spirit rather than competitive, something we've only really seen on a large scale with Gears Of War and Borderlands.

The main question that remains is why go for a new look? Why not do all this but with the old, fantastical look of the cartoony Overstrike?

"We’ve gone through lots of phases of what Fuse looks like before we ended up with the one we were happiest with," explained Brian. "Essentially it connects unifying elements. That’s the key we always look for. If we have a particular colour or style for the weaponry, it makes everything fit together. At one point we had different colours for every weapon before we settled on Fuse and it looked like a party. It looked like fireworks going off. It just didn’t quite gel."

Now, it does gel. The look fits Fuse and enhances the impact of the weaponry, which feels brutal without feeling gratuitous, has impact without becoming tiresome.

And when it's released, Fuse looks strong enough that it'll be talked about for what it is rather than what it isn't.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is brilliant.

It's had an identity crisis, it's gone through development hell and it's now being propped up by two separate studios but none of this matters now. Because it's brilliant.

Seeing the bold design of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and how fun it is to slice your way through the guards in front of you, it's hard to believe this project was ever on crutches, threatening to collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

This isn't just a game that's been saved. This is a game that's been retailored to destroy every other game around it. It is that good.

But before we clamber into the hyperbole cannon, strap on our hyperbole helmets and fire ourselves into Hyperboleland, we need to answer the most pressing question about this game.

Is Revengeance A Metal Gear game?

"LOL NowGamer you're so dumb, of course it's a Metal Gear game look at the title!"

You might be thinking that, give or take a few hundred exclamation marks, because it seems like a really obvious question. But hush. Hear us out.

The big concern with Revengeance, since the relaunch trailer stuffed with OTT action and revelation that Platinum was involved, is that it doesn't play like a Metal Gear game.

It's true. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance doesn't play like a typical Metal Gear game.

Yet all the familiar touches are there. Revengeance has cutscenes full of eccentric characters like Jetstream Sam and Doktor the, erm, doctor (although the cutscenes are a brisk three or four minutes rather than hours). The story is also suitably loopy, demented sci-fi welded to clunky philosophy. It's very, very Metal Gear.

Revengeance is also packed with sound effects that have clearly come from 'MetalGearLibrary' folder on Hideo Kojima's desktop. The warning beep when your health is low, the ambient music during the moments of quiet, the classic alert noise - not a huge thing but again, all very Metal Gear.

If you've been following the development of this back when it was first announced, you may even smirk when the tutorial asks you to slice watermelons - a nod to the original Metal Gear Solid: Rising tech demo.

Hell, there's even a token effort at stealth. Pressing up flips on a radar vision of sorts, and you can pick off patrolling guards with stealth kills.

But while the likes of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored discourage an all-guns blazing approach in favour of stealth without truly taking away either option, Revengeance encourages you to ditch skulking around the shadows and get stuck in.

How? By having an incredible combat system that is almost criminal to ignore.

Platinum Games Rising

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is Platinum Games through and through. Having brought this project back to life, Revengeance now throbs with the Japanese studio's blood, every bit of their action experience and know-how flowing through each attack, slice, combo, everything.

If you've played Bayonetta or Vanquish, you'll recognise the hallmarks of those games. Fast action, fluid animation, satisfying feedback punctuating the combat and a simple control system that hides a surprising amount of depth.

In this case, the depth comes from the 'cut anything' mechanic. Officially called Blade Mode, it could also be known as the 'make Revengeance fun' mode. Holding L1 slows down time and means any swipe with the right analogue stick translates onscreen as a sword swipe.

And you can… cut anything. Hence the name. Cars, boxes, lamp-posts, guards, everything drifts apart in slow motion at the point where you've hacked it. It's a brilliant system, mostly because slicing things up is really, really fun. Controlling the camera while slashing around with your katana does feel a little rubbing-your-stomach-while-patting-your-head but it's the kind of chaotic control that's enjoyable.

Soon you learn to combine Blade Mode with other moves. Jumping and pressing triangle sees Raiden do a fast, homing kickflip off his opponent. In the air, you can go into Blade Mode and slice your opponents to ribbons as you fall back down.

The perfect example of this is your first boss fight, against the snappily-named IF Prototype LQ-84i. A metallic wolf with a chainsaw for a tail, your final blow flips him into the air. Even though he's defeated, you get the chance to carve the hapless adversary apart, for no reason other than your own enjoyment.

After struggling against the boss for however long it takes - even at this early stage, it puts up quite the fight - getting a free shot to slice it apart is immensely satisfying. It shows Platinum's understanding of what makes action games so enjoyable.

Metal Gear?

So this isn't a Metal Gear game in the usual sense. For us, Metal Gear is defined by its gameplay, which is about stealth, ambitious gameplay ideas and gadgets that would get Q hot under the collar.

There's no mistaking Revengeance for anything other than a Platinum Games title and, dare we say it, this could be even better than Bayonetta if the 'cut anything' mechanic holds up throughout the entire game. It is stupidly, ridiculously, ludicrously fun.

It's also as far away from shooting patrol guards in the thigh with a tranquilizer dart as it's possible to get, short of a dubstep soundtrack and a WUBWUB accompanying each slash. But then again, Metal Gear is a series that encompasses cards (Acid), soldier collecting (Portable Ops) and third-person shooting (Touch). Why shouldn't a Platinum Games slash-'em-up fit alongside them?

Metal Gear fans will enjoy the characters, the bosses, the plot and the little touches. Platinum Game fans will enjoy the speed, the combat and the 'cut anything' mechanic.

Above all though, everyone will enjoy what is already shaping up to be one of next year's strongest titles.

We're actually frightened. It's hard to believe given our real life surroundings in a brightly lit, crowded room with a teammate within elbowing distance, but when we play Aliens: Colonial Marines we’re mentally in a more cinematic place.

For a few crucial seconds, we're actually on LV246 and separated from our squad mates, being stalked by a hulking Xenomorph Soldier. That's bad enough, but this isn't just any Alien.

Oh no, this is an Alien being controlled by another player, and he or she just happens to be a cunning git. We catch them scuttling on the shadowed ceiling in our peripheral vision and spin, pouring echoing Pulse rifle fire into the lithe extraterrestrial beast.

It doesn't finish him, and he lunges. We lash out with our melee attack, gaining just enough space to draw our Itchaca M37 12-gauge shotgun and splatter him against the wall.

We chuckle with relief, but it's short lived as - with a piercing screech - we suddenly find ourselves pinned to the deck by another more gangly looking Alien.

We have just enough time to quietly say, 'Oh bugger!' before he messily eviscerates us in gruesome third person and scrambles off in search of another victim. Aliens-1, Colonial Marines-0.

You'll need to work together if you hope to survive.

It's a quintessentially 'Aliens' moment, and just one of many playing Aliens: Colonial Marines multiplayer.

We'll admit it; the game’s constant delays means we had mixed expectations, but the human half of Aliens: Colonial Marines asynchronous 6 Vs 6 multiplayer is looking seriously gripping.

Gearbox Studio has crafted a formula combining periods of heart stopping fear with bursts of nail biting adrenaline - and from what we've played, it's working.

Playing as a Marine squad against a team of developer-controlled Aliens on two multiplayer maps, Lost Hope and Origins, it's quickly clear how elaborate an homage to Aliens this is.

Our armored Marines look spot on, and their customizable set of weapons, the M41A Pulse Rifle, two types of shotgun, the long range burst fire Assault Rifle and trusty pistol all look, sound and more importantly feel as they should.

Naturally you're equipped with the iconic Motion Sensor, but using it causes you to lower your weapon, leaving you momentarily defenceless and terrified as you hear the beeps of stalking Aliens.

Early in the game we learn the spawn point for the SMART Gun, a powerful hip mounted machine gun with sensors that track Aliens, and can rip them to glistening shreds.

Aliens will need to use their unique abilities if they hope to avoid the range of the Marines.

We briefly feel invincible until our plodding pace, and slower turning speed, see us bloodily killed by flanking attackers.

There are just so many ways for Marines to die and despite fanboy fears over the game’s different Aliens types, they work, cleverly forming an engaging enemy eco-system reminiscent Left 4 Dead's with its special zombies.

Those revealed so far include the classic, terrifying Soldier Alien, the Lurker, a gangly killing machine that pounces on Marines from incredible distances and the Spitter, an acid-spewing nightmare that sprays you with flesh melting mucus from the shadows.

The most terrifying new addition however is the massive, armoured Crusher Alien, which like the Smart Gun is a spawn pick for the Alien team.

It charges you, scattering clustered groups of Marines while its fellow nasties rip confused survivors apart. If an Alien leaps upon you, you're pinned and toast unless a teammate shoots it off you.

All the Aliens, bar the Crusher, can crawl across walls and ceilings as easily as the ground, to take advantage of the environment.

Last Hope is a ruined colony habitat and a deadly rats warren of shadow-filled corridors.

It's certainly tense, helped largely by the dark visuals.

Origins in contrast is a vast outside loading bay filled with huge shipping crates and a mixture of big open spaces and tight narrow areas that make for much more open, 'Last Stand' type battles, and both totally support Colonial Marine's engaging terror/adrenaline based gameplay.

The Aliens feel horrifically powerful but playing the Marines doesn't feel totally unfair. If you work as a team - players will need to verbally communicate over PSN or die - lay down fields of fire and watch each others backs you've a chance of holding the Xeno's at bay and racking up the kills.

We quickly find ourselves slipping into Military jargon, ordering each other to 'watch our sixes' and screaming things like 'they're coming out of the walls.' without a hint of irony as we battle to survive. Yes, we're nobs.

With our matches played to a time limit, the Aliens would often throw caution to the wind as the clock ran down, just throwing themselves at us, giving matches a great sense of pacing and making them feel very much like one of the climactic scenes in Aliens itself.

It's hard not to be drawn in, especially if you're a fan. While Aliens: Colonial Marines’ asynchronous play occasionally feels a little clunky, we don't know how playing Aliens will be yet and worry that it's edge of fear might eventually be blunted by the fact that no matter how gruesome your last death you'll really just respawn in a second, what we've seen so far is impressive.

We're ready to hope this could be the Aliens game that we've hankered for ever since we first watched Cameron’s classic, and that's as exciting as it is scary.

When Snake asked those watching in a none-too-subtle fashion, “Kept you waiting, huh?” there was pause.

Looking at this grizzled, grey-haired veteran, it was hard to tell exactly who we were meant to be waiting for. Was this Naked Snake – latterly Big Boss – of  the Metal Gear Solid 3 timeframe, or was it his clone/son, Solid Snake, last seen at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4?

In fact, why did it even matter? But that’s exactly the kind of intrigue a new Metal Gear Solid game can throw up, and while it was cleared up pretty quickly – it’s Big Boss and the grey hair is actually a result of a graphical lighting technique – it instantly got all the gossip started again.

For every cynical dismissal of the MGS series and its obsession with exposition-heavy cut-scenes over in-game action, there’s a thousand others asking questions, theorising, getting to know the world that Kojima Productions has created and retconned many times more. People love Metal Gear Solid, so people get more Metal Gear Solid – this time in the shape of Ground Zeroes.

The phrase ‘open world’ has been bandied around when it comes to Ground Zeroes and has – again – caused a fair bit of debate. What it means is, far from the GTA and Elder Scrolls of the world, that levels will be much bigger and more open than those encountered in previous Metal Gear Solid titles.

Who is this little boy and why is he so important. Is that you, Chico?

Players travel from area to area by helicopter – the only point at which there will be any pause for loading to take place – and are free to explore the region they are dropped off in as they see fit. And thanks to the studio’s proprietary Fox Engine, these are some quite spectacular-looking environments to sneak about in.

The game so far has been shown off on a PC, though it hasn’t yet been confirmed for release on the platform, with specs equivalent to those of a PS3. This is, of course, a roundabout way of claiming the game will look this good on consoles, though we’re unlikely to be the only ones remaining sceptical about that one.

It doesn’t look impossible, especially when you study the detail on show, but it does look a bit too good – a bit too smooth – to truly be a current-gen title, at least in its current form. We’re willing to be proven wrong, though. Other elements of the game bring back that wonderful world of speculation, with all manner of aspects being chatted up.

Who is the mysterious scarred man demanding information from Chico? Will we see any multiplayer in the game, especially with KojiPro setting up shop in Los Angeles? Just how much of the claimed ‘replayability’ will the inclusion of a day/night cycle add?

And just how much Starsailor will be in this particular game? It’s the sort of thing fans love to discuss, and it’s why Kojima and his team love to control the flow of information for – though we’re sure they’re eager to show off what the Fox Engine can do.

One thing that has been revealed from day one, however, is that this is not Metal Gear Solid 5. Hideo Kojima was quick to point out that Ground Zeroes will act as a ‘prologue’ to MGS5, which both throws up fears that it might be a bit of a side-project game and seemingly confirms the existence of the fifth entry to the main series.

Which, to be fair, is a veritable goldmine of information compared to the usual trickle that spills out of Kojima and his studio. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is making all the right noises – and definitely showing an appropriate quantity of shiny things – to get a lot of people very excited.

There’s always hype with a new Metal Gear title and there’s similar anticipation when a new engine is being shown off in such a way. Combine the two and you get the hype to end all hype.

Ground Zeroes does look a little too good for a current gen game. We do hope we're wrong, though.

(No) planes, (no) trains and automobiles (and helicopters)

Snake isn’t alone in the field this time out, nor is he solely on foot. Taking cues from Peace Walker, Big Boss can call in support from a helicopter, to ferry in supplies or offer the sort of heavy weaponry one might mount on a chopper.

Best of all is how players can set their own music for the ’copter to be blaring – and the louder the music, the higher the likelihood of discovery. So opt for Tubular Bells, if you want to stay hidden. Snake is also capable of scooting around the environment in a number of vehicles, including a jeep.

The necessity for vehicles serves to highlight just how sizeable the levels are likely to be.

What do you think of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes? Let us know below.

By now we’ve come to expect a certain amount of ‘dudebro’ mentality from histrionic-laden third-person shooters.

Sure, these experiences will inevitably contain a certain amount of discord between the reality of wanton death, and humour, but in the case of Army Of Two its adolescent, knuckleheaded absurdity hit the wrong side of unpalatable.

It wasn’t completely deplorable in that regard; just a sort of numbing crassness that elicits a doleful sigh and a heavy eye roll. EA isn’t prepared to give up on the franchise just yet, though, hoping that the third time will be the charm, as it has employed Visceral Games to handle the new instalment and install a little gravity to the proceedings.

“It’s not that the humour isn’t going to be there; it’s just going to be a little more mature,” notes executive producer Julian Beak. “There are parts of the previous games we don’t want to lose in terms of the narrative. It was fun.

You could sit down and not have to take it super seriously. It’s very similar in the way that it’s an action blockbuster – you’re just having fun with it. But some of the humour is going to grow up.

Certainly I’ve been asked a lot of questions about whether it’s going to be gritty, tragic and depressing and I can say no. Don’t worry about it. The goal is to have everything be blockbuster fun.”

Beck’s sentiments are certainly reflected in one of the game’s more erratic missions. New duo Alpha and Bravo make their way through a dilapidated warehouse before encountering a group of Mexican cartel.

Yeah! Take that, you stupid mountain. These guys only go after the biggest targets.

While a firefight inevitably ensues, it’s the moment-to-moment choices the player makes that maintain a strong resonance with the player. As the two get separated, one must cover the other from afar, before the two calculate a way to reunite and exit to the next portion of the stage.

For Visceral, the key to evolving the series was improving immersion and engaging players beyond the immediate carnage. “The whole Visceral thing is about it being a personal story,” Beck explains in a quick breather from the action.

“You’re emotionally engaged not only in what’s going on in the story but what’s going on in the moment. If a guy is coming at me with a knife, what does that mean to me? How is my partner reacting to that? And how am I going to react to that as my character?”

It was also fundamentally integral to Visceral that the story featured more complex heroes at its core. Alpha and Bravo will be fighting for survival in the midst of a drug war, but there is a personal factor that influences their decisions through the game.

“The story is not some abstract geopolitical thriller,” laughs Beck. “It’s a very specific drama and blockbuster based around what’s happening to you. You’re holding on to your survival in the heart of the Mexican drug wars. You haven’t gone down there to fix the problem; you’ve gone down there to do a mission and it’s falling apart and you’ll be lucky to survive.”

As with prvious games, playing with a friend is the way to go.

Thankfully, you don’t have to rely too much on luck to succeed through the main campaign. Joining the increasingly prevalent EA trend, Visceral is utilising the Frostbite 2 engine for The Devil’s Cartel. But instead of embellishing the scenery with photorealistic textures, the studio has taken a more absurd approach to the tech.

Overkill mode enables players to slow time a fraction and annihilate enemies with explosive ammunition. Equipped with unlimited ammo and no reloading, each bullet furiously detaches limbs from their owners and reduces the environment to rubble.

You could accuse this mechanic of being another example of the franchise pushing a tonal juxtaposition to an uncomfortable extreme, but there’s no denying the instant gratification and raw vigour of the mode. “For Visceral, the goal is to make all of the action intense and right close to you,” enthuses Beck.

“It’s being very aggressive about making sure that what you’re experiencing is broadly appealing.” And we’d certainly agree that the studio has done exactly that.

Pirates and merchants. That’s a gaming combination as exciting and alluring as papers and carrots.

Pirates aren’t as good as ninjas, and neither of them are as good as robot dinosaurs, while the only time merchants have been good is in Resident Evil 4 with the pervy guy who looks like he’s going to flash but actually has RPGs, shotguns and grenades tucked inside his trenchcoat.

Port Royale 3 should be on to a loser, then, given that it is (1) a game about pirates and (2) a game about merchants.

But lo! What is this stirring in our gaming crotch caused by its mysterious ways? Why, it’s Port Royale 3, scratching our geek itch in all the right places! And that’s because we see words like ‘trading’ and ‘building’ and ‘open-ended’ – which is technically two words together, but shhh.

All of those things remind us of Civilization Revolution on PS3 or Sid Meier’s Pirates! on PSP, and this is a very good thing indeed. While it’s not much to look at, Port Royale 3 is aimed squarely at the strategic gamer.

Buying and selling, for example, has a direct effect on supply and demand and therefore prices. You have to pick and choose the right spots to offload your supplies so you don’t unbalance the world’s economy and make things trickier for yourself.

Same for buying. Buy from the same port over and over again and they’ll jack the prices. If it sounds dull, this is not and never will be the game for you. It’s for strategic gamers.

Like we said. Although you can go in all cannons blazing if that’s the life you prefer.  And it’s that choice that Port Royale 3 is relying on, as it allows you to play out the part of treasure hunter, trader or buccaneer.

It won’t win any awards for looks or sex appeal, but if it’s strategy you’re after, Port Royale 3 scratches that itch better than most.

Sail away, sail away, sail away

There is much nuance influencing the smaller elements of Port Royale 3. To form a convoy, you need to get all the ships over to the quartermaster in the nearest harbour, where the largest ship then represents the full convoy.

This gives you a higher attack strength and more storage but even then, you have to decide if the convoy will be used for trading or attacking. ch nuance influencing the smaller elements of Port Royale 3.

To form a convoy, you need to get all the ships over to the quartermaster in the nearest harbour, where the largest ship then represents the full convoy.

This gives you a higher attack strength and more storage but even then, you have to decide if the convoy will be used for trading or attacking.

It’s always been something of a gaming cliché – parents demanding that their children lay down their joypads and get outside for some fresh air.

Now those children have grown up, there seems to have been something of a role reversal – in the case of Sony Japan game director Gavin Moore, at least.

“Puppeteer was an idea conceived to reawaken my son’s imagination,” says the British expatriate. “Games today are so high quality and the technology is awesome, but the kids have got used to it. There was a point when my son played one of these games for 30 seconds and then decided he was going outside to play."

"As a dad that’s great, but as a game creator I thought, ‘Well that’s kind of shocking! He shouldn’t be going outside to play, he should be inside playing games!’ When I was kid we played games and wouldn’t want to leave our bedrooms.”

The result of this nostalgic thinking is Puppeteer, one of Sony’s many imaginative Gamescom reveals, which combines old-school platforming with a world as unpredictable and joy-packed as any of Mario’s. The game plays out within the borders of a theatre stage, the images within its frame constantly shifting as you progress through the world.

It's about time we had some inventive platforming along the lines of Braid.

Stages and sets slam into place, old environments pushed into the background as new ones replace them. It’s a deliriously inventive backdrop, transforming before your eyes every ten to fifteen minutes.

“I wanted to make something that would move, and something that would engross the player,” says Moore. “As a game creator who wanted to do this for his son, I could keep him in his seat not knowing what’s coming next.”

The story within this world is no less erratic. You play as the young Kutaro, a boy who’s had the unfortunate one-two punch of being turned into a puppet and then having his head bitten off by the tyrannical Moon Bear King.

Kutaro can find and ‘wear’ new heads located around the world, which imbue him with new powers. Wearing a hamburger upon his shoulders, for instance, allows Kutaro to turn background objects into trampoline-like sandwiches, while a spider head enables him to access hidden areas of the game world.

Puppeteer’s other central mechanic comes in the form of a pair of scissors named Calibrus. Controlled using the right analogue stick, these enable Kutaro to snip enemies in two and slice through flaps of material to reach higher areas, or, at one point, cut upwards through a colony of cloth bats to propel himself into the air.

We need more platforming games with characters with hamburger's for heads.

It’s all looking very imaginative – a clash of Eastern and Western design that harks back to a time when imagination presided over graphical fidelity or technological power. “It’s going to give people a lot of different experiences,” says Moore.

“It’s all about the gameplay experience, and ensuring it’s novel. Sony is willing to give us creative freedom to explore that and come up with something new.”

Although the core ‘zan-datsu’ gameplay of Metal Gear Rising has remained consistent across the change in developers, it’s still difficult to repress the feeling that the game we would have got from Kojima Productions would have nothing on the flashy sambuca shot of a game that’s coming from Platinum.

We’re not the only ones who think so. “We had several elements of the game, but we didn’t have a core route – the very specific game that would be the core of the experience,” says creative producer Yuji Korekado of Rising while under the rudderless direction of Kojima Productions.

“When only the staff of Kojima Productions was working on Rising, we had this feeling of, ‘Well, if it’s a Metal Gear game it has to be like this.’ However, when we started working with Platinum, they had revolutionary ideas that we would never have been able to think of.”

It’s thanks to this input that Raiden’s latest adventure is a less a straightforward sword-wielding beat-’em-up, and more the kind of cathartic, free-flowing adrenaline shot that we’ve experienced previously in titles like Bayonetta and Vanquish.

It’s fast, hyper-violent, and more than a little bit silly, taking Metal Gear in a welcome new direction. “I believe that collaboration is truly bringing new and good things,” says Korekado, and it’s difficult to disagree.

Any of this look a little bit like Bayonetta?

Bringing a sword to a CQC fight

“It was Kojima who said, ‘One of the core features of this game is the katana. It’s a sword game, so it has to be a Japanese developer,’” explains Korekado, “‘A Japanese developer will know how to handle a katana.’”

Platinum has certainly brought something to the table in this regard. Blade mode allows the player to slow time to a standstill, using elastic flicks of the analogue stick to unleash devastating directional slashes across both humans and scenery.

They’re severed with a satisfying chunk of sound design akin to a hot blade cutting through ice. “Metal Gear Rising is a game that, just by touching it, feels good,” Korekado says.

Raiden's a real cyborg ninja

In his first starring role since his escapades aboard Big Shell, Metal Gear Rising sees Raiden return front and centre, nine years on from the events of Metal Gear Solid 4.

The cyborg ninja is defeated near the start of the game by an unknown and powerful PMC, leaving him critically wounded and then once again rebuilt with an even more powerful cyborg exterior.

According to Korekado, the connection to past games in the series is evident: “Metal Gear Rising takes off in a world where [the Patriots were stopped] and we’re looking at the results of what happened – it is completely connected to events in previous titles. There are elements that only fans of Metal Gear will [notice and] enjoy.”

Raiden has all the best Gear

Raiden’s abilities are not limited to slicing apart watermelons with his electrified katana; there are a range of weapons and moves discovered throughout. Raiden has a kick that causes a blade to extend from his leg, for example, and a range of secondary weapons and unlockable combos to keep things interesting.

He’ll also be able to use weaponry such as rocket launchers, the game slipping easily from third-person brawler into over-the-shoulder shooter when such a weapon is wielded.

It’s hardly on par with the kinetic shooter combat of Vanquish, with such weapons acting more as power-ups rather than frequent additions to your arsenal, but they add a welcome layer of gameplay to the usual flurries of light and strong sword swipes.

Platinum Games' Vanquish was going to have a robot dog, but he's made it into Revengeance.

Bayonetta, say hello to Metal Gear

Past entries into the Metal Gear series have featured giant bipedal mechs, psychokinetic ghouls and Inuit shaman who fought with F-16 weaponry, but even that feels restrained when compared to where Platinum is taking the series.

You’ll hack apart attack helicopters in mid-air; lasso and whip around Gekkos as if they were bolas; and fight alongside cyborg Beauty and the Beast-esque Pumas. “In MGS4 Raiden was only in cut-scenes, making all of these cool movements, jumping around from one place to another,” says Korekado.

“With Rising, we wanted the player to control and do all of those movements.” Players will also be able to choose which route they take through levels, and engage in very light stealth elements.

Anarchy reigns in Metal Gear

Metal Gear Rising isn’t totally without its problems. The lack of an evade is a glaring omission, particularly when you consider that this game comes from the same company that so expertly pieced together Bayonetta.

When in combat, Raiden can jump or run but can’t elegantly leap out the way of incoming attacks, his main form of defence coming in the form of a parry – presumably so his sword and Blade mode ability stand as his main point of defence.

Rising has also shown itself only to be linear, with the potential for repetition seeping through the cracks if Platinum doesn’t mix things up enough along the way.

Thankfully, what we’ve seen so far – an anarchic combination of over-the-top combat and deliberate tongue-in-cheek silliness – looks to be doing just that, shaking up both the gameplay and the series in one fell swoop.

Seeking more knowledge on XCOM: Enemy Unknown led us to the lair of one Garth DeAngelis, producer on the title at Firaxis Games. We threw some questions at him and, would you believe it, he answered – first of all on what the heck the studio thinks it’s doing with the announced multiplayer mode.

“It’s basically a toybox where you can select any unit from the game – any human unit, any alien, any inventory item. They have a point cost associated with them and then you can build your perfect squad within the budget of that point cost. You’re facing off against one other team and it’s classic last man standing wins.”

Which… alright, that sounds really good. It’s not an out-and-out ‘Multiplayer is insanely important’ announcement which might have taken some of the attention away from the core single-player experience, instead opting to just be, like DeAngelis says, a toybox.

As that central experience of offline play isn’t being taken for granted, we wanted to know what it is that makes XCOM – why it is the game we think we’ve been hoping for, for many years now. DeAngelis explained: “These are the things about the original that made it unique: the turn-based combat, the strategy layer on top of it, the fog of war, the destructible environments, the permanent death – all of these things we had to bring to the modern version."

So a straight remake then? Hardly.

“At the same time we had to modernise it – game design has evolved in the past 15-20 years, we can’t just remake the same game with better graphics. There’s no perfect science to it but I think the team did a fantastic job of maintaining the spirit of the original with all those elements, but the mechanics underneath them have been updated and reimagined."

One area we were fearful would be toned down was difficulty. That same area is one in which DeAngelis put us in our place, just as the game will.

“The original XCOM as you know was very challenging and we didn’t want to lose that. Permanent death is a big part of that… We needed to have the challenge there and I’m confident players will like it – there’s much more weight to the success. You know the potential consequences and the odds stacked against you – we had to have the challenge there."

But one thing definitely added is a more focused storyline, though it’s not like you’re going to be confronted with a dozen cut-scenes during each encounter, as DeAngelis was keen to point out: “It can’t be a linear narrative because this is a game all about choices. For me, the more powerful element of XCOM is the internal narrative the players have…

That internal narrative, for me in XCOM, is much more powerful than having a super-scripted story, and we didn’t want to lose that… We have a little bit of both – I would say the internal narrative is more important, but we do have that narrative wrapper on top.”

But, as if to wrap it up neatly, these linear story elements that appear in the game will not be carried over into multiplayer. Back to DeAngelis: “We felt it was more powerful to just say ‘This is the ultimate toybox, do what you want, combine the abilities in ways you want and then see if you are the best deathmatch player there is in XCOM.’ Putting a story over that would be a little unnecessary.”

The more we hear about XCOM, the more excited we get, it has to be said and with the makers of Civilization at the helm, XCOM: Enemy Unknown has to be a contender for strategy game of the year.

Like Watch Dogs before it, Remember Me is looking to meld open world exploration with Assassin’s Creed’s sci-fi trappings. Unlike Watch Dogs, however, where you hack external technology, here you hack minds. As an agent for a shadowy corporation, it’s your job to change your target’s memories, giving them false impressions of their lives, which then leads them to drastically alter their futures.

It's a bit of a cruel way of torturing someone, but lead character Nilin doesn’t seem to care: one example saw a man commit suicide after he was hacked to believe he had killed his wife. Fashionable gimmick, or intriguing gameplay mechanic? Let’s have a look.

Mindjacking

Remember Me’s lead is Nilin, a ruthless and talented memory hacker in Neo-Paris, 2084. As usual, she’s very good at what she does, right up until her handlers decide that she maybe knows a little too much, what with having habitually done all their dirty work.

One mind-wipe later and you’ve got to figure out exactly who did this to you, and attempt to get your head back together. After breaking out of prison (why don’t they just kill her?), you’ll call upon your one remaining friend to help you out. Shades of Mirror’s Edge there, as there is in the combat. As well as being good at hacking people’s brains, Nilin is a skilled martial artist.

Neo Paris is set to explode

Set in 2084, the future Paris of Remember Me is essentially how London is now: everyone is watching you, all the time, and you better get used to it. The surveillance state that Nilin has to negotiate seems fascistic in nature ­– all authoritarian slogans and street patrols – but it seems that the citizens have accepted that, getting on with their business like the good drones they are.

Oppressive government aside, we’re looking forward to seeing what Neo-Paris has to offer. We quite enjoyed climbing around the place in The Saboteur, and with the addition of the future tech there should be some interesting changes about the place.

Messing With People’s Minds

Remember Me’s hook is that you can explore people’s minds, changing their memories to influence future actions (CUE BLARING INCEPTION HORNS).

Remember Me’s hook is that you can explore people’s minds, changing their memories to influence future actions (CUE BLARING INCEPTION HORNS).

Remotely hacking a despised authority figure, Nilin finds a memory of his wife leaving him. The mission is to get him to kill himself before he is promoted into further power (because killing him yourself would be too obvious) by manipulating his memory. Making him drunkenly stumble on a bottle and taking the safety off of the gun he grasps on the way down sets off a new series of events where he accidentally shoots his wife. ‘Waking’ from the memory, the guilt-ridden commander proceeds to blow his brains out. BWAAARRRGH!

A surreal game of cat and mouse

Interesting as it already is, there’s no doubt in our minds (or is there…? BWARRRRGH) that the demo shown is just the tip of the iceberg. After all, to retain players’ interest, the game is going to have to keep escalating the levels of complexity and involvement, which means only one thing: crazy characters with mental backstories.

If we had to guess, we’d say that as the game goes on there will be a more defined puzzle aspect: maybe multiple choices of how a memory plays out, with the most imaginative ones getting the bigger rewards. Like Hitman, but in your mind, man, and much, much more bizarre.

Selling memories on the Black(out) Market

One other intriguing aspect of Remember Me is that memories are seen as currency, bought and sold on the open market. If implemented properly as a mechanic then this could be something special: imagine buying someone else’s memory and then putting it into another person entirely.

The scope for interesting/hilarious outcomes is massive: especially if you can swap memories across gender divides. It’ll be like Freaky Friday, or Vice-Versa, or Big, but now this time in game form.

On a serious note, this could also be a smart way to handle any upgrade tree the game may have: buy or steal memories to remember how to do things. We like it.

By now we’ve come to expect a certain amount of ‘dudebro’ mentality from histrionic-laden third-person shooters. Sure, these experiences will inevitably contain a certain amount of discord between the reality of wanton death, and humour, but in the case of Army Of Two its adolescent, knuckleheaded absurdity hit the wrong side of unpalatable.

It wasn’t completely deplorable in that regard; just a sort of numbing crassness that elicits a doleful sigh and a heavy eye roll. EA isn’t prepared to give up on the franchise just yet, though, hoping that the third time will be the charm, as it has employed Visceral Games to handle the new instalment and install a little gravity to the proceedings.

“It’s not that the humour isn’t going to be there; it’s just going to be a little more mature,” notes executive producer Julian Beak. “There are parts of the previous games we don’t want to lose in terms of the narrative. It was fun.

"You could sit down and not have to take it super seriously. It’s very similar in the way that it’s an action blockbuster – you’re just having fun with it. But some of the humour is going to grow up.

"Certainly I’ve been asked a lot of questions about whether it’s going to be gritty, tragic and depressing and I can say no. Don’t worry about it. The goal is to have everything be blockbuster fun.”

Beck’s sentiments are certainly reflected in one of the game’s more erratic missions. New duo Alpha and Bravo make their way through a dilapidated warehouse before encountering a group of Mexican cartel.

Two men, hiding behind cover. No screenshot summarises this generation as well as this.

While a firefight inevitably ensues, it’s the moment-to-moment choices the player makes that maintain a strong resonance with the player. As the two get separated, one must cover the other from afar, before the two calculate a way to reunite and exit to the next portion of the stage.

For Visceral, the key to evolving the series was improving immersion and engaging players beyond the immediate carnage.

“The whole Visceral thing is about it being a personal story,” Beck explains in a quick breather from the action. “You’re emotionally engaged not only in what’s going on in the story but what’s going on in the moment.

"If a guy is coming at me with a knife, what does that mean to me? How is my partner reacting to that? And how am I going to react to that as my character?”

It was also fundamentally integral to Visceral that the story featured more complex heroes at its core. Alpha and Bravo will be fighting for survival in the midst of a drug war, but there is a personal factor that influences their decisions through the game.

“The story is not some abstract geopolitical thriller,” laughs Beck. “It’s a very specific drama and blockbuster based around what’s happening to you.

Expect a lot of on-rails helicopter sections.

"You’re holding on to your survival in the heart of the Mexican drug wars. You haven’t gone down there to fix the problem; you’ve gone down there to do a mission and it’s falling apart and you’ll be lucky to survive.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to rely too much on luck to succeed through the main campaign. Joining the increasingly prevalent EA trend, Visceral is utilising the Frostbite 2 engine for The Devil’s Cartel.

But instead of embellishing the scenery with photorealistic textures, the studio has taken a more absurd approach to the tech. Overkill mode enables players to slow time a fraction and annihilate enemies with explosive ammunition.

Equipped with unlimited ammo and no reloading, each bullet furiously detaches limbs from their owners and reduces the environment to rubble.

You could accuse this mechanic of being another example of the franchise pushing a tonal juxtaposition to an uncomfortable extreme, but there’s no denying the instant gratification and raw vigour of the mode.

“For Visceral, the goal is to make all of the action intense and right close to you,” enthuses Beck. “It’s being very aggressive about making sure that what you’re experiencing is broadly appealing.” And we’d certainly agree that the studio has done exactly that.

PES is back. No, really. Don’t believe us? That’s OK, we weren’t sure ourselves until going hands-on with the game. Now however we feel pretty safe in saying that this is the best PES of this generation, and will run FIFA very close this year. In some respects it’s already the better game. 

The passing, for example, is leagues ahead of its rival. It already was in last year’s game, and it feels even better here. With full control over the pace and direction of your passes (including a fully manual pass option for the Xavis out there), PES’s midfield exchanges are incredibly authentic while still remaining fun.

Because the system is so well implemented it changes the way you set out against teams: Spain need to be harried and harassed on the ball, (because if Iniesta gets his foot on it you’re in big trouble) whereas more direct dribblers like Ronaldo and Portugal will require a different approach.

It’s all part of PES’s system to make teams feel like, well, teams and not collections of individuals, and the new Player ID system backs it up. Gerrard, for example, plays like his real life counterpart, spraying the ball around and carrying the ball forward.

Ronaldo loves coming forward with the ball, legs pecking down quickly and arms chopping from side to side in the process. Each side feels different, something FIFA has struggled with for years.

Master League should be better than ever.

So the good stuff is still good, and changes have been made to correct the niggling faults that afflicted PES 2012. Most obvious is the shooting: formerly it felt like you were kicking a balloon around such was the pace it would leave players’ boots.

Now it feels like you’re actually connecting with a football, thundering off the laces on hard shots and curling delightfully when hit with finesse.

It all combines to make match play a delight. There are still problems: heading is rubbish, and there aren’t enough goalkeeping animations. Get these fixed however and PES will very nearly be back to its best. Between this and FIFA football fans are in for a banner year.