For more coverage, read our Call Of Duty: Ghosts Interview with Zach Volker, Lead Animator at Infinity Ward

We've seen Call Of Duty: Ghosts in action. There will be longform features that break down exactly what to expect in forthcoming issues of our fellow publications gamesTM, Play and X360. So be sure to check those out for the HUGE information blowout. HUGE. In capital letters and everything.

But as this is the internet, where attention spans are low and thirst for information is high. So here's the quick lowdown on what to expect from Call Of Duty: Ghosts.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Story

• The story is written by Stephen Gaghan, who wrote Traffic and Syriana, the latter of which he also directed

• It’s a completely new universe, unconnected to Modern Warfare 3

• The game primarily follows two brothers who want to be part of the Ghosts The ‘Ghosts’ are remnants of US Special Forces. They’re fighting back after a major new world power rises up and a cataclysmic event

• Activision isn’t saying who the new antagonists are

• It looks set in the current day, rather than in the past or the future

• Call Of Duty: Ghosts isn’t going to be quite as over-the-top as the full-on spectacle of Modern Warfare 3 was. “It’s a little bit pulled back in terms of the scale of everything that was going on,” explains Zach Volker, Lead Animator at Infinity Ward.
  
  “I would say that the stakes are still high it really is America that is in the balance, so it’s not a trivial thing – it’s not like we’re losing a city. But at the same time it’s not a world scale battle that’s being fought. That’s not what the story is about. It’s smaller and more intimate. So it’s a bit of a balance.”

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Not A Reboot

• “We didn’t set out for it to be a reboot as much as something that was just new for Infinity Ward," says Volker. "We didn’t set out thinking we were going to redefine anything. We said that we wanted to do a take on what we’ve done in the past and come at it from a different direction. So from that perspective it’s new and a lot of the new tech features are new.
  
  But we didn’t set out to revolutionise anything, or release anything significantly different. It’s a tough line between giving the fans what they expect and buying a Call Of Duty game because I know what it is and I love it and giving them something that’s new on top of that."
  
  It’s always a balance between if we don’t give them enough of what they expect they say ‘well this isn’t Call Of Duty, I bought Call Of Duty’. And if we don’t give them enough new they complain and say ‘you didn’t give us anything new.’ That’s a serious conversation that goes on at Infinity Ward of trying to find that balance.”

• What about Eric Hirshberg, Activision CEO? What does he have to say? "A lot of people say that [COD] is cresting or already has. The fact is: no, it hasn’t."

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Visuals

• Call Of Duty: Ghosts will run on a new engine

• There will be new animations (at last). The animations for sliding and leaning around cover are more advanced, but it’s hard to tell what gameplay implications these will have without actually playing it

• The new visuals were shown off in a dense jungle map with a flaming plane wreckage in the corner. This showed off the interactive smoke and lightning

• There is lots of detail that shows the step up in character models for Ghosts – facial mannerisms, extra detail on the hair and skin tones and so on

• Call Of Duty: Ghosts will use SubD, a technique used in Hollywood film VFX that exponentially boosts the poly count, created advanced photorealistic textures. Pixar films use the technique

• A few examples of how Ghosts will use SubD: a scope view without SubD shows jagged edges and using SubD, it looks smooth and circular. Previously, Infinity Ward would use a blur effect to hide the edges

• The X95 weapon, new to the series, is shown off. SubD brings up a lot of detail in the weapon, right down to bolts and rust spots

• Infinity Ward is using a HDR-based lighting system, with volumetric lighting effects and a huge increase in particle count

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – The Level Demo

• Call Of Duty: Ghosts will be 60 frames per second across all platforms

• There will be an underwater section when you’re in scuba gear, swimming towards an aircraft carrier-sized ship. As with previous Call Of Duty games, you’re following an ally to your objective

• Large sonic wave emitting from the aircraft-carrier sized ship that knocks the player back and causes destruction all around him

• There’s lots of wreckage on the ocean floor (and detail on the surface too, such as fishing boats). Their eventual goal is a lighthouse next to the ship. Activision skips ahead ‘for the sake of time’.

• They fire a missile, which is then controlled in first-person view. When it hits the ship, the explosion knocks the player back and the lighthouse is destroyed, leaving players trapped under debris. Reminiscent of the mansion destruction in Iron Man 3

• You’re pulled from the rubble by your colleague as you both swim away from the collapsing carnage, including a helicopter that falls into the water and nearly kills both characters. Classic Call Of Duty style escape-from-the-chaos scene

• The demo ends as enemies enter the water in scuba gear and a gunfight breaks out near what looks like a sunken graveyard. So underwater gunfights look to be in Ghosts and playable too

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Now With Dogs

• There’s a new canine member of your squad. Yes, really The dog fights enemies for you

• The dog will also sniff out explosives

• We’re not sure how high this ranks on your list of reasons to get Ghosts but the dogs are motion-captured too

• “We can’t talk too much about exactly what the dog gameplay is going to be like but we did build the dog specifically as a friendly squad mate," says Volker.
  
  So along with that comes a new AI movement set of getting him to move in a way that’s believable and realistic. That includes things like making him act like a dog. Dogs don’t go to a position and stay there like a solider does – which was how we were initially working with him. And then it seemed off and then we realised that dogs don’t do that."
  
  "Dogs go to a position and they sniff around, get bored, go over there, sniff around, they get bored then they come back to  you, look and say ‘what are we going to do next?’ Once we started to grasp that understanding of ‘oh yeah, dogs aren’t people’ then he really started to take on a life of his own.”

Call Of Duty: Ghosts – Multiplayer Details

• The main new innovation is dynamic maps – earthquakes, floods, logs falling and crushing players

• Infinity Ward hasn’t yet revealed if these can be triggered by players or if they occur randomly

• Players can set environmental traps on maps, such as exploding doors

• Character customisation will be expanded, so you can choose what you look like rather than have it dictated by your loadout

• Different heads, face paint, military uniform variations, scuba gear are some of the customisation options

• "Looking at the interactivity of environmental maps, you start to think ‘what if we could do something different here in this level, that’s appropriate for this level but not for maybe any over MP map? This map is very different. This is something we can do here that isn’t appropriate for any other MP map.’ It spitballed the idea of coming up with some very specific scenes," says Volker.
  
  "One of the levels has an earthquake that’s constantly going on and off through the level that starts to effect things in different ways. But that’s only that one MP map. So it was really an idea of how can we push things further and this was a really creative way of exploring that."

You know this whole ‘are games art’ argument? Remember Roger Ebert (god rest his soul) annoyed a load of people by saying games were essentially worthless? Well, this is pure speculation here, but it’s a fair bet that had someone sat him down in front of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, he’d have held his hands up and admitted ‘crikey, fair enough lads, I was wrong.’

Lest we forget, this was a game where your main character Raiden; in between bouts of dissecting Metal Gears, Cyborgs and (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT) libertarian nut job politicians going Super Saiyan; would have philosophical conversations about the nature of free will and mankind’s predilection towards atrocity and self-destruction with a robot dog with a chainsaw for a tail. If they were to make a movie of this Alejandro Jodorowsky would probably direct it.

That particular robot dog is the focus of the latest DLC and of course, while it’s not up to the standard of the main it’s still probably essential for people fixing for more Zandatsu in their lives, which in a just world would be absolutely everyone, but we are not in a just world unfortunately, if Dead Island: Riptide is anything to go by.

The Blade Wolf’s mission takes about an hour and a half to get through (not including the multiple times your doggy will get mulched by enemies). It takes you through environments you saw in Revengeance before, although that’s not really anything to get antsy about as Revengeance could take place in a purely white environment (or Boscombe) and would still be a heap of fun, due to how brilliantly implemented the combat system is.

You get a good, challenging boss character you’ve never seen before for your trouble as well, which is nice. Of course he’s given no real background and only exists to torment our existentially befuddled mechanical mutt, but since when did anything have to make sense in Metal Gear? Lest we forget this was the franchise that tried to tell a serious story about how war was, y’know, bad and that, with burping monkeys and a character that constantly pooped himself. It’s like Harry Hill reading an audiobook of Crime and Punishment.

Whilst the Jetstream Sam mission was two hours of relentless decimation, Blade Wolf requires a bit more tact. Playing stealthily reaps the most rewards here, as you’re given hunter bonuses at the end of each encounter which are essential for that all important S Rank.

His default speed is slower than Raiden’s too, doubtless to aid with his cheeky canine subterfuge. It takes a while to get used to the slower pace in comparison with the breakneck J-rock ultraviolent sugar rush of the main game, but once you acclimatise yourself to how robot doggy works, it’s quite satisfying sneaking up on baddies that would normally end you in a few hits and chainsawing them in the back of the head.

The Blade Wolf DLC however, is probably only best for those that completed Revengeance multiple times (including the Revengeance difficulty, in which the best tactic for most people is to huddle in a corner, weep hysterically and kiss your arse goodbye). For those willing to go through it that many times, there’s more than enough here to warrant a purchase, and Blade Wolf plays differently enough from Raiden to maybe justify shelling out its (admittedly kind of steep) price.

To those that’ll just go through it once and forget about it though? It’s maybe not worth it. Revengeance knows its core audience; it’s the one that’ll perfect dodge offsets, parries and blade mode cancels in pursuit of the highest scores. The Blade Wolf mission is for them. Others should perhaps wait for a discount, though it’s still deserving of a look in at some point. Good boy.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Opening with dark, dank, tension filled corridors reminiscent of the very first Resident Evil mansion, nostalgic nerves are jangling from the moment Resident Evil Revelations reveals itself. Remakes are still all the rage, but in a time where there are more video games released than most people can afford, only the truly special ones can be afforded space in a gamer’s income.

Regardless of the reaction to last year’s Resident Evil 6, Capcom isn’t giving the series up without a fight, and thankfully the HD version of Revelations is somewhat of a return to form, giving a whole new audience the chance to face-off against yet more disturbing monster creations and the partaking of the herb.

Resident Evil Revelations - A Traditionally Nonsensical Story

Kicking off with a simple search and rescue operation, Jill Valentine and her partner Parker Luciani are looking for Chris Redfield and his partner Jessica Sherawat, last heard from aboard the HMS Queen Zenobia – a massive ship floating lost on the ocean waves. Obviously, as is always the case in Resident Evil, things have gone wrong, subterfuge is present, and nothing is as it seems.

In fact, Chris and Jessica aren’t on the Zenobia at all, they are off in search of the bad guys in a snowy, mountainous area. Revelations flips between the two sets of characters multiple times during each chapter, and there’s also a flashback setting focussing on the (now) lost city of Terragrigia – a fully self-sustaining solar-powered city that was decimated thanks to a bio-terrorist attack by none other than the same gang that Chris and Jessica are chasing.

Revelations has a serviceable narrative, but newcomers to the series will find it all a bit bizarre and pretty ham-fisted. There are plenty of clichés, no truly worthwhile ground trodden, and the plot twists in the later game sections are all fairly obvious. There’s a heavy reliance on knowledge of the franchise, too, and whilst there is an attempt to make Revelations self-contained in parts, you’re playing as characters that are long-standing series mainstays.

Tank Controls Are A Thing Of The Past (Almost.)

Whereas the original games will feel very dated when played today, Revelations is best compared to Resident Evil 4 or 5 in terms of gameplay. Movement is fully controlled by the analogue sticks, and you don’t have to stop and shoot. It’s a tricky thing to get right, but the close quarters feel to the Zenobia sections of the game feel good almost because of the controls. Firing off a few rounds only to realise the oncoming monstrosity is going to get to you before you can kill it, forcing retreat and readjustment; it makes for a tense affair, and creates an inescapable dread that few games get right.

Most of Revelations channels that survival horror game feel, but the sections that veer away from the Zenobia do end up seeming too much like a generic third-person shooter, which is a shame. It just serves to prove that Resident Evil is best when in tight, poorly lit corridors. The co-op that has become a series mainstay nowadays causes some odd moments in this HD remake, too.

In fact, as early as the second chapter, playing as Chris you’ll find yourself falling from a sufficient height as to temporarily incapacitate yourself. While you wait for your AI partner to come and help you, you’re attacked by mutated wolves. Despite them only taking two shots (for the most part) to kill, they are so great in number, that fighting the camera angle (which feels too zoomed in on a sitting, injured Chris) whilst also fighting off the onslaught is an annoying moment. This is worsened by the fact that once the wolves are successfully fended off, Chris’ injury vanishes incredibly quickly; it’s just daft.

The enemy design is somewhat disappointing, as well. Not focussing on Zombies gives room for a bit more creative freedom, but instead, this new enemy type (simply named “the Ooze”) are all similar in design with variations that dictate their attack methods. Whereas modern enemy design will allow strategic attack, most of Revelations’ enemies just require lots of bullets to stop. Boss design is slightly better, but suffers from turning one of them into a repeat enemy, whereas the rest are so traditionally Resident Evil in scope and design, that they just don’t excite like they used to.

But there is more to Revelations than pointing and shooting anyway, enter stage left: the Genesis device. Scanning environments to grab 100% completion won’t be for everyone, but thankfully it’s only a required mechanic for story moments. Holding down the left bumper, rather than bringing up a gun aim, brings up the Genesis device, and you can scan the area for hidden items, or just scan decomposing enemies to raise your completion rate. Once you grab 100%, you’ll be awarded with a bonus item, and then you’ll have to start toward that 100% again. It’s rarely tedious, as it’s often obvious where items will be hidden – piles of rubble, under a table, in the sink – so after a period of learning, most players will know exactly when to pull the Genesis out.

The herb system is a simple one now, and all you now have to do is find them, and hit a face button on the controller to instantly use them. It’s a design decision slightly at odds with the atmosphere, because on the one hand you’ve got a reasonable level of immersion, ruined slightly by a “health button”. No more mixing herbs for you, it’s all a bit too easy. The enemies take a fair bit to put them down, though, and their twisted, distorted movements make grabbing headshots trickier than just targeting a slow-moving Zombie shuffler for that traditional quick kill.

Resident Evil Revelations - RAID Mode

Like most Resident Evil titles, once you’ve finished the main campaign you’ll be able to take on the additional modes, with Revelations including RAID mode. While the main campaign of Revelations does have a mission-based structure and scores you based on performance, RAID mode is more stage-based. Think of it like an Arcade mode; the enemies even have health bars above their heads.

Completing stages in RAID mode or just playing the single player campaign will award you with Battle Points. This system is pretty simple: the more you earn; the better weaponry you can unlock to use. Each playable character will have a base weapon, or setup, but to get a better ranking, you’ll need better tools. There are lots of stages available, but you’ll have to unlock them as you go, and each is based on a location from the single player mode. Unlike the campaign, you can take RAID mode online to experience with another player, which is a nice new addition.

It’s a superb alternative to the campaign, allowing for a quick slice of the action, with the idea of buying new weapons from the shop offering replayability. Once the campaign is over, only the hardiest of fans will keep playing, but RAID mode ups the value for money significantly.

What Is HD About It?

The one thing that is noticeable about Revelations HD is that on the whole, it looks gorgeous. Capcom know how to make a cut-scene look good, and they’ve done a superb job on bringing a low-resolution 3DS game onto HD consoles, but then, you’d expect nothing less, as the original is only a year old. There are rough sections though, and when the camera shows you a texture too close-up, it’s horrendous looking and a reminder of the game’s origins. It’s a definite case of closer inspection revealing the cracks, but just playing the game you won’t notice it very often.

In-line with the visuals, there’s full surround sound support, and the ability to play RAID mode online, as well as the expected additions such as Achievements and Trophies. The Wii U version supports off-TV play and dual screen gameplay for RAID mode, too.

New to the HD version is Infernal mode, which is unlocked after completing the game. Offering a higher difficulty challenge is great, but Capcom have gone one further, and for Infernal mode the enemies - even including a new enemy, the Wall Blister - and items have been randomised throughout the game to attempt to create even more of a challenge. Infernal difficult is a welcome addition, because the main campaign isn’t particularly difficult. Like RAID mode, if you’re not careful you can be one-hit killed with little warning, but at the same time it’s a rewarding experience, though not one everyone will enjoy.

People who missed Revelations the first time around will find an enjoyable and fully fleshed out Resident Evil experience - while not spectacular, it's certainly closer to the original games in terms of atmosphere than the modern outings. RAID mode and Infernal difficulty also offer compelling reasons for Revelations veterans to grab the HD version.

While Resident Evil's future is unclear at present, this HD version of Revelations proves that there’s life in the old dog yet, even if there’s a high likelihood that anyone who wanted to play Revelations will probably already have done so.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Sometimes it's good to go back to basics.

Take Sacred Citadel. This download-only title is unapologetically clean and uncomplicated, pushing Sacred away from its more traditional presentation to offer up this quirky, feisty brawler. Whilst it might not quite strike the perfect balance owing to some sequences falling on just the wrong side of fun, it's well worth a few hours of your time.

The story is... well, nothing new. An ancient evil schemes to take control of the fantasy kingdom. Good Guys swoop in to try and stop 'em. Cue a few moderately amusing one-liners and then hijinx ensue, complete with swarms of enemies, boss fights, looting and plot "twists".

You’ve probably heard this story before.

Sacred Citadel - Classy Game

The classes won't feel unfamiliar, either. Take your pick from a warrior, mage, ranger, and shaman - you know the drill - all of which bring their own unique twist to combat proceedings. Yeah, there's admittedly little narrative innovation here - but don't hold that against Sacred Citadel. Sure, it's an age-old story of good versus evil with swords and spells and potions and stuff, but the tale's delivered with an unabashed self-awareness that - coupled with an infectious score and deceptively simple art style – is undeniably entertaining.

To be honest, the story plays second fiddle to the action, anyway. Citadel propels you through a 2D, side-scrolling world of pleasant but forgettable forests, deserts, ships and swamps that are – very loosely – linked to the enemies about to pounce you. It’s not quite as dreary as it sounds; whilst unmemorable, the backdrops are agreeable enough to carve carnage against, even if the 2D perspective occasionally messes with your ranged attacks. Add in the interactive environmental factors – think pounding stone blocks, swinging logs and puddles of toxic goo – and it all serves to dampen the monotony … which is just as well, given how repetitive the gameplay can be.

Controls are crisp, clear and pleasantly simplistic, although you’ll undoubtedly find yourself recycling the same old combos over and over again. And it’s here where things start to feel just that little bit same-y.

The greatest frustrations crop up at the beginning of your journey. As you get to grips with the gameplay and combos – all of which unlock with satisfying regularity – you may find yourself stumbling into an end of level boss fight unaware and ill-equipped to take on what’s waiting for you. Unfortunately, not even death helps your odds; use up your potions and they don’t come back, even after respawning, and enemies rarely drop anything of value in the boss arena. You’ll either have to slog your way through the battle slowly and steadily in the hope of besting the boss, or  . . . well, exit out, stock up, and then replay through the (mercifully short) level again.

Sacred Citadel - Solo Play vs Co-op

Irritatingly, in the latter half of the game the boss battles offer very little challenge at all, particularly if you head in fully-loaded and stocked with all the Rage and Power potions you might need.

That said, the further into the game you delve, the better you’ll be able to gauge the length of each chapter, and it’s here where the fun really begins. Successful combat unlocks generous XP, armour, combos and weapons, and you’ll find yourself levelling up with surprising ease, even in latter stages.

But just as you settle into a routine, the game switches it up a bit. New enemies with increasingly more complex powers jump into your path, heralding a welcomed change of pace. That's not to say they're not frustrating - they very frequently are - but at least there's no longer room for complacency.

Trouble is, tackling the hordes alone mean it's easy to become overwhelmed, particularly if you find yourself lost in the on-screen scrum or you’re unfortunately clad in colours similar to your foes. When the going got tough, we found that the best strategy was to quick-roll around, smash out a couple of strong melee hits, and roll off again in the other direction. Crass and a little inelegant, granted, but it’s surprisingly effective.

To really wring enjoyment from Sacred Citadel, you need to jump on with some friends. Bringing the different combat classes into battle creates a balance that’s simply not achieveable if you go it alone, and thanks to the plentiful loot and spoil drops, there’s always enough to go around.  

Sacred Citadel’s narrator will have you believe that this is not a place that the sane would travel to willingly. We respectfully disagree.

Version Tested: XBLA

It takes roughly 30 seconds, maybe a minute, until Blood Dragon delivers its first fierce punch to your nostalgia gland. You open the game in a chopper buzzing around an enemy base while Long Tall Sally by Little Richard plays. “Predator!” you’ll whine through tears of joy, as you crumple to the floor from your winded nostalgia gland.

If you understand the Predator reference, you’ll understand Blood Dragon is a game that feels like it was made specifically for you. This is a love letter to 80s action movies, sprinkling references to Predator, Terminator, Aliens and Commando throughout. As an added touch, Michael Biehn has been brought in to voice the main character, the Terminator and Aliens star growling one-liners like “yeah, I picked his brain” after landing a headshot.

Some games try too hard with their humour but Blood Dragon manages to consistently hit the mark, poking fun at genre conventions and at itself, to the point where the humour allows Ubisoft to smuggle in loathsome tutorials (“just let me kill people!”), scripted set-pieces (“Why is the lift so slow?” “Presumably to create tension”) and even make the loading screens entertaining.

In many ways, this is the game Duke Nukem Forever should have been. Blood Dragon is refreshingly honest about its love for 80s action flicks and it’s hard to resist that enthusiasm.

But it’s not just the references that make Blood Dragon tick. It also has the right look and feel. Its dark vibe with bright streaks of neon punching through looks incredible but there are smaller touches thrown in that really add to the look, such as the VHS static and distortion after nearby explosions. The soundtrack is a glorious throwback to action movies of that era, meshing synth keyboards with squealing metal guitars. Given it refuses to take itself seriously, it’s surprising how atmospheric Blood Dragon feels.

Blood Dragon - Is It Different To Far Cry 3?

It’s also strange that a game revelling in its humour and references is backed up by such grounded, considered gameplay but that’s why the Far Cry 3 moniker is there – Blood Dragon is essentially a reskinned, slimmer version of Ubisoft’s sprawling island shooter.

The rhythm is mostly the same too. While there’s a main story that’s host to the more interesting set-pieces, it’s all too easy to ignore that thanks to the wealth of distractions on offer. There are garrisons to be liberated, animals to be hunted and side-missions to be found. Both games do a great job of scratching that OCD side of you that needs to find and do everything.

The main difference between the games is the addition of the titular Blood Dragons, the alpha predators in this game’s ecosystem. Dragons have poor eye-sight and you can sneak around them without incurring their wrath without too much difficulty but the fun part is you can pilfer cyberhearts from fallen soldiers, which work as bait for the Blood Dragons. Throw it just outside a garrison and while a shield will prevent them from entering, they can still blast the soldiers inside. While Dragons never dominate the gameplay, they do factor in enough to make this feel different.

Other key difference is how Blood Dragon has stripped back elements. There are no skill trees to navigate as you level up automatically and there’s no crafting to be done, with weapon upgrades earned through completed side-quests. Oh, and unless you’re up, close and personal with something, melee has been replaced with the middle finger.

Another difference – although it’s perhaps more to do with having gotten used to the gameplay following 30 hours of Far Cry 3 – is that Blood Dragon isn’t particularly challenging, especially if you load up on side-mission upgrades before tackling the story in earnest. The only time you’ll feel your gameplay abilities being tested is during Hostage side-missions, where you have to be stealthy – one of the rare occasions where you can’t bludgeon your way to victory with your superior firepower. After all, Blood Dragon is a game where you unlock explosive rounds for your sniper rifle.

Blood Dragon Ain't Got Time To Bleed

Blood Dragon is brilliant. Admittedly, this is coming from a 30-year-old with an unhealthy love for Commando and Predator and therefore exactly the sort of person Ubisoft is targeting with this release, but it’s still backed up by the same gameplay that powered Far Cry 3 to a 9.0 score last year.

Some players may actually prefer Blood Dragon to Far Cry 3, simply because its status as a stand-alone title has refined the Far Cry 3 sprawl into razor-sharp focus. There isn’t a single inch of wasted territory here, the story revels in its own ridiculousness rather than alluding to something deep and meaningful and the gameplay has been stripped back to the core mechanics, meaning there's no bloat. It's just a shame the challenge isn't tighter.

Having Blood Dragon as a standalone release is the right decision so it will find success outside of those who own a copy of Far Cry 3 but we almost wish this was DLC, just so it would serve as a reference point for studios who churn out identikit slices of whatever game it’s for and call it a day.

Well done to both Ubisoft for signing off on a creative spin-off like this and to the devs for pulling off Blood Dragon in a way that's imaginative, refreshingly honest and brilliant fun.

Version Tested: XBLA

The tutorial programme has been loaded into the brain of Mach IV cyber soldier Rex Colt. And he’s not too happy about it. A message pops up on screen. “Press A to demonstrate you have the ability to read.” Colt, half-man half-machine, grumbles. “To look around, look around”, says a voice in my ear. The grumbling gets louder. “Moving allows you to go in many exciting directions!”

Finally, after 5 minutes of being lectured in what the game calls ‘military navigation for dummies’, Rex Colt has lost his ever disintegrating rag. “I hate f***ing tutorials,” says Colt, voiced by 80s action star Michael Biehn in trademark macho gravelly tones, “and this one is terrible.”

It’s the kind of moment that will pop up a lot in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a game that goes out of his way to tell you that it’s not taking itself seriously. The ‘apocalypse has had an apocalypse’, the game proclaims, and Rex Colt is the only one who can stop an evil cyborg army from taking over the world.

Far Cry 3 In A Different Setting?

In some ways, it's just Far Cry 3 moved into a different setting: you’ll be stringing together takedowns with both bow and gun kills in the same exact engine, and accepting hunting and wanted missions throughout an open world.

This isn't just Jason Brody's adventure take two, however, it's Jason Brody taking too much LSD and time-travelling forward 50 years to be faced with a world that is insane and intriguing in equal measures. Instead of Brody's binoculars, Colt is fitted with a Cyber Eye which turns the world red and tags all enemies in site.

Colt, when forced to heal, may just pop a joint back into place à la classic Far Cry, but he might pull out a pair of hand grippers instead, give them a couple of quick squeezes, and return to the fight with his health bar inexplicably replenished. And after taking down one enemy, a simple button press will cause Colt to fling a Shuriken at any nearby enemies, taking them down in one shot. Because, you know, ninjas are cool.

Adding to the wacky effect is the colour palette: full of bright oranges and yellows and blues, all of which effectively portray the futuristic, over-the-top look the development team were looking for. Your cyborg enemies don’t bleed when you shoot them, instead emitting bright blue sparks that fly in all directions, and interior battles soon turn into concentrated fireworks displays set against a background of neon strip-lights.

Blood Dragon - Motown And Comic Panels

The game’s opening is a classic turret sequence, where Colt is circling an enemy stronghold blowing up explosive barrels and mowing down cyborgs. Nothing strange there, you might think. Except that you’re mass murdering to a background of catchy Motown, bobbing your head as your enemies tongues lull.

Colt infiltrates the enemy's base and, with help from fellow cyborg soldier Spider, hacks the mainframe and escapes. The interaction between the two men (if you can call them that), as with every other story element, is played out in moving story panels that are completely separated from gameplay segments: an interactive comic strip, if you will, which turns out to be fantastically retro and very well implemented.

One of the most exciting additions, and proof that this game delivers on what you might think is an obscure title, are the Blood Dragons. Yes, they exist and yes, they’re awesome. After clearing out the base you encounter a pack of 3 of the beasts, and are forced to sneak by them.

Luckily, their eyesight is poor, and you can distract them by throwing cyber hearts ripped from the torsos of downed foes, but make too much noise yourself and their fluorescent bodies will change colour from green to yellow and finally to red, at which point you're pretty much screwed.  The final segment of the hands-on session shows that the dragons are an important part of what looks to be the game’s shiny crown and jewels: liberating garrisons.

They’re like the outposts from Far Cry 3 only bigger and more futuristic, and there are far more options to play with. Naturally, you can capture the area by destroying all enemies on site, but you can also concentrate on taking the shields down, allowing the Dragons to wander over, or luring the beasts over with thrown cyber hearts. Both options will give you a glimpse of the Blood Dragons' party piece: they can shoot explosive lasers from their eyes, vaporising enemies in the blink of an eye. Which, given the rest of the game, doesn't come as a surprise.

Is Blood Dragon More Fun Than Far Cry 3?

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is showy in a kind of look-how-little-I-care sort of way but it’s fun enough to get away with it. And this isn’t a piddly add-on either: it’s got a freely explorable map that will give you a good 6-8 of non-stop entertainment. And you don’t even need a copy of Far Cry 3 to play it.

In fact, there could be many that enjoy it more than Far Cry 3. It takes the body of Far Cry 3 – the open world gameplay, the exploration, the tight shooting, the hunting (of cyborg animals this time) – and lops off a less-than-excellent story limb, replacing it with a horribly mutated, radioactive clown arm that will both puzzle and amuse you at the same time.

The result is fantastic. It’s both a homage to classic 80s action films and a less-than-subtle critique of gaming narrative, all build on a foundation composed of the solid mechanics and, after spending an hour or so with it, you can't help but wonder why more developers don't do something similar.

It loads properly. You press start on Double Dragon II’s title screen and the game begins. It may embark on a LOLsome tutorial that tries to tie mysticism into the mundane controls (“Vice meets virtue” croaks a bored voice actor, as a prompt tells you to press X, X, X) but it loads. So there is that. Is that worth 0.5? Let’s say that’s worth 0.5, for the sake of argument.

There is nothing else of in Double Dragon II that deserves even 0.5. Nothing. Not the visuals, not the controls, not the music, the level design, the co-op, anything.

Double Dragon II: Wander Of The Dragons is the worst game on Xbox 360.

Double Dragon II And The Hands Made Of Ham

It begins with that tutorial and then puts you in the shoes of Billy or Jimmy, both of whom have stretched arms and giant hands that look like they’ve been chiselled out of ham. We don’t think it’s a deliberate cartoon look because this has the same pungent ‘make everything gritty’ vibe that infiltrated Bomberman: Act Zero. And if it is deliberate, then well. Look at it. Has it worked? Does it look like it’s worked? No.

Instead of saying “the controls are awful” and leaving it that, here’s how movement works. There’s no auto-lock but a soft-lock of sorts when you’re near an enemy. When you tap any direction, you’ll do a quick dash that way. That sounds like a great idea until you actually want to run, as the recovery following the dash means it’s not that useful for evading, and to run backwards, you have to hold that direction.

So how do you dodge? You have to hold block, tap the direction, then let go of block and hope it works because if it doesn’t, you’ll stand there and take the full attack in the face.

Why. WHY. Why does this have to be so needlessly complicated? It doesn’t add anything to the game. All it does is make you stagger about like a drunk trying to make it to the nearest taxi rank while balancing a kebab and chips. All it does it reinforce why so many developers put dodge on the right analogue stick.

Double Dragon II On The Offensive

Your actual attacks are limited to mashing X (punch!), mashing B (kick!) or mashing the two (a combination of punches and kicks!). No combination unlocks any new animations and holding RT just gives you an enhanced version of your ending move – again, with the same animation. There are also special moves to clear out enemies. Attacking is dull and the controls don’t have the snappy response you need in this genre but they just, just about work.

Because attacking isn’t quite as awful as the rest of the game, attacks are also tied into a stamina bar, which completely ruins it. Stamina recharges but performing any attacks drain it, and when you’re surrounded by enemies, it’s not long before your stamina is gone and you’re left helpess. The only thing a stamina bar adds is an absurb amount of frustration.

This is because Double Dragon II is also stupidly hard. Not hard in the sense that you won’t complete it, because Double Dragon II tucks 20 credits in your back pocket before it boots you into the first level. You’ll just have no idea how to avoid being caught in an endless loop of being knocked to the ground until you die.

Every enemy here has gone to the Playground Bully School Of Combat, where they crowd round you and kick you until you fall over. Get back up and they’ll batter you until you fall down again. Get knocked down, get up again. Get knocked down, get up again. It’s that god-awful Chumbawamba song in game form.

Double Dragon II And Imperfect Guard

Perfect Guard should have been the solution to this, a parry move that offers your only real defensive response to the barrage of attacks you’re subjected to. It doesn’t work. Not only does a successful Perfect Guard drain stamina but it offers no invincibility as a reward while you recover from the animation before launching a counterattack. Perfect Guard one enemy and

In short – it’s absolutely useless when surrounded and that’s the only time you really need it.

The levels see you go from left to right, with some vertical movement allowed That’s fine – it’s what the originals did – except the originals also ensured this restriction made sense with the design of the levels themselves. Narrow streets, narrow construction sites, narrow rooftops and so on.

This lesson has been lost on Double Dragon II circa 2013, which throws invisible walls around you to stop you exploring. Worse still, there’s an invisible wall on the far left and right of the screen where enemies can attack you but you can’t fight back. Unbelievably annoying.

And the levels themselves! Level 1 sees you running past a helicopter, which then pops up again on Level 3 even though you’re in a new area. One level has a lever that throws a winch across a walkway, knocking the enemies off, except they can (and will) attack you during the cutscene that shows the winch moving. You can't defend yourself while this happens.

Our favourite level is one that takes place inside a plane, which tilts in a cutscene, has you hammering B to hold on for dear life, then another cutscene shows the plane levelling out, at which point you fight more enemies. Again – WHY.

This all plays out at a sludgy frame-rate while a musical loop waltzed straight from hell churns over and over, pushing you a few steps closer to early dementia.

Double Dragon II Co-Op

It’s better with friends! No, it’s not. ‘Better with friends’ may be the usual copout for games with a co-op mode but not here. Firstly, it doesn’t have online co-op. The inevitable comeback to this might be that the original Double Dragon II only had local co-op but it’s 2013 now, not 1988.

Secondly, if you try to put any of your friends through this – inviting them round, forcing them to cancel whatever plans they had that not, forcing them to make the trip to yours, forcing them to suffer this in silence while they wonder why the both of you ever became – they will never play games with you ever again.

It’s just bad on every level. Bomberman: Act Zero, AMY, Hour Of Victoy, Yaris, Kengo: Zero, Discs Of Tron, your new champion is here. Double Dragon II: Wander Of The Dragon is truly the worst game on Xbox 360 and it will take something apocalyptically bad to knock it from its new throne.

Version Tested: Xbox Live Arcade

It's not hard to picture the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 team having a brainstorming meeting for new ideas, blank notepads in front of them, the loud "ummm" noises breaking up the silence of fingers being drummed on the table.

This is the sixteenth game in the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series and golf hasn’t changed an awful lot in that time. It’s not like EA can hand Tiger a Flaming Club Of Justice (+5 Strength) as he trundles off to Warlock Mountain, or add new Team Deathmatch modes.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour games are limited by the game of golf itself. That means struggling for new ideas that justify a sequel without breaking authenticity of the game itself.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour - Absolute Power Or Total Control?

The most obvious manifestation of that struggle is found in its ‘golfer types’ addition. You can choose between power, control and draw specialists and there’s further specialisation in hitting the ball high (susceptible to wind by more likely to lie on the green), low (the opposite) or somewhere between the two.

It’s not a bad addition but a fairly pointless one that does little to add to the game. At times it feels restrictive that you can’t club the ball 300 yards from the tee because you’ve picked the wrong ‘type’ of golfer while at other times it feels empowering, should you have the right golfer for the right situation.

But at no point does it ever feel as though having different types of golfer has really added anything to Tiger Woods.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Online

Play an online tournament, though, and you almost feel as though the it justifies a sequel in itself.

Online tournaments have golfers working their way through the courses at the same time as you, and you can see their shots in real-time as white outlines bouncing along the green. It adds an unusual sense of camaraderie or competition, depending on your skill level

An overall leaderboard tracks the leading golfer for that particular tournament (which often lasts 24 hours) before a winner is declared. There are some tournaments you can only enter once, some which are tracked across 36 holes, and annoyingly, some that require DLC to participate in.

There should have been more work to open this side of the game up, as the choice of tournaments can be limiting (especially with the further DLC restriction in place), but it’s surprisingly good fun. Seeing live play alongside you makes working your way round the courses that much more enjoyable, as it’s no longer a lonely pursuit of perfection.

You can also form Country Clubs, which is the gentlemanly golfing equivalent of clans. It’s a nice way of keeping track of rivalry with friends, and if you have people on your Friends List who are working through the game, it’s another brilliant addition to the online side of the game.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Single Player

But what about single player? Besides the usual additions that won’t really register on your Must Buy This Sequel Now scale – new golfers, new courses, night golf – there is one mode that stands out.

Legends Of The Majors takes you through the history of golf tournaments, starting from 1873 as you work your way through to the modern era. Having a throwback to the past is interesting because of the way EA has fully committed to it. There are grainy sepia filters, retro fashion such as jackets and ties and best of all, old-school golf clubs with comedy names like ‘baffing spoon’.

It’s interesting because it’s different, EA finding a way to make golf feel different without having to break authenticity to do so.

The only problem is that mode becomes less engaging as the eras begin to catch up with the present. As modern-day elements bleed back in – colour broadcasts, modern clubs, modern equipment, and so on – it starts to feel like Another Tiger Woods Single-Player Mode that’s rolled off the EA factory line, indistinct from any other mode from previous outings. It loses its unique appeal.

Tiger Woods + Online Pass = Profit?

Is there enough in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 to justify a sequel? Just about, if you have access to the online side of the game (those buying second-hand will need to get an online pass). Online tournaments are a brilliant way of playing through the various courses, and seeing the real-time play alongside yours does add something fresh to the usual Tiger Woods fare.

Without the online modes, it’s a much harder sell. Legends Of The Majors is good but not really good enough to warrant those who played last year’s edition to pick this up and that’s the only single-player mode that stands out. It’s also frustrating that you bump into DLC restrictions as often as you do here, which cheapens the overall experience (there's no option to 'earn' the extra courses - they can only be bought).

Despite that it’s still a great golf game so if you haven’t played any Tiger Woods outings for a while, this year is as good as any to come back to the series.

Just make sure you do so with an online pass.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Don’t play BattleBlock Theater’s multiplayer before you play campaign. Don’t. Don’t.

Because you’ll die. A lot.

The title screen might suggest multiplayer is the best way to go when diving in for the first time, given the background has bearded and fanged toons smacking each other around blocky levels, but playing multiplayer first is a mistake.

It’s not that BattleBlock Theater is a difficult game to understand (it’s not) nor is it a complex game to play (it’s not). It’s that your default weapon is throwing mines.

It might sound impressive but everyone else will likely march into battle with an arsenal of destruction ranging from the ridiculous to the ridiculously effective – grenades, desk fans, fireballs, paper-planes stuffed with C4, exploding frogs and so on.

Throwing mines is BattleBlock Theater’s equivalent of farting in the wind and hoping for the best.

So stop. Reset. Play campaign first and you’ll find that not only is it the mode that yields the currency needed to buy these weapons but campaign is also really, really good fun.

Hatty Hattington And His Army Of Cats

BattleBlock Theater is a 2D platformer that throws you through a series of increasingly difficult levels that contain gems and yarn to collect, in-game currency to unlock character customisation and weapons.

It carries strands of The Behemoth’s previous Xbox Live Arcade releases, Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. You’ll recognise the art style, the sense of humour, the ease of control.

(You’ll also be rewarded with ‘heads’ from those games if you have a save file on your hard drive for them, so there’s that as well.)

You play a prisoner being forced through a series of increasingly difficult levels by technologically-advanced cats being ruled by your former friend Hatty Hattington, who is only doing this for his own entertainment. Obviously. What this means is The Behemoth can be silly – very silly – with the cutscenes and the dialogue, indulging itself with humour that isn’t too intrusive but makes the game far more fun to play.

Die Again And Again And Again

The way the difficulty scales up means that humour is needed to take the edge off any potential frustration.

It begins as a relatively simple affair. Detonate those blocks to let the paper boat fall into the water, draw the paper boat towards you by splashing the water, sail to freedom. There’s a minimum number of gems needed to unlock the exit, which are almost harder to avoid than they are to collect. It’s an easy ride through simple 2D platforming.

Slowly, and inevitably, this changes. The difficulty cranks up as death lasers, ice blocks and moving platforms are introduced, plus enemies who hunt you down and make your life misery. Gems become harder to collect. Some enemies run away with gems strapped to their back.

There’s no real punishment to dying in BattleBlock Theater thanks to the generosity of checkpoints but for those chasing high post-level rankings, fast times are essential. When you clunk your head against a spiked ceiling and you watch the potential for a fast time dissolve as your body drops to the fire coals below, you realise just how tough the game can be.

Frustration does creep in, mostly due to the enemies who chase you – other elements of BattleBlock Theater’s platforming can be learned, practiced and improved but the unpredictability of the enemies means sometimes you’ll just… well, die.

Frustration never dominates BattleBlock Theater, which is a challenging but breezy platformer. But The Behemoth finds ways to continue pushing your platformer skills.

Battleblock Theater's Weapons

Just as the platforming looks to become perhaps too simplistic, mastery of your weapons is demanded too. Example: one gun fires plastic sucker-darts that can stick into walls, which can be used as temporary platforms to leap to freedom. Another example: boomerangs can nab gems for you, solving that last few minutes of head scratching when you’re beginning to swear it’s impossible to grab those gems.

Each chapter also ends with a timed level, putting your learned skills and weapon use to the test.

There are also hidden gems and secret areas throughout. There’s the occasional clue to where these hidden areas are – why is there a death laser firing in a corner that is clearly miles out of my way? – but we stumbled upon most by accident rather than design.

In short, to make a crude comparison, BattleBlock Theater feels like it’s somewhere between Spelunky and Super Meat Boy. It has the pacing and game structure of the former and learns towards the challenge and level design of the latter. It is, to be shorter still, brilliant.

BattleBlock Theater Multiplayer

You can save prisoners with collected gems in the gift shop, which is a fancy way of saying you can unlock new heads for your character. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them here – bandits, gorillas, vampires, mobsters, aliens and most that defy single-word descriptions. Yarn can also be spent on weapons, and it’s once you have an arsenal to be proud of, that’s when you can proudly march into multiplayer.

While campaign tests your timing and ability to solve platform puzzles, competitive multiplayer is about keeping on top of the chaos as players leap about firing weapons, hitting each other, avoiding the environmental obstacles that drift in and out of play.

What makes multiplayer so enjoyable is there’s a huge wealth of modes and maps to get stuck into. Challenge is a race through levels while Muckle is the traditional free-for-all, or at least as traditional as it can be when played with bandits and exploding frogs.

If those are staples, then other modes such as Capture The Horse (ride a horse to the opponent’s stable) and Color The World (switch as many blocks to your team’s colour as possible) that provide an odd, unique and engaging twist on multiplayer.

Ball Game is a particular favourite. A football drops in the middle of the level and two teams of two have to carry the ball to the opponent’s goal to score, which leads to a weird game of attacking the opponent’s goal and defending your own, albeit it with grenades and uppercuts. Messy, weird but undeniably a lot of fun.

Great Campaign And Party Game Multiplayer

BattleBlock Theater’s multiplayer is more party game than anything else. The weapons aren’t even close to being balanced – hence the problem with the minethrower being the sole choice for beginners – but even that doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable.

The question is how long the multiplayer will last, more than anything else. The sheer wealth of modes and maps will sustain it, plus there’s a level editor to extend its life, but multiplayer will only last as long as the gameplay remains engaging. There’s no real nuance or strategy here, and it’s only the lure of unlocking new heads or weapons and taking them into multiplayer arenas that will keep you engaged.

Even so, BattleBlock Theater’s multiplayer is the most fun we’ve had online in a long time and it’s backed up by a fantastic campaign. It’s hard to say which half of BattleBlock Theater excels as they’re both brilliant but that’s good news for us, as it adds up to a very, very good game indeed.

Version Tested: XBLA

It's easy to think, reading a list of LEGO games that have come out in the last few years, that Traveller's Tales are simply milking the proverbial cash cow for everything it's worth. But, fans of the series will ask, if the milk tastes this good, then why should they stop?

And for the past few years the milk has tasted very good indeed: LEGO video games have recently been consistently fun, consistently enjoyable, consistently able to take a different franchise and give it that LEGO twist that we never knew it needed.

With LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, it's clear that the developers are not content with making just another LEGO game. However, that doesn't mean they'll be changing the classic, brick-based formula. What they'll be doing is giving gamers more content than they ever have before, and that makes this Traveller's Tales' most ambitious LEGO building project to date.

"It's LEGO Marvel New York"

The game is based around a freely explorable area that Producer Phil Ring promises is “not just New York; it's not just LEGO Yew York; it's LEGO Marvel New York”. It's this central hub that looks like it will be the star of the show. But more on that later, because Phil races straight into a demonstration of the game's opening level.

First impressions are good: it's classic LEGO simplicity woven into a very cool Marvel universe in which the characters, and their own unique abilities, are very much the focus. Hulk and Iron Man are trying to force their way into Grand Central Station, where Roxxon executives have been taken hostage by Sandman and Abomination. These two villains, along with the rest in the game, are trying to retrieve “cosmic bricks” that have been left over from the destruction of Silver Surfer's surfboard just before the start of the game.

Combat isn't particularly challenging, or all that deep, and as the superhero pair fight their way through Sandman's goons to the station itself and then through the inner terminal, the puzzles that confront them won't cause any problems. If it's silver, shoot it with Iron Man, if it's green, smash it with The Hulk, if it's a wall of sand, wet it so that it hardens and glows green and then... well, you know what to do. However, the way that the characters control provides a lot of variety that means that the gameplay never gets old.

"You Play Far More Characters Than You've Ever Done"

Phil Ring explains that the team's hardest challenge has been “making sure the core characters have all the abilities you'd expect”. “They all need to feel cool, they all need to feel fun to play as”.

At first glance, it looks like the challenge has been overcome. Controlling the agile Iron Man, you can hover in the air above the battle, fire off repulsor blasts, or charge up your Arc Reactor to take out multiple enemies, while The Incredible Hulk, whose figure is bigger (they're calling him a 'BigFig'), lumbers round the tight level like a green bull in a LEGO china shop. He can Hulk-smash his way through any obstacle, pick up cars and use them to batter his foes into quadrilateral pulps, or rip certain sections of the level apart in order to progress.

The game is based on an ever improving engine, which allows the team to make environments look sufficiently impressive. “We're always progressing our engine internally, we want to make these games bigger, show more enemies on screen, show more LEGO” says Phil, making Hulk thump the ground to prove his point, an action that sends LEGO flying into the air all around.

As Spider-Man swings into the battle, halfway through the level, Phil explains that there will –  staggeringly – be over 100 playable characters, including all your favourite Marvel heroes and villians, although not all of them will be available for the game's main storyline.

In the game's first three levels you will play as 3 separate groups, consisting of 8 different characters in total, and this variety and addition of new characters, Phil promises, “doesn't stop. From a story perspective you play far more characters than you've ever done.”

LEGO Marvel: Spider-Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Abomination

If this bulging cast of characters can each be kitted out with a personal skillset and be made to feel like their own entities, then Traveller's Tales could be onto something.

What will certainly help are the superb animations: whether you're slinging web into the face of enemies with Spider-Man or morphing from the Hulk into your human counterpart, Bruce Banner – who can do things the green monster can't such as build useful contraptions using free LEGO bricks – everything looks stylish and appropriate for the character in question. It's all done to make this an authentic Marvel experience. “We want people who are fans of The Hulk to feel like they're playing as The Hulk”, Phil says.

Even when at rest, the characters look unique. An ever restless Spiderman, after a few seconds of standing still, will take up his iconic pose, legs spread apart and chest grazing the floor, whilst Iron Man will launch into an amusing robot dance.

Clearly, LEGO's trademark silliness remains in abundance, and only through experimentation and exploration will you fully appreciate it. Holding B whilst controlling Hulk allows you to rip chunks of LEGO from the environment and use them as a makeshift weapon, but try and do that when standing on sand and the blocks will crumble as The Hulk holds the block above his head in his mighty hands, showering himself with tiny LEGO blocks that he struggles to shake out of his hair like a man with incurable dandruff.

The completely original story, which does not take place in a specific point in time in the Marvel world, will put “put characters that people have never seen together in locations they've never been before”, such as Captain America and claw swinging Wolverine, who will meet up in the game's second level.

But there will also be familiar match-ups, especially between friend and foe, which will provide, Phil says, “references for people who are fans, who know these characters, who know the history.”. We're treated to one such encounter between The Hulk and Abomination, which turns into a frantic, cinematic quick-time-affair in which The Hulk ends up smashing Abomonation over the head with his own fist before slinging him through one of Grand Central Station's huge windows as glass and LEGO go everywhere. Nice.

LEGO Marvel Heroes vs Sandman

As the trio of heroes finally take down a giant Sandman, through battling more mini sandmen and building huge water cannons that solidify the huge boss, allowing The Hulk to smash him to pieces, Phil tells us that – in the final game – you would now be taken to the game's central hub: New York City. And from the sounds of it, it's worth getting excited about.

It's not just a cardboard cut out: the recreated city will boast real landmarks such as the iconic Statue of Liberty, Time Square, and Central Park as well as specific Marvel locations such as Stark Towers. Phil wants the city to feel “alive”. “It's busy, it's bustling”, and there's no shortage of secrets to find or nooks and crannies to explore, which you will be able to do “at your own pace” from the game's very start. “When you go round corners or climb on rooftops, there's things everywhere”, Phil says.

The Marvel locations, scattered across the Big Blocky Apple, will be where fans of the comics will get their most nostalgic kicks. These areas will act as mini-levels that delve into the treasure chest of existing lore. Phil says that “there will be things where people go 'oh, I know where that's from, it's actually taken from this series or this comic book'”. These areas allow you to “take characters that don't feature in the main story arc and do something there that you wouldn't be able to normally.”

LEGO Marvel: 'Different' On Hand-Held Devices

The prospect of taking over 100 superheroes and villains through a fully explorable LEGO New York, constantly finding new secrets, is more than intriguing. As are Traveller's Tales' plans for future LEGO games. For the moment, the team are determined to make their titles “as accessible as possible”, which may give them a dilemma when the next generation of consoles finally come to town. “Younger games aren't necessarily going to have the latest tech, the latest hardware,” Phil says.

When it comes to LEGO Marvel Superheroes, there are still some secrets to be revealed. The game will be coming to both Vita and 3DS as well as PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and WiiU, and we're told by Phil to expect “something that is different to what we've done in the past” on hand-held devices. Make of that what you will, but be assured that, at this moment in time, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes looks like it's determined to make good on its lofty promises when it releases later this year.

There’s a videogame first that happens in Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, which we’re pretty sure shouldn’t happen in a game that’s entirely devoted to Shooting Things. And that thing is this – shooting the environments is more fun than shooting the generic bad guys. Far more fun.

It’s not that the shooting is bad, per se. Like previous outings in the series, Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel sees you and a partner team up to work your way through streets of endless bad guys, who are armed with guns, grenades and AI that means they never quite learn to keep their heads fully tucked behind cover when they’re not firing back.

You’re now playing as Alpha and Bravo, who replace Salem and Rios. Alpha and Bravo still suffer from the same verbal diarrhea that plagued the previous duo, as though the biggest threat they face on a mission is an awkward silence. And yes, the dialogue will still make you cringe. Alpha and Bravo no longer high-five each other or play air guitar after murdering an entire drug cartel though, so there is that.

Army Of Two Working Together (Sort Of)

The idea is that you work in tandem with your partner, one of you drawing fire while the other flanks around the threats to take them out. This works best when the map design forces it through split pathways or obvious side-routes that offer new angles to shoot back. It's not a revolutionary or new idea any more but when it works, it still feels fresh and interesting enough that it engages you.

The key part being 'when it works'. More often than not, the map design is messy and confusing to the point that it’s hard to really lock down any sort of tactic beyond surviving and fighting back. When The Devil’s Cartel moves from narrow streets into more open areas, threats appear all around you and it’s hard enough to figure out which bit of cover is safest, let alone how to initiate any fire-and-flank tactics.

This doesn’t make The Devil’s Cartel difficult, as it’s surprisingly generous with how many shots you can take before you have to be revived. It’s more that when you’re shot at from all directions, working in tandem with your partner is the first thing to suffer and when that disappears, the action feels clumsy. It happens surprisingly often for a game where co-op play is the main calling card.

Cover Me

What makes things worse is the cover system. You look at cover, a small cover symbol appears and you hit the appropriate button to begin an animation to slide towards safety. From here, you can then line up a symbol on the next bit of cover, the idea being that you spring from cover to cover without breaking a sweat.

Again, this works best on narrow streets when you have time to ‘aim’ where the cover symbol will appear and all the angles of cover ahead of you are flat. In wide-open areas, as you’re panicking under fire from all directions, it’s too easy to accidentally select the side of the cover you wanted rather than behind it simply because you didn’t have time to fine-tune the aim on where you wanted to go. Then there’s the additional panic of cancelling the run-to-cover animation – do I press the cover button again? Do I hold back? – followed by further panic when you successfully and unexpectedly cancel the automatic spring, leading to you standing upright in a hail of gunfire.

It’s not exactly elegant and it’s a cover system you’ll spend most of the game wrestling with. As a result, you’ll find one spot of cover and stick to it rather than engaging with the game’s cover-to-cover mechanic, just to avoid the frequent mishaps when something goes wrong.

The Devil's Cartel High Scores

Still, what’s important is that in a game where you’re either shooting or moving to the next location where you’ll be shooting, The Devil’s Cartel offers a punchy sense of feedback across all the weapons – the sound, the recoil, the animation of hit soldiers, the ragdoll effects, everything comes together to make your arsenal of weaponry surprisingly potent.

Score bonuses also reinforce the sense of feedback. Flanking enemies, headshots and shooting the same grunt as your partner are a few of the examples that award you points and encourage you to play in a different way that aiming in the general direction of distant movement and squeezing the trigger.

Some score bonuses serve as unintended rewards than a pat on the back – “SURPRISE! 25 points. DECOY! 25 points.” – but even so, they all contribute towards your Overkill meter, which slowly fills up.

Then you activate Overkill and everything changes.

Shooting The Environments > Shooting The Bad Guys

Score enough points between both players and you unlock Overkill, which temporarily awards you invincibility, infinite ammo and a new destructive tint to the weapon you’re holding. Watching the scenery crumble and shatter under your new-found strength is empowering in a way that most shooters fail to achieve, possibly because so few of them put attention in that sort of area and rarely do they do it so well. It’s why shooting the environments is more fun than shooting bad guys.

It’s a thrill that never really gets old and will justify unwarranted use of Overkill at the least appropriate times. There’s one guard left and you shouldn’t really use Overkill… but look at all the untouched scenery behind him! Activate Overkill. Watch bullets fizz off metal, cover splinter and crack, walls spit out concrete chunks.

It’s something that Visceral has clearly cottoned onto during development, because there are plenty of environment targets sprinkled around each mission, daring you to attack it with an Overkill onslaught. It starts with explosive barrels and oil tanks moves onto fireworks and toppling water tanks as you race through town firing a mounted machine-gun at anything that looks like it will react to your gunfire.

It’s a surprise that shooting at environments should be as engaging and thrilling as it is in The Devil’s Cartel but it’s not the biggest surprise here.

The Devil Cartel's Co-Op Fail

The biggest surprise is how poorly online co-op is implemented, given that’s the entire reason for this game – this series, even – existing in the first place.

It’s not drop-in drop-out co-op. Well, you can drop out without any problems, so that's half the problem solved, we suppose. But drop in? When a player wants to join your game, you’re asked if you want to allow him in (yes, fine) and then you’re warned that doing so will boot you back to the start of the chapter (wait, what?).

Co-op is supposed to be Army of Two’s speciality, the one thing it does right, and this clunky design feels like a 2008 throwback when co-op was a new and wonderful thing developers were trying out for the first time. Army Of Two has had three games to get this right. That it hasn’t managed to do so is bizarre.

Are You Human?

That in itself would be forgivable if playing alongside a human partner had some sort of impact on the gameplay itself but again, The Devil’s Cartel comes up short. There’s no indication that you’re playing with a human player rather than an AI bot once both players are locked in, which makes the co-op experience feel bland. Customisation is one of two things that separates a human Alpha or Bravo from an AI partner and even then, mask and weapon aside, it’s simply one set of drab mercenary uniform replaced by another.

The only other indicator of a human player is the occasional splash of head-smacking behaviour, such as the player who charges headfirst into a throng of enemies and then screams slurs at you until you revive his fallen body.

Each completed mission shows you a small table comparing stats in different areas and which player 'won' the mission but it’s too understated and impersonal to matter. Having a scoring mechanic like that prominent and in your face during the game itself might encourage a sense of competition, a tug-of-war between the players as they hunt down the last few soldiers to grab vital points. As it is, it’s too easy to ignore.

The end result is that playing with another player isn’t really different enough to playing with an AI bot and at times, is actually more inconvenient than going through campaign alone. It's not a problem if you have friends planning on picking the game up as well but it is a clear issue if you were planning on playing with random players online, which will be an inevitable state of affairs when your friends move on or if you come to this game later in its life.

Missed Opportunity

There are a lot of faults here – the messy map design, the awkward cover system, the surprising co-op fumble – but Army Of Two: The Devil’s Cartel manages to make its core action of shooting things engaging and fun, and that’s what will pull you through the game.

It’s not the co-op that makes The Devil’s Cartel unique in any way but rather, the destructive environments, which explode and shatter in a way that will leave even Battlefield fans nodding their heads with approval. It’s a shame that beyond the shooting that The Devil’s Cartel comes up short in almost every other area, leaving this as yet another fun but flawed outing in the Army Of Two series.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Terraria struggles, even now, to escape its comparisons to Minecraft. Where Terraria built its success alongside Mojang’s smash-hit indie success, now it appears to be porting over to consoles in much the same fashion.

And, just like Minecraft, Terraria has done a fantastic job of arriving on Xbox 360 almost intact. Controls have been reworked, enhancements have been made and a tutorial has been added.

Yet the core gameplay remains untouched. Almost, anyway.

For those not aware, Terraria is a 2D, randomly-generated dungeon explorer. While many of the game’s features are reminiscent of Minecraft – mostly the gathering and utilising of raw materials – it is still a game all its own.

It arrived during the peak of Minecraft’s popularity on PC and that, combined with a fairly low entry fee, made Terraria a huge success for the indie developer behind it.

It’s ostensibly a PC game, however, so there could easily be fears over the Xbox 360’s lack of a mouse and keyboard.

Worry not, though, the controls have been reworked to fit a controller and it’s surprisingly well done.

Just A Port To Xbox 360?

A tutorial has been added to the Xbox 360 version, something of a blessing when there isn’t immediate access to the fountain of knowledge known only as the internet.

It does a good job of explaining the basics to you, about what is required to make a habitable home and the most important information you’ll need to survive Terraria’s harsh (but decidedly pretty) world.

After that you’re on your own, though the in-game Guide – an NPC who will join your world when you first spawn in – will help keep those looking for a bit of direction on the right track.

Controls-wise the game has been ported to analogue sticks and triggers surprisingly well. Not only are menus simple enough to navigate (after a little practice, anyway), but the mining and combat is surprisingly adept.

It’s surprising because unlike Minecraft – which works well due to its nature as a first-person game – Terraria’s 2D plane and point-and-click controls are so heavily reliant on a mouse it’s something of a revelation to have it work so well.

It uses two methods. The first is a simple, contextual cursor that picks the best option relative to your position or your currently selected item. It’s erratic, it’s not always manageable but perfect for when you simply have to mince up all the terrain around you.

Press the right stick in, however, and you’ll have the cursor mode – a precise tool to provide more finesse to your creations, excavations or combat.

Surviving Terraria

It’s not quite as ideal as a mouse and doesn’t fully replace the ease and precision of the PC input, but it more than suffices and rarely frustrates. If Terraria on console should be praised for anything, it’s this.

You’ll be thankful for it as you delve further and further into the abyss too. The deeper you go the harder Terraria’s world will try and stop you, and if you were struggling with the controls it just wouldn’t seem fair.

First it’ll be timid green slimes, then skeletons, then giant mother slimes, then burrowing worms, then demons and lava and brimstone and… well, you get the point.

The Xbox 360 version of Terraria comes alongside a slew of content either already seen on PC (it’s already been updated and updated and updated) as well as a few pieces of exclusive content.

Everything else about Terraria remains untouched. On Xbox 360 there are a few noticeable drops in frame rates as you explore quicker than the game can load in non-visible terrain data, but even this is forgivable and never proves a nuisance to the game.

If you’re a fan of Minecraft – whether on PC or Xbox 360 – then you owe it to yourself to try Terraria. There are similarities in some ways, but as mentioned earlier Terraria is a game all its own.

Compared to the PC crowd, indie games are a hard sell on Xbox 360 and it’s true that elements such as the combat and platforming might feel a little clunky to those not already au fait with Terraria.

As such it takes a bit of learning to adapt, but once you do you’ll find a compelling game regardless of if you play it alone or with friends – which is highly recommended.

Is Terraria Better Than Minecraft?

It’s more RPG than open world explore-‘em-up. A large part of the game is iterative progress into the depths of the world, but all the while you’re improving.

Whether it’s gathering the necessary resources to craft a new piece of armour or special equipment for your home, finding a chest with some unique and entertaining piece of weaponry or simply searching that little bit further into hidden caverns and dungeons, there’s always something new to experience.

And this is why you should play Terraria. It’s not better than Minecraft, and it’s not worse – it’s just different. It’s equally absorbing and just as rewarding. 

There are few games on Xbox Live Marketplace that are safe purchases, and with the hours of content, unique approach to discovery and the originality of Terraria’s gameplay this is easily one of them.

Sure it’s not quite as manageable as the PC version and it doesn’t have the immediate appeal that Minecraft has, but by bringing something new to the table Terraria remains its own beast that needs to be played.

Version Tested: XBLA

If you want to find the real heart of Gears Of War: Judgment, you need to go back to February 2011, when Bulletstorm was released.

Bulletstorm developers People Can Fly enjoy a close relationship with Epic and it showed in its ballsy FPS. With chunky characters, over-the-top gunplay, comic book gore and gruff, macho characters, the studio had clearly been studying the Gears Of War series closely.

With Epic focusing its efforts elsewhere, that made People Can Fly the perfect choice to co-develop Judgment with the studio but more importantly, the debt has been paid back. Gears Of War: Judgment proudly shows a heavy influence from Bulletstorm, taking the scoring elements from that and fusing it with the bombast we’ve come to expect from the Gears series.

Marcus Fenix has gone. High scores are in.

Climbing The Gears Of War: Judgment Leaderboard

If we’re being really pedantic (and hey, that’s exactly what we’re paid to do!), then the Gears Of War series was moving in this direction anyway, albeit slowly. Arcade Mode was a quiet and unfairly overlooked inclusion in Gears Of War 3, buried beneath the explosions of single player and the constantly evolving multiplayer. Yet even if it didn’t get the attention it deserved, Arcade Mode showed that a high score competition could co-exist alongside the battle between COG and Locust.

Gears Of War: Judgment builds on those initial high score steps. It delves into Baird’s backstory and fills in some of the events from before Gears Of War 3 (with a later unlockable campaign taking place just after that game's conclusion) but interest in the story soon takes second place to interest in the scoring system, which dominates the game and becomes your main reason for playing.

Gears Of War: Judgment - How Scoring Works

You’ll notice a star meter in the corner, which slowly fills up as you kill Locust until it fills all three stars. Executions, Gibs and Headshots are a few of the kills that add to your star meter, as do unlocking Medals and Ribbons during play. It’s a similar system to Gears Of War 3, with Ribbons unlocked for killing more than one enemy with a grenade or chainsawing three enemies in a row and so on, and unlocking Ribbons now makes more sense given there’s a direct reward for doing so.

Having that scoring system in place doesn’t seem like a big change but it’s surprising how it switches the dynamics of traditional Gears gameplay around. Instead of playing to survive, you’ll find yourself playing for points. You’ll risk a few more seconds of aiming and leaving yourself exposed to nail a valuable headshot, or dare an execution on a crawling Locust rather than pumping its wounded body with Gnasher rounds from distance.

Optional COG objectives make the level harder in exchange for star bonuses. That sounds like typical videogame sequel fare, implemented as another bulletpoint to be added to the marketing checklist, but the way these have been implemented is brilliant. People Can Fly has managed to weave them into the narrative so they don’t feel tacked on and better yet, these objectives rarely repeat themselves and dramatically change your tactics.

One example: one COG objective takes away Longshots as you encounter a bridge full of Locust that needs to be crossed, with Sonia noting how easier that weapon would make the task. Another example: heading down into the deep, dark bowels of the earth means passing through the dusty archives and battling reduced visibility.

As a final touch to fresh up the Campaign structure, People Can Fly has brought Horde mode into the mix, peppering moments through single player when you’re fending off waves of Locust. It makes sense given the popularity of the mode and even though it always feels like a jolt to suddenly be dumped from the standard gameplay fare into a Horde-mode style level, they’re good fun and help break up the Gears routine.

Gears Of War: Judgment - New Weapons

New weapons also help alter the experience. While the bulk of the new entries are variations on the aim-and-shoot arsenal of old, there are some interesting new ideas. Tripwire Crossbow does exactly what the name suggests, giving you a long-distance alternative to planting grenades, while Stim Gas grenades provide a healing field for your team.

In the meantime, returning weapons haven’t undergone any major revisions. Hammerburst fans might be disheartened to find it now has a fierce kick that sees you fighting to keep the reticle lowered when firing several shots but the other weapons haven’t undergone anything quite as dramatic.

However, while the new weapons do have a place in Gears Of War: Judgment, none of them have enough impact to encourage players from abandoning the traditional Lancer plus Gnasher combo although that dramatically changes in multiplayer - more on that later.

Slide Into Cover, Blindfire

But this isn’t People Can Fly trying to reinvent the Gears cog. There’s enough here to freshen up the experience enough that veterans will feel it’s justified revisiting the series but the moment-to-moment gameplay is largely the same. You’re still sliding into cover, blindfiring at threats, meleeing in panic and switching to Gnasher for up-close encounters.

If anything, there might be a slight whiff of disappointment that while the structure has been freshened up, there’s still a lot that’s familiar. The animations haven’t changed. Weapon specific executions are the same as Gears Of War 3 (unless you’re using a new weapon, of course) and there hasn’t been any change to the other animations for roadie run, chainsawing, meleeing and so on. There arguably isn’t a lot of room to freshen up those animations but we’re four games into the series now, so some of these animations are really old.

There aren’t many new minor gameplay flourishes in terms of mechanics that we saw in Gears Of War 3 either, such as that game’s cover-vault kicks and meatshield tag-and-kick. The biggest change that affects gameplay is grabbing a meatshield no longer forces you into using a pistol and leaves you free to use a weapon such as Gnasher or Hammerburst, making grabbing meatshields a more viable option.

Even so, this feels fresh enough that Gears fans will enjoy campaign. Multiplayer, however, will prove to be somewhat more controversial…

Gears Of War: Judgment Online

Gears Of War: Judgment’s multiplayer looks like Gears and sounds like Gears but when you begin playing, you realise there are a lot of subtle changes that change how it’s played.

There are four modes – Overrun, FFA, Domination and Team Deathmatch. Overrun is an attack the objective style mode that builds on Beast mode of Gears Of War 3, putting you in the shoes of both defending COG and attacking Locust. FFA is Free-For-All having every player for himself while Domination sees your team securing and holding onto three points.

No King Of The Hill, no Execution (that's coming later as DLC), No Warzone and so on. That’s the first big change. But when you start playing you realise just how much the gameplay has been tweaked and adapted to People Can Fly's vision for online.

No active reloads. No down but not out. No Lancer plus Gnasher default set-up. Gnasher itself has (finally!) been toned down. Ink grenades have been beefed up. You can walk off high ledges. COG vs Locust replaced by Red versus Blue. There are different classes of character to choose from. And if you hated how loud the footsteps were in Gears Of War 3, you’re really not going to like how loudly players stomp around maps now.

These changes make multiplayer much more accessible and much faster than Gears has ever been but some of the tactical edges we've come to expect from the series have had to be sanded down for this to happen.

The traditional Gears online match has been about digging in and team-mates flanking around the enemy. That doesn’t really happen anymore – partially because only Domination and Team Deathmatch cater to that sort of team-versus-team gameplay but mostly because the action is now too fast to settle down into the tactical back and forth we’re used to. This is where Gears veterans may find themselves feeling as though Judgment is a step back.

The changes to multiplayer make FFA work as a valid mode – an all-against-all mode would have been awful in previous Gears outings – but the mode itself isn’t really compelling enough to make up for the loss of traditional Gears gameplay.

Co-Operative Not Competitive

To counter this, the Horde mode side of multiplayer has been buffed up, so Overrun and Survival are now arguably the stars of the show.

This is where the class system really comes into play. You can choose between Medic (heals team-mates), Scout (snipers and throws scouting grenades), Soldier (gives ammo) and Engineer (set-ups sentry and repairs fences). Soldier is arguably the only indispensable class because ammo refills are essential but the fun comes from the unique team set-up your team has, depending on the make-up of the group and watching everyone find their role.

So while the competitive side of Judgment feels as though it has taken a step back, the co-operative side has taken a huge step forward.

The weeks and months ahead will see the Gears community determine how successful Judgment’s multiplayer is  but those who found previous Gears titles difficult to get into – something Epic has often admitted has been a real problem – will find Judgment as friendly as the series can possibly get without really compromising itself.

The Best Gears Yet?

People Can Fly has done a great job of keeping Gears Of War: Judgment fresh and relevant with next-gen looming on the horizon, and shown real bravery with the multiplayer that at the very least pays off with the co-operative elements.

The high score ethos that runs through Judgment keeps veterans from feeling as though they're going through the motions but the real success here is that the studio seems to have solved something Epic never could - multiplayer is accessible to newcomers.

The standard has been set high through the series and Gears Of War: Judgment doesn't let the side down. Although it doesn't have the bombast of Gears Of War 3 or impact of the orginal in the series, it's still very good for single-player and great for those who will play it with friends.

At long last, it’s here. It’s finally bloody here.

Darkstalkers has been the one Capcom fighter notable for its absence in recent years, while the likes of Marvel vs Capcom: Origins and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have found their way onto Xbox Live and PSN (Capcom vs SNK 2 is still somewhere further back in the queue, snivelling and wiping its nose.)

Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono has been banging the Darkstalkers drum for several years now, dropping hints and teasers at a full-blown revival that never. Worse still, there didn’t seem to be any real reason for Darkstalkers being held back, given it’s one of the more interesting fighting games in Capcom’s back catalogue.

But there’s no point going over all that history now though because Darkstalkers is finally here. And it’s really good. Really, really good.

Chain Combo System

If you’re new to Darkstalkers, what seems like a typical 2D fighting game starring monsters instead of Ryu and Ken actually has plenty of unusual mechanics under its surface to match the eccentricity of the cast. Like we said, it’s one of the more interesting fighting games Capcom has.

The main method of comboing is to use chain combos, which is to tap moves in a sequence from lightest to hardest. Roughly translated, that means you can do sequences like light kick, medium punch, medium kick, hard kick. It’s an easy combo system to grasp even if the timing is more demanding than you might expect (as with all fighting games made in the mid-late 90s).

Not all characters rely on it – B.B. Hood is more about tight links, Victor is more about throws and so on – but chain combos are often the easiest way to inflict damage. They are the fundamental core of attacking in Darkstalkers.

When you knock someone down, you can follow up a pursuit attack by hitting up and punch, leaping after them to do more damage if timed correctly. Another change from the expected formula is that ES attacks replace traditional supers, the key difference being that there’s no pause to signal an incoming super.

Darkstalkers And Its Odd Moves

The commands also wonder into unusual territory for a Capcom fighter, with some moves pushing you beyond what has been committed to muscle memory by thousands of hadoukens over the years.

For example, Demitri initially seems like the typical shoto character but he has a dash-cancel dragon punch (towards, towards cancelled into SRK + P), grab super (down, towards, down/towards + PP) and a raging demon (LP, MP, towards, MK, MK). Felicia can charge meter, Sasquatch has a down, down + P move that seems him blast ice and Hsien-Ko has a super activated with LP, HK, MP, MP then up. Which is… bizarre.

Even dashing isn’t straight-forward. There are air-dashes, diagonal air-dashes, ground dashes that allow for air moves and teleporting dashes. Individually, those moves aren’t particularly awkward but collectively, they add to Darkstalker’s unique edge.

Capcom was already experimenting with a Custom Combo system in Street Fighter Alpha 2 by the time Darkstalkers 3 had released, and so the latter title saw something of an equivalent with Dark Force. Initiated by hitting two buttons of the same strength, it temporarily powers up characters in different ways – Felicia summons a cat helper, Rikuo can move freely around the screen with super armour, B.B. Hood can fire endless missiles and so on.

Matches don’t centre around Dark Force like they did with Custom Combos and later V-Ism in the Alpha series but again, they add an extra touch to Darkstalkers, helping it stand out as unique.

Darkstalkers' Defensive Options

Just like attacking is unusual, so is defending.

Pushblock is a familiar concept nowadays but the way it’s done in Darkstalkers will challenge you. You have to drum punches while in blockstun and the more punches you hit, the more chance you have of activating pushblock.

What this means is unlike the press-two-punches-and-activate-pushblock we’re all used to now, where the only consideration is if your opponent will cut his blockstring short to bait and punish a failed pushblock attempt, merely doing pushblock in Darkstalkers requires dexterity and skill. It’s the cornerstone of defensive play.

Guard cancel moves are another unique element of defending yourself. Each character has a move that can be used to cancel out of block stun, without having to spend any meter to do so unlike an Alpha Counter or suchlike. The drawback is that these moves can be baited (and some guard cancel moves are useless) and again, keeping with the fact that Darkstalkers comes from an older fighting game era, the input timing is quite strict. You can also roll on wake-up, so you can avoid pressure as you get back to your feet.

Yet for all the bizarre mechanics, Darkstalkers never descends into the sort of anarchy you see in, say, Marvel vs Capcom. The fighting remains grounded and mostly plays out as an extremely fast-paced fighting game that favours rushdown.

With modest combos in comparison to most fighting games and limited defensive options, the priority here is shifted onto overwhelming your opponent with fast mix-ups, mostly forcing guesses between overheads and lows.

Where's Donovan?

For the sake of completion, Darkstalkers 2 (or Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge, to give it its full and official title) is also included. There are subtle differences between this and its sequel – the lack of Dark Force, the slower speed and ‘proper’ rounds being the main ones. There are also some characters present that were dropped for Darkstalkers 3 – Donovan, Pyron and Huitzil are the unlucky names that weren’t brought back.

There’s a tutorial mode across both games that’s not hugely comprehensive but does a good job of covering the basics such as movement, anti-airs and staple combos. The descriptions are user-friendly and have a healthy dose of personality injected into them. They’re useful too, going right up to advanced 1-frame link combos for characters, ensuring most bases are covered.

Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution is still the standard for teaching players the basics and intricacies but for a tutorial mode, this tutorial will still go a long way to helping those new to Darkstalkers find their feet.

Darkstalkers Visual Filters - Scanlines And Cigarette Burns

If you’re familiar with Darkstalkers, you’ll be pleased at the wealth of options available here. You’ll know what to expect from Iron Galaxy simply by looking at what it did with Street Fighter III: Online Edition, because a lot of the options crossover.

There are various visual options, ranging from the awful child-like potato print colours of the smoothing to the scanline filters that recreate the smoky atmosphere of arcades. You can manually set how many frames of delay there is for the GGPO netcode and a series of in-game challenges are ticked off as you play (pulling off a certain amount of EX moves, winning with a timeout and so on).

Most importantly, this is an excellent port. We’re told there are two frames of delay in comparison to the arcade version but it’s impossible to tell in-game. The only notable differences are aesthetic considerations such as the inclusion of remixed music or the lack of an attract mode.

Training mode is as comprehensive as Street Fighter III, allowing you to record and playback so you can work how to punish certain attacks or practice against certain moves. New players will be annoyed that move lists involve calling up a character select screen and selecting who you want, adding an annoying (and needless) layer of hassle when trying all the characters out for the first time, but that’s the only real complaint.

Darkstalkers Resurrection Online

Get over the abundance of Talbain and Lillith players and online play holds up extremely well, a reflection of Capcom’s generation-long trial and error in getting the netcode right for its fighting games. Unsurprisingly, given they share GGPO roots and the same studio, the Darkstalkers netcode is remarkably similar to how Street Fighter III: Online Edition performed.

That means online play feels remarkably smooth and seamless and the ability to tinker with the GGPO frame delay – the better your connection is, the closer to zero you should set it – means that matches within your region (Europe, America, etc) will run as well as they possibly can. The GGPO magic has been talked about by PC players for years and Darkstalkers is another title that shows it works just as well on console.

One issue is that rage quits seem to incur disconnection penalties for both players, which is why the leaderboards are peppered with players who have a 1% or 2% disconnection rating. It’s unlikely to matter too much in the long-run, when the community shrinks down to the hardcore and the majority of online play moves towards Player Match, but it does render the disconnection rating useless for Ranked Match if it’s not an accurate portrayal of how likely a player is to quit out of the game.

Like Fighting Games? Get Darkstalkers

It may have taken a while but there is no denying that Capcom and Iron Galaxy have had enough trial runs to figure out the perfect way to re-release older fighting games. The upside to Darkstalkers taking so long to hit Xbox Live and PSN is that it’s benefited hugely from this long wait, as the package works on a nostalgic level for fan service and it also has an online mode to be proud of, which may not have been the case had this been released a few years ago.

Those new to Darkstalkers will find the pace of the series thrilling and frightening, and the lighting speed is almost certainly a bigger barrier to entry than the occasionally awkward commands and strict inputs.

Even so, while Darkstalkers fans will obviously be pleased by this release, those who haven’t yet tried the series will find themselves won over by how well put-together the overall package is.

It feels fresh and relevant even today, while the eccentric nature of its characters and design ensure that even with the genre feeling somewhat bloated, Darkstalkers Resurrection belongs with the best fighting games have to offer.

Version Tested: Xbox Live Arcade

Doing things a little differently is good. That seems to be what filmmaker Josef Fares believes.

He’s recently put directoral duties for the big screen on hold and is helming the upcoming downloadable title, Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons in conjunction with Swedish-based Starbreeze Studios.

And he truly believes they’re on to something special: “I’ve always had this passion and love for games. And this is a dream come true for me. I pretty much paused my career just to do this.”

Despite his background in film, Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons was, Fares insists, “always a game.” The idea initially came about when Fares was helping out a friend and a group of students with a prototype.

"It wasn’t until after that he approached Starbreeze Studios, a game developer traditionally associated with shooters.

“He showed me the game, and talked about his concept and I said I want to do this, this is something new, something different, it’s going to be something that has never been done before,” states CEO and President of Starbreeze Studios Mikael Nermark.

“I think the team are really pumped up for this because it’s a different way of making a game,” says Fares. “The good thing about this is that we have total creative control.”

After working on bigger budget shooters like Syndicate and The Chronicles Of Riddick, Starbreeze seem genuinely excited in the rather drastic change of tone.

Shaking Up The Games Industry

Fares wants more than a shakeup for Starbreeze though. He wants a shakeup of the entire games industry.

We’ve been told that we’re done with controllers; that they have nothing new to give. This is, Fares believes, “bullshit.” He’s also firmly of the belief that games studios need to stop their preoccupation with running time and instead focus on the unique experience of actually playing a game – however long it ends up being.

“I don’t even know where that came from, I don’t care! It’s like if you go see a movie or hear a song – you don’t care (about the length), you care about the experience – that’s the important thing. And I think it’s become like a bad habit.”

“It depends on how you value your time. For me, if I have three great hours then that’s value for my time, instead of ten hours of replaying the same shit.”

Replaying the same things again and again in varying degrees of difficulty is something Fares has promised will never happen in Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons.

The game, which follows the two eponymous siblings as they search for a cure for their ailing father, aims to constantly change and defy expectations.

As an example, in the hands-on demo we played was one section where the brothers placed a sheep inside a wheel in order to lower a bridge that they could then both cross. That kind of puzzle, Fares insists, would not appear again in the game in another guise.

“People in my team maybe thought I was a little bit crazy, because it costs a lot of money to make everything unique – you create a lot of bugs and a lot of issues, of course.

"But I think for the players it’s important, because when we see players play (the game), they don’t know what’s going to happen next and I love that.”

Original Achievements

With Brothers, Fares and the development team want to encourage exploration and challenge gaming convention. Everything, including the Achievements, have been created with the idea of being a little bit different in mind.

“We have 12 Achievements in this game, but none of them are like ‘collect this, do that’ – all of the Achievements are almost like short stories.”

To illustrate this, at one point during the demo the little brother, the more mischievous of the two, releases a bird from a cage and waves gleefully as it flies away.

Later in the game, we are told, if we look through a set of binoculars we’ll see that same bird meet another bird and fall in love.

It’s an Achievement, but one that will only happen if players explore and interact. The older brother – the more reserved and responsible of the two - doesn’t release the bird from the cage, so trying different variations is key to getting the most out of the game.

“You can run through the game, but if you explore, get the Achievements, you will have a richer experience. So it’s up to you,” says Fares.

One Analogue Stick And One Button

To make exploration feel as natural and easy as possible, controls are kept simple. One analogue stick represents each brother, and the corresponding trigger button – left for elder brother and right for the younger – initiates their interactions.

Letting the trigger button go ends that interaction. Aside from the option to move the camera manually with the left and right bumpers, those are the only controls.

“Because we don’t want any menus or anything, one of the reasons to have one button was that you don’t have to teach a player something new all the time.

"From the focus tests that we’ve done, people don’t have any issues at all – people get it without any button indications,” Fares says.

Though somewhat bewildering at first, after a few minutes controlling two characters feels more natural, allowing a pleasant flow of simultaneous action and the added satisfaction of synchronicity if you manage to pull off actions in tandem.

The demo moved at a gentle pace; encouraging players to explore without ushering them along to the next area or puzzle. Brothers isn’t designed to be challenging; it’s designed to be enjoyable and memorable to players.

“I just want them to have a good experience. What they feel, how they feel it, doesn’t matter. I want them to go ‘this was cool’– and to pretty much forget about time. Time is not an issue here. The experience is the issue – that you feel something when you finish this game.”

Fairy Tale Charm

There’s a fairy tale charm to the soft, sun-dappled world we’ve seen so far, where the brothers can pause on any number of benches and simply drink in the views – ranging from towering snow-capped peaks to quiet golden pastures dotted with haystacks to villages where gardeners prune, housewives sweep and the local drunk gets happily sozzled without being too much of a nuisance.

There’s no dialogue, as the brothers themselves and all NPCs speak in nonsensical gibberish, but everyone still conveys enough emotion and intent to have individual character.

The ultimate objective of Brothers is to forge an emotional connection between the player and the central siblings, with an experiential hook driving players forward rather than the more traditionally gamer-friendly promise of challenge.

It’s a type of game we’re seeing more and more, and will continue to see emerge in new and interesting ways with the recent critical success of thatgamecompany’s Journey.

“These kinds of games, even if they’re not executed perfectly, I buy them just to support them and I hope there’s more of them in the future…

Those are the games that will revolutionise the industry, those are the games that are going to take gaming a step further in the future.”

Will Originality Be Rewarded?

And what of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons? Isn’t Fares worried about doing something differently? That the risk will outweigh the reward?

“I never hesitate when I believe in something. I truly believe in this… I’ve been in the situation where I’ve had nine people in a room telling me, this is not going to work, and I’m saying, you are wrong – this is going to work.

"And I know it, I just strongly believe it, because I’m making a game that I would love to play myself, and I hope players will appreciate that.”

Sometimes it pays to do something a little differently. Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons is scheduled for release on XBLA, PSN and Steam sometime this spring.

Good series never seem to die. Halo, Sonic the Hedgehog, and soon Mass Effect: many iconic franchises will undoubtedly churn out game after game for years to come, for better and unfortunately, in some cases, for worse.

And now, with Gears Of War: Judgment, we can shove Damon Baird and the gang into that category. Actually, you probably shouldn’t risk shoving Damon Baird anywhere, unless you want the sharp end of a Lancer Rifle through the middle of your face.

Gears of War: Judgment bookends the Gears trilogy, with one campaign set 14 years before the original, and another, unlockable campaign set just after the events of the third game.

Which – if you’re a dedicated fan with unanswered questions, craving more of the trademark cover hopping and polished shooting – is very exciting indeed. But for many, the main draw of the Gears series has consistently been the multiplayer.

Whether you’re slicing through armies of locusts split screen with a friend or tearing some online opponent a new one in a simple Team Deatmatch, there’s something about the fast paced gameplay and the slightly obnoxious camera that means that your time with Gears’ multiplayer always ends with white knuckles, finger imprints in your beloved controller, and adrenaline pumping through your veins.

Why Survival Changes Multiplayer

There’s a plethora of new multiplayer game modes to experience here: Free-For-All, OverRun, which pits two teams of five COGs and locusts against each other, an objective based Domination mode and, finally, Survival mode.

The last of these will provide both a nod to central pillars of the series so far, and a bold step in a new direction – or so the developers claim.

In Survival, like in previous games, you’ll still be facing waves of Locusts, increasing in difficulty as you progress. So far, so classic Horde. However, there are two game changers.

The first is that, unlike Horde mode, you’ll be protecting a small, destructible objective, maintaining defences to keep your foes from destroying it. The second is that there’s a new, class based system in play.

You battle it out with the locusts in small, claustrophobic areas, with a single objective normally sitting at the back of the map, as far away from the Locust spawns as possible.

It is the be all and end all: if the objective starts to take damage its state of repair will dwindle rapidly and cannot be recovered, meaning even a rogue Ticker can put a huge dent in your hopes of success.

Stopping the locusts from reaching it is your five man squad and a host of automatically erected defences such as barricades and sentry guns, which are designed to ensnare and distract the onrushing beasts allowing you to take them out safely.

Maps are divided into numerous smaller sections, each acting as an individual stage, and once the objective is destroyed in a certain area, your team falls back until all objectives are destroyed and you stare at a game over screen in embarrassment or anguish, depending on which wave you managed to reach.

The action is far more bottlenecked than ever before: enemies converge on one point from all directions, leaving battles hectic from the first sound of gunfire until the last.

Things start off simple, as you would expect, with predictable spawns and manageable lines of attack, but as you move through the waves, enemies will start to hit you hard in co-ordinated assaults, trying to overwhelm you with sheer numbers and targeting your defences in an attempt to reach the objective.

Pick Your Class

At the start of a match, players can choose between four characters:  Damon Baird as the Engineer, Augustus Cole as the Soldier, and newcomers Sofia Hendrik and Garron Paduk as the Medic and Scout respectively.

Not the most imaginative class list I’m sure you’ll all agree, but let’s face it: if you’re buying this game that probably won’t bother you. If there’s not enough players to fill the roles, the AI will handily do it for you, never leaving you a body short.

Each class has a specific set of weapons as well as class specific ability, which can be used on a cool-down basis. With the abilities, as with the classes themselves, there’s not much originality on show.

Medics, equipped with lancer and sawn off shotgun, can throw Stim grenades, creating an area of affect in which fallen comrades can be revived and those under fire healed, and Soldiers lay down ammo crates for their squad mates to collect.

Scouts, semi-automatic rifles in hand, can climb up to hard to reach locations and toss beacon grenades, marking enemies within a certain radius, making them extra vulnerable to your bullets, and Engineers can use their blowtorch to repair defences – vital for extended survival – as well as deploy a sentry gun to cover them while they sure up.

The results of this change are twofold. Firstly, gameplay is more varied. Racking up executions and pumping bullets into locust flesh endlessly never fails to be fun, but it’s nice to have the option to do something else.

Fed up as an engineer in one spot? Why not go on the offensive, shotgun in hand, to the front line, blasting locusts in the face and plonking down a sentry gun for extra firepower?

Tired of the same piece of cover as a medic? Back up, survey the scene, and throw a healing grenade to the front lines, allowing your teammates to push forward into the haze.

Secondly, to get to the later waves you’re going to need a hell of a lot of teamwork, which is what you want in a co-op based multiplayer. It means that if you want to be useful, it won’t cut it to simply have the fastest trigger finger on Xbox Live.

Working As A Team

Points are awarded separately for combat and support, meaning that unselfish team play can catapult you to the top of the leaderboard. Communication becomes extremely important – more so than in previous Gears titles.

If you’re a Scout up on your perch and want ammo, you’re going to want your Soldier to know so that he can lob some unceremoniously your way, and the same for an Engineer taking heavy heat, begging for the medic’s assistance.

Fortunately you’re not going to have to rely on voice chat – although that’s still the best method – to make use of the system; icons pop up above friendly heads if they’re in need of an ammo boost or health fix-up, accompanied by some in game chatter from their character. This notification system works well, although it does reveal just how shallow the system is.

The whole thing is clearly designed with shooter newbies in mind: the way the classes complement each other is too perfect, and a one-button system dumbs down the feeling of co-opearation in a big way.

It turns Gears into a game of ‘look for icon above enemies head; press button to help’. If this class-based system stood alone it would fall: it’s shallow and formulaic, but you have to think of it in context.

Combine it with an objective based game mode and you’ll get one of the most frantic multiplayer experiences around, with enemies and allies alike focused on a single point, ammo boxes, grenades, and sentry guns flying everywhere. This is Gears of War: already one of the best co-op recipes around, and all this does is add a little extra spice.

More a sprinkle of thyme than a mouthful of garam masala, but sometimes, that’s all you need.

If you’re looking to blow your head off then you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re a Gears veteran looking for something that adds to an already great experience, then this will be just the ticket.

It’s funny how things come full circle. When Uncharted released back in 2007, it carved itself a new fanbase thanks to the fact it took parts of the Tomb Raider formula and did it better.

Now, Tomb Raider has been rebooted, cribbing its platforming and gunplay straight from Naughty Dog’s action-adventure series – and adding its own depth and individuality on top. From a gameplay perspective, it’s better than the series which stole its thunder thanks to stealing back its innovations and putting its own spin on them. Uncharted out-tombed Tomb, now Tomb is (in some ways) out-Uncharting Uncharted. Circle of life.

From the moment Lara finds herself on a dark, foreboding island in the middle of the sea, the game blends set-pieces, shoot-outs, exploration and puzzling with near-perfect pacing and variety. 

One moment, you’re clearing a room full of goons using the bow and arrow for headshots, the next you’re scaling a cliff-face with a pick-axe, zip-lining across yawning chasms and piecing together puzzles, all while searching for treasures, relics and other XP-boosting collectibles.

She's A QTE

One early sequence sees Lara stealthing  up a mountain path, grabbing enemies from behind and slipping arrows into their skulls without being seen.

Then the action leads straight into a QTE-driven wrestle with a knife-wielding killer. 

Whether steering Lara through a raging river or swerving debris along a manic cliff-face slide, or even paragliding through a jungle of evergreens, Lara certainly gets into a few scrapes. 

In fact, it always feels like the game has another surprise around the corner. For every few moments you spend shooting or puzzling, you’re treated to several adrenaline-pumping segues which push Lara from one area to the next. 

These set-pieces make the game feel more dynamic, lending proceedings a relentless pacing, delightful in the variety they inject.

Linear Croft

Game progression feels linear, with Lara being funneled through fairly set paths, especially during set-pieces or shoot-outs. 

But then, every so often the game lets go of your hand and leaves you free to roam the area. 

Here, though progression is linear (there’s always a ‘way to go’ to find the next clipscene), several of the environments are built to be fairly open, packed with multiple platforms, hidden paths, optional tombs, collectible relics, treasures and GPS caches to find.

Platforming is a joy, with jumps, ledges, bits of plane and cliff-faces all explorable. But it doesn’t just retread what we’ve seen before; Lara’s pick-axe allows her to scale sheer cliffs, while balance is important – mis-time a jump and you’ll have to hit X to regain grip. It’s a little change, but it feels slightly more nuanced as a result.

Each area has at least one ‘base camp’, allowing Lara to fast-travel back to previously-explored parts of the map, Red Dead Redemption style.

Base Boosters

Base camps are also where Lara upgrades her weapons and skills. These hidden collectibles (as well as kills) give Lara XP to spend on new abilities.

These can be anything from new ways to use weapons, to hunting talents and such.

Similarly, collectible ‘salvage’ can be found on enemies and scattered in boxes across environments, which can also be spent on weapon upgrades.

The system lends the game an extra level of depth, a slightly RPG-esque feel which gives Tomb Raider a depth beyond other action-adventure titles.

This nuance extends to Lara’s survival ability.

With a press of the left bumper, the picture darkens and swooshes a radius of discovery around our heroine, revealing which ledges can be climbed, highlighting enemies and creating a beacon in the distance to mark the next objective. The ability is a boon both to environment traversal and puzzle-solving.

The island setting itself is gorgeous; a dark, dangerous world filled with menace; sheer cliffs, enemy bases and shanty-town settlements. 

From the vast mountain peaks covered with snow to the lush jungles teeming with live deer Lara can hunt for XP, the world is varied and interesting.

Quality Over Quantity

It’s also fairly small, with few ways to move between each area.

This is not an open sandbox, but a collection of linear levels laid end to end, often (but not always) linked up. This is a game Crystal Dynamics want to you wring every drop from; find every last collectible in every level, learn the placement of each ledge, platform and puzzle and comb all the environments for unlocks and achievements. 

It’s a different approach to many games, but one which works well here, highlighting the strengths of the quality over quantity argument and creating a freedom not seen in other linear action-adventurers like Uncharted or Enslaved.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the title, though, is its gunplay.

Lara’s arsenal is simple: stock pistol, rifle, shotgun, arrows.

But complexity comes in the secondary abilities of each weapon, and the upgrades which can be added to them. 

The shotgun can be used to blast away debris which blocks some paths, the rifle can fire grenades with the right bumper and the bow can be upgraded to shoot flaming arrows (perfect for firey headshots, or for certain puzzles) as well as rope.

Upgrades come in the form of quicker reloading, better damage, bigger clips and gun-related ‘finishers’ (e.g. hit Y to finish a hurt enemy with a close-range pistol to the temple).

This is a weapon set which has clearly been carefully chosen, each one adding something different to shoot-outs as well as contributing to the puzzle and exploration side of things.

Roping You In

The rope-firing ability of the bow is the most versatile. 

Many environments are peppered with bits of rope tied to or hanging from ledges, posts and cliff-faces.

Firing rope arrows into these, Lara can create zip-lines, climbable rope-wires and pull objects towards her.

This is mixed right into puzzles: often you’ll need to shoot a rope arrow into something to change its position or location and set a chain reaction in motion.

It lends a physics-based element to puzzling, allowing Crystal to do something different with a lot of the solutions, forcing you to think about how to use fire, rope and good ol’-fashioned shotgun blasts in equal measure to progress

These puzzles also use the island’s weather. Often, you’ll be forced to contend with howling gusts of wind ripping through an environment.

This wind interacts with objects, adding another twist to what might be otherwise simple head-scratchers.

While no puzzles are particularly taxing, the environments’ traits, combined with the various tools at Lara’s disposal, keep things fairly varied throughout the game.

Naturally, as one of the most iconic characters in gaming, there's just one thing some fans will want to know: how Crystal Dynamics has reworked Lara Croft.

Angel Of Indecision

The answer is: with mixed results. 

Lara 2013 is probably the most believable interpretation of the character yet, but Crystal has still got a few things to learn about creating compelling people.

At least to begin with, Lara is more grounded, more real. She feels a bit like Bond did in Casino Royale; human, fallible, forced into situations which test her to her limits – not just a killer for the sake of it.

Lara has just the right blend of fortitude and femininity, mixed with a vulnerability that makes her feel like she’s living on the edge, making kills because she has to, not that she necessarily wants to. 

About halfway through the game, Lara finds herself crashing into another deep dungeon, before dusting herself off and exclaiming ‘I hate Tombs’. 

Much like Bond’s ‘Do I look like I give a damn’? shaken/stirred moment, it’s clearly an attempt to distance the character from her past, marking her out as different. 

But because the game is fairly poor at portraying character development, it just comes off as painfully transparent, with all the subtlety of a flaming arrow to the face. 

In fact, the one real let-down of the title is in its cutscenes and character building. 

You simply don’t care about Lara and her crew that much, even though the underlying story is pretty decent (though it does end up veering off in a direction at odds with its gritty opening).

The voice acting here is also so-so, the script uninspiring and the character animation nowhere near Naughty Dog standards. 

Though the groundwork has been laid for a better script next time out –and we definitely do want to see this Lara again – it all lacks a little dynamism. 

Caught Napping

When fellow crew member Sam is kidnapped, we found it hard to muster any motivation to save her. Of course, we had to, but we didn’t feel the thrill of suspense pushing us on. 

Her character is bland and under-developed, as is much of the rest of the supporting cast: middle-aged scientist, token beefy dude, nerdy guy with ‘Esc’ Key t-shirt… stop us if you’ve heard it before.

Lara’s believability as a character also wanes the more abilities you unlock.

By the game’s end, Lara’s hot-swapping rifle and shotty, putting the gun barrel to an enemy’s face and blasting his brains out for an ‘expert rifle kill!’. 

Of course, those gameplay elements, mostly through upgrades, are brilliant fun, but they do somewhat take away from the picture the game paints of Lara as vulnerable, making her seem more and more like a ruthless, cold-hearted killer the more upgrades you can unlock. 

Uncharted knows this and never hands Drake so much power that he enjoys his kills, but Tomb Raider gets the balance slightly wrong, even if it helps make the game more complex than that other series.

But despite these story gripes, this new Tomb Raider is still a leap in the right direction from a gameplay perspective.

Each gameplay mechanic is simply top-notch and easily the rival of any other action adventure title, taking well-worn ideas and adding a layer of depth and individuality which makes them feel like a step forward, cribbing from current genre kings, baking in more complexity and wrapping it all up in a presentation which still feels like classic Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider 2013 gives the series a fantastic new start, which is exactly what the reboot should feel like for this all-new Lara Croft – just the beginning.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Put simply, Crysis 3 is mundane. It probably doesn't seem it looking at the visuals, but as a game there's very little holding it all together.

There's no doubting Crysis 3 is a good quality game; Crytek has put a lot of effort into crafting a visually arresting shooter, that's guaranteed.

Crytek just seems to have forgotten to put the game in there.

But first, the graphics. Even on Xbox 360 this is one of the best looking games of the generation; on PC, it's next-gen before it even begins.

There's no denying that it makes the experience all the more entertaining: the visual awe of navigating these gorgeously crafted and uniquely designed areas never waivers.

Well, until the final level that is. That section is unnecessary, ridiculous and uninspiring. In keeping with the series at least, if nothing else.

Best of all is the openness to these environments. It's not quite as open-world as the original Crysis but the scale is huge all the same.

Initally you're funneled through corridors in the first level, but once things start going the environments really begin to feel open with what seems like multiple tangents or diversions.

Even if you're choosing overt confrontation, you'll only survive if you make use of the stealth cloak and bow.

The truth is, though, that this isn't quite the case; there are barriers of some form in each level and if you like to search the worlds of your videogames then you'll soon begin to spot the limitations in its design.

And if you're hunting for those collectables and intel, you'll find these barriers all the more.

The openness does affect the gameplay in two ways, one positive and one negative.

The freedom to explore a situation as you see fit should always be praised, and Crytek has handled it well with Crysis 3.

In a similar fashion to Batman: Arkham Asylum, you'll battle through individual areas, each a contained instance in their own right.

With Crysis 3, however, you'll be given the option to tackle a group of enemies however you please: silently takedown individual soldiers, run in guns ablazing or simply sneak through them completely.

Thanks Crytek, for giving us the choice.

The trouble is, these environments are a little too large now. It worked in Crysis because it was open-world, it was much easier bypassing situations if that's what you wanted.

The bow is hugely overpowered: one-shot kills and invisibility means few things can get in your way.

In Crysis 3 you're forced into overcoming the obstacle, whether you want to or not.

If you're playing in a stealthy fashion this is even more of a pain, because if you're forced into combat and end up dying you'll need to repeat the whole process again - which is a bugger when the areas are so large.

The best example of this openness is actually towards the end, where you're given three objectives in a huge enivornment and the freedom to combat them however you wiish. This is what the entirety of Crysis 3 should be about.

You have the ability to tag enemies too, as you did in Crysis 2. While it is still optional, these environments are so large it takes much more work to track them. But it's a necessity just to avoid getting spotted.

And you will get spotted. A lot.

Unfortunately the AI hasn't had much work done to it from the issues in Crysis 2. While they can better handle the superpowers of Prophet, they just as often throw grenades at each other instead of you. A hilarious but unforgivable flaw.

The worst part is their hawkeyed talent for spotting you. It doesn't matter how far the distance is, if you're in the line of sight of a guard they will spot you immediately.

This is one of the best looking games of the generation. Easily.

Should your stealth cloak run out in the middle of nowhere, your enemies won't be startled or surprised but will immediately open fire. No questions asked.

Crysis 3 might have next-gen graphics, but it doesn't have next-gen AI. Whatever that means.

And that's about all Crysis 3 does that's new - and in the grand schemes of things even that isn't that new.

Everything else is more of the same. This is Crysis, and for some of you that's all you needed to know. It's a visual spectacle, a showcase of polygons and textures but beyond that it's not much more.

In fact the best the game has to offer is over after the first couple of missions, and even those don't really provide much in the way of excitement.

Crysis 3 just becomes a slog of one arena after another, and though the nanosuit continues to keep you feeling like the superhuman warrior you are it still feels like more of the same.

In a lot of ways it's reminiscent of the Killzone series, where the second in the franchise was the more finely-honed game, building on the ideas set before it in the original.

This level is just one example of Crysis 3's uninspiring level design.

But much like Killzone 3, Crytek's latest Crysis is all show. It's more of the same and while it's enjoyable enough as a shooter, it doesn't really provide much new or compelling.

It's hard to really pinpoint what's wrong with Crysis 3, but then if it wasn't for the graphics there'd be very little reason to continue playing at all. It just feels mundane.

It's enjoyable at its core, but that's not enough. We need a bit more originality from our games, and if we don't acknowledge that then the next-gen of gaming is going to be very depressing indeed.

Crysis 3 is proof that a good quality game crammed with fancy graphics is enough to see you through to the end, but you still need a little more depth if you're going to truly appreciate it.

As much as we're loathe to admit it, FPS games need a little more spectacle outside of the graphics. We're not asking for more explosions or Michael Bay levels of action, but all shooters need a bit of showmanship if they want to standout.

And Crysis 3 doesn't do a good enough job of that.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

This review only takes into account the first two chapters of The Tyranny Of King George.

Assassin’s Creed 3 is one of the biggest games Ubisoft has ever produced, but despite its size and grandeur there were elements that didn’t quite come together.

NowGamer's original review went some way to explain just why Assassin’s Creed 3’s ‘buffet’ experience struggled to come together as well as it had done in the past, despite the third game in the series clearly offering some of the series’ best moments.

There was pure gold contained within Assassin’s Creed 3, it was just unfortunately nestled between a lot of very average gameplay.

But, Ubisoft has proven it can learn and apply changes to the Assassin’s Creed template. Assassin’s Creed 2 is evidence of this, but unlike its spin-off sequels Brotherhood and Revelations, The Tyranny Of King George is approaching things in its own, very different, way.

Divided into three chunks – The Infamy, The Betrayal and The Redemption – The Tyranny Of King George takes Connor out of the standard timeline and dumps him in an alternate reality. One where his mother is still alive, magical powers are a part of the warrior’s journey and George Washington has proclaimed himself King with the help of the Apple of Eden.

Things couldn’t be more different from Connor’s adventures in Assassin’s Creed 3, but can Ubisoft’s clear experimentation with the staple gameplay translate into something interesting or will magical powers, alternate timelines and evil Kings be a step too far?

According to Assassin's Creed 3's DLC George Washington is really mean. Look at him stabbing Connor in the heart.

The Infamy & The Betrayal

It’s immediately clear that Ubisoft is having a little bit of fun with the Assassin’s Creed form in The Tyranny Of King George. Having already revealed that the DLC’s kooky narrative is still very much part of the series canon and with Connor aware that’s something changed, the self contained story of The Tyranny Of King George could have far reaching effects in establishing the future of the series.

But in the here and now Connor has to deal with the madness of King George and what’s immediately evident is just how little things have actually changed. One of Assassin’s Creed 3’s major criticisms was the appearance of linearity, the perception that the game’s narrative was leading players by the nose through its levels, giving little opportunity for exploration.

It’s a perception that unfortunately hasn’t been addressed. Despite there being many opportunities to explore off the beaten path, there’s never really any incentive. Which is strange because The Tyranny Of King George, on the surface at least, is all about experimenting and giving players new incentives and gameplay.

George Washington might be ruling over America with an iron fist afforded by the mystical powers of the Apple of Eden, but Connor is granted a few new gifts of his own. Returning to his native roots each chapter in The Tyranny Of King George brings with it a new magical ability that Connor can exploit in battle.

After completing sky walks, in which Connor explores the boundaries between the perceived world and that of the Animus, he gains:

• Wolf Cloak
• Eagle Flight
• Bear Might

Essentially, these are magical powers and it’s these gameplay hooks that really give The Tyranny Of King George its edge.

In the first chapter Connor can turn invisible and call on a pack of wolves to take out a number of assailants and things only get stranger from there. 

It's an interesting idea, but Ubisoft doesn’t ever truly take advantage of Connor’s new abilities and instead presents missions and scenarios that feel like they’ve been lifted from the main campaign.

The DLC's new abilities don't really change the gameplay that much, but do give the player the opportunity to have a little fun.

You’ll perform much the same role in battle as you always have with the innovation left to the deft narrative flights of fancy and the occasional dream sequences. Overall, The Tyranny Of King George’s interesting premise appears to be exclusive to its cutscenes rather than presenting the player with a totally unique environment.

Though you’ll traverse the same locations as the main game, there’s only ever a light sprinkling of new details to absorb. The odd poster here, some dead bodies there; it rarely, if ever, feels like the world is suffering under the rule of a maniacal dictator.  

It is interesting to see some of American history’s most well-known Patriots warped into moustache-twirling bad guys, though. Even if the world itself seems largely unaffected by the tumultuous changes. It feels more like a dream and unconnected to the wider fiction, despite Ubisoft’s insistence that it is indeed canon.    

Quite why nobody seems alarmed by an ethereal pack of wolves appearing from thin air and attacking people highlights this disconnection. As the chapters progress this only seems to worsen with Connor learning how to turn into an eagle to fly between buildings quickly appearing ludicrous with no one reacting to this incredibly feat.

The problem is, the gameplay implications of Connor’s new abilities largely sit well within the open-world gameplay remit. Eagle Flight is essentially Batman’s grapple hook from Arkham City and the promise of Chapter 3’s Bear Might will hopefully give players the ability to smash their way through the inevitable battles.

Each DLC chapter has one main setpiece to get your blood flowing, but they're nothing you won't have already seen.

But nothing feels weighted in reality or even the highly twisted version of reality that Assassin’s Creed has always presented. The Tyranny Of King George offers more of the same and feels lightweight while doing it.

But there’s a level of quality here that can’t be ignored, even if Ubisoft’s storytelling relies far too heavily on the cutscene rather than the world itself. The first two chapters offer an extensive adventure that raises serious questions regarding how the Animus can present the past, Desmond’s demise and what on earth is actually going on.

All of these questions will be answered in the third and final chapter, according to Ubisoft. It’s just a shame that The Tyranny Of King George doesn’t further exploit what is the perfect excuse to go to town and offer somet gameplay that's really different.

As it stands the first two chapters are merely interesting diversions that remind players of both why they loved and hated aspects of Assassin’s Creed 3. Where Ubisoft goes from here, though, could be very interesting indeed.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Insomniac’s Fuse has had something of a strangled and confused time during development.

It hasn’t helped that Insomniac has quite publicly changed its mind a number of times regarding the level of humour and proposed seriousness of its co-op shooter, but this back and forth undecided development process has muddied the general perception of Fuse and what, if anything, makes it different.

Sitting down to finally play through a chunk of its campaign (which apparently appears just after the halfway mark) it becomes clear that Insomniac is struggling to define the Fuse experience.

With Insomniac and EA announcing recently that the game would be delayed to June/July, it gives Insomniac a chance, however brief, to readdress exactly what is currently holding the game back.

But what should Insomniac look to changing in its brief but crucial delay?

Humour

Much was made of Fuse’s original reveal back at E3 2011, when it was announced as Overstrike. Billed as a colourful co-op shooter with Insomniac’s expected level of comedy-infused moments, Fuse took a rather unexpected route and began to downplay these unique elements.

After a warm reception, Fuse’s muting of Overstrike's humour and colour seemed to take Insomniac’s game in a rather predictable direction and many of the studio’s fans spoke out. Those criticisms were heard loud and clear, according to Insomniac’s CEO Ted Price, who admitted as much in a recent NowGamer interview.

Price explained how Insomniac eventually ended up back-peddling and reinserting Fuse with much of the colour and humour that had been removed, but what has this back and forth development process meant for the game itself?

Well, as you’d expect, Fuse’s tone is a little muddled.

Insomniac’s vocal fans were right, though. When Fuse’s colourful, cartoon-edged world works, it’s a unique joy to experience as well as feeling fresh, too. Ted Price might like to explain that Fuse’s art design and world were inspired by mixing District 9 and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol together, but that doesn’t really do it justice.

Jumping into a random level it’s hard to gauge just how well Fuse is pulling everything together. It’s certainly a lot brighter than the more serious re-reveal had suggested it would be, but it now appears to sit a little awkwardly between the two types of visual styles.

Hopefully, these tonal inconsistencies will be ironed out because at its core, Fuse has a compelling setup that deserves exploring.

Insomniac is promising that levels will have multiple routes through for the various characters.

Difficulty

It was something of a surprise to jump into Fuse’s campaign (with one co-op partner and two bots) and discover that combat was crushingly difficult. Though Insomniac explained that by the halfway point we were inserted into, players would be well-versed with the Fuse weapons and mechanics, it did feel like the enemies found it a little too easy to overpower us and the bots we had fighting by our side.

Forcing co-op partners to work together through adversity is one thing, but at this stage, it appears that Insomniac hasn’t provided players with the appropriate tools to deal with the onslaught the enemies can provide. This was clear in the Fuse’s main campaign but blindingly obvious in its Horde mode spin-off, Echelon, which sees enemies drop in front and behind the player.

Fuse’s combat requires that players utilise their specific abilities and Fuse-based weapons to succeed in combat. Combining these attacks should mean that players are more than capable of taking on the swathes of crack-shots that head you way. But, it’s not quite as easy as that.

Relying on cover and swift communication between players to combine attacks, combat is actually rather tricky. This is due to Fuse’s mix of normal and specialised Fuse-based weaponry (of which each character has one) as well as the ways in which players are required to work together.

Fuse encourages this style of play by reinforcing it with XP boosts that allow you to level up faster, but this reliance on your fellow players (or the AI itself) could be what’s ultimately holding Fuse back.

To offer a comparison of sorts, Borderlands 2 offers similar co-op play that rewards players for working together, but it doesn’t require that you do to succeed. Gearbox finds a balance between the two styles that currently is lacking from Fuse.

This might not necessarily be as debilitating as you’d think, given Fuse’s obvious co-op focus, but another issue quickly arises and given that Insomniac only have a limited time for polish and improvements over the next few months this might prove much more troubling…

AI

Though we struggled to come to terms with Fuse’s difficulty level and style of play that emphasised teamwork over solo gung-ho theatrics, it was the AI that consistently let the side down during our brief gameplay stint.

Though far from a finished build of the game (especially now considering Fuse’s delay) the AI struggled to deal with the complex co-op interactions that were required.

Even with one person helming another character, the AIs inability to interact with what we were doing had a definite impact on our success. Despite Insomniac’s Ted Price’s insistence, rarely would an AI controlled character run to our aid and help us back into the fight.

The heavey empahsis on team work really does require constant communication between players.

Recognising the awkwardness of playing Fuse alone, Insomniac has included a ‘hot-swap’ feature that allows you to ‘Leap’ between unoccupied characters and utilise their distinct abilities. This should give you some idea just how important each character is to the success of a mission but also just how limiting the AI actually is.

How much impact these issues have on the overall experience depends on how much Insomniac can get done over the next few months. From the small slice of gameplay we had the chance to jump into, a delay seems all but inevitable and almost certainly the right choice.

Despite the issues we’ve described here, there’s still every chance that, when experience within the context of Fuse’s campaign, these salient issues fade into the background. But, as it currently stands, Insomniac was right to delay Fuse and use the time to polish what is largely a positive game.

You probably haven’t played Obscure. The little known – some may say, Obscure – co-op survival horror series launched on PS2 before a Wii/PSP sequel. It was decent.

Now, the series is being re-launched on PS3 and XBLA as a cartoony same-screen 2.5D co-op side-scroller similar to the likes of Shank.

The action sees you take control of one of four horror cliché characters: the jock, the nerd, the charmer and the cheerleader, teaming up with a host of weapons to clear objectives and kill zombs.

The biggest change from the third-person adventure titles of old isn’t the switch to a side-on perspective, though – it’s the colour.

Gone is the black and white murk of old, in its place is a veritable pallet of greens, yellows and reds. Lots of lots of red.

Drawing on influences like Left 4 Dead and Shank, lead dev Francois Potentier says his Mighty Rocket Studio is enjoying the freedom to create the game it wants, not have to worry about pleasing hordes of fans.

He said: “I’m a fan of Dead Space and Resident Evil so I won’t say that these games are crap, they are really good.

“We have more freedom to innovate and try something new. 

“When you have a lot of money, millions of dollars, your game has to be a success. “Our games cost a lot less so we can try to do new gameplays and test gameplay and if it doesn’t work, we have ten people so we can do something else. It’s a lot easier for small studios to innovate.”

He went on to say PSN and XBLA has been a breeding ground for innovation this generation, above and beyond popcorn blockbusters like Uncharted.

“When you have games like Uncharted or something, you are obliged to have big success, so maybe you prefer to stick to what you know will work and appeal to a broad range of people;” he added.

He continued: “Are they less innovative? I think so, this is my opinion. I like Uncharted, I’m a big fan of this kind of game, but I think you find more innovation on XBLA/PSN than a game in a box.”

Indeed, Mighty Rocket Studios was set up purely to work on Obscure, after previous studio Hydravision closed after development on the game began.

The team has many of the same people – taking a very different approach for the third Obscure.

It may not be too original, but its slick arcadey feel and downloadable pricepoint could win the series some new fans.

As Potentier put it: “As long as I develop fun games and have enough money to do the next game, I don’t need a Porsche or anything like that. I want to live for my passion, not being Bill Gates.”

It's 2013 and we've seen every shooter imaginable.

We've seen first-person shooters and third-person shooters, military shooters and cel-shaded shooters, horror shooters, light-gun shooters, multiplayer shooters, abstract shooters, retro shooters and even portal shooters.

If you're a shooting game in 2013, chances are we've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, shot the t-shirt.

And if you're thinking a game called Special Forces Team X doesn't bring anything new to shooters, you're right.

But It's Really Good

That's our concise, why-we're-paid-the-big-bucks counter argument. It's really good. Special Forces Team X doesn't have a single original bone in its body, nor does it offer any ideas you won't have seen done several thousand (possibly) times before in the genre.

But Special Forces Team X is put together with such confidence and such style, you'll ignore feelings of familiarity and find yourself drawn into it anyway.

It's described as a cover shooter but rarely plays out that way, with players often racing about the maps and only snapping to cover when a prolonged battle over distance beckons.

Special Forces Team X is one of the speediest, fastest third-person shooters we've played, with the cover system only really coming into the equation for objective modes as both sides dig in deep.

Unleash The Dogs

The one mechanic that sets Special Forces Team X apart from its genre rivals is that it'll randomly generate map variations before each game. These are picked from tilesets voted for by the lobby, with the resulting map loosely adhering to some vague sense of logic and structure - you won't have three buildings floating in the sky or anything abstract or weird.

But it means you always have that 'learning the map' freshness you do when you first learn a multiplayer map, as leaderboard positions are dictated by the speed with which players learn maps as much as their speed with the trigger finger.

There are other interesting mechanics too, though these riff on well-established genre motifs. Attack dogs for one. Team Bonuses (and team respawns) for another.

There's also customisation powered by your character's level, with weapons and aesthetic items unlocked.

Add these elements together and the resulting game is an interesting mix of Borderlands-lite visuals (including numbers appearing when you shoot enemies), Counterstrike-style map design and Ghost Recon-esque shooting. It's a familiar mix and yet, despite that, it's undeniably engaging.

This is all backed up by sturdy netcode that rarely had any hiccups while we played, so you're focused on fighting the other team rather than fighting lag.

Like we said - Special Forces Team X is really good.

Where The Players At?

The biggest problem Special Team Forces X faces is how long it'll last as a game. There's no single player here, which is probably the right move, but that means it's entirely dependent on the multiplayer component and an online community sustaining the game.

We jumped in a week after launch and had no problems finding matches (although we rarely had more than one or two games before a disconnection to host message kick us out) but the list of open lobbies was worryingly short.

Compared to the high-profile launches of Gotham City Impostors or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Special Forces Team X seems to have been lost in the mix, squeaking onto Xbox Live Arcade without any fanfare or buzz.

Will this last one month down the line? Six months? A year? We're not confident Special Forces Team X will have the long life it deserves and it's a shame. While wholly unoriginal, there's a lot of fun to be had here.

Our advice is if you're sitting on the fence, jump in now and make the most of the community that's there because it could be that sooner rather than later, the lack of community will make your mind up for you.

Version Tested: Xbox Live Arcade

How can Gearbox go from Borderlands 2 to Aliens: Colonial Marines? What happened?

At its very core Aliens: Colonial Marines misinterprets Cameron’s ‘Vietnam movie in space’, shows little regard to the innovations of the FPS genre and just down right walks all over the Aliens canon to such a degree that fans of the film will have a hard time comprehending just what Gearbox were thinking.

And that’s the real question that many will come away with after playing through Aliens: Colonial Marines; how can Gearbox go from Borderlands 2 to this? The answer comes within seconds of the credits beginning as Colonial Marines is announced as a ‘Gearbox presents’ title and a list of other, lesser, studios is reeled off underneath it.

Aliens: Colonial Marines doesn't really feel like a Gearbox game in the same sense that Borderlands 2 is. Billing itself as the official sequel to Cameron’s film, Colonial Marines’ story is Fox sanctioned and now an integral part of the Weyland-Yutani, Ridley-Xenomorph and Prometheus-Engineer story and it goes out of its way to throw a spanner in the works.

Though Ridley Scott’s Prometheus provides only tangible links to the original Alien series, Colonial Marines attempts to join the sagas together in the clumsy manner that many videogame licences have attempted over the years.

The story isn’t clever, it’s not subtle and adds nothing other than planet-sized plot holes that are explained away with a wave of the hand as merely ‘long stories’ too lengthy to explain within the game itself.

The Alien series has seen its fair share of diluting as games, movies, books and comics have all taken a slice of the first two movies and attempted to spin-off in entirely new directions, Aliens Vs Predator being the obvious and worse culprit. Gearbox had the opportunity to reset and re-engage with Colonial Marines and deliver a game that for many had always been in the back of their minds.

But that simply isn’t the case. The awkward plot could be ignored if Aliens: Colonial Marines’ gameplay captured the frantic survival horror action that Cameron’s movie so perfectly envisages. It’s clear within minutes of the game beginning that Gearbox hasn’t found a satisfactory way to merge horror, action and squad-based gameplay together in Colonial Marines, despite the licence appearing to be the perfect fit for it.

Whether it’s because Aliens has been continual referenced in games since its release – be it in Halo, Borderlands or literally every sci-fi FPS ever – Colonial Marines fails to balance Xenomorph scares with its below average standard military combat. Gameplay here never rises above mediocre.

What’s immediately obvious is just how overpowered the player is. Even playing alone on the hardest difficulty level, Aliens: Colonial Marines is a walk in the park. Neither the human or alien enemies prove to be anything more than bullet sponges with the most basic AI and it’s such a shame.

Over the years we’ve become accustomed to Giger’s Xenomorph failing to embody the same primal terror it so clearly imbues in the films and we’re now completely accepting that a rifle butt to the face of one of these creatures is enough to fend them off – which is totally incorrect if the movies are to be believed.

Combat lacks the tension needed and largely provided for by the Xenomorph resulting instead to one note spray and pray encounters.

Cameron’s Aliens might not have had quite the same majesty of Ridley’s original, but they still managed to decimate the marines silly enough to wander into Hadley’s Hope.

Gearbox attempts to inject some life into things by providing different types of Xenomorphs – Spitters, Crushers and other zombie-like Aliens that explode if you get too close – but these all manage to upset the series verisimilitude as well as fail to provide satisfying gameplay.

There’s no concession to horror or tension in Aliens: Colonial Marines. It isn’t enough to just re-create Cameron’s sets and hope the memories of the film are able to carry players through. Forcing you to lift up the iconic motion tracker to hunt down threats is an interesting way to instil tension and remain in touch with the film, but like much of the Aliens nostalgia references, it’s under utilised.

Aliens: Colonial Marines never goes beyond simply providing it as an option. It doesn’t give the player any reason to use their motion tracker and when enemies rarely surprise you, you’ll quickly forget that it’s even there.

It simply isn’t fun fighting Xenomorphs and it certainly isn’t very scary. Though Gearbox does create a reasonably tight close quarters FPS experience, it also continually places enemies out of the reach of your weapons or in the human’s case, behind cover. Nowhere is it more evident that Gearbox didn’t know how to merge the Aliens fan service with a competent FPS than in the forced ways to asks players to engage with the Weyland-Yutani mercenaries.

It’s also surprising to see that much of what Gearbox touted as Colonial Marines’ innovative gameplay, the co-op Left 4 Dead-styled gameplay, the ‘last stand’ setpieces that require players to weld doors and setup turrets, is practically none existent.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a basic FPS with corridors, be they small interiors or large exteriors that do little but funnel streams of easy to dispatch enemies at you.

The Alien architecture can at times look impressive, but it's probably because the rest of the game is poorly realised visually it's just the contrast tricking our eyes.

And that’s what’s most disappointing; Gearbox has shown it has a fundamental understanding of the FPS genre and how to exploit it to get great results, but Aliens: Colonial Marines’ gameplay couldn’t be further from something like Borderlands 2.

Even the inclusion of XP and weapon upgrades fail to give your guns a real tactical advantages and even manage to change the classic appearance of the weapons removing the nostalgia value entirely.

It’s clear that over Aliens: Colonial Marines’ lengthy development process the original vision for the game has been lost. Levels and gameplay events shown at preview stage have been removed and with an ending that rushes to the finish line without thinking twice, it’s obvious that elements of the game have been left on the cutting room floor.

What’s left, though competent enough to provide a distracting FPS experience, is bland and technically rough around the edges. Screen tearing, texture pop-in and a visual style that only ever really does a good job at capturing the alien environments and nothing else, so much here misses the mark.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a colossal missed opportunity.

Version Tested: Xbox 360

Some games naturally loan themselves to a brief, artificial encounter. Some games do not.

BioShock Infinite is definitely the latter.

It's like popping to the Caribbean for a sandwich. The journey's too long, and the view too beautiful, for a fleeting visit. It's an experience to savor, not rush, so even though we're being forced to explore the skyscape of Columbia against the clock, we're going to make the most of this preview with Infinite's producer Mike Soden, and writer Drew Holmes, alongside to keep us company.

If you haven't quite kept up with Infinite, don't panic. Truth is, we know little more than we did in our BioShock Infinite preview last December, and Irrational are hellishly good at keeping  their story under wraps. You play as Booker DeWitt, a guy as cool as his name with a debt to clear and a very specific job to do.

Dispatched to the floating city of Columbia at the turn of the century, DeWitt is tasked with mysteriously retrieving the mysteriously imprisoned mysteriously mysterious Elizabeth. Why? Uh, we still don't know. But what's clear is that Lizzy's kind of important to the people of Columbia, and the townsfolk aren't too keen about you dropping by.

Previews inevitably mean substance over style, but when it comes to BioShock, you just can't play that way. There's too much to see and too many nooks to explore, so whilst some might opt to push on through at speed, we can't help but idle over every inch, just in case there's a kickass collectible tucked away someplace. After all, this is a franchise that demands exploration, and even turning against the grain of the waypoint brings its own rewards.

But it's not just the exploration that might slow you down. Columbia? It's stunning. Steeped in classic, early-American architecture and a palette so bright it's breathtaking, it's impossible not to be drawn into this light, bright, vibrant skyscape. But much like Rapture, you can sense that something's amiss, and it doesn't take Booker long to inadvertently scratch the surface and discover the evil bubbling underneath…

Rapturous Welcome

"Much like Rapture, we view Columbia itself as a central character," explains Irrational writer, Drew Holmes. "The way we tell our story is so much through the world, you have to spend that meticulous time and detail. We can write dialogue to our heart's content but at the end of the day, you gotta be sure that the information that [the players] need is placed there in the world."

But it's not just that, Holmes admits. The bright colours? Open areas? The skyline? "All those things - they're fuelled by the desire to try something different. We never want to repeat ourselves at Irrational."

Producer Mike Soden flicks to an image on his tablet. A rough, marker sketch of a cartoon sea and sky, there's a cross striking out the former and a check/tick approving the latter. Arrows point up to the clouds.

Seems Holmes wasn't kidding when he said Irrational were anxious to move away from what's been done before.

You'll recognise Infinite on sight. Columbia has been realised with the same deliberate, conscious care as Rapture, and it's peculiar how familiar it looks given Rapture was such a deep, damp, dark place.

That said, it's the characters of Infinite's world that you'll be mostly drawn to, and the preview, irritatingly, leaves us with more questions than answers as we slide into the second section. As DeWitt steps into battle and Lizzy scurries into cover, a nagging thought occurs: hang on. This isn't just an elaborate escort mission, is it?

Clicking Into Place

"Every time we think of an escort mission, we go 'Oh, geez'," laughs Holmes. "It was really important to us to make sure that Liz never feels like a burden to the player. The minute someone got frustrated [during development], we were like: this can't ever happen. It doesn't matter how cool the story is, or how cool the gameplay is - if the character that's supposed to be with you the whole time frustrates you, you won't care about the game."

"We wanted to make sure that she was someone you wanted to spend time with," Holmes adds. "The story is very much her story, and she's as much the protagonist as Booker is. She is not a damsel in distress but a fully-realised character, and not only narrative wise. She's also incredibly helpful in the gameplay, too. She's not an escort mission. Liz is a part of the world and a part of the gameplay and she's gonna help you along the way."

It's this that seems to be much of Irrational's focus. Whilst sculpting this new, cloud-clad colony came with it's own challenges, the meaningful and relatable realisation of Infinite's lead characters were of great importance during development. And nothing was going to be taken for granted.

"We had to re-work this really minor section early on in the game," explains Holmes. "We'd done all this work on Liz in terms of making her useful in combat - her animations were great, she looked fantastic, she was charming etc. But we were getting feedback that people were just not quite connecting with her. You have to go back, be the archeologist, and say: okay, what is she doing? Without going into spoiler territory, there's this one small reaction she had to Booker at this critical moment.

So we went back and changed it - this very small thing - and suddenly, everything clicked into place. People fell in love with Liz. It's really interesting. I think often times the solution isn't quite clear, and what you may think is the problem turns out not to be the problem at all. It might be actually something very small, but it starts to nag at people and they get frustrated. It's part of the overall game development process."

This attention to detail - particularly that of leading lady Liz - is evident in the gameplay. In the second segment we're pitted against a familiar-looking, formidable foe, and Elizabeth's timely interventions help Booker seek out additional salts and weapons, as well as help keep him agile thanks to her intriguing ability to 'tear' reality. Combat in Infinite? It's not easy. You may find yourself drawing upon Elizabeth's seemingly impressive AI more frequently than you might first think. Holmes was right; this girl is not a damsel in distress.

Grown-Up Gaming

Which is a surprise, quite frankly, given the horrifying secret of Columbia's purported success. Within the opening half hour you'll be tasked with making some uncomfortable decisions, and bear witness to the city's unapologetic bigotry, exposing that the zen-like peace of Columbia comes at the cost of freedom and tolerance. Heavy stuff? We know. But this is BioShock, where our first shuffled steps into the franchise threw us headfirst into the charming concept of infanticide.

But whilst Irrational are demonstrably unafraid of telling a mature story, have the recent controversies surrounding storytelling and adult themes forced a period of reflection in the writers' room?

"I think you're immensely conscious of it," says Holmes. "But nothing is sensationalised. It's certainly core to the factions of the world, the thinking of the world, the feel, the beliefs, and to the characters. As long as these things have a purpose and have context within the larger story, I think it diffuses a lot of the headline-grabbing 'Oh, they're trying to do this!' stuff. It's not about that. It's about what is central to the story, and not being able to tell that story without these larger themes."

"It's certainly a story that you've never seen before," he adds. "And I'm not talking about just in a game - I'm really trying to wrack my brain to try and draw a parallel to any story seen in any medium."

We wish we could concur. Or disagree. Or anything, really. Sure, what we've played has been rich, fluid, and polished, but so little of the story has unraveled that it's impossible to comment. Is this a good thing? Yeah. Probably. But when Holmes finishes his interview with hints about the ending, you can't help but be left just a little smitten by Infinite. 

"I'm really excited to see people's reactions to the ending. It's certainly something that no-one has ever seen before. Ken [Levine]'s talked about it a couple of times, how proud he is of it. I don't want to hype it too much, but we tried to account for everything. This is certainly the best game I've ever worked on."

"But at the end of the day? My opinion and the opinion of the team doesn't really matter. It's ultimately about what people's reaction to it is, and how they connect to it."

It’s one thing to ape Call Of Duty, but a whole other to mimic that and Halo. This is something that the Crysis series’ multiplayer has always done and, in doing so, has managed a fine line between the two.

Now we’ve had a healthy dose of gameplay from the on-going Crysis 3 multiplayer beta, we’re surprised to see Crytek has really honed this very tiny market.

Here’s some of our impressions with the new and improved multiplayer mode.

Shotguns Are Overpowered

There’s a disclaimer on the beta that insists things like balancing could change prior to release, and it is worth remembering that. However, something like this seems a little tough to change.

Stick on invisibility; get up close and blast away with a shotty. As soon as you figure that one tactic out, chances are you won’t want to swap loadout again.

Snipers seem to remain a persistent threat, but again as long as your clever about your invisibility usage you should have no problems against these guys.

And say Crytek did nerf the shotgun (it’s a one-hit kill from a pretty decent range) all it could do is weaken it to the extent that it’s useless. And then no one will use it.

If you get a chance to play the multiplayer beta, seriously: try the stealth/shotgun combo. You’ll rack up kills in no time and likely feel a little guilty about it when you do.

Learning to navigate maps will be more important for success in Crysis 3.

Clever Map Design

These guys are super soldiers. They can leap large chasms, lift heavy vehicles and deftly grasp onto ledges. Crytek is aware of this, and has implemented rather clever methods of enabling you to feel like a superpowered warrior, even in a map filled with superpowered warriors.

The Museum map best shows this off, though. Fallen trees lead up to higher ground – and if timed properly you can leap from one side to the other with ease. There’s a number of situations where this has been built on the map, and it makes for some smart design.

Knowing your maps – and how to get around – is now as important as the weapons you use and the timing of your nanosuit abilities. If you’re quick enough you can get the drop on an enemy without them ever understanding how or where you attacked from.

It means there’s an increased level of verticality to each of the maps, which is something Crytek has insisted was important to the single-player content too. That design choice has clearly carried over here, and it works surprisingly well.

Here's Hunter mode in action.

The New Mode: Hunter

Hunter isn’t an original idea for multiplayer games. Halo has had its Infection mode for some time now, which sees a couple of powerful players on one side against an uneven team with rifles.

The concept is the same in Crysis 3’s Hunter mode. Starting as a Cell operative, you’ll need to try to survive as long as possible against the Hunters. Your equipment is weaker, your abilities limited and your senses hampered. The Hunters aren’t invincible, mind, but it’ll take teamwork to survive.

Hunters, meanwhile, have access to unlimited stealth, silent bow and arrow weaponry and the usual increased strength, shields and speed that comes with the nanosuit.

In other words, they’re tough. Properly tough.

A Hunter’s job is to whittle down the Cell operatives one by one. If a Cell soldier does die, they’ll respawn as a Hunter. Not original, perhaps, but there are subtle differences that make this mode quite thrilling.

The proximity reader, for example, instils a sense of panic in any Cell operative. You’ll find it hard to keep your cool when the creepy beeps of the detector signals a nearby Hunter, and even legging it won’t help since this invisible predators can run faster than you.

Teamwork is the only way you’ll survive, and careful management of the team’s (limited) supplies of EMP grenades – the only real solution to combating a Hunter – will be important in this mode. Good fun, though.

Alien Technology Brings Brief Power Surges

New to Crysis 3’s multiplayer is the inclusion of alien weaponry. A big deal in the main campaign, these powerful – but limited – pieces of equipment randomly spawn on the map.

In an homage to classic Unreal Tournament or Quake multiplayer gaming, these are a sudden but exciting way of claiming dominance. There isn’t quite as much depth to the system – you won’t be counting seconds until a respawn, for example – but the power is a handy reward for your team.

These could be a high-end plasma grenade launcher that obliterate anyone in the area or, our favourite, bipedal mech robots that is the equivalent of seeing a tank roll in on Battlefield 3.

It’s a subtle difference – and perhaps even an unnecessary inclusion into the game – but if your team are finding themselves up against tough odds, remember that these short-lived solutions are here to help out.

It’s the equivalent of the Gatling gun turrets that can be dismounted in Crysis 2’s multiplayer, but on a whole other level. Besides, it’s fun to turn people into bloody bits.

The easiest way to describe Terraria is to say that it’s Minecraft in 2D with a dash of Metroid thrown in for good measure.

It’s an easy explanation, but it’s also incredibly lazy and in no way gets across just how impressive Terraria really is.

Xbox 360 and PS3 players might like to think they’re ahead of the curve in regards to indie hits like Minecraft on XBLA (which is close to rivalling the PC version in sales) or even Journey on PSN, but there’s a huge wealth of games that have bypassed consoles entirely.

Fortunately, one game that's making the transition to Xbox 360 and PSN is the Minecraft-like Terraria. A 2D platformer/RPG hybrid that randomly generates enormous levels and presents them in a wonderfully kitsch pixel-art inspired design. 

Terraria was designed by Andrew ‘Redigit’ Spinks and though it might look like it is simply twisting Minecraft’s 3D world and putting it onto a 2D plain, there is so much more to Terraria than that simple assumption implies.

But, that’s content that has to be worth playing and though Minecraft’s mouse and keyboard setup translates to the control pad rather harmlessly, Terraria’s slightly more complex controls need a little tweaking.

Look how retro Terraria looks. It's visuals really are great, especially when you get to see just how big some of the maps really are.

Thankfully, on the move to Xbox 360 and PS3 Terraria loses none of its control dexterity. It’s not an entirely natural fit, but a short acclimatisation time is worth paying to get the full Terraria experience. Arguably, there would have little point porting a neutered version of the game to consoles.

Terraria’s controls become half-platformer, half-twinstick shooter, giving players the chance to jump around and interact with the world in the same way as mouse and keyboard players.

Chipping away at the blocky environment is easy and for added precision, Terraria on XBLA and PSN gives players an added option.

In order to give control pad players the same sort of precision that comes naturally to a mouse, Terraria on consoles has what it calls its ‘Fine Cursor Mode’. Players are able to click the right analogue stick and gain extra accuracy while crafting giving players the chance to get their creations looking just right. 

If you've played Terraria extensively on PC it takes some getting used to, but the console crowd won't even notice.

The only real difference in terms of content between the console and PC versions of Terraria is some of the new additions that are console excusive, such as:

• New armour
• Brand new end-game boss
• Pets: zombies, bunnies and a few more

Terraria makes no concessions for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and it is all the better for it. Part of what makes Terraria stand apart from the obvious Minecraft associations is the fact that it gives players an RPG, stat-heavy progression system in which they’re able to level-up their characters to take on the word’s vast array of enemies.

More than Minecraft, though, which rather wonderfully asks players to set the parameters of their experience, Terraria could be described as more of a traditional ‘game’. Looting for better items, ensuring you have armour equipped and using weapons and items to fight, all form the backbone of the gameplay.

There is absolutely tons to find in Terraria and you can lose days to the complex maze its levels often turn into.

You’re given an enormous level that you can interact with in a number of unique ways, but, as with Minecraft, Terraria is best played with friends. Which is why the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions allow:

• 4-player splitscreen
• 8-player co-op on PSN or Xbox Live

With sprawling levels filled with enemies, both above and below ground, Terraria feels like an RPG distilled into its purest form. The world itself rewards innovative play and you can spend hours just tinkering with your immediate surroundings.

Interacting with water, which flows as you’d expect and can lead to unforeseen complications, also gives Terraria an unpredictable edge.

Watching water interact with lava to cool and form new rock or even following water as it invariably finds its way down through a level before pooling in some hidden depth makes Terraria’s world feel alive, if only in a digital and retro-styled sort of way. 

Just like the version on PC, though, there’s no multiplayer modes other than co-op play and the only option players are given is turning friendly damage on or off. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a million ways of interacting with the world and anyone in it.

It’s Terraria’s mix of freeform creation gameplay and RPG drive that really makes it unique. Building a house to survive the night may begin your fascination with interacting with the 2D world (as well as sounding vaguely familiar), but that really is the tip of the iceberg and it’s difficult to explain just how vast Terraria really is.

A perfect edition to XBLA, it's hard to see how Terraria can fail to win over XBLA's Minecraft fans and those looking for something a little different on PS3.

The Cave has been gestating within Ron Gilbert’s mind since the days of Maniac Mansion, but despite the vast amount of time between the two it doesn’t quite live up to the popular point-and-click adventure despite offering a few giggles of its own.

In many ways the latest outing from Tim Schafer’s Double Fine harkens back to the point-and-click games Schafer and Gilbert built their careers on, but The Cave manages to stumble into a few of the genre’s obvious pitfalls making for something of an uneven experience.

The Cave itself is a mystical, labyrinthine structure that lures in seven unsuspecting characters, each with their own story to tell. The Cave itself narrates the experience to the player in Double Fine’s customary humour-filled manner and asks that three of the cast are chosen to explore its dark depths, as well as the dark depths of themselves.

Each character is a vital piece of the puzzle and choosing who you initially take into the depths, while not hindering your progress (as each of the characters you leave behind will provide the replay value) will dictate the sort of experience you’ll have.

The Cave is about puzzles, though you'll go through traditional platforming hoops to get to them. Each character has a unique ability and figuring out how to proceed is usually a matter of logical lateral thinking, but considering Gilbert’s history, you'd think things would rarely be that simple.

Each of the caves areas are visually distinct, but are still very... um, cave-y.

Characters:

• Knight: has the ability to turn invincible meaning he can survive long drops and pretty much anything else, too.

• Hillbilly: For some reason the Hillbilly can hold his breath underwater for as long as he likes making him perfect for exploring the cave’s deep waters.

• Scientist: The Scientist can hack into computer terminals.

• Adventurer: The Adventurer has an Indiana Jones style whip-hook that means she can traverse deadly pits of spikes as long as there’s something to hook onto.

• Twins: Just like the twins in The Shining these two can freak you out by grabbing switches and then leave a shadow of themselves before wandering off to do something else.

• Monk: The Monk can use telekinesis to levitate objects.

• Time Traveller: The Time Traveller can ‘phase’ through bars blocking entrances or certain smaller objects gaining access to areas the others can’t.

You’re only allowed to take three characters into the cave, with the experience appearing to mould to whoever you take past the first stage presenting character-specific levels interspersed with some general hub-like puzzle areas.

The Cave itself continually reminds you that everyone has the capacity for darkness and depending on how you solve certain problems you’ll eventually be presented with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ endings. But, it’s invariably easy (and a lot more obvious) to discover each character's evil side.

Exploring the personal worlds of the cast allows that character to come to the fore. With an obvious ability to use in certain areas puzzles are enjoyably logicial, often forcing you to think about the bigger picture and how each cahracter can contribute.

There are times when characters can be at opposite ends of a level (even across different time zones) and answers to the problems are rarely easy to come by.

But, and this is an inherent problem with the sprawling structure of The Cave and the puzzle structure itself, it requires an unhealthy amount of back-tracking.

The Cave isn’t really built around experimentation to figure out its problems, but that’s usually what’s required of them. Discovering how a problem can be solved needs each character to moved around individually and this can take its toll.

Moving different characters around the same location becomes tedious very quickly. There are moments when the two characters you’ve left behind will catch up with you, but these seem restricted to the times that you enter a new area. Other than that you’ll spend much of The Cave's playtime backtracking across the same area as you attempt to discover the answer to a practical puzzle.

It’s an irritation that can’t be avoided and it can begin to grate, especially on multiple playthroughs. What doesn’t grate, though, is Double Fine’s trademark glib humour that takes full advantage of the characters (or the players) situation.

It might be character psychology 101, but discovering each tale and the good and evil outcomes gives The Cave an interesting edge. It’s just a shame that the laborious puzzles will eventually wear your resolve down.

Further issues arise through a slightly stuttering framerate, sometimes glitchy character movements and a few other graphical problems that gives The Cave a ‘rough around the edges’ feel to it. There were a number of times we found that our characters became stuck and one instance of them falling through the world entirely.

These niggles detract from what is a genuinely funny game that stretches an interesting concept over head-scratching puzzles. It might be easy to gloss over such issues in Maniac Mansion, but we have the benefit of hindsight and forcing players through such awkward and strangled designs belies how far we’ve come.

Version Tested: Xbox Live Arcade

Dead Space 3, we have decided after playing the first four chapters and speaking with Associate Producer Yara Koury, is a devious little so-and-so.

It makes you think, at first glance, that it's just another Dead Space title. It sits you down in  a comfy chair with familiar game mechanics, telling you to relax, that everything is just as you remember and that the beer is in the cooler over there.

But then, when your back is turned it and your attention distracted, it grows two extra heads and comes at you, yellowing teeth bared. “We want to innovate”, says Yara Koury, “we always want to bring them (the players) something new”.

This is without doubt the bravest Dead Space game to date, and it's clear that EA and Visceral games aren't intent on pandering to fans of the series. Instead, they've made a game centred around a co-op campaign that features many new ideas that they hope will change the way think about horror games.

Going it alone

That's not to say that, at its core, the single player campaign will greet you like anything other than an old friend. You're still looking straight over Isaac's shoulder as he strategically dismembers a variety of Necromorphs and solves simple puzzles with his kinesis and stasis abilities, all whilst trying not to soil himself as flailing limbs and wild eyes appear out of nowhere.

The story remains an even balance of epic and personal, with love and betrayal mixed in to a continuing journey to discover the origins and meanings of the Markers. However, the changes that they have made are certainly noticeable as you play through, and add up to make quite a significant difference.

As you would expect, there are new enemy types to face, and chief amongst them is the Waster.

An unpredictable – if not entirely original – foe, the Waster can grow back gruesome body parts when they're shot off, which turns a fight with a group of them into an intense game of guess-that-body-part as you panic fire at anything that resembles an arm or a leg (which, after a few seconds, will be everything).

The human enemies are far more benign and tedious to battle. The game opens with Isaac being directed to safety by Earthgov operatives, fighting through waves of Unitoligist forces as he tries to escape the New Horizons colony. The Unitologists don't seem to know how to take cover properly, and leave the top of their heads poking out from behind chest high walls.

That's just asking for trouble. They'll often blindly rush out into your fire with no apparent strategy, which, although rather convenient for you as it allows you to rack up easy kills, means they pose no challenge.

Weapons free

One of the most anticipated features is the ability to customise your weapons. “It has been inspired by players”, Yara Khoury tells me, and it certainly seems to have been built with the idea of maximum enjoyment in mind.

The customisation goes deep – building a new gun requires you to choose a frame, upper tool, lower tool, upper and lower tips, attachments and upgrades, all of which require specific materials found throughout Dead Space 3's levels.

Not only does this mean you can walk around with something that feels and looks very personal in your hand, but it'll also lead you to explore your surroundings extensively for precious resources, meaning no nook or cranny or the meticulously detailed environments will pass you by.

By leaving no stone unturned and no dead alien body ceremoniously un-stomped we scavenged enough to make a weapon that boasted both a plasma core and a line gun, kitted out with a damage upgrades which meant we could knock enemies back and slice them to pieces in two button presses.

Although it sounds like a good thing that Isaac now has more firepower, it's not always what you want in a horror game. Part of the charm that the original Dead Space was so famous for was down to the fact that you felt rather helpless.

You were an engineer, using an engineer’s tools for a job they were not designed to do. Holding a gun which is part ripper blade, part flamethrower, all hold-down-trigger-to-kill equipped with damage and reload upgrades, you'll feel that sense of helplessness slip away.

Environmentally friendly

This trend can be seen elsewhere, too: Isaac now feels far more mobile than he has ever done. He's agile despite his cumbersome suit, and can now roll away from enemies or take cover behind low objects, eliminating the kind of feeling you got, particularly in the first Dead Space, that you were always exposed.

Yes, that sense of hopelessness has been sacrificed to make combat a more intuitive experience, but the heady atmosphere that made the Dead Space series so great is still here in abundance, created by a number of wonderful environments. Even though our time with Isaac didn't see him land on Tau Volantis – that happens slightly later in the story – it's clear the in-game environments are predictably superb, and more varied than ever.

The murky corridors Isaac trudges through on the ship Raonake are suitably menacing and do a good job of creating tension, but he'll also find himself fighting for his life atop a speeding train and running through a modern apartment block, never bored of something to feast his eyes on if he has a moment spare (which, seeing as Necromorphs are trying to eat his face, he probably doesn't).

The huge variety of settings mean that whilst there are scares in certain areas they are less frequent than in previous titles, hacked away like a gangrenous limb to make space for action.

Whilst this doesn't bother us - we've never felt the Dead Space series was shit-your-pants scary - you might be disappointed if it's pure fear you crave.

Yara admits that Tau Volantis is “much brighter” and more “open” than the dark, dingy spaces that we’re used to seeing Isaac lumber around in but it does seem suited to the genre. “We’re playing a lot with the fact that you can’t see in front of you”, she says, “The Ice planet felt like a great fit because it’s still very hostile environment and makes our players extremely vulnerable.”

The slight shift towards a more action packed affair is epitomised by the set pieces sequences that Yara calls “Epic moments”, which are “very carefully crafted” in an attempt to provide some welcome variation in pace.

One minute you'll be peeking around corners, chewing your nails and wondering what the hell just moved in the shadows, the next you'll be piloting Isaac as he thrusts his way through a asteroid field-like expanse of floating debris from destroyed spacecraft, all the while shooting speeding mines to stop them reaching his companions.

Expect these events to figure heavily in the narrative as the game unfolds. “One of the big action moments is when you crash land on Tau Volantis”, Yara says, “we didn’t really wanted to have them landing safely, it wouldn’t be a Dead Space game otherwise”.

Hunting in packs

All this may be very interesting for the solo player, but Dead Space 3's real meat and bones lies in its co-op mode, and the developers are extremely keen to get you playing it. Perhaps too keen, you might think, given that they’re actually holding back certain areas of the game from those playing solo in an attempt to convince us that buddying up will really make the game more enjoyable.

“I think that we have provided enough incentive for fans to play the co-op experience”, said Yara, “There are missions that are unique to the co-op experience... players are usually keen on playing as much as they can”.

This feels like a kick in the teeth to those who want to play the game on their own. As Isaac wanders through the first two hours of the game, the evidence of these exclusive co-op areas is there for all to see. Locked doors loom menacingly around every corner, glaring at him like angry bouncers at the entrance to a couples-only party.

This will no doubt irk some players, but EA's policy seems to be that if it gets you to at least dip a tentative toe in the co-op waters, it will be worth pissing a few people off.

“I’m pretty confident that they’ll at least give it a shot”, says Yara, and when they do, she's sure that “it will get them hooked”.

Although EA didn't showcase any co-op play at the event, what we saw and heard has still worked up our appetites. This will not be Dead Space as you know it – you'll have to stick to the single player for that. This will be an extremely different animal.

The main focus is the highly anticipated dementia mechanic that will permeate every aspect of the co-op campaign. It promises to create some of the most unique moments we've seen in the Dead Space series so far with both players, at various points, seeing things that the other can't through hallucinations. Yara tells me that the team have been “creating gameplay mechanics around” co-op.

John Carver –  the second playable character in the campaign – and Isaac will experience their own stories in tandem and despite the fact that Carver is easy to write off as a run of the mill, shaven headed soldier who hates everything and everyone (he keeps telling Isaac that “we're not friends” and to “try harder next time”), EA have tried their best to flesh him out.

“As an individual we crafted him very much in his own way”, says Yara. “We built this whole back-story about Carver that has been introduced in the graphic novel Liberation, so he’s very different from Isaac.”

It's clear that the co-op campaign will be a very personal, story driven journey, with both characters coming out of their shell in time.

“They have common things that bring them together”, says Yara, “their families have been taken away by the Necromorphs. Both these characters evolve together in the story” and “define themselves by playing together”. Whether Carver turns out to be anything other than a cardboard cut out still remains to be seen, but at least we know the team have put effort into his character.

Uncharted territory

The reason that creating this co-op mode was such a bold move is that it promises to be worlds away from everything we've come to expect from the Dead Space series. Whereas previous games have relied on a sense of isolation, and created fear through edge-of-your-seat suspense punctuated by big scares, Dead Space 3 will have an entirely different focus.

“We’ve explored a lot more the psychological horror”, Yara says, and although it doesn't look like the dementia mechanic will be particularly frightening, it will certainly create moments that are strange, bizarre, and above all, intriguing.

While it's a shame that go-it-aloners will miss out on the bulk of Dead Space 3's content, the addition of co-op makes Dead Space 3 one of the most interesting propositions in many a gaming year. The single player option is still there to be played and thoroughly enjoyed, but once you've run through it you'll still have that wonderful feeling that comes with having a whole lot more game to sink your teeth into.

Although the co-op follows the same story arc as the single player campaign, the difference in game mechanics means that Dead Space 3 is really two separate games. The first, a solid, familiar, single player story that is a little lighter on scares than previous titles, and the second a unique, mysterious, highly original co-op mode.

Dead Space 3 may not look just like its older, much loved brothers, but it promises to a very exciting addition to the family.

Dead Space 3’s first surprise is that it’s not Dead Space. Not purely, anyway. Between the dynamic cutscenes, the linear progression and the endless expanse of snowy blizzard you’d be forgiven for thinking Visceral have been playing Uncharted 2.

But nailing bizarre head-squid bodysnatchers and slowing down time to shoot between the gut-ripping blades of a massive drill while necromorphs scythe into your flesh? That’s pure Dead Space.

The second sequel from the freshest horror IP in years does a lot to set itself apart from its predecessors. Having crash-landed on a freezing expanse of alien planet, Isaac Clarke’s first sight is of nothing at all – just the endless whiteness of a snowstorm.

One grapple with a falling truck later (press LS! Press A! the game screams while the camera pans around the scripted action), and Isaac’s suddenly confronted with an (alien) sun-drenched courtyard and a big, badass, snow-camo tarantula which rips him from the lift he entered like tuna from a metal sardine-holding container.

The next section is more claustrophobic fare. A confined corridor sees a decapitated head/squid monstrosity burrow into a rotting corpse and take control of it, replacing its head with its own and reanimating it into a shuffling nemesis.

Unlike most necros, it takes headshots to kill them - anything south of the neck sees the sickening creatures forage across the ground for another corpse to call home. It’s sickeningly ingenious and classic Dead Space.

Stasis (slowing down time with Y) is put to good use on a 50ft spinning drill – slipping bullets between its whirling blades takes precision, even in slo-mo, and requires the right balance of shooting for its shut-down trigger and defending from swathes of pacey, dangerous enemies.

Dead Space 3 promises a mix of old tropes and new tricks, mingling its trad horror stylings with more open, action/adventure elements. Whether it has enough scares to satisfy horror hungry fans remains to be seen, but it has variety in abundance.

How it stands up beyond the demo level – and how it feels in co-op - will be explored soon, so stay tuned to NowGamer.

For now, Dead Space 3 is still looking hot - even if it leaves some fans cold.

Our biggest fear when finishing DMC: Devil May Cry was you. Well, not you, but the Royal You: the wider internet that, for reasons unfathomable by a sensible, normal-thinking human being, has decided it hates the new DMC.

And you, Mr Joe Internet, should not hate DMC.

Ninja Theory has done an excellent job with Capcom’s seemingly most-treasured franchise, not only in keeping it firmly rooted in the past, but giving it a modern appeal at the same time.

And Dante – even with his black hair – is one of the reasons Ninja Theory has done such a good job. Truth be told this isn’t the same Dante you remember and that no doubt makes you weep silly little tears, but hear us out.

Dante is a character. Obviously we don’t mean he is a character, instead that he is a character, managing to stand out in a game where demons yell expletives at every possible turn. And that’s no easy task.

He’s crude, aggressive and full to the brim with puns – which, thinking about it, is actually a lot like the original Dante – with a particular highlight being the moment when Dante taunts a multi-storey car park of a boss by calling him an asshole.

It’s not funny because rude words make us laugh (they do), nor is it in the delivery. Instead it’s the context: that Dante’s favourite way to start a battle is to refer to his aggressor as a person’s southern-most orifice. That is who this new Dante is, and it’s hard not to love him.

Check out one full (awesome) level of DMC: Devil May Cry.

So if that’s the issue of New Dante answered, then, what about combat? Well there’s no worry here. It’s a considered system that’s as open to experimentation as it is entertainment.

By utilising three different weapons (not including Ebony and Ivory) combat is awash with opportunities. Heavier Hell weapons break shields and deal damage, while the Heaven equivalent are about managing crowds and keeping those enemy juggles in the air as long as possible.

All this ties into the basic sword – the Rebellion – making for a system ripe for opportunities to combo your way around a battle arena. It’s slick, open to interpretation and – most of all – a lot of fun.

New enemies are introduced consistently throughout DMC: Devil May Cry too, meaning you’ve always got something new to learn. As the tougher enemies start to appear, your grasp of the combat system will need to evolve.

Add in the increasingly inventive ways of adding in different hazards that force you to rethink a strategy and you've got a beat-'em-up capable of sitting alongside the best.

Yet while you can simply D-Rank every battle by tapping Y over and over again, doing so will take more time. Using the combat system to its fullest will see you obliterate enemies and, really, isn’t that what DMC was always about?

The inventiveness of the levels wanes a little towards the end, but by that point you're already hooked.

The ability unlock system is a little superfluous admittedly, offering only a handful of new combos and instead providing subtle – and usually unnoticeable – damage upgrades or tweaked effects.

But then adding too many new combos would overcomplicate the system, and we can’t imagine restricting the majority basic combos behind unnecessary unlock gates would have made the game quite as fun to play as it is.

In other words, that’s not really a criticism.

Combat is spliced together by bouts of platforming, and this is where elements of Ninja Theory’s Enslaved really start to shine through. The balance is spot on, so you’re never double-jumping for too long without slicing open a demon or two.

The platformng sections become increasingly challenging too, which is surprising considering it really only relies on the use of a grabby whip and a pullly whip – which, by the way, aren’t their official terms.

Most interesting are the levels themselves, which manage to provide something genuinely unique even after all these years. Ninja Theory’s interpretation of Limbo provides some honest-to-god standout moments that really highlight the developer’s penchant for creativity.

There’s little like it in the series before, and if this is a tease of things to come – whether DMC or otherwise – we should all expect great things from Ninja Theory in the future.

Knowing what attacks to use and when is important in later battles.

The addition of collectables, too, means there’s plenty of scope to explore the otherwise linear levels, while ability unlocks require you to go back into previous levels if you want to collect everything and complete all the challenge rooms.

But then going back and playing the game is almost expected with DMC. In all honesty the initial highest difficulty – Nephilim – isn’t all that difficult, and will be easily completed by anyone even remotely familiar with the genre.

Luckily further difficulties provide a wealth of options to those really wishing to test themselves, whether it’s Son Of Sparda’s more resilient enemies and harder enemy waves or Hell And Hell mode, which sees Dante vanquished with a single hit.

Nephilim, then, is the training session. The standard range of enemies to teach you the mechanics of each of Dante’s arsenal, as well as the possible encounters you could face and how to beat them.

On harder difficulties bosses even include additional attack patterns, just to mix things up for you. It is in the tougher modes where DMC really shines.

So outside of the characters, the world and the fancy facial motion capture, it is this that is the real benefit of having the Enslaved team work on DMC: Devil May Cry.

Earning S-Rank isn't mandatory, but it does make you feel like a boss.

It’s not obtusely difficult, meaning anyone – yes, including you – can play DMC: Devil May Cry. The options are there for anyone who wants a challenge, but at its base level this is open to as many players as possible and that’s really what Capcom needs for the franchise.

Which brings us right back to our initial point. Ninja Theory’s reboot of Devil May Cry is better than anyone expected, ourselves included, and if it doesn’t sell well because of some misplaced nostalgic love of the franchise then we’re seriously very worried for the games industry.

Version Tested: Xbox 360