Someone once said that "war, war never changes", but given room to exercise a great deal of creativity, developers in the military FPS genre can bring plenty of fresh innovation to the table, and can break free from what has gone before. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Treyarch has done just that.

Through the original Black Ops, the Santa Monica-based studio proved that it had finally come of age, and while it wasn't a radical departure from ingrained Call of Duty staples, there were plenty of signs that Treyarch was desperate to break free from Infinity Ward's far reaching shadow.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will mark the moment that Treyarch surpassed the Modern Warfare series and became a true force to be reckoned with among the FPS elite. Why? Because Black Ops 2 breaks new ground in ways that haven't been felt since the first Modern Warfare hit the scene. Read on to find out more.

Black Ops 2 puts the president's life in your hands

Herded into an exhibition hall in sunny Santa Monica, the games press quickly found their seats and watched Treyarch play through of two Black Ops 2 missions. The first was called Protect P.O.T.U.S. and it introduced us to the volatile world of 2025, and Black Ops 2's protagonist David Mason, son of the first game's hero Alex.

In this volatile future, ruthless terrorist Raul Menendez has waged a bloody vendetta against America, by hijacking the nation's vast unmanned army. Menendez has sent the army to downtown Los Angeles, in a bid to wipe out the world leaders at a G20 summit taking place there. Mason and his comrade Harper - both members of the S.O.G. Unit - are tasked with evacuating the president. 

The mission begins and Treyarch doesn't waste anytime in setting out its stall, with a brash tone, startling violence and the best visuals in a Call of Duty game yet, underlining that Black Ops 2 means business. 

We see the sheet-white face of a presidential bodyguard as he wretches and spews blood all over the armoured getaway vehicle, dying violently from a gunshot wound. The new game engine boasts some of the best facial animation this side of LA Noire.

Mason surveys the scene and receives a plan of action from the president who, confirming recent rumours, is female. The plan is to escape the already evacuated downtown Los Angeles and regroup to form a counter attack againt Menendez and his drone army. The vehicle crashes as a speeding truck runs it off the road. As Mason emerges from the rear door, the severity of the situation becomes clear.

Black Ops 2's human enemies are everywhere

The LA skyline has been reduced to burning skyscrapers while an unfathomable amount of unmanned drones and stealth bombers tear the city apart. It is absolutely insane. Essentially, take the madness of Modern Warfare 3's New York opening and double it. 

As Mason finds his feet, the gameplay begins as human troops - the nationality of which we weren't told, although sources suggest China - begin flooding the freeway and unloading on Mason and the president's van. Zig-zagging up the freeway while using smouldering cars and rubble for cover, Mason returns fire with his advanced Type 95 assault rifle.

The chaos makes for low visibility, so Mason uses the rifle's x-ray ACOG scope to help him pick out targets and blast them through walls. But still they come, flooding out of parked trucks, emerging from boutiques by the road side, as drones scream overhead, unloading gunfire that can kill you in seconds if you linger in the open for too long.

With the human enemies dispatched, Mason hops on the turret of a crashed military truck and launches a devastating barrage of Skyburst missiles to thin out the packs of strafing drones, giving the president a better chance of escape. 

Black Ops 2 gives you moral and tactical choices that lead to multiple endings

Taking point and surveying the freeway ahead, Mason reaches a section of road that has crumbled, and is given a tactical choice - rappel down to the street below and help the president at close quarters, or use his Type 95 scope to pick off threats from a high vantage point.

Treyarch informs us that these decisions will come thick and fast throughout the campaign and, together with sandbox missions called Strike Force Operations, will change up the routes, plot and final ending with each playthrough. The days of static corridors, infinitely respawning enemies and intense hand-holding are dead. We'll return to Strike Force Operations shortly.

Gunning down hidden troops with his X-Ray scope and KSG shotgun, Mason rejoins the group at the mouth of a huge shopping mall. The street outside is collapsing around the group, forcing them indoors. However, the place is crawling with troops, so Mason uses his wrist computer to send a swarm of around ten quadrotor drones on first to thin out the ranks. 

Black Ops 2's quadrotors, mechs and planes are hackable and not on rails

If you're a fan of Battlefield 3's vehicular combat, you'll love the drones in Black Ops 2. Securing the shopping mall, Mason can choose to send in quadrotors and fight alongside them on foot, or simply enter one of them from a FPS perspective and control it first-hand. How you approach and use drones is entirely up to you.

But the enemy troops manage to eventually thin out the quadrotor swarm, so Mason runs in ahead of the presidential team, battling alongside his remaining quadrotors.

The pace is, once again, intense. Reaching an open air cafe, Mason encounters a CLAW mech which, contrary to the impressions given in the debut Black Ops 2 trailer, are actually no taller than humans.

Mason can choose to fight the CLAW or hijack it by using his wrist-mounted hacking dart that fires like the Ballistic Knife from the original Black Ops. Again, the choice is entirely yours. Mason uses cover to get close and sticks the CLAW with a dart, which then gives him full FPS control over it.

The CLAW stomps around - again, entirely off rails - unloading on human troops with its deafening minigun. It's an empowering feeling, as it's a strategy that can turn the tide of battle in moments. However, a menacing roaring sound can be heard over the chaos, causing the team to panic in fear. Something very bad is about to happen.

Black Ops 2's jet combat is sandbox and is both incredible and off rails

Now back on the street, Mason and his team continue fighting but once again hear a deafening roar in the distance. Suddenly, without warning the earth shakes and a skyscraper in the distance begins to topple towards Mason. The destruction on hand looks incredible, once again underlining Treyarch's enhanced engine. 

The building hits the ground violently and kicks up a dust storm that throws Mason back. The fighting goes silent, giving the player a moment to breathe and get his bearings. Harper contacts Mason to tell him that the president has been shot and is making a break for it in a convoy of armoured vehicles. 

Ordered to provide air support, Mason hops in a harrier jet and takes to the skies. On the HUD, the president's convoy can be seen under attack. This is entirely sandbox and free form, similar to Tom Clancy's HAWX series, putting the dull, on rails jet section from Battlefield 3 to shame. 

Gunning down attackers on the street, Mason protects the presidential convoy before a pounding synth soundtrack kicks in and a pack of around 15 unmanned stealth bombers bear down on his position. The chase is on.

Mason swoops and corkscrews around skyscrapers, peppering drones and stealth bombers with the harrier's chain gun, heat seeking Skyburst missiles, and giving them the slip using the breakneck boost function. This is the moment that many onlookers realised that Black Ops 2 isn't the same old Call of Duty, and that war definitely can change.

Black Ops 2's Strike Force Operations are the biggest thing to happen to Call of Duty in years

The only on rails section of Mason's jet fight is when he kamikazes a drone and uses the ejector seat to fly to safety. This is when the mission ends and the action moves to Singapore, and the first live presentation of Black Ops 2's Strike Force Operation missions.

Described by Treyarch head Mark Lamia as "proxy wars", these campaign missions are small sandbox wars where you are in full control. You choose which wars to wage, how to approach each objective and in doing so, will steer the plot in different ways to one of many multiple endings.

Singapore puts you in charge of a strike force as it rappels down to a dockyard swarming with enemies. The target is a freighter containing mission-sensitive cargo that cannot be allowed to leave the dock. The team has 20 minutes to disengaged two missile shields so that they can blow up the freighter. Fail, and the narrative shifts and continues regardless.

Black Ops 2's Strike Force Operations allow you total battlefield control

In this mode, you can jump between any member of your team in an instant to give you the best tactical perspective possible. You can go up a layer and pilot a quadrotor to provide air support while the AI controls your troops on the ground. Finally, you can go into Overwatch and view the map from above from an RTS perspective. 

In Overwatch, you can use x-ray vision to identify hostiles, place waypoints and direct every member of your squad - both living and robotic - to help you reach your goal faster. Back on the ground, the squad are fighting through a maze of freight containers while repelling and hijacking enemy quadrotors, CLAW mechs and smaller robot sentries on tracks. 

The process of hacking and turning these drones over to your side helps turn the tide of battle and the team eventually break through and secure the first shield generator. But more troops flood in and rush the unguarded area, prompting the player to switch to Overwatch view and send a swarm of quadrotors over to where they are firing from.

All three perspectives work beautifully together, giving you total battlefield control. Fans of Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six and other objective based tactical shooters will adore how fluidly it all comes together.

With the shield generators destroyed, the team launches a missile at the freighter, destroying it and ending Treyarch's presentation.

Black Ops 2's campaign, zombies and multiplayer make it the biggest Call of Duty disc package yet

Mark Lamia goes on to explain that this is only a glimpse of what is the most ambitious and generous Call of Duty package yet. The campaign has huge replay value, thanks to multiple choices, routes and endings. Zombies is now integral to multiplayer, with a four vs four mode in which two packs of survivors fight the undead and each other for points.

Multiplayer, Lamia promises, has largely been built from scratch, and will cater to all skill levels - from beginners in Training Camp mode, to new modes geared towards e-sports players who play like pros. Treyarch mean business and this lengthy and exhilarating showcases gives us no reason to doubt them. 

All eyes will be on Black Ops 2 in coming months to see just what other tricks the studio has up its sleeve, and as always, NowGamer will be on hand to give you the inside scoop as it happens. Stay tuned.

Want more from Black Ops 2?

• Black Ops 2: Multiplayer & Campaign Video Interview - Treyarch Speaks 
• Call of Duty Black Ops 2: Multiplayer, Guns, Plot – Rumours & Facts Round Up
• Black Ops 2 Multiplayer: Type 95, Perks, Killstreaks - What The Campaign Suggests

Lost Planet is not exactly your average franchise. Where so many series change only slightly between iterations, Capcom’s oddity undergoes a total overhaul every time out.

The original was an straight-up arcade shooter with the 2010 follow-up shifting towards grinding, loot drops and multiplayer, melting away the snow to reveal Akrid-infested jungle corridors – it’s no great surprise that this change didn’t sit well with a lot of the original’s fans.

So in order to revisit the winter wonderland of the first game, Capcom has little choice but to set the time machine for ‘ages ago’ and whisk players away to the then-uncolonised frostball that is E.D.N. III. And true to form, it’s a completely different game again.

Or, more accurately, several different games. While you’re out and about in the snowy wastes, Lost Planet 3 is at its most familiar.

Gunplay has been tightened up considerably, lending a far greater sense of weight and satisfaction to each encounter but chatty new protagonist Jim is no soldier – let enemies get a bit too close and you’ll notice the comfort of ranged combat fade as he battles for his life through a string of QTEs and mini-games.

There are changes to the setting too, rigid structure replaced with branching sections and open world areas to explore, complete with the expected host of people to speak with and side missions to pick up.

Hurray! There's still bright orange, glowing weak spots! Sigh.

It’s unclear at this stage quite how open it’ll be, though it’s likely to fall closer to something like Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood than GTA IV in this respect.

But E.D.N. III is not a nice place and in order to explore it in any meaningful way, Jim will need a little help. Enter the Rig, a giant customisable mech suit that can withstand the harsh conditions, weather the attacks of most Akrid and even hold its own in a fight.

Hop into the Rig and gameplay changes entirely, shifting to an incredibly immersive first-person viewpoint from which to pilot the stomping death machine.

Using the stock mining gear, smaller Akrid can be picked up and squished in a giant claw or devastated with the multi-bit drill while battles with larger beasts and bosses almost become clunky first-person fighting games – well-timed blocks and clever movement become essential, with some tougher encounters demanding a mix of on-foot and in-cockpit techniques to reveal their disturbingly obvious weak points.

The Rig isn’t just a giant metal comfort blanket, either. It’s a lifeline, Jim’s sole method of communication with the main camp and this is reflected by a novel gameplay gimmick.

Once you get beyond a certain distance of your Rig, the HUD starts to crackle and fade from the screen, dropping out entirely once you stray a little further from your giant metal BFF.

Third person elements are a lot more like Dead Space than anything else.

This paves the way for the third pillar of Lost Planet 3’s different gameplay types, the action falling more in line with survival horror games as you root around in those confined spaces that simply can’t accommodate a 15-foot robot.

We’d say it was a bit like Dead Space, though that’d be an abject lie – it basically is Dead Space in these oppressive sequences, impressing with jumpy scares and atmosphere rather than Lost Planet’s usual scale and creativity.

Between these three wildly different types of gameplay, Lost Planet 3 might seem like it has something for pretty much everyone. Well, everyone who doesn’t strongly oppose glowing orange weak points or games set in the cold, anyway.

But a lot will hinge on how well Spark Unlimited – under the watchful eye of series creator Kenji Oguro on the Capcom side – fuses the trio of styles in telling what feels to be a surprisingly affecting and… well, human story.

The freedom we’ve enjoyed so far to flit between gameplay types as whim and/or situation dictates is promising indeed and while we never expected to see Lost Planet meet its full potential at the hands of the creators of Turning Point and Legendary: The Box, that’s exactly what looks to be happening here. Like we said, though, Lost Planet isn’t exactly your average franchise…

The first Sniper: Ghost Warrior was a game pulled in two disparate directions – there was the tense and stealthy sniping experience of crawling through foliage and patiently waiting for enemies to wander into your crosshairs, and then there was what felt like an obligation to the more frenzied playstyles of the Call of Duty crowd, with firefight and shootouts dotted throughout the game.

This didn’t seem to be a purposeful design decision. The AI was shoddy in almost all regards, but it was particularly poor when it came to stealth.

Enemies could spot you from what felt like kilometres away, causing most missions to turn from highly secretive ops behind enemy lines into the final fifteen minutes of Commando.

The result was a disjointed, clumsy and irritating game; one that really needed a great deal more work. So, in comes the sequel, which hopes to remedy the original’s problems by focusing more on the more predatory side to sniping rather than on constant run-and-gun heroics.

The opening level we’re shown gives us hope in this respect. We’re playing as Cole “Sandman” Anderson, a hardcore military man who’s grown up learning combat as a way of life.

He’s not plonked down in thick undergrowth of some unknown jungle, but tied to a chair in a dark cell underneath the war torn streets of Sarajevo.

CryEngine 3 is really making this game shine.

We quickly escape from the gaunt Serbian enemies giving us a beating, before stalking up and out of the cells using a pistol and a knife. A bit of crawling and a few silent stealth kills later and we find ourselves in a burnt-out library, where we’re suppressed by snipers entrenched in a building across the alley.

We skulk around behind bookcases and under debris, avoiding the sight-lines through the windows, before locating a sniper rifle and taking out the enemy marksman across the way with a bloody slo-mo bullet to the brain.

Later in the mission we tag enemy locations using binoculars, use battery-powered thermal goggles to spot enemies hiding behind cover or obscured by smoke, and even line up one shot to take down two unfortunate foes with a single bullet.

Only if you seriously mess up will you be noticed; if not, you can skulk through the levels unseen and unheard, avoiding those awkward firefights that marred much of the original game.

There’s something to be said for the visuals too. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 is making use of CryEngine 3, and although the visuals here aren’t quite as stunning as they are in Crytek’s own Crysis 2 – they’re somewhat softer and less defined around the edges – this is still a great step up from what we’ve seen from this series in the past. 

This goes particularly for the second part of the demo, in which were sent to a more familiar Ghost Warrior locale – a dense clump of Indonesian jungle.

Hopefully the stealthy, pick-your-spot nature of sniping will be the biggest feature of the game.

This is what CryEngine does best, the light breaking through a swaying canopy and glittering water effects coursing past in thin, shallow streams.

This section of the game is far more familiar than the last, Anderson tracking behind a spotter named Diaz who’s half whispering, half barking orders like “wait here” or “take out the one on the right”.

We do a fair bit of sniping here too. Although it’s been somewhat toned down in the demo, realistic ballistics take into account the player’s location, wind-speed direction, breathing rate and distance from the target.

In the first game this basically meant that you had a second reticule floating around your scope, indicating the location your bullet would actually be sent due to these variables rather than down the centre of the crosshairs.

However, it sounds as if the level of difficulty in this sequel will be customisable, meaning you’ll be able to switch off such aids if you’ve think you’ve got the skill to go it alone.

Overall, the second mission features little that’s surprising. It’s a succession of belly crawling, hiding in bushes and bloody headshots; nothing we haven’t seen before in every FPS since Call Of Duty 4, and it all feels a little unsatisfactory.

Cut down on the bugs too, City Interactive.

Also, we can’t help but notice that both this and the previous mission in Sarajevo feel heavily directed – it’s all dictated by the script rather than by the player’s own choices. 

If Sniper 2 hopes to be relevant to an ever more demanding crowd of FPS gamers it’s going to need more than just Crysis’s visual sheen; it’s going to need some of its open-ended gameplay too.

Taking All Ghillied Up and stretching it across an entire campaign might sound like a good idea, but no one wants to spend an entire game staring at Captain Price’s backside as he wiggles from spot to spot.

At some point you have to let the player break free, make their own way, and take that final shot themselves. Only then is it going to feel like the true sniping experience Ghost Warrior hopes to recreate.

Natural resources dwindling to a point where their prices soar like a poorly programmed UAV. The US president criticising China for its tendency to stockpile metals.

Not the opening headlines of tonight’s Ten O’Clock news you understand, but merely the first baby steps on an inexorable slide towards war.

At least, that’s How Black Ops 2 sees things. Oscillating between the Eighties and 2025, it tells a tale of two separate cold wars. One, the product of a boring old nuclear arms race, the other born of a future world’s desire to become more energy-efficient – prompting a scramble for materials that make this possible.

Unfortunately though, at the exact point future Uncle Sam is coming to terms with having to fashion iPhones from mud and a few pointy sticks, some oaf hands the activation codes for the United States’ existing unmanned drones to some crazy, crazy terrorists.

In so doing, creating a situation so perilous that only the buffest, apple pie-eatingest patriot could possible solve it. And even then, only if the stars and stripes are dramatically waving behind them. 

So Treyarch’s narrative choices aren’t particularly surprising, as impressively grounded in real-life events as they are. Raising a significantly larger number of eyebrows, however, is the gameplay structure through which the studio has decided to force them.

Confirmed locations include 2025 Los Angeles, Singapore and Yemen.

This will be the first Call Of Duty title to feature branching storylines, for instance. The first COD to offer players a choice of route through its missions.

The first, indeed, to make failure carry a greater consequence than respawning a few hundred yards down the road. Allowing a particular contact to die, or defence installation to remain intact will cause missions to stumble towards more pathetic endings, with that shameful result creating resonances that echo throughout the rest of the game.

While this isn’t Mass Effect and you won’t be copping off with your superior officer, it’s interesting to see the series tackling replay value head-on after a succession of disappointingly brief single-player campaigns.

It doesn’t end there, though. In addition to the above gameplay extension methods, Strike Force operations will also debut.

This new gameplay type will likely govern a handful of Black Ops 2’s campaign missions, sitting alongside those with more traditional structures, and ones boasting major decisions.

They’ll differ from the norm in that players will choose from a handful of Operatives to control, including unmanned ciphers that will allow a top-down view and the ability to control soldiers indirectly, like an RTS.

Should players remain on the ground, they’ll be grateful for the chance to swap between members of their squad at will, with a negative result again entirely possible should all men be killed, and the mission failed.

Mo-capped horses will feature in the game. Exciting.

For variety’s sake, Strike Force will allow gamers to complete objectives in any order, operating across larger, less tunnelled environments and altering enemies’ spawn points in a fashion similar to Left 4 Dead. Appropriate, seeing as Zombies Mode is back in.

So far as characters are concerned, we’re reintroduced to Alex Mason – hero of Black Ops and in 2025 a quite considerably old man. We should expect to have some of his Vietnam war memory loss filled in before the credits roll, most likely embellished by his buddy Frank Woods, who spends a great deal of his time telling us how far in advance he’d seen this all coming.

The vast majority of play time will be spent in the year 2025 though, controlling Mason’s son, David as he uses his bendy futuristic wrist screen to sift through mission details.

Ones that detail the whereabouts of Raul Menendez – our villain – described rather optimistically as a facsimile of Heath Ledger’s Joker whose deals with far eastern powers see players briefly chasing his henchmen on horseback through a dusty and unwelcoming Yemen.

So though their terrain remains pretty familiar, Treyarch’s certainly packing enough variety in to justify its inevitable spot on top of the shooter pile.

Max Payne 3 is, at base level, fashioned around old concepts. After all, it’s a third-person shooter with a slow-mo gimmick, and by all accounts it should feel like a relic of generations past. Looking back at also-rans Stranglehold and Total Overdose should underline the fact that this formula isn’t exactly new. 

But leave it to Rockstar to evolve and reinvent what has gone before in a bid to make it relevant again. The publisher has, after all, been doing this for years through reiterating the GTA franchise with glittering success. We can now confidently add Max Payne 3 to this list of Rockstar’s many achievements.

Getting this much detail into Max Payne 3 multiplayer was vital to Rockstar. it has succeeded.

The ability to repackage a concept without making it feel stale is a talent that few possess and even fewer get right, but in Max Payne 3, Rockstar has once again proven that it has the skills and a keen eye for quality. It’s this kind of dedication that can make any concept – regardless of how much it has been run into the ground – radiate excellence.

This trend of reinvention and growth is most evident in Max Payne 3’s multiplayer component, and it underlines Rockstar’s increasing proficiency as a competitive online player. Through GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption and now Max Payne 3, Rockstar has fast become a multiplayer force to be reckoned with.

We decided to go straight to the source and spoke with Rockstar’s lead multiplayer designer Charlie Bewsher to learn what it means to fashion an inventive multiplayer in a sea of cookie-cutter shooters. Read on to find out what he had to say.

Max Payne 3 multiplayer was a learning curve for Rockstar

Rockstar set out its stall early on with Max Payne 3 multiplayer, explaining that it strived to create an online component every bit as competent and polished as the single player campaign. 

Bewsher explains how his team approached this lofty goal, “I think the main difference here was all the energy and creativity that we normally pour into our open worlds was distilled into these very tight levels and shooter mechanics – and this requires a different approach and different solutions.”

“We’ve really drilled down into the details here and it’s challenged the way we normally work – for instance our streaming tech has to work within very small tight levels, whereas in other games it works across cities.”

It makes sense that Rockstar wouldn’t simply shoehorn the open world formula of Red Dead Redemption or GTA into the arena-based multiplayer of Max Payne 3. This would be a square peg, round hole nightmare. Instead, Max Payne 3 needed a smart and calculated revision of past efforts.

“We actually brought a lot of what we’d done before into our arena level design”, explains Bewsher, “the large maps have many smaller areas, each with their own unique feel and gameplay experience. At the same time we’ve focused on making the levels really flow and be easily navigable, while offering loads of tactical possibilities.”

But some Rockstar habits are impossible to break – namely, a sense of open world freedom – as Bewsher explains, “We never wanted the arena walls to be a constraint the player felt, so we ensured our game modes, mechanics and HUD pushed players together.” Being a team-based experience, this approach makes perfect sense.

Max Payne 3’s multiplayer bullet time integration was a real challenge

How Rockstar would make bullet time function in multiplayer was a real question mark that hung over Max Payne 3 for some time. It’s not an easy mechanic to nail in an online setting, as Bewsher knows full well.

“Bullet time has frankly been an enormous challenge. Nailing the first initial spec took a lot of design and discussion and we came up with a dozen different versions on paper", Bewsher explains.

“Then we started working out how to implement the chosen solution was hugely difficult.” Bewsher reveals, “As was tracking all the different players potentially running different time streams for movement, cameras, particle effects, audio and so on.”

Even with the chosen formula cemented on paper, Rockstar toiled with bullet time to ensure it was perfect, as Bewsher explains “We tuned and tweaked [bullet time] for over a year, to ensure it was advantageous to the user without being annoying to the target, or any other players.”  

“Finally we developed a whole range of ‘Bursts’, of which Bullet-Time is one, to ensure it wasn’t this single power, but was part of range of strategies the player can adopt. We’re extremely happy with the results.”

Rightly so, as Max Payne 3’s bullet time works perfectly well in multiplayer, operating on a line of sight basis. Once someone executes bullet time, you will slow down to a near halt if you’re in their line of sight, making you an easy target. It’s a tricky mechanic explain on paper, but it works surprisingly well in practice.

Max Payne 3 doesn’t conform to existing multiplayer modes

It would have been so easy for Rockstar to throw in a bunch of archetypal game modes into Max Payne 3’s multiplayer, slapped a price sticker on the game’s box and watched the money roll in. But that simply isn’t the way the studio operates.

Innovation, functionality and creativity are all unspoken watchwords that apply to Rockstar’s approach, and this has given rise to multiplayer modes such as Payne Killer, in which two players adopt the role of Max and his buddy Passos, while the rest of the lobby hunts them down. 

Whoever inflicts the most damage on Max or Passos before they die will respawn as them, giving them the power. Whoever is Max or Passos longest during the game will win. It’s simple, but utterly ingenious mode design at its finest.

Bewsher echoes this sentiment, “One thing Rockstar would never do is release a ‘me too’ multiplayer game, or a multiplayer component that was there to simply tick a box. Max Payne 3’s multiplayer had to feel integral to Max Payne while also offering the gamer something new. So we really had to develop multiplayer from the ground up.”

Then of course you have Gang Wars, which is a series of five-round matches that have their own narrative linked to the many Sao Paulo gangs Max will be facing in the single player campaign. Each of the five rounds focuses on a different game mode, best out of five wins the match.

It’s a great addition to the multiplayer roster, but Rockstar won’t be getting complacent once Max Payne 3 ships, as Bewsher confirms that his team will continue its dedication to DLC and free multiplayer updates post-launch.

Max Payne 3 multiplayer doesn’t copy Call of Duty or Battlefield

We’ve already touched on the way Rockstar masterfully takes old or existing concepts and makes them its own, and in some ways there are elements of Call of Duty and Battlefield present in Max Payne 3, but the similarities are threadbare.

Sure, you have things like perks, custom load outs, levelling up and the chance to prestige – called ‘Legendary’ here – but as we said, these are very sleight similarities.

Bewsher explains, “I think so much of what makes Max Payne 3 feel fresh simply comes from the core game, in that it’s a state-of-the-art shooter, with incredible movement mechanics, Bullet Time and Max’s unique gritty feel.”

In this sense, Rockstar has absolutely fulfilled its goal of conveying the quality of Max Payne 3’s single player quotient into the online arena, but it was also a chance for Rockstar  to rectify elements it felt many others get dead wrong.

“From a multiplayer point of view, we wanted to tackle a few areas that made us feel unsatisfied.” Bewsher reveals, “For example, playing with strangers who always remain anonymous to you – and you to them.”

Bewsher continues, “There is also the lack of consequences in multiplayer shooters – normally all you can do is change your own stats and score. These were design themes that we continually returned to throughout the game’s development.”

What Bewsher refers to is the sheer level of customisation in Max Payne 3’s avatar creator and gear unlocks. Do you want your guy to have a gravity-defying afro, aviator shades and a football top? Done. In short, you’re not just another faceless goon running around with identical comrades.

Max Payne 3’s crews can be transferred to GTA 5

The ties between Max Payne 3’s multiplayer and GTA 5 are interesting, as few games have offered crossover in this fashion. Rockstar’s crews – large clans that can band together and win rewards by cooperating online – can be imported between Max Payne 3 and GTA 5, giving us a taste of what to expect from Rockstar’s return to San Andreas.

Bewsher sheds light on the crew system, “Well, there are going to be two types of Crews – private crews that you and your friends can create and customise to your liking, and Rockstar-created crews that are open to everyone."

"Private crews hold up to 250 members and public crews are unlimited, so thousands of people can join the same crew and start reaping the benefits.”

“There are also a range of in-game rewards and mechanics that impact crew cooperation”, Bewsher continues, “such as HUD identifiers, customisable emblems on in-game equipment for opponents to see, dedicated crew assist-style awards and the Crew feud mechanic to name a few. This last one creates automatic feuds between different crews, to see which is the meanest.”

The concept is intriguing, lending social interaction and genuine cooperation to the arena shooter format where similar games would have you running and gunning as a lone wolf. Once again, Max Payne 3 demands teamwork. 

Reconfirming cross compatibility, Bewsher adds, “You may have read recently that we also announced that crews created in Max Payne 3, and any feuds you have going with other crews will be fully transferable into Grand Theft Auto 5 and beyond.” 

Max Payne 3 gives us a clear view of Rockstar’s future titles

Note that Bewsher said, “Beyond”. This confirms that Rockstar is making big, sweeping changes to the way it does business online in Max Payne 3, making its multiplayer offering all the more relevant. Sure, Max Payne 3 can be seen as a test bed for multiplayer ideas, but when has Rockstar ever done things half-heartedly?

As this crossover between games exists, many will be asking what Max Payne 3’s multiplayer means for Rockstar’s future titles, “We’re always thinking about the future,” Bewsher explains, “But we won’t really be able to answer that until long after Max Payne 3 has been released.”

Bewsher concludes, “The community needs to establish itself and we will of course be entrenched in it, constantly watching and reviewing."

"That said, with our Crew features and the way all the friendships and feuds and rivalries players create in Max Payne 3 can be transferred over into GTA 5 and beyond, it’s clear that we’ve got big plans for future Rockstar releases.”

Want more from Max Payne 3?

• Max Payne 3 Multiplayer: Weapons, Perks & Modes Hands-On
• Max Payne 3 And GTA 5 Multiplayer Crews Coming To More Games - Rockstar
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Among all the challenges faced by developers crafting an energetic, colourful and mascot-driven racing game – whether it be weapon balancing, the ebb of track design, or just which IP to pilfer colourful characters from – the hardest is undoubtedly not appearing like a brazen Mario Kart clone.

Of course, it would have been impossible for the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing to avoid such comparisons – what with the plumber being Sonic’s age-old nemesis – but try as hard as it might, it lacked the immediate accessibility and thorough depth that propelled Mario and his karting chums into critical and commercial acclaim.

For developer Sumo Digital, approaching a sequel was less about iterating and more about overhauling the experience to better serve the versatility of Sega’s most notable heroes and finally step out from Mario’s dominating shadow. 

“We spent a bit of time with Sega trying to make a game that wasn’t just a direct sequel,” explains Jem Lee, producer at Sumo Digital. “We didn’t want to go, ‘Well that game did well, everybody liked it, let’s just use the same engine and just get something with new characters and new tracks in.’

"We wanted something that not only built on what was great about the last game but pushed the boundaries of the kart racing genre.”

Quite rightly, these innovations transpire in a wide variety of forms, the most notable of which is the transforming karts that Sonic and his chums will drive.

The vehicles in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed possess a little more heft than in its predecessor. 

The vehicles in Sonic & All-Star Racers Transformed will react depending on whether the terrain, switching between karts, boats and aircrafts. A Panzer Dragoon themed track sets the tone for the remainder of our hands-on time with the sequel, the stage physically transforming across a three-lap race.

It begins as a traditional course for karts, twisting through a sandy canyon as a dragon flaps around in the background but as the race enters the second lap the whole course fills with water, forcing Sonic’s kart to transform instantly into a hovercraft. It’s a slick manoeuvre, tarnished slightly by the crude transition to air in the final leg of the race. 

And if the concept doesn’t appear particularly fresh, then that’s because that plucky plumber beat Sumo Digital to the punch with last year’s Mario Kart 7 on 3DS – which came as something as a surprise to the developer.

“We were sitting in a meeting room at work watching the E3 conferences and Nintendo came on and we all wondered if they’d be doing a new Mario Kart,” Lee exclaims.

“Then they had a montage of things and you had a kart sprout wings, and we all looked around the room, and then you saw a car go into water and we were all like, ‘No fucking way!’ But then they went into each one in depth and, although it’s kind of flying, it’s more falling with style.

"Whereas the driving underwater… that’s not boating. There will be a few people who think we’re copying them – but no! We’ve been making this game for 18 months.

New courses don’t just swap between land, air and water segments; they’ll feature surprises along the way too. 

"But that’s the nature of it, and we feel confident from watching people play it and hearing opinions that people are really enjoying it, especially the freedom of flying and that the boating is actually quite challenging to do.” 

Indeed, it’s fair to say that this isn’t a retread of Mario Kart 7’s achievements. The environments are slightly more linear (routes don’t branch into alternative air, water and ground tiers) but tracks gleefully toy with convention – a Super Monkey Ball stage has a brief Monkey Target interlude – two new additions to the roster are Gilius Thunderhead of Golden Axe and Vyse of Skies Of Arcadia.

But the fact of the matter is that, in an effort to move away from the established tropes of classic Mario Kart, the studio has inadvertently welcomed more comparisons than ever in the slipstream of Mario Kart 7. For now, Sonic will have some serious catching up to do if he has a chance of overtaking Mario this late in the game.

You probably didn’t care about Dishonored until you saw that first trailer. If you’re yet to do that, we advise going to do so right now. Not only will it give you the same sense of intrigue that it gave us, but it’ll make this preview far easier to decipher.

Brought to you by the minds of Harvey Smith (Deus Ex, Thief: Deadly Shadows) and Raf Colantonio (Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic) it ignores many of gaming’s normal conventions to craft an experience that plays into your hands. Stone the crows!

Some context first: The man of the hour goes by the name of Corvo, once the bodyguard to the empress, now imprisoned due to being falsely accused of her murder by the evil Lord Regent.

Like magic, the foundations and arc are put in place, the theme of revenge being rammed home before you’ve even busted out of jail.

Naturally, though, it’s not simply a case of walking out of prison, luckily stumbling across your mortal enemy, stabbing him in the head and enjoying the credits a mere five minutes later.

Gathering information to fuel your quest and lifestyle is key, all fuelled by the usual RPG-esque fodder. Here, it’s a trip to the Golden Cat Bathhouse, a gentlemen’s establishment where the Pendleton family are currently holed up. It’s up to you to suck the life from their being.

Although Dunwall isn’t a sweeping, open landscape, it certainly isn’t closed off, offering enough opportunity to feel out and take advantage of the environment.

There's a great blend between action and stealth.

Taking on side-missions or talking to the locals will unveil secrets to be abused, in this case having a serious effect on how you infiltrate a building. Once inside, it’s time to play it safe.

Focusing on the art of stealth, it’s Corvo’s mobility options that summon up thoughts of Assassin’s Creed or Prince Of Persia. Be it the standard lean – to examine what’s around the next corner – or clambering up the side of a structure, our hero isn’t restricted or forced to stick to a straightforward path; experimenting with what’s around you is an area the game continues to come back to.

As a ‘lady of the night’ asks if we want to ‘play’, it’s out onto the rooftops in order to sneak in another window. We experiment with some of our powers, in this instance ‘Blink’.

Enabling you to essentially teleport to a chosen location, it’s the ultimate weapon in staying silent and taking guards out before they have a chance to react. Pop up behind one, and you can activate a melee kill almost instantly.

Prior to bringing death upon our enemies, though, it’s into the bathhouse we must venture, thanks to a fish, oddly enough. Dishonored is more than happy for you to possess animals (and humans when you enhance the power to level two) so having the bizarre inclination to jump into the body of a carp, for example, will enable you to find a secret entrance beneath the Golden Cat.

From here it’s an all out sneak-a-thon where staying in the shadows and meticulously planning each kill reaps huge rewards, not least because the alarm won’t be raised.

If only we had more time in-between all the assassinating we have to do...

It also helps where your own knowledge is concerned. Listening in to other people’s conversations will reveal information to help the cause: a quick eavesdropping session discloses where one of your targets is, moving your waypoint.

With another guard quietly suffocated, it’s hard not to notice that in its current guise Dishonored is still slightly mechanical. Enemies have distinct walking routines, and while there’s logic to this – observing these patterns is key to understanding when and where to move – it’s an area our keen eye did pick up on.

Dork vision is on hand to assist with this further, highlighting where threats are and their current line of sight. It opens up the opportunity to crossbow someone in the back, before we stumble upon our first piece of prey.

Although there are multiple ways to do away with Morgan Pendleton, our current objective is to make it look like an accident. Attaching a nearby crank to a gas pipe does the job wonderfully, pumping the poisonous toxin into the chamber.

The rest of the walkthrough follows a similar routine, seamlessly using Dork and Blink to assassinate the watch from the shadows until Curtis Pendleton makes himself known.

In one of the more creative kills we’ve ever seen, possessing the man and casually walking him out the room and hurling his body off the balcony to the treacherous depths below is as hysterical as it is ridiculous. Dishonored has us very interested…

2K’s Spec Ops: The Line is certainly rather different. From its harrowing single-player campaign to its obsession with sand, it’s not immediately trying to fit any particular mould where the shooter market is concerned.

Multiplayer, mind, is a little different. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was yet another Call Of Duty clone when you first sit down with Yager’s third-person military epic online – there’s ways to rank up, perks to be enjoyed and classes to be tinkered with.

Given that this has become almost standard across the entire genre, though, means it’s tough to judge it just because the development team has smartly looked at the wider field and seen what’s popular.

It can be to a team’s own detriment to ignore such obvious trends. Thankfully, once you actually get into the nitty gritty of what Spec Ops is trying to achieve, there is something very unique that waits, offering up a spin on an expected experience.

The first real shift comes in how many players can be on the field at one time. Restricted to eight, it’s a very conscious design choice by Yager to try and keep battles intricate, intense and personal.

It’s not a multiplayer arena that lets you ignore teamwork without taking on a significant amount of risk. Much like Gears Of War, supporting your squad and moving as a unit is where the key to success lies.

With smaller numbers per game, there's a heavier focus on sticking together.

If you’re skilled enough the run and gun approach is certainly an option, but it’s a last ditch effort rather than an intelligent opening gambit. It works too, mostly due to how quickly you realise the importance of unity and the benefits that come when using it in conjunction with the ever-threatening compound that is sand.

It’s not often you’ll hear us ranting and raving about how a small yellow particle can actually be quite the game-changer, but Spec Ops: The Line manages to provoke such a reaction.

At any point in a match, a sandstorm or avalanche can completely upend a game, cutting off pathways, opening up new ones or just restricting your view to the point enemies could pop up as if from nowhere at any minute.

Aside from the amount of fear it generates, it’s a fantastic way to ensure that no tactic is the correct one. You can spend an entire round camping and racking up headshots with your trusty sniper, but as soon as the weather changes it’s actually impossible to carry on in the same vein.

You’ll either be an easy target for someone else, or just completely useless as you stare into the great abyss. It has also meant Yager can be a little more imaginative with the perks that are available.

As ever more will become available as you level-up, but it’s not just a case of a faster reload or being able to sprint a bit faster. When the sand pays a visit, every player’s movement is restricted, much as it would be if any of us were to be caught in such extreme weather conditions.

Spec Ops: The Line's multiplayer might not be surprising, but there's a fresh feeling to it.

At a particular juncture, however, you’ll be able to choose an upgrade to counter that, making you the ultimate assassin when things take a turn for the worse. 

Outside of this Yager has tried hard to introduce an array of modes that although based on what we all know and love, are tweaked enough to make them somewhat fresh.

Rally Point operates much like King Of The Hill, although each waypoint will shift around the map after a certain period of time in order to keep the pace up.

Buried is far more inventive. With the grand aim to destroy your opponent’s high value target, you first have to take out three vital points that are situated in their base.

Needing an absolute barrage of ammunition to take down – there are RPGs scattered about the map – and possessing the ability to be repaired, it soon breaks down into your squad dividing itself up into an offensive and defensive unit.

Daring to rely on merely one will almost suffocate any progress you could potentially make, so there’s a genuine discussion to be had about who’s more suited to which end. The wrong decision can prove to be almost embarrassing as you get overrun within minutes. 

The real joy for us, much as it was when we touched the single-player, is that Spec Ops handles differently to many shooters out there, making it instantly refreshing when you do start to toy around with it.

It’s certainly nothing revolutionary, but the many tweaks it has made make it wonderfully satisfying. A good community is always a benefit to any game that wants to be a mainstay online, and if Spec Ops: The Line’s potential is anything to go by, it’s definitely deserving of one.

Spec Ops: The Line looks like any other military shooter on the surface. But while campaigns in fellow military games Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 feel throwaway, developer Yager has created a shocking, brutal and engaging story that sits alongside the multiplayer component. We go hands-on to learn more.

Spec Ops: The Line underlines the harsh brutality of war

Like life, every good story is a journey. You start at one point and end up at another, changed by the events experienced. Whether for good or bad depends upon your point of view, but what’s important – in life and in storytelling – is change.

Read any military account or ask any veteran and they’ll testify that perhaps more than any other experience war changes men, but gaming’s gung-ho military shooter heroes rarely acknowledge that.

They go into combat as unassailable dudebro figures, and return much the same to kick ass in the sequel. Yager Development wants to change that in Spec Ops: The Line, a dark odyssey that sees Captain Martin Walker and his Delta Squad thrown into a Dubai ravaged by sandstorms and war.

“We wanted to do to military games with Spec Ops: The Line what Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket did to military films,” explains lead writer Walt Williams, “take them out of that black-and-white, WWII, John Wayne fighting the Nazis, ‘We’re the heroes, hurrah!’ approach.”

While war films after Vietnam started portraying war more realistically and evolved again after the Gulf wars, games have yet to catch up. “Games have stayed on the slick Hollywood style when it comes to war for so long,” says Williams, “but we figured games have gotten to a more cinematic presentation, and we had the technology, so it was the time to make something mature like this.”

To this end, Yager blends a hard-hitting third-person military shooter with a mature narrative, and hopes to emotionally engage gamers on a visceral, psychological level. 

They’re high minded goals, but the German developer, chosen by 2K Games in 2009 to put a fresh spin on its old Spec Ops franchise, has tackled them with gusto.

The team admits it’s been a long development, but claims the time refining these ideas paid off. “The genre we’re in is super-competitive,” explains Studio Head Timo Ullman, “and you really need to focus on what makes you unique to carve out your spot. We found that, but it takes time – and even once we knew our strong narration was the key we had to find ways to incorporate it into every aspect of the game.”

Spec Ops: The Line's plot recalls classic Vietnam war epics

Spec Ops: The Line’s chilling premise is a solid foundation for those ambitions, as you play Captain Martin Walker, leading his Delta Squad – Sergeant Adams and Lieutenant Lugo – into a Dubai destroyed by horrific sandstorms.

You’re looking for Colonel Konrad and the 33rd Infantry battalion, sent into Dubai as part of a rescue operation but refusing to pull out. Having served under Konrad, Walker is determined to find his old CO, but as Delta Squad enters Dubai they quickly discover the 33rd has apparently gone rogue, committing terrible atrocities.

With Delta squad quickly forced to kill other US troops – a disturbing premise in itself – its only allies are shady CIA agents engaged in a clandestine war with Konrad, with the lives of thousands of refugees in Dubai at stake.

Clearly, Delta Squad’s harrowing quest is inspired by Apocalypse Now (itself based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness), but according to Williams Apocalypse Now is really about Colonel Kurtz while Spec Ops is all about Delta Squad: “Konrad is the goal at the beginning, but really he’s just the catalyst for the journey these soldiers and the player are going on.”

Spec Ops: The Line's Dubai setting has as much personality as Bioshock's Rapture

Delta Squad’s dark journey is into a unique world in videogames – but one based on a real place – the ruined city of Dubai. A futuristic metropolis carved out of the uninhabitable desert with oil money, its once-gleaming skyscrapers, hotels, exotic shopping malls and pristine highways have here been shattered by the sandstorms.

It’s easy to see parallels between Spec Ops’ Dubai and BioShock’s dystopia, Rapture; in real life, this is a desert city you can ski in, or walk along artificially cooled beaches. Here, Yager is really pushing the sense of a grand accomplishment and human hubris humbled by all-powerful Mother Nature. 

Our hands-on starts with us battling looters on the car-choked highway into Dubai, skipping onto some traumatic battles at a 33rd base later in the game before finishing with a mind-blowing confrontation in an abandoned mall – and every location has its own character and challenge.

“Ruined Dubai really gave us an opportunity to do some interesting things with our cover system,” explains creative director Cory Davis, “because the fiction doesn’t let us make boring, blocky cover. Instead we have a high variety of cover based on this opulent, ruined environment.”

Yager’s art department visited Dubai to get a taste of the city, and it’s clearly paid off – the Unreal engine has a reputation for creating drab, brown shooters, but there’s an exotic sense of contrast in Spec Ops’ hauntingly beautiful but sand-ruined combat spaces, which are filled with abandoned sports cars, ruined high-tech or art deco structures and priceless art.

Spec Ops: The Line's cover shooter mechanics are some of the best this generation

There is a hardcore, visceral feel to the combat in Spec Ops; battling on the highway and Dubai’s crazy maze of shattered buildings makes battle a 360-degree concern, with enemies often above or below you in the ruins.

“We had to develop systems adapted to that, and allow players to move fluently between those unusual spaces,” explains Davis. Navigating the environment, you can stick to cover and fire from it, your vault mechanic is linked to the melee button.

It’s confusing at first but makes effectively using your vault kick attack in close quarters easier. Walker can carry two guns – the usual military-styled shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and grenades – and they feel brutal as enemies writhe under fire, or snap into agonised slow-motion when head-shot.  

“We want players to feel more what it’s actually like to be a soldier, and see bad things happen,“ explains Williams. “To pull the trigger and know someone on the other side is going to die.” So dying enemies won’t relinquish guns or ammo unless finished off, with a bullet to the head, or one of the game’s increasingly brutal executions.

But weapons aren’t only way to kill: Spec Ops’ desert environment itself is deadly. Throwing grenades into sand stuns enemies, and shattering set-piece windows with tons of sand pressed against them horribly smothers enemies.

The devastating sandstorms that have ravaged the city aren’t over, either; at key points you and your enemies will be forced to battle through blinding storms.

“Our AI has to be able to react on the fly,” says Davis, “because at any time you could throw a grenade into the sand and stun them, or set off a sand avalanche and sweep them away. We could kick off a sandstorm and make the entire group AI go into search behavior, where things like line of sight change.”

That advanced AI is reflected in enemy behavior; battling undisciplined looters early on is very different from the soldiers of the 33rd, which include lightly armed infantry, deadly shotgun wielders, tactical Special Forces troops and Heavies.

Heavies are armored soldiers that can only be killed by precise headshots through their mask. They all use the unusual cover to rush or flank you, and turrets and grenades with devastating effect. 

Spec Ops: The Line's squad mechanics actually make a difference

Spec Ops’ combat is tough, but your versatile AI squad mates Lugo and Adams really do back you up. They can be directed to take out specific targets using RB, with Lugo using his sniper rifle and Adams his explosives and a shotgun when it makes sense.

If you don’t like micromanaging a squad, they can look after themselves, but it’s Game Over if they die. “The idea was to make them feel as real as possible, and not just tools to shoot guys, and in the downtime make jokes.

They’re their own people,” says Williams. “Both have their own identities and beliefs. And as they see what happens they evolve in their own ways.” 

Spec Ops: The Line throws gut-wrenching moral decisions in your face

That human drama really shines in Spec Ops: The Line’s morality set-pieces, where players make harsh choices often reflecting those of real-life soldiers.

These are done through gameplay not cut-scenes, and drive your Squad’s character arcs. At the start, the Squad is full of banter, but clearly made up of professional soldiers ready to do a job.

But by the second half of our hands-on, which starts with the squad trapped under a collapsed building, it’s clear that the pressure is warping them.

Their eerie torch-lit faces are haggard, their uniforms dirty, and the banter is long gone – replaced by serious desperation, with Lugo and Adams at odds.

“This is a story about these three men, and what happens when you put good men into an increasingly bad situation,” says Williams. As we escape from the ruins, briefly battling 33rd troops in a plush bubble of opulence under the sand, we stumble upon a dark trench filled with the charred bodies of looters, our squad wondering in disgusted tones what has happened to create the scene.

It’s a question that quickly answers itself, as we clamber out of the trench to the sight of the ground in front of us burning. The looters have been hit by an incendiary anti-personnel attack – white phosphorous delivered by mortar. And as our Squad creeps through the flames, briefly battling a trio of Heavies, we are confronted with our first morality decision.

Spec Ops: The Line punishes you for poor decision making

Delta squad has been working with a CIA Agent named Gould to track down Konrad, and we happen upon him in the square, where he is being tortured by 33rd troops.

It‘s a desperate scene, his assailants threatening to kill a group of civilians if he doesn’t give up information, holding a screaming woman down and shooting around her head. A fierce whispered debate breaks out, with Lugo claiming they have to save Gould at any cost for the mission and Adams insisting they save the hostages – while Walker just listens.

“What Walker is doing in this situation is he’s doing what the military call the BOYD cycle or the OODA loop: he’s observing, then he’s orienting and then deciding and acting,” explains Davis. “Even though there might be something super-horrific going as the squad leader, he’s not going to express it in that moment.

"He’s going to internalise those things and the player gets to make that choice.” We choose to save Gould, hearing gunshots among the hostages.

Yet despite our choice, the savagely tortured Gould only lasts long enough after the battle to tell Walker where to meet his CIA colleagues, and as the squad trudge warily past the civilians we’d failed to save, Lugo and Adams start fighting, with Walker forced to separate them – a far cry from their earlier professionalism.

“These guys won’t hold hands at the end and say, ‘we made it!’” says Williams. “These are life-changing events that will change them and how they see each other.”

To hammer this home to players, voice work and pacing are key, claims Davis – Nolan North, Christopher Reid (of Kid ’n Play fame) and Omid Abtahi voice the Delta Squad – in order to balance the third-person action with slower character-developing moments.

Spec Ops: The Line's civilian casualties are horrific

Moving forward, we discover the white phosphorus mortar used on the looters earlier – and the choice is left to us whether or not to use the horrific weapon on a group of 33rd troops gathered below.

We make our decision and, as we engage the mortar, our view changes to the familiar green electronic aerial targeting screen, and we rain death on fellow American troops as Walker whispers, ‘This is war, and they made their choice.’

However, choices in Spec Ops carry consequences, and a vision from hell awaits us below. Scattered across the burning ground are charred bodies, and horribly burned victims with faces and limbs missing.

Most heart-wrenching of all are the piteous cries of men burning to death. As Walker approachs a hideously burned trooper, he raspingly reveals we’d attacked a 33rd splinter group actually trying to help nearby civilians.

We feel genuinely shaken, split between condemning our own trigger-happy nature and feeling that we’d somehow been tricked into committing this horrible atrocity.

“We’ve had focus testers who after that section had to pause the game and leave the room to compose themselves,” admits Williams. “We wanted to touch the player emotions, by getting his hands dirty, so to speak, in some of these scenarios,” says Davis. But Yager’s intent isn’t just to shock.

Every choice you make is based in the narrative and realistically upon the actions of characters reacting strongly to situations they don’t have full knowledge of.

“As well as showing the reactions of the Squad and these events impact on them,” says Williams, “we’re allowing the player to put themselves into Walkers shoes and ask, ‘What happens to me when I’m put in this situation, how am I  going to react?’”

We really identified with Walker and his men here, and while this is entertainment, it promises to meld gameplay and narrative in a truly affecting way.

Spec Ops: The Line's heroes will hallucinate under the pressure of combat

Our final hands-on section sees Delta Squad working with another CIA agent called Riggs, to steal a convoy of water trucks from the 33rd. It sees Walker hanging from a fleeing truck as we fire a grenade launcher at 33rd troops, humvees and helicopters before a panicking Riggs spectacularly crashes the truck.

As a battered Walker stumbles past locals frantically trying to gather spilling water, he discovers Riggs trapped under the burning rig, and we have to choose between leaving him to burn or ending his misery. Shooting him in the head – reluctantly, of course – we limp on, noticing the odd sight of a deer gamboling past us as we search for our squad.

But it is only after a dramatic set-piece in a ruined Mall, saving Lugo while he is held at gunpoint by silently kicking a 33rd troop over a guard rail to get a sniper rifle, that the truth of how psychologically fragile events will leave Walker start to become clear.

As he struggles against a Heavy trooper in a luxury shop, Walker begins to hallucinate – with the Heavy changing into a shattering statute each time we shoot.

Walker rants about ‘not needing this now’, and clearly this is a growing problem. Killing the Heavy stops the hallucination, but elsewhere Walker’s descent into madness takes many forms, like phantom deer, huge adverts of fashion models that morph into Konrad’s image.

Perhaps craziest of all, are Walker's increasingly brutal executions of enemies. Just how far down the rabbit hole you’ll go isn’t clear yet, but there are some nasty surprises promised.

Spec Ops: The Line's explosive action matches the madness and style of Call of Duty

Clearly, Yager is determined to tell a darkly mature story and really show the stark effect of war in Spec Ops: The Line – all while giving gamers an engaging third-person shooter.

It’s a tough balance and the development team knows Spec Ops is very different to other games of its type. However, one question remains: can it compete in a world of blockbuster-style shooters?

“Frankly, there are enough games like COD out there,” says Williams, “and not to say there’s anything wrong with them – they do what they do incredibly well, which is why they’re played so much and so many try to emulate them – but we didn’t want to do that.

We wanted to make the kind of mature game that we wanted to play but didn’t have the option of because it’s not there.” We suspect a lot of gamers share that desire, and if everything comes together as Yager hopes, Spec Ops: The Line could usher in a serious and welcome change to the military shooter and its heroes.

It’s Portal! Except it’s not. Quantum Conundrum is an XBLA and PSN-bound puzzle game where, excuse the boring technical moonspeak, you can switch between four different dimensions to alter the world around you. You can make objects fluffy which makes them lighter, hard which makes them heavier, slow down time or reverse gravity.

An example. You’re in a room with furniture you can’t lift, a pressure switch and a door that won’t open. What do you do? You have to turn the world fluffy, grab the now lighter furniture, place it on a pressure switch and turn the world heavy.

Furniture thumps down with a metallic clunk, pressure switch crunches underneath its new weight. Door opens. Success! That’s an easy example of how it works.

Fans, multiple switches, lasers, power cords and glass floors soon complicate matters and this is before you start switching dimensions on the fly.

It becomes the same brain-frying sorcery that powered Portal, turning your grey matter to mush as you try to figure out how to escape the room you’re trapped in.

Ah yes, Portal. What of that comparison? Kim Swift was lead designer on Portal and is creative director here. It shows. Quantum Conundrum has her fingerprints all over it, particularly with the same enter room, assess puzzle, scratch head, tentatively hit buttons and attempt solution formula coming to the fore.

The writing is just as light-hearted and also features an unseen voice guiding you through each room. The look is more cartoony than Portal – think the bright vivid colours of Team Fortress 2 rather than Portal’s clean and muted aesthetic – but there’s no denying the two share a lot in common. And that is a very, very good thing indeed.

Harvey Smith feels more and more like a less celebrated Ken Levine. Both have worked on classic videogame series, the instalments of which lurk in the mechanically complex past of the PC’s classic FPS heritage.

While Smith and Levine both worked on System Shock, that series was the one the Irrational founder chose to reboot for a more accessible console legacy.

Smith, on the other hand, seems to have chosen his work on Thief as an entry point. Perhaps he feels like more authentically replicating the involved, stealth-based style and unforgiving, gothic mood that characterised that series, rather than pandering to traditional FPS tropes in the way that allowed BioShock to really make its name on console.

But what both Smith and Levine seem to agree on, even before considering what a player does in a space, is what the world is, and why they’re actually there. It’s this sense of time, place and atmosphere that Dishonored, like Levine’s Rapture before it, seems to place at the forefront.

It’s easy enough to accuse developer Arkane Studios of hiding behind Dishonored’s art style as the big pull, of course; since its announcement last summer, the developer has still flatly refused to show more than mere snippets of gameplay in action.

But as details of the world spill out of the team’s Lyon headquarters, it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that, in a location so accomplished in its fiction and its visuals, there’s going to be anything less than epic adventure to play out.

There's definte tastes of Half-Life 2 in this screenshot.

Wisely, Arkane has already limited itself to a single location, and Dunwall is its name. The fantasy city is a gritty fusion of 1940s London architecture and  the steampunk sensibilities of artist Viktor Antonov – who brought us Half-Life 2’s City 17 and its related Orwellian social horrors.

An imperialistic metropolis of skyline-dominating steel fortresses, Dunwall would be bleak at the best of times – but that’s before the added inconveniences of plague and, for player character Corvo, being fitted up for the murder of the city’s Empress.

It’s an oft-told story, perhaps; the people’s hero – tooled up with supernatural skills and a generous armoury – is on the run from the very lawkeepers he used to lead.

But like Thief, passage through Disohonored promises to offer little in the way of compromise. Stealth, cunning and picking the right battles at the right time seems to be the gameplay angle, and Arkane plans to reward the commitment of players with an environment that’ll be a far more energetic sandbox playground than the average shooter.

Verticality, apparently, will be one of the keys to this freedom, as Arkane describes a world structure in which Corvo will spend as much of his time climbing buildings as skulking around or through them.

At the same time, peering through keyholes and stealth killing will contribute to gameplay that, like thief, rewards the cautious. And the game’s ‘Chaos’ feature could prove to be its genuine, forward-moving trump card in this area.

Details are still sketchy, but Smith has discussed the dynamic as being like a quiet checklist the game keeps of all of individual elements of Corvo’s behaviour that could destabilise Dunwall, with the idea that too much social disturbance could seriously unravel what remains of the city’s sociopolitical fabric.

No ‘adult’ videogame is complete without its share of prostitutes.

And that, perhaps, is a binary representation of Corvo’s choice: sneak around manipulating and affecting others – using powers such as the ability to possess creatures to do his bidding – or rely more on a personal level of raw skill to get by.

With athletic powers such as double jumps or a near-distance teleport known as the ‘Blink’, Corvo is more than capable of slipping by on his own.

But it’s the wider potential for Machiavellian intrigue in such an affecting and atmospherically charged sandbox that seems to be DIshonored’s real temptation.

Until Arkane is willing to show any of this in action, however, it’s all theoretical. But can an assembled force of Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex and Half-Life 2 names really be wrong?

DmC: Devil May Cry has got a lot of people upset, but after spending some real time playing through the first mission of Ninja Theory’s ludicrous hack-n-slash reboot, we reckon it’s time for some critics to calm down and trust Capcom’’s decision.

Regardless of what new Dante looks like, DmC plays just like classic Devil May Cry games, and in many ways, delivers more action and more stylish insanity than previous instalments. 

Slick, utterly hilarious, massively violent and with a stunning combat system, we finally go hands on to check out why DmC: Devil May Cry is a worthy addition to the franchise.

DmC: Devil May Cry's new Dante is the same as old Dante

Listen, we know and understand why many consider new Dante to be the opposite of fan service, but looks aren’t everything, and throughout DmC: Devil May Cry’s opening mission, Ninja Theory has peppered every scene with nods to the original games, and perfectly captured the style of the series.

DmC: Devil May Cry opens with Dante waking up in his trailer after a heavy night of partying. His trailer is parked at the end of a pier, and it’s a total mess, littered with empty pizza boxes and garbage. He gets out of bed fully naked as a hulking sea demon attacks his trailer.

The cutscene has nods to the opening of Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening. Dante gets dressed as he is thrown around the trailer, while a flying pizza slice hides his private parts. It’s totally daft, but then again, the Devil May Cry series has always been tongue in cheek.

Now fully dressed, Dante yells, "Get your filthy f**king claw off my trailer”, and picks up his trademark pistols from inside a pink bra hanging off his furniture. Emerging out on to the pier, Dante begins his escape from the demon.

DmC: Devil May Cry blends DmC 3's combat with Uncharted's platforming

In typical Devil May Cry fashion, Ninja Theory has pushed action to the forefront of DmC: Devil May Cry. This is represented by a mix of classic Devil May Cry set pieces and climbing sections similar to the Uncharted series.

These sections are slower than the combat, but don't break the constantly insane flow of action. After Dante escapes his trailer, he climbs along the pier as it collapses beneath him, then sprints along the deck as the sea demon smashes the environment to pieces.

The scene is loud, brash and set to the tune of destruction and blazing heavy metal, just like the classic Devil May Cry games. It’s around about this point you will probably stop fixating on how new Dante looks, and tune in to the chaos. It’s mesmerising and genuinely exciting.

Add to this previous trailers that show Dante outrunning a constantly morphing city that splinters and warps in an attempt to kill him, and you can already get a vibe for just how mad and unrelenting DmC: Devil May Cry will be.

DmC: Devil May Cry’s multi-weapon combos make for stunning S-Rank combos

Put your fears of a watered down combat system to rest, as DmC: Devil May Cry is home to long, heavy-hitting and mind-boggling combo chain that not only give you options for stringing different moves together, but also different weapon sets.

All of the Devil May Cry staples are in there, from light and heavy combos, dashing strikes, air launchers, air combos, juggles and much more. You also have a typical dodge roll that can be used to skirt around enemy attacks.

Dante’s sword can be unleashed to land close quarter hits, and it can also morph into a chain that can be used to pull enemies close and keep combo chains flowing. The sword chain can also be used to grab shields off enemies, or latch on to grappling hooks to cross pitfalls. 

One of Dante’s new weapons is a scythe than can be swung around wildly for devastating effect. You are free to switch between the scythe and sword to experiment with custom combos. 

DmC: Devil May Cry makes you feel as badass as the previous games did

Put simply, DmC: Devil May Cry is similar to Capcom’s original titles in that it makes you feel badass, and you don’t have to be a technical wizard to pull off the low-level moves and still feel great doing them.

But if you want those S-Rank combos, you will really need to work for them. The music is also reactive, erupting into a flourish of brutal metal riffs as you build up your combo meter. Fans of previous Devil May Cry games and other Capcom brawlers will get a real kick out hitting S-Rank combo chains.

It’s clear that Ninja Theory isn’t actively setting out to annoy die-hard Devil May Cry fans here, as all of the series staples are present and correct, as well as the usual Capcom fan service gamers have come to expect. 

We’ll have more on DmC: Devil May Cry as it happens, but for now, keep an open mind on this one, it’s honestly not bad.

Lost Planet 3 marks another collaboration between Capcom and a western developer, this time Spark Unlimited, the studio behind average shooters Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and Legendary: The Box. But don’t worry, NowGamer saw Lost Planet 3 first-hand at Capcom’s Captivate event last week, and it looks superb.

Serving as a series prequel, Lost Planet 3 follows the first crew to arrive on the hazardous ice planet E.D.N. III, and focuses on an expedition worker called Jim. This is a classic, story-driven Lost Planet experience, and you can fin out everything you need to know about it right here.

Lost Planet 3’s protagonist is similar to Nathan Drake

Where Lost Planet 2 would have you create a faceless mercenary without a back story or personal motives, Lost Planet 3 fleshes out the world of E.D.N. III by placing you in the role of Jim, one of the first humans to explore the barren ice planet.

Jim signs up for an expedition to E.D.N. III to begin colonizing the planet, and to earn money for his wife and child. However, his journey quickly descends into the usual battles against hulking Akrid aliens that fans of the series have come to expect. 

Although Jim is the wise cracking type, when the Akrid menace threatens his crew, he quickly develops into a tough hero, who must battle aliens and the harsh environment to survive. 

However, Jim also refuses to sleep in his crew’s quarters, opting to sleep inside his Utility Rig mech instead, hinting that he’s a little more complex than he first appears. 

Regardless, a large chunk of the plot is dedicated to Jim and his team finding ways to utlilise the planet’s natural resource, thermal energy to thaw the ice. However, questions start to arise about whether or not Jim’s crew are really the first humans to set foot on E.D.N. III, throwing him into a shadowy plot full of mysteries.

There's a much creepier tone to the on foot sections now.

Lost Planet 3’s tone and on foot combat is similar to Dead Space

Jim is a worker, not a solider, so while he can use weapons when he needs to, he will often use his Utility Rig mech and its tools to battle the Akrid horde. The thing you have to remember is that Jim’s team doesn’t know about the Akrid, so their mechs aren’t fully weaponised, giving Lost Planet 3 a real survival vibe.

Aside from E.D.N. III’s brutal snowfields, Lost Planet 3 delivers indoor sections that are tonally similar to Visceral’s Dead Space series. These dark, tense sections are incredibly claustrophobic and help create a balance between larger expanses.

Many of these areas have an atmosphere similar to survival horror titles like Resident Evil, and they are quite often filled with massive Akrid beasts that cannot be bypassed, forcing Jim into battle.

Akrids can also pounce on Jim and lurch in for the kill. Similar to QTE sections in Dead Space 2, you will have to hammer buttons to draw your knife and kill the attacking beast before it take a bite out of Jim.

Lighting is also employed to create a sense of dread, as shadows flicker, and light swings to keep you on edge. Jim can also pick up radio diaries of previous crews sent to E.D.N. III, which helps you piece together the madness unfolding around him.

Lost Planet 3’s mech combat is first person and brutal

Whenever Jim hops into his Utility Rig mech, the action switches to first person mode, which is a departure from previous Lost Planet games. While Jim can explore the frozen wastes in the rig, many areas are too small for it to pass, and require the player to exit the vehicle. 

In one scene Jim’s rig freezes over, and he has to exit the vehicle and shoot the ice off it, allowing it to move again. But when he leaves the rig he leaves himself open to Akrid attack, and you will most certainly get ambushed a lot. 

Rig combat sees Jim grabbing Akrid with the mech’s left arm then tossing them around or crushing them brutally. The rig can also volley off shots with its right arm. It remains to be seen if Jim can pilot other mech types, but we’d be surprised if Spark doesn’t include different models. 

Will we be able to kill this from the inside, like in Lost Planet 2?

Lost Planet 3’s bosses are massive

Similar to the first two Lost Planet games, the bosses in Lost Planet 3 are colossal. In Capcom’s demonstration, Jim is seen tussling with a giant Akrid crab boss while on foot. The beast has weak points behind cracks in its shell, as well as the muscles around its arms.

As Jim fires at the crab, he will eventually break off part of its claws, causing it to scream in pain. You can then have Jim lob a grenade in the crab’s mouth to finish it off. It’s a classic Lost Planet battle, the kind that dazzles you with its sheer scale and spectacle.

After returning to his Utility Suit, Jim is confronted by another crab, but this time the action plays out like a first person boxing match, as you block and counter its swipes. Then, using the suit’s drill, you can attack its weak spot until its claws break off, and follow up by destroying its shell.

These encounters are hectic and inventive, requiring keen attack placement and well-timed attacks. Bosses have always been a highlight of Lost Planet, and the trend is set to continue in Lost Planet 3.

Want more from Lost Planet 3?

• Lost Planet 3: Turning Point Dev Chosen For 'Passion & Ability' - Capcom
• Captivate 2012: Sony Leaks Lost Planet 3 Reveal 

We’re up to our necks in exploding giblets from the sixth shotgun round Salvador has managed to pump out in the space of three seconds and things are only about to get worse.

Halfway through the two levels Gearbox has given us access to we’re only now realising what it was that made the original game’s grinding so palatable.

You can have all the colourful visuals you like, but if the careful balance between firearms, co-op and loot, so brilliantly fused together, is tampered with too much, this house of cards could come tumbling down around Gearbox’s head. 

As it stands, Borderlands 2 is making changes in all the right places and as we gleefully jump and shoot our way through Pandora’s Park towards a military coastal base, we’re amazed how fast we find our groove.

We shouldn’t be surprised, though; it was the main reason Gearbox’s sleeper hit worked as well as it did. Borderlands’ effective mix of stats, XP, shooting, loot and co-op created no end of fun.

But now, we’re witnessing its gameplay and art come together to create something altogether more focused, and we’re constantly distracted by its beautiful visuals and unrelenting shooting.

Salvador and Maya are blasting their way across the bright countryside and if it’s not some lethal multi-limbed indigenous species trying to claw their faces off, it’s yellow mechs pouring out of the nearby base attempting the same.

Explosions are good. Borderlands 2 is full of 'em.

We’re two characters short of the full team, but it’s not inhibiting how much destruction we’re able to dish out. In many ways, Maya and Salvador, with a complementary range of abilities, are the perfect combination for what’s ahead of us.

Her Siren class allows for Phaselock abilities to stun and trap enemies, as well as developing numerous ways of handing out health (if that’s what you want to do) and Salvador, well, he’s a Gunzerker and has a tendency to go mental with his weapons whenever opportunity knocks.

These special abilities are activated by the left bumper and require a cool-down time after use, but they’re invaluable when you’re outnumbered (which is always). 

Gearbox has rather nicely provided us with characters upgraded to level 40, so we’ve got a substantial stock of abilities to play around with, and there’s plenty to upgrade. Borderlands 2 is taking steps to ensure you’re never more than a few seconds away from the action.

With our skill tree menu up, our co-op teammate can see the outline of our menu in front of Maya’s face, so he knows we’ll be spending at least a few seconds tinkering away (and not to start screaming at a vacant character model). Skills are split into three easy-to-understand categories – Motion, Harmony and Cataclysm.

It might as well read Passive, Co-operative and Attack, but the clear design and obvious images make picking out your skills and ultimate role in the group easy. 

There's a larger variety of enemies now, too.

Looting and shooting are Borderlands 2’s key tenets, but it’s amazing to see how pure Gearbox has managed to keep its action. We weren’t treated to hub worlds or characters dishing out “fetch me this” quests here.

Our objectives were housed in a little box to the top right of our screen – a little shopping list of destruction that would be checked off as and when we completed the tasks.

With characters jabbering over the radio and adding to our “to do” list as we explore the world, we’re never short of something to do, or, more importantly, something to shoot. 

In these mid-game levels Gearbox relays most of Borderlands 2’s narrative in much the same way, keeping the action flowing and the bullets flying.

At one point we’re given a little moral quandary. A huge mutant boss creature that took more shots to take down than we’ll ever remember firing, rewarded our hard work with a loot chest.

Inside were some naughty pictures of Moxxi that Marcus wanted. This was news to us, coming to the game at the midway point, but both characters were willing to help us out in reward.

But, who should we return the pictures to? It wasn’t made clear just how our actions would affect the experience, but it highlights the ways Gearbox can experiment with this action-heavy shooting and retain a sense of story progression.

The visual style returns, but crisper than ever before.

Handsome Jack, the game’s antagonist, can be heard taunting our efforts over the radio, but we wonder just how much of Borderlands 2’s narrative will be conveyed in this manner. 

Slant Six recently ran into the same co-op focused story problems with Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and it fell flat on its face, presenting a game that failed to satisfy lone players or those with friends.

Gearbox’s original hit a sweet spot between the two, but we’re already witnessing the sequels inability to have players do anything other than shoot. Not that we’re complaining, as a slice of action it’s difficult to find fault with the tweaks and improvements that have been implemented here.

After fighting our way through hordes of mechs, the level ends with at least twenty of them falling from the sky into a courtyard, backed up by a building-sized mega mech, before fading to black.

Boss encounters, it seems, will punctuate the levels, providing the game’s big moments. Which is saying something, given how explosive even your average enemy can be. 

Traipsing through the underground cesspit of Caustic Caverns, a green Toxic Avenger-styled environment, Gearbox’s art design, enemies and tech are all on display.

From the original’s mid-development change to the cell-shaded vistas of its sequel, lead artist Kevin Duc is adamant it’s not quite comic book in style, but it’s hard to see it as anything else.

The previous characters are replaced by newer, more stylish variations.

Colours pop whatever you’re doing and the bold lines and inventive enemies all fuel Gearbox’s need to keep you moving forward and hammering your gun’s trigger. 

What we didn’t expect to see was the breadth and range of enemies that continuously entered our crosshairs, though. After taking on a swarm of bugs (that looked eerily similar to the savage aliens seen in Starship Troopers) huge lumbering hulks emerged from the ooze, complete with handy glowing hit points.

Nothing is ever that easy and the enemies here have a tendency to shift form to surprise you. The mechs might be running at you now, and in a largely predictable manner, but they’ll soon shift and morph into little vehicles to ram through groups of players.

The huge insects that provided so much trouble earlier in the level will go through an entire life cycle of changes in a matter of seconds. It means, if you’re fast, you can catch them in the chrysalis stage and stop them in their tracks.

All of this sounds exciting, and it is, but Borderlands 2 manages to have all of these things happening simultaneously, presenting some of the most chaotic battlefields we’ve ever seen. 

It’s clear that Gearbox wants to perfect the formula the original game seemingly stumbled across and managed to hook a substantial number of gamers with. That Borderlands 2’s art style reinforces just how different it is should attract the attention of the COD and Battlefield players who would do well to try something that’s as audacious as this.

It might not look it, but vehicle driving has been improved.

Where the danger lies now is in players becoming fatigued by the constant action and the games overriding narrative being drowned out by the incessant gunfire and need to continuously move forward.

There may be moments of downtime we are yet to see, but Gearbox is insisting on presenting Borderlands 2 as an experience filled to bursting with guns and things to use them on.

This is what it’s all about after all, but there has to be something that releases the pressure. Knowing Gearbox though, it’ll probably be a bigger gun, an even bigger boss and dubstep blasting out of your speakers.

Max Payne 3 multiplayer isn't developed by the same team as Red Dead Redemption's online offering, yet it underlines Rockstar's rapidly growing proficiency at crafting well-balanced, expansive multiplayer components that don't feel tacked on to the single player campaign.

We sat down with Rockstar to play a few hours of Max Payne 3's multiplayer, and found it to be big, bold and very, very insane. Read on to find out more.

Max Payne 3's multiplayer bullet-time works perfectly

Rockstar has ensured that Max Payne 3's multiplayer component doesn't make concessions and instead, plays exactly the same as the campaign at base level. Players can still use bullet-time in the same way as Max does, and rather than being a clumsy gimmick, it works rather well.

When you perform a slow-mo leap, everyone else within your line of sight slows down to a near halt, giving you a window for the kill. So while it's in your interest to avoid making yourself visible to someone using bullet time, you can still see them packing with an old fashioned melee finisher if you happen to get too close to them.

Scoring hits and kills will refill your adrenaline gauge which lets you use more bullet time. However, you can choose to bolster your bullet time skill with many of Max Payne 3's awesome multiplayer perks, which are called Bursts. More on these later.

Max Payne 3's multiplayer delivers cinematic gunplay

Again, Rockstar hasn't trimmed back in any area when it comes to multiplayer. Any gun wielded by Max during the campaign can be used online, but they must first be unlocked by gaining experience online, then by buying them with money earned by winning games.

You can dual wield a massive combination of guns, and sling a two-handed weapon over your shoulder, as well as packing explosive devices. The sight of people leaping off rooftops while dodging RPG fire and returning the favour with dual wield Uzis in slow-mo is incredible, and insanely good fun.

Max Payne 3's multiplayer character customisation gives you an insane degree of control

As you level up and earn cash, you can buy new weapons, Bursts, attachments, avatar gear and passive skills. You can customise your character's appearance with a wide range of clothing, tattoos, accessories and more, although a popular favourite in our session with Rockstar was the rather terrifying gas mask and giant afro combination. 

All gear aside from clothing adds to your character's overall weight. The heavier you are, the slower you move, which also stunts your health regeneration rate. There is a clear trade off between packing serious firepower and staying nimble enough to survive longer. It's a neat bit of balancing that makes you really consider your load out.

Max Payne 3's Burst system is tactical and innovative

Earlier in this preview we mentioned Bursts, which is Max Payne 3-speak for skills. You can unlock many Bursts by levelling up in multiplayer and equip them in character customisation. Paranoia is already a favourite, making everyone on the opposing team look like an enemy as you stand back and watch your enemies gun each other down.

Trigger Happy will sacrifice your current weapon for a grenade launcher when you need a big push, Intuition reveals the location of all hostiles on the mini-map, while Big Dog will give your whole team a health boost. You can also stack up to three levels of adrenaline to unleash bigger variations of each power.

The mix of singular and team-wide buffs and effects are what make Max Payne 3's wild and unfettered multiplayer suddenly enter tactical territory, which elevates it from being just another shooter to something much more compelling. This is just as well, because Max Payne 3's multiplayer modes require plenty of teamwork.

Max Payne 3's Gang Wars mode runs alongside the campaign

Throughout Max Payne 3's single player campaign, the deadbeat cop will tussle with various gangs around the city of Sao Paolo. The Gang Wars multiplayer mode focuses on what these gangs get up to behind the scenes of the single player, with each game spreading across five rounds. 

Each of these mini-multiplayer campaigns throw tons of modes at you, from capture the flag inspired bag snatch mode, which sees teams scrambling over two bags of cash then dropping them off at constantly changing drop zones.

You also have a bomb defusal mode, a straight-up multiplayer face-off and point capture games. All of these modes can be played outside of Gang Wars, with maps changing layout depending on how much of the 16-player lobby has been filled.

Max Payne 3's Payne Killer mode is outstanding

One mode which can't be played in Gang Wars is Payne Killer which is absolutely brilliant. Each game begins with all players battling in free-for-all, and the first person to score a kill becomes Max Payne, while Max's first victim respawns as his buddy Passos. These guys are tough, and have two bottles of painkillers each, although they don't have regenerative health.

The rest of the players must hunt down Max and Passos and kill them, and the cycle repeats. For example, whoever scores the most hits on Max will become him when he dies, which is a great way of preventing kill-stealing. This mode is a manic dash to hunt the duo while remaining cautious of their increased power.

Who ever spends the most time as Max and Passos is likely to geet the biggest score and win the round, thanks in alrge part to their increased resilience and firepower, so it's in your best interest to try and respawn as Max or Passos as much as possible.

That's all from Max Payne 3 multiplayer for now, but as always, NowGamer will be on-hand to cover more Max Payne 3 information as it happens.

Want more from Max Payne 3?

• GTA 5: Rockstar Confirms Max Payne 3 Multiplayer Crew Imports
• Max Payne 3 Single Player Hands On: Gameplay, Awesome Tech & Bullet Time

We have to be honest. As RPG fans, we’re tired of being pandered to, looked down upon, underestimated and led by the nose. We’re often mature, intelligent people who – shock, horror – have been doing this for a while, and we can handle both complex mechanics and adult storylines in our games.

While the RPG once seemed the last bastion of hardcore depth, it’s been bitten by the accessibility bug of late – just look at the disappointing Dragon Age II and even Mass Effect 3, which can be played as a pure shooter if you like.

There’s nothing wrong with that – choice is good, as is introducing new people to the genre – but we’ve been dying for something we can really get our teeth into, and that tells a cracking fantasy yarn. Yes, we got some RPG ‘meat’ in Dark Souls, but it was very focused on its mechanics and, for some, to quote Bruce Lee, it had no emotional content story-wise.

We want it all; both engrossing mechanics to tinker with and a story that’ll genuinely transport us into a fantasy world. The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings, CD Projekt Red’s PC hit from last year and now ported to the 360, is promising just that.

Geralt is back, and he means business.

The Witcher 2’s setting is the stuff of hardcore fantasy fans’ dreams. It tells the tale of Geralt of Rivia, an alchemy-enhanced monster hunter, caught up in the deadly conspiracy to plunge the Kingdom of Temeria and its neighbours into war by systematically assassinating all their heads of state.

This is a Game Of Thrones-style world of realistically bickering nobles, full of corrupt officials and self-interested guilds, and watched by secret police – and other traditional fantasy tropes are given similar dark twists. Humanity’s relationship with fantasy peoples like elves, dwarves and gnomes are largely defined by racism and oppression.

Geralt and his party are even caught up in a bloody demi-human rebellion, and there’s a real tension between magic users and normal people.

As you travel this character-rich kingdom, undertaking quests to uncover the titular killer and embarking on dangerous bouts of monster-hunting in the wilds, a dark and mature fantasy tale looks set to unfold.

Both Geralt and his companions, some of whom you can romance, are in constant peril, and your choices directly impact which of the game’s distinct multiple endings you get to see.

There’s a similar promise of depth in how you interact with the world, and while you’ll find plenty of familiar RPG mechanics, they’ve been tweaked to make them more interesting.

The overarching fantasy world is one of the best around today.

You’ll recognise the conversation system from Mass Effect, but in key places your responses are timed and genuinely influence the next set of questions you get to ask.

Your relationships with NPCs often also affect what quests you can do, and nothing can be taken for granted. The Witcher 2’s real-time weapons-based combat is similarly deeper than the norm, your performance affected by your armour and equipment stats, and the various buffing potions you can make from gathered components as a witcher.

Your hard and fast attacks with your two swords – one used to kill people, the other monsters – has been slightly simplified compared to the PC version, but still promises to be more intricate, fluid and demanding than in many 360 RPGs.

Your various witcher abilities, which include a series of magic spells like a telekinetic push and fire, and a range of thrown weapons, are mapped to a wheel similar to the one in Mass Effect.

Learning to use them is key, and everything seems tailored to rewarding players that learn its systems. Unlike Dark Souls, however, it’s far more driven by the story you’re engaged in.

What’s great about The Witcher 2 is that it’s more than just a simple port of the PC version, with more than four hours of additional content coming to our favourite console.

This is looking like best version of an already great game, and we’re hopeful that it’ll match up to expectations. If it can, we’ll have an excellent example to point to as gamers and show developers what we want from our RPGs. As fans we want it all, and we might finally get it. 

Death comes to us all – an end that philosophers, poets, novelists, artists, sculptors and musicians have all tried to capture, to bring meaning to. In doing so it’s a concept often afforded human form. The Grim Reaper is the better-known incarnation, but there’s also the Pale Rider; one of the Horsemen Of The Apocalypse.

There are four in total, and depending on which version of the lore you ascribe to (the Bible, Metallica, 2000AD…), they are War, Death, Pestilence and Famine, the first two of which make fantastic central characters for a videogame.

The last two not so much, though we have had some considerable befuddlement wondering what a game whose central character is Famine might be like.

We don’t like to dwell on the past. This is a hands-on preview of Darksiders II, so the less time we spend talking about the original the better.

But, briefly for those who didn’t play it: you played War, one of the Four Horsemen, fought against demons and angels, cut things, kicked things, threw things, solved puzzles, powered up, and gained new abilities to open up new areas. It was open-worldy, and you had a horse named Ruin. Also, it was rather good – a game that you should all go back and play if you missed.

Darksiders II promises us a comparatively massive game with a play area many times the size of that seen in the original. Puzzles are harder by way of a more elaborate design.

We have to admit, this is the stuff iconic death metal album covers are made of.

Death is a leaner, faster, lither, more agile player-character. He has Lara Croft DNA, and so has greater fluidity of movement. He can string together wall-running, swinging and grappling combos.

And there are random loot drops from enemies; superior, inferior or just plain different pieces of armour and weapons that allow us to trick out our Death, not only with stuff that kicks greater statistical ass, but also in whichever way we find the most aesthetically pleasing.

We amble into the demo room. It’s in the nave of a medieval church nestled betwixt the canals that run like arteries through the heart of Amsterdam.

It is early morning. With an infinite supply of Red Bull at a bar little more than an arms length from our demo booth, we sit down and, after a brief fight with a headset whose left speaker has failed (we bang it on the table and shout at it, swig more Red Bull, bang it harder, faster until we’re told to stop it) we sit down for a jittery three-hour playthrough of the final dungeon of the first quarter of the game. The Foundry.

At first, Death is greeted by Karn, a big, dumb fellow with a hammer. Those of you who played the first game may remember him as the one with whom you engaged in an angel-splopping competition.

During our journey through The Foundry, Karn is there alongside us, often taking a different route that we must open up for him, he in turn there to help us prop open doors, offer us the occasional hint or lob us bodily to some high, otherwise-unreachable platform.

Wall-running, dashing, vaulting. The platforming of Darksiders II is an immediate highlight; a dance of fingers on buttons that flows fluidly and without issue. 

Hope you have space on your keyring Death.

It’s proper platforming, and requires proper skill, timing and accuracy. And like all the greatest platformers, it sees us fall to our death every eight seconds. It’s not so bad; Darksiders II respawns us onto the platform we were last on and we try again. And again.

Enemies arrive in your standard human-sized, scythe-fodder variety, as well as some that are smaller and easier to sponk when coming thick and fast. The main difference here is that, mysteriously, numbers emanate from the heads of each monster as Death wades through them. Is it just us, or is every game an RPG these days? 

The time we had to play was not long enough to afford these numbers appropriate context. The number 49, for example, means little to us when there is nothing to compare it to. In the grand scheme, we can imagine this will prove a point of satisfaction as Death becomes stronger, his weapons sharper, those numbers steadily bigger.

New weapons are dropping all the time. It’s only twenty minutes in and we’re already bumbling about the equipment screen. We compare stats and effects on the three different scythes we’ve already picked up.

We move the cursor faster; left, right, move it back and forth, watch the numbers change; can’t settle; one has a poison effect, the other does more damage. Which one is the best? Which?

The main crux of the dungeon is a hub from which leads several locked doors. The one way open branches venally to other rooms, each with its own specific personality and part in the grand solution.

Believe it or not, this is actually a fair fight.

There is a series of puzzles here, primarily involving some path-finding for Karn so he can join us and prop open a door from whose other side we have to roll a giant ball. It’s not immediately clear how to solve either of the two gloriously intricate puzzles that need to be fathomed in order to reach the Guardian boss.

But Darksiders II does a great job of encouraging us to fiddle with its mechanisms. It’s like a pop-up book; not apparent what will happen when we pull one tab or another, but by presenting us with myriad fun things to experiment with, gradually a picture of the grand plan emerges and we’re able to link A to B to C.

We unlock several new powers as we plunder the Foundry in an erratic fashion. The Death Grip is the most significant. Powers can be swapped out for easy activation on the X or Y button and with the Death Grip in either, we’re able to grapple onto distant scenery mid-jump.

Handy, we think, but what it amounts to is to crank up the difficulty of the platforming to the point where we spend more time falling into molten lava than we do getting anywhere.

Death also has two pets. The first is a raven called Dust. He flies about and settles on objects of interest when we spend far too long trying to hump a wall that can’t be humped. Over here, you idiot. That’s his job.

The second is Despair; a pale, green horse on whose back we take on the Guardian. No studio likes their game compared to others, but this boss fight is similar to Shadow Of The Colossus.

As we ride about on horseback, we wait ‘til big hammer slams down before drubbing the hell out of his arm, climb him, then bash his weak points in. It’s not original, but it is fun and challenging.

And that was the sense with which we came away from our time with Darksiders II; of something massive and involved and tough and beautifully realised. Something to which a mere three hours cannot do justice. In short, we want it, and you should too.

Many won’t have heard of Crash Time 4: The Syndicate despite it being on a fourth outing already, but it could well provide a little bit of every kind of racer around. We had recent hands-on with PQube’s racer, and here’s what we thought:

Crash Time 4’s Open World Is Like Burnout Paradise

Most racing games these days seem content to drop you into a track or force you down very specific routes; not Crash Time 4. There are markers that lead the way, of course, but if you know a secret route or can shave off a few seconds by taking an alternate path then feel free. There is an issue in that each district seemed segregated – which could be a little jarring in the full game.

Crash Time 4 Has Driver Style Missions

It’s a shame about Driver: San Francisco. We’re partial to some classic Starsky And Hutch style shenanigans, but Tanner’s latest outing just failed to capture what that really meant. During our hands-on with Crash Time 4 we had plenty of opportunities to take part in high-speed chases, cause unexpected pile-ups and even track down concealed stunt jumps – without any of that nonsense ‘shift’ mechanic getting in the way.

Race Around A Realistic Recreation Of Cologne

Perhaps not the most traditional of choices, Crash Time 4 eschews the more typical racing game settings of San Francisco, New York or Paris. Cologne isn’t exactly well known for a history of car chases and vehicular based excitement – but perhaps that’s the point. It’s clearly targeting a German market and there’s no denying that Crash Time 4 is authentic in that sense, though hopefully the numerous autobahns of the city won’t grow tiresome.

Gran Turismo 5 Style Races Are Also Included

If open world antics aren’t enough for you, there are even traditional race events replete with dynamic racing line and aggressive opponent AI. We only had the chance to attempt one of these tracks, though we could return to try and beat our times. Whether this will affect the realistic representation of Cologne – admittedly we’re not quite sure just how many different racetracks there are in the city – but it proves that Crash Time 4 can offer all types of racing.

An Arcade Feel To Missions

Despite the underlying physics engine tying Crash Time’s racing together, the missions themselves are a little more arcadey in their approach. This might range from simply heading through a set of checkpoints while causing as much damage as possible, or the more taxing high-speed chases with spike traps and armoured vehicles but it’s strangely refreshing to have only one objective to contend with – hopefully the final game can maintain that level of excitement.

Traveller's Tales' perpetual production line of Lego games is quintessentially formulaic by nature: hit that, collect this, chortle wildly through the charming cut-scene.

Frankly, it could continue recycling this dutiful template until the end of existence without so much as a squeaky whine from its core demographic (kids and bigger kids, lest you’ve forgotten).

And Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes doesn’t alter much – quite rightly so – but Traveller's Tales has been canny enough to realise that its vision was due a slight rebuild, and has taken Gotham and its citizens into a new direction that should make this sequel the freshest offering since Lego Star Wars blasted into space.

Historically, Batman has often been given the short shrift by adversarial maniacal idols of DC Comic’s distinguished Rogues Gallery, and that was certainly the case in 2008’s Lego Batman game.

In the sequel, the risk is that the Caped Crusader could suffer the same fate once again but this time at the hands of his ally. In a divisive turn, Superman (making his Lego debut) could potentially overshadow his Gotham-dwelling foil; as for one he gets all of the best powers (flight, heat vision, freeze breath).

It’s an arsenal of absolute supremacy that videogames in the past have failed to translate, but which doesn’t prove much of a problem for the tongue-in-cheek nature of the Lego videogames. 

“With all Lego games it’s about ‘how do we make it fun?’ rather than focusing on making them the hardest experience possible,” says producer Philip Ring.

Superman will, unsurprisingly, have all the coolest abilities.

“So when it was time to include Superman, it was a case of that he has to feel cool, he has to feel awesome. While we’re doing that, though, we have to make sure we don’t make the other characters any less important so they all have their own unique skills throughout the levels. Superman just kind of adds to that as well.”

Aside from the Man of Steel’s inimitable arsenal, Batman, Robin and other DC characters will have a series of suits with tailored functions to expand the otherwise staid abilities that the heroes are known for.

Batman has a sensor suit which enables him to appear invisible and an electricity suit that absorbs charges, while Robin has an acrobatic costume that enhances his platforming abilities.

It’s not just a step to make each of the characters relevant (while creating specific objectives for each hero), but it’s also a measure to keep the focus very much on the Dynamic Duo.

“Because it takes place in Gotham City, it just felt right to keep the focus on Batman,” states Ring. “He is the main key point of the story, so you have Batman and Robin, then Superman kind of joins in with some other characters but it really is more of a Batman story that follows through.”

The story begins as Bruce Wayne is being given the prestigious ‘Man of the Year’ award for his contributions to Gotham, as the Joker pays an uninvited visit.

Inevitably, a fight ensues, but it’s not long before it’s revealed the clown has teamed-up with Lex Luther to break out all of Arkham’s inmates.

For the first time ever in the series, Lego characters will now be voiced.

It’s with this huge cast of heroes and villains that the playground has been expanded, Gotham City once again transformed into a sprawling open-world environment.

Famous locations are spread across the scenery: from above the infamous spot of Bruce Wayne’s parents’ death, the Monarch Theatre, can be glimpsed, elsewhere Axis Chemicals and Wayne Tower loom far in the distance. 

But this all pales in comparison to the most momentous modification to the Lego blueprint: voices. For the first time in Lego history, each of the characters will utter words from their brick-mouths and while you would expect this to sideline the charming parody, it serves only to enrich the humour.

“It’s really about what we can do with the characters,” smiles Ring. “Take Superman, for example, people have a good idea of what they expect from him.

"But the Lego version of Superman almost comes across as a little bit arrogant and that’s reflected in the way he speaks and the way he delivers his lines but also in the way his animations are portrayed – slicking his hair back and things like that. It’s just a bit different to what you would expect.”

There’s a grey cloud hanging over Ghost Recon: Future Soldier courtesy of the many delays Ubisoft’s third-person shooter has had to suffer – it was initially due for release in 2010, you know.

As with many games that have been cursed by extended development time, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier now has to contend with two sets of fans, from those who have anticipated the game for longer than is healthy and those who have since lost interest entirely.

But this protracted development hasn’t necessarily lead to a game that is worse for wear, and given a lengthy hands-on time with the latest build of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, we can tell you why there’s no need to worry about the delays.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Isn’t All That Sci-Fi

Okay, so obviously it is still sci-fi – it is Future Soldier, after all – but one of the reasons Ubisoft delayed the game so much was to tone down its sci-fi element.

When it was first revealed there was a lot of impossible futuristic tech built into the game, a feature that left many fans of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter cold.

The stealth cloak is the only element that has copied over to the nearly finished version of the game, and even that has been toned down a little. Crouch or go prone and your Ghost’s camouflage cloak will activate – making him practically impossible to spot over range. That won’t make him invisible, however. 

Get too close and you can be spotted and if an enemy with a heavy weapon fires in your direction – perhaps a last known position – then it’ll cause your cloak to disappear.

There’s still the recon drone too, GRAW fans, which is imperative for stealthy manoeuvres. It’s all a little more down to earth than the initial reveal, and makes for a much more identifiable (and less ridiculous) game overall.

Marking is a great new feature for co-operative play.

Co-op Is Important To Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

If you’ve played GRAW then the chances are you’ve played it in co-op. It’s a mode the series is well-known for, bringing a set of challenges that are best completed with actual, human allies.

The same is true with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, with full co-op campaign for up to four players.

There are a few new additions to cater for it too, such as the new mark and shoot system. A loose comparison would be to suggest it’s like Splinter Cell: Conviction’s automatic press-to-win button, but there’s a little more work involved here.

Marking can be done by anyone (though it’ll preferably be handled by whoever is in charge of the recon drone), with a maximum of four enemies targeted at once. From here each player picks a target, which is then highlighted as ‘ready’ with a mystical blue laser.

Once all four are targeted, simply execute the shot. If done successfully in tandem then time will slow a little, which is particularly handy in those tougher encounters against more than four enemies.

Guerrilla Mode is based on a real strategy used by guerillas to cause havoc in an key strategic area.

Guerrilla Mode Is Future Soldier’s Answer To Horde Mode

There’s little to distinguish the two, to be honest. You and three friends defend yourself against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. So even more co-op to get your teeth into.

There are a few tweaks to the tried-and-tested formula, however. You’ll begin by capturing a headquarters that for the next 10 waves needs to be defended. Let an enemy stay too long in your headquarters and it’s game over, so there’s a constant need to keep an overwatch over it. 

After 10 waves, the headquarters moves to a trickier location to hold – meaning you have to recapture (preferably stealthily) the post before continuing.

Then there are wave bonuses – rewards for surviving multiple waves and perfect for last-ditch attempts against harder rounds. These range from the basic (enemy detecting radars) to the powerful (obliterating air strikes) that can only be activated once per round.

It’s not much nor is it particularly original in any way, but it is tough and does add some co-op fun outside of the main game. With shield-wielders and snipers, it’s more than a simple fragfest too.

You'll need to stick together in case one of your team-mates is taken out.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Is Still For The Hardcore

We didn’t get hands-on with any of that namby-pamby Kinect nonsense, nor did we get an opportunity to try easier settings, but if you’re worried that Ubisoft Montreal has fallen foul to making its game ‘accessible’ then there’s nothing to fear here.

In fact, Jean-Marc Geffroy – Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s creative director – suggests “accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean easy”, and from our hands-on with Future Soldier, it’s clear that’s the case here.

We weren’t even on the hardest difficulty and we found ourselves dying on numerous occasions, reverting to previous checkpoints and having to recuperate and figure out a strategy for the best approach.

Though Ghost Recon: Future Soldier can be played solo – and the AI do an amicable job of replacing human allies – there’s a real emphasis on team-work to survive.

It only takes a couple of bullets to bring yourself or a squad-mate down, so rushing into battle and playing it like a cover shooter will not be enough to survive. 

Whether the AI of the game is smart enough to flush you out will take some real analysis at review, but it’s clear Ghost Recon: Future Soldier still retains the hardcore attitude that made GRAW so popular.

We didn't get to play this section, but we're already intrigued.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Isn’t Too Linear

These days shooters tend to funnel us down very pretty – and more often than not, explosive – corridors, with little in the way of thought beyond which shooting gallery target to aim for next.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier isn’t quite like that, providing areas a little more open and combat situations requiring a little more thought. Cross the river or hold at the bridge? Head through the barn or cover it from different angles?

It’s the on the fly choices that makes Ghost Recon a tactical shooter franchise, and all this ties into the hardcore difficulty already mentioned. It makes a change to have decisions to make, and we’re thankful that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier doesn’t seem to have lost sight of that.

That’s not to say there are Battlefield levels of openness, you won’t be able to swarm an encampment from all fronts in a plethora of vehicles and there are still scripted set pieces to contend with.

These might be as simple as breaching a building a la Call Of Duty but one of the highlights we encountered in our hands-on was defending a derelict building from an unstoppable infantry force while a tank chipped away at our ever-decreasing cover. It was hard, which made the eventual victory all the more tantalising.

No doubt more exciting moments are in store in the final game, but since few can compete with the over-the-top attitude in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 it’ll mostly be refreshing if we didn’t have to bring down famous landmarks for a change.

As far as wake-up calls go, Activision dropping the axe on True Crime: Hong Kong had to be a sobering one for United Front Games. Deemed as “just not good enough” by the mega-publisher at a press conference, the game – reportedly playable from start to finish at that point – was left incomplete just mere months before it was due to hit shelves.

“We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Activision,” the developer stoically stated on its website, “but we understand why… In the meantime we are setting our creative sights on a different horizon.” 

Whatever waited on that horizon would have to be put on hold. Square Enix London Studios entered the fray in the eleventh hour, approaching the ModNation Racers studio to take over publishing duties on the Hong Kong-set open-world crime caper.

“They’ve had incredible support and excitement for the game from the moment they saw it,” enthuses Jeff O’Connell, senior producer at United Front. “They really helped us tune it up and get it to where it is now.”

Square Enix failed to acquire the IP along with the game from Activision, but it’s fair to say that True Crime has well and truly slipped into franchise rigor mortis.

The logical redubbing of the game as Sleeping Dogs was just the first instance of Square Enix’s overriding influence on the game, as the publisher lent its experience of nurturing studios such as Rocksteady and Avalanche to tweak and adjust areas of United Front’s crime drama. 

With GTA V’s impending release, if it arrives before Christmas it could very well eclipse Sleeping Dogs. 

“I think, fundamentally, the game is still the same,” states O’Connell. “It’s still set in Hong Kong, you’re still an undercover cop, and it’s still an open-world game with action mechanics that are deeper than you’ll find in any other urban open-world game, and that’s really what it was always about.

"What Square Enix London Studios has really brought to it is the experience they have with Just Cause and Arkham Asylum, and that lines up just perfectly with what it is we’re trying to do.”

So while the core tenets remain – an elaborate, compacted open-world to explore; undercover cops infiltrating the volatile Triads; and visceral violence to punctuate the central narrative – there’s a semblance of influence to be found in the above titles. And with such an assortment of influences, the results are a congruent blend of gameplay components.

“What we wanted to do was create a seamless mix between fighting, shooting, driving and then driving combat, and even adding in some free running. It’s not an easy task,” quips O’Connell with a grin. Dive into combat and instantly the comparisons to Arkham Asylum’s brutal ballet of ballistic pugilism are easy to make.

As a gang of unseemly thugs gather to pummel Wei Shen – the undercover detective who has spent the last fifteen years in America, now back in Hong Kong to enact some blood-soaked justice and revenge – it’s the first opportunity for games™ to witness the combat system in action.

Many of the NPCs will speak Cantonese throughout the game, subtitled for the benefit of those of us who aren’t fluent. 

Mostly, it’s a rather simple case of smashing the attack button to perform brutal blows, while alternatively holding down the attack button will instead unleash a more powerful hit.

Shen doesn’t possess the same fluidity of The Caped Crusader, but it’s no less acrobatic and unfeasibly choreographed, both in the transitioning between straight offensive attacks and defensive counters – enemies springing to attack are signposted with a flashing indicator, in much the same way as they were in Arkham. 

This approach may be overshadowed by Rocksteady’s well-engineered fighting system, but it alleviates these concerns with ultra-violent contextual attacks that emphasise the harsh reality of the seething underworld players have been thrust into. After grabbing an opponent, a number of flashing objects will appear around the environment.

What occurs next could be anything from slamming a head into a car door to drowning a foe in a freshly-filled toilet, or possibly a tongue-in-cheek face-in-the-fan method of grisly dispatch. It remains to be seen what level of repetition we’ll see in these colourful finishers, but as a taster it’s certainly palatable. 

It’s also only one part of a menagerie of influences found both in the medium and out. Moments of action that could’ve leapt out of the frame of John Woo’s Hard Boiled are keenly followed by parkour mechanics that bring Ezio’s adventures to mind.

The over-exaggerated way vehicles collide and explode recalls Saints Row The Third’s loose approach to physics. 

A touch of the jump button when approaching an obstacle will send Shen vaulting over barriers in a heart-pounding chase sequence; uninspired QTEs serenade cut-scenes; even bullet time (automatically activated when springing over obstacles) is brazenly co-cribbed from The Matrix and Max Payne.

It’s no surprise that the studio houses individuals with history that stretches through the industry far and wide. “We put together an incredibly talented group of designers,” says O’Connell. “We’ve got designers from Rockstar’s Bully, as well as the guys who have worked on the upcoming Max Payne game.

"We’ve brought in designers who worked on Need For Speed and guys who have worked on other open-world games too, like The Godfather and Mercenaries. There’s just a ton of different experience there.

"So we have a perfect group of experienced people who have put their heads together and made a system that is seamless. It is very easy to just pick up and play the game.”

Perhaps the most noticeable among those accolades is the small band of individuals that has worked on the Need For Speed series of EA racers (not to mention United Front Games’ only other release to date, ModNation Racers).

One portion of the game features a Fast And The Furious-style race around the mean streets of Hong Kong business district at night, the area illuminated by street lamps that slice through the hazy smog of bustling cityscape.

Lucy Liu voices one of the game's characters. Expect some more famous vocals to be announced closer to release. 

It’s a shame then that, as the race begins, the controls feel flimsy, not helped by a procession of 90-degree corners and overly-aggressive AI making the sequence fizzle out with little in the way of impact.

If it’s beginning to sound like a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ approach then you wouldn’t be far wrong. Even the shooter mechanics – an area that, in fairness, the majority of third-person open-world games find troublesome to nail down – feel lightweight, even if they’re backed by a competent cover system. 

If Sleeping Dogs is to have any major talking point (and commercial success), it has to be in the open-world environment, and all the eccentricities, vigour and diversity of design that create an absorbing environment for players to get lost within for countless hours.

It’s here that United Front Games decided to change perhaps the most synonymous aspect of the True Crime franchise, by creating a fictitious facsimile of Hong Kong rather than map out a GPS accurate rendition of the densely populated Chinese city. 

“One of the things about the True Crime series before was that, while that was a neat back-of-the-box feature, it didn’t necessarily translate into great gameplay,” says O’Connell. “What we wanted to avoid was what we called the ‘Austin Powers problem’.

"There’s that famous scene from the first movie when he’s stuck in the corridor, backing up and moving forward, and Hong Kong is so dense and crowded that in some instances we’ve had to open up the streets or sidewalks a little bit, or just adjust the car and pedestrian density so that it doesn’t become and exercise in frustration.”

The combat is heavily indebted to Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum. 

Walking out into the streets, the night sky is set alive by fireworks bursting in a kaleidoscope of colours, while a costumed dragon dances and whirls to the entertainment of hooting pedestrian NPCs.

If anything, this abridged interpretation of Hong Kong is a far more alluring landscape than any direct replication could ever muster, and the extravagant veneer the perfect mask for the illicit corruption lurking beneath the neon hub.

“What you’ll see in Sleeping Dogs is an environment that’s all about the gamer,” explains O’Connell, “and creating things that are fun to do in the sandbox, rather than just say, ‘Jeez, I drove down that street and I’ve driven down that street in real life’.”

Yet our brief snapshot of Hong Kong was restricted, the open world nothing but a fleeting glimpse. Our time was spent travelling between point A and point B, with the bulk of the world held back. After four or five years in development, it suggests a lack of confidence, and no doubt some rough edges that need to be addressed.

Ultimately, only time will tell whether Square Enix made the right choice in resuscitating Sleeping Dogs, or if Activision had the right idea by putting the beast down in the first place.

The Amazing Spider-Man movie is already generating some buzz, so what better way to celebrate than with the time-honoured tradition of a film to game tie-in? Don’t scoff, though, this could well be the next Batman: Arkham City.

Activision gave us early access to The Amazing Spider-Man game in action, and it’s already clear that this could be the next big superhero game. Here’s why:

The Amazing Spider-Man Is Open World Again

Remember the classic PS2 Spider-Man games? Remember how everyone refers to them when talking about good superhero games or film tie-ins? Well, so does The Amazing Spider-Man game’s producer, Doug Heber, who name-dropped Spider-Man 2 and 3 a lot during his presentation.

The biggest reason was the return to an open world Manhattan, something fans of the PS2 games will really appreciate. Sure, Beenox has done a great job with the Spider-Man license in its previous two PS3 and Xbox 360 games, but they were in closed environments – now Spidey is free to websling around the city once more.

The camera has been set back closer to Spidey, making those plummets to earth all the more exhilarating.

The Amazing Spider-Man Has Elements Of Batman: Arkham City

Swinging through Manhattan or helping solve street crimes is only one aspect of The Amazing Spider-Man. Learning from previous experience, Beenox also knows that, sometimes, players need a little more direction. 

So more contained areas branch off from the hub of Manhattan in a fashion similar to Batman: Arkham City. Here our Spider-Man must clear the area to reach whatever objective he’s been given, and the comparisons to Rocksteady’s recent Batman games are stark indeed.

Combat is a necessity, but what about those enemies with guns? Spider-Man will have to find his way across each room safely, silently dispose of the rifle-toting bad guys before he’s free to leap into fisticuffs with the rest. The only thing it’s missing is a Batarang and an unnecessary amount of indoor gargoyles…

The Amazing Spider-Man Game Continues After The Film

Film tie-ins tend to mimic the silver screen action like for like, but it’s the good few that dare to step outside of those boundaries. The Amazing Spider-Man is one such game.

It’ll take place after the events of the film – which we won’t spoil for you here – and will focus around a whole new enemy, Dr Octopus. Of course there will be interactions with characters and events from the film, but the most part this is its own beast entirely.

Spider-Man's fighting style has been worked to resemble that of the film. You'll understand when you see it.

The Amazing Spider-Man Has A New Web Rush Ability

We could liken new Spidey’s Web Rush ability to Batman’s Detection Vision but, honestly, they’re entirely different. Where Batman’s ability let him gather information, Spider-Man’s let him quickly (and stylishly, of course) spring to action.

Enter Web Rush mode and time will slow down while multiple ‘ghosts’ will appear, indicating actions Spider-Man can take from there. That might be swinging to a new location, destroying an environmental object against enemies or taking out a gun-wielding weapon. Release and, as simple as that, the action will be enacted.

The idea is to make Spidey’s move set simple to use with as much flair as possible since actions can be chained together, too, meaning flinging around Manhattan is as fun as possible. In theory, at least.

The Amazing Spider-Man Will Be Filled With Fan Service

Do you know the difference between The Amazing Spider-Man and just plain old Spider-Man? Do you think Spidey can shoot web from his wrists, or is he smart enough to create web-shooters that do it for him? If you know how to answer all those questions then you should get excited for The Amazing Spider-Man videogame. 

Beenox has proven it knows how to handle the Spider-Man license, and with confirmation that many classic Marvel characters will be visiting Manhattan you can be certain there will be something to tap into all that time you spent reading comic books. See, totally worth it after all.

Imagine, if you will, that you did a doodle. It doesn’t matter what said doodle represents, but it would be pretty cool if this basic sketch brought into existence for a laugh was seen by the head of a development company and turned into a real game, wouldn’t it?

That’s how Fable Heroes was born. Constructed during Lionhead’s annual ‘creative days’, where employees are encouraged to take some time off and come up with original ideas, former head Peter Molyneux saw the project and greenlit it almost instantly. Not too shabby…

An Xbox Live Arcade game, Fable Heroes is certainly an interesting concept. Roughly described as a four-player side-scrolling beat-’em-up, it’s the number of elements that can be found within that really get your eyebrows raised.

Rather than just walk left and smash the crap out of your X button, you’ll be collecting coins; abusing particular power-ups to increase in size à la Mario, speed your character up and so forth; enjoying mini-games; and taking on gargantuan bosses, much like the beloved Castle Crashers.

The redesigned, cutesy characters look great.

With co-op at the heart of events, however, again, you’re not allowed to rely on how strong that button-mashing thumb is. Working together, as your parents always taught you, is key to success.

Through all of this, though, it’s levelling up where the most interesting and potentially important aspects come into play. The system is based on a board game, the aforementioned collecting of gold tying in to a certain number of dice rolls you can earn on the levelling-up squares.

Where you land will determine what ability you receive, and this can continue infinitely. RPG whores, prepare yourselves. It’s a fascinating project considering that it’s coming out on XBLA, and should easily make a mark on downloadable gaming once it arrives.

You may not even have to be a Fable fanboy to get into it, such is its charm and creative spark. We can’t promise that, though.

It may sound like faint praise to award Transformers: War For Cybertron ‘Transformers game we actually quite liked playing for a few hours’, but in the context of the Transformers games we’d played up until that point, it’s actually a rather prestigious honour.

Most Transformers games were bland, unimaginative tie-ins – at least War For Cybertron felt like it had some love behind it. It had the touch… It had the power…

But dodgy Stan Bush lyrics aside, there was certainly room for improvement, and Matt Tieger, game director of the sequel, Fall Of Cybertron, is just as aware of that as we are.

“There were some good elements in War For Cybertron, but the gameplay needed more variety,” he admits. “The environments were interesting and cool, but people expected a little bit more out of Cybertron. The story itself was decent, but could have been told better.”

“So we took those three elements and said, ‘These are going to be the strengths of our new game’,” he continues. “When a gamer plays Fall Of Cybertron, they’re going to tell their friends that every character they played offered a unique experience that challenged them in interesting ways, that they played against really cool transforming AI, and that the world was a really neat place with layers of history that proves Cybertron is a bigger place than you ever thought it could be.”

Fall Of Cybertron takes place directly after War For Cybertron, during the darkest hours of the battle; Cybertron is a post-apocalyptic shadow of its former self and the Autobots have lost the civil war, now looking to escape the broken planet rather than recapture it.

There will be moments of quiet, for High Moon Studios to focus on the story more.

The central premise of Fall Of Cybertron is that each level will offer something different than the last, each new character bringing a new and unique ability to the table that will alter the pace of gameplay.

Case in point: the first level we’re shown, in which the player takes on the role of the Decepticon Vortex, who can transform into a jet/helicopter hybrid form at any time and, as such, instantly alternate from ground-based to aerial combat at the touch of a button.

Later in the level he combines with his fellow Combaticons to become the 70-foot Bruticus, turning the gameplay from aerial and ground-based tactics to straightforward, might-and-power destruction.

High Moon really isn’t afraid to pull the camera back and go big. Another level shown sees Optimus Prime protecting his home city of Iacon against an attacking Decepticon force. Iacon’s not just a city, though – it’s the hiding place of the city-sized Autobot Metroplex, who rises from beneath the streets and buildings to aid Prime. Players can watch the action from a distance, ordering Metroplex to attack by selecting where to launch missiles or stomp out enemies.

Then there are the quieter missions. One sees new character Cliffjumper exploring the Sea of Rust – a barren graveyard full of the remains of dead robots. His special ability allows him to turn invisible, adding an element to stealth to the mix.

A later level sees Jazz introduce a navigational element, using his grappling hook to quickly move between multiple platforms, stopping on each to take out spider-like enemies who clamp onto sections of rock before firing.

Grimlock is a fire-breathing dinosaur robot. Which is as cool as it sounds.

The best is kept for last, though: Grimlock’s mission. “There are four reasons why Grimlock is perfect for a Transformers game,” explains Tieger.

The first is that he’s so popular, the second that he’s a sword and shield brawler twice the size of everybody else, and the third is that you can’t transform whenever you like.

Instead, you need to build up a ‘rage’ meter before you can trigger his transformation and wreak some real havoc. And the fourth reason? “He’s a f**king space T-rex that shoots fire.” Quite.

In the five missions we’re shown we get to see a bit of everything – action, stealth, set pieces, narrative-led section, space dinosaur mayhem – but we don’t see anything of co-op.

Unfortunately, co-op, unlike in War For Cybertron, has been removed in favour of a more intense single-player experience.

A great pity, but as a replacement we’ve got a range of new characters, better AI and larger environments, all steeped in a love for Transformers lore. What’s more, Shia LaBeouf is nowhere in sight. This is one sequel we might actually play for a few hours and then some.

Fable: The Journey has not had the easiest ride. With that awful pun out the way, the truth of the matter remains. Revealed to the world at E3 last year followed by a large, and mostly unexpected, amount of groans and resistance from its audience, it sent Lionhead, and more specifically Peter Molyneux, into explanation mode.

Once done, everything went quiet. The team made no bones about the fact it felt the game had been shown of too soon, so back they crawled to hide away and wait for the right time to emerge again.

Performing magic is quite satisfying but there is a learning curve to be mastered.

As is painfully obvious, that time is now. Fable: The Journey is no longer just an on-screen concept but a fully-fledged Kinect experience. More importantly, it’s one that wants to capture the core gamer.

To drive this idea home, Lionhead is keen to stress that The Journey has been designed to be played sat down, even slumped on your sofa. This isn’t the usual five-minute Kinect marathon where you throw your arms around after moving your coffee table to one side.

Much as you would with a controller, the next step in the Fable franchise series demands that you get comfortable before you even start your adventure.

Even though those particulars remain the same, this isn’t the Fable we know and love, many of the themes and foundations we’re used to going on a very distinct turn – for one, the hero lineage has been pushed aside to focus on a more ‘normal’ individual.

Thrust into the spotlight after saving Theresa (that’s the old, intriguing woman who has been at the centre of all Fable games in some fashion) from the Corruption which is slowly wreaking havoc over Albion, she asks you to take her back to the Spire. All of a sudden, it’s an out-and-out ‘Kinect-a-thon’.

You can fight when riding on a horse and combining the two can be a little unforgiving.

As has been made quite clear, your horse is central to all proceedings. In true Lionhead fashion there’s a hope you’ll bond with the steed – if your loving pet takes some arrows to the body, for example, you have to gently pull them out – and it’s also the fastest and easiest way to explore Albion.

It’s reality that comes into play, then, as whipping your hands out in front of you as if you were holding the reigns will prompt your horse to start trotting, a fiercer jolt giving it notice to speed up.

The same logic applies to steering as well, pulling your left hand back and right hand forward to head west and vice versa. You are, in essence, riding a horse, the only real caveat being that all physical attributes are in your head.

It works too, subtle movements being acknowledged and nudging your ride in the direction you intend. This common sense spills over when it’s time to go on foot.

Although there’s no direct control over moving our new heroic figure, where you go and how you defend yourself most definitely are. Naturally, it’s the latter that proves the most interesting.

This is the largest world Lionhead has ever made, hence why you can get the horse up to speeds of around 40mph.

Magic has always been a necessary part of the Fable franchise – the RPG side of things always took care of it – and in The Journey, Lionhead literally tries and puts the power in your hands.

An individual’s quest will open up the possibilities to craft what spells you have but for us, there were three specific powers to wield. The first was an energy bolt. Cast by flicking your fingers from your palm, it’s possible to hit enemies around the screen by merely shifting the bearing of your hand.

To add a touch of flair to proceedings, however, rotating your wrist powers up the magic, transforming it into a fireball with devastating effects.

The same process continues over to the left hand too. Pushing your palm outwards casts a rope of sorts at an adversary, trapping it in what for now we’ll describe as a net. With it stuck, moving that same hand outwards will hurl it across the screen.

It’s a rational system and one that would seem to benefit from just waving your entire body about. To counter that, though, foes who pose a threat will learn from your attacks, meaning flailing around like a moron is actually more likely to see you get in trouble.

Existing as almost a side story, this is our new protagonist but he is not part of the ‘hero’ bloodline.

While there’s certainly a reasoning to this method and it does work, it’s only fair to say this isn’t a pick up and play game, at least not if our hands-on (off?) is anything to go by. There’s a learning curve that exists here, and although it’s not of the conventional sort, don’t expect to have it down within minutes.

With that in mind, Fable: The Journey was a little frustrating on occasion. We witnessed someone else pull off such of the mentioned moves with ease and yet when we sat down in the hot seat, it was almost like being told to juggle with one hand while throwing darts with the other.

Ultimately, however, that’s a hurdle Kinect was always going to have to overcome in order to get the depth necessary to build a ‘hardcore’ game.

The real satisfaction will come in mastering it and there’s a lot to be said for the fact Lionhead has added technology allowing The Journey to watch how you play and then adapt Kinect accordingly. In the long-run, this could be the key to overcoming any annoyances a shorter playthrough brings up.

Max Payne 3 embodies a different time – a time where action heroes would throw themselves into the fray against impossible odds in a hail of hot lead and raw adrenaline. He's John Maclane, he's Rambo, he's everything in between and he's here to show the new-school action heroes how it's done.

While the industry seems content to peddle out cover shooters and flog the military genre until it's raw, Rockstar's bullet-time extravaganza feels like a breath of fresh air by comparison. 

We sat down with Rockstar to tackle two brutal Max Payne 3 missions armed to the teeth with an overkill payload and a taste for action. Rest assured, if you're a fan of Max's previous outings, you absolutely must check out Max Payne 3. Join us as we explain why.

Max Payne 3 has a proper story

Max is at his lowest ebb, drinking himself to death in New York, hooked on painkillers and living a purposeless existence. That is, until his old buddy Raul Passos shows up to headhunt Max for a private security job in Brazil. 

Reluctant at first, but forced to flee New York due to unforeseen circumstances, Max takes the job, and finds himself protecting wealthy businessman Rodrigo Branco and his family, who are the upper echelon of power and wealth in São Paolo. So far, so good.

Of course, things quickly turn sour as Branco’s wife Fabiana is kidnapped by a ruthless street gang and held ransom for a cool $3 million. Max convinces Branco to let him and Passos drop off the cash at a nearby football stadium.

Just as Max is about to hand the ransom money over to the heavily armed kidnappers, a sniper in the commentary box drills the crowd with potshots, blowing chunks out of Max's arm in the process. The gang member with the bag full of ransom money scarpers.

What follows is an absolutely insane chase to find the gang member with the ransom money before the sniper and his Paramilitary friends get to him first. It's the kind of classic action movie escalation that takes the plot from zero to 50 at the drop of a hat.

Max and Passos quickly get their hands dirty wasting thugs left right and centre, as they wade deeper and deeper into an intense bullet hell. Max Payne 3 starts off chaotic and just gets madder and madder as it goes, so if you're a fan of high octane shooters, you need look no further.

Max Payne 3 has superb dialogue and acting

But aside from the relentless gunplay, Rockstar has kept the noir vibe alive and well, opting to find new ways of implementing it rather than conceding to an all out gun-fest with little to no exposition.

Amid the noise of relentless gunfire, Max still finds time to ramble to himself, spouting snappy dialogue and questioning his station in life. Max Payne fans will be happy to know that James McCaffrey returns to voice Max and provide some incredibly slick motion capture throughout the campaign. 

Aside from Max's hungover ramblings, there is the occasional comic book blip, such as lines of the dialogue flashing up on screen as characters talk, and comic book panels shifting around the screen to really underline the graphic novel tone of the series.

Max Payne 3’s bullet time is essential to gameplay

As you’d expect from a Max Payne game, slow-mo is king. Whenever you click in the right stick to activate bullet time, or perform Max's trademark leaping motion, every gunshot, entry wound and piece of destruction caused by your rampage is a marvel to behold. 

As Max fights through the environment, goons rush him from all angles, causing you to think fast and either enter slow-mo to even the odds with some well-placed headshots, or scramble to cover for a moment's respite.

Yes, we said cover, and no, don't worry, Max Payne 3 hasn't become a boring cover shooter. Instead, cover gives Max a chance to breathe for a split second, and pop some painkillers to top up his health bar. Yep, there's no room for regen health here - Max is kicking it old school.

You absolutely cannot play Max Payne 3 as a cover shooter, as Max's attackers don't make life easy on him- with smart AI causes thugs to flank you at every opportunity, and in big packs. Playing Max Payne 3 in this manner will result in many deaths, as these enemies aren't stupid and will find some way of flushing you out into the open.

The carnage during each shoot-out is exhilarating, bolstered further by the superb Euphoria engine, but we'll focus on that later on, as it really is the backbone of this new and improved slow-mo mechanic. Even outside of slow-mo, Max Payne 3 is a brilliant run n' gun shooter.

Skip to a later chapter that sees Max working alone to rescue Fabiana from a dockyard warehouse teeming with gang members, and Rockstar throws even more fun tools into the mix. Although it's merely aesthetic, leaping through windows guns blazing in extreme slow-mo while killing enemies is aurally engaging.

But then you have other staples that should be rote, yet benefit from Max Payne 3's slow-mo mechanic, such as exploding gas tanks and leaping out of the way of enemy grenades as they erupt slowly beneath you. Everything that exists in Max Payne 3 is there to look incredible at slow speed, and thankfully, everything does. 

Max Payne 3‘s gameplay is tactical

Although Max Payne 3 sounds like an impossibly ludicrous action flick, Rockstar has rooted some elements firmly in reality. For example, Max doesn't have bottomless pockets, meaning he can only holster two single handed weapons at any time, as well as slinging a double handed weapon over his shoulder. 

This stripped back payload actually works better than giving you too many toys to play with at once. Pistols work a treat when dual-wielded, as do UZIs, while riot control shotguns make short work of thugs at close range. Then you also have assault and sniper rifles. 

It may seem like a restricted payload, but bear in mind that Rockstar has yet to reveal other potential weapons. But at this point in the game, Rockstar has kept things simple to really nail the feel of each weapon class, and it really has perfected these fundamentals.

Another neat touch is that whenever Max wastes the last goon in an area, Max Payne 3 enters bullet chase view, following your last round straight into the victim. You can hold down slow-mo to slow down time even further, as well as hammering the fire button for repeated overkill rounds. It's insanely violent, and in a sadistic way, makes you feel badass.

Melee takedowns are the same - executed by pressing fire next to an enemy - as Max batters thugs before whipping out his gun to finish the job. Even then, you have to press fire to deliver the lethal shot, putting you in full control of the trigger.

Max Payne 3's physics and tech enhance the experience

None of what you've just read would be possible without Rockstar's superb Rage engine, as well as some incredible use of Euphoria physics that make even one of Max's bullets impact the body often enemy realistically, causing them to jerk and contort accordingly. 

When it comes to open world Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, the game is streaming so many things at once that it's difficult to place too much emphasis on physics. 

But because Max Payne 3 is more linear, this results in some of the most impressive character physics to date, as well as increased detail and some truly slick motion capture.

For example, the way Max stumbles and reaches out to walls to steady himself when injured is convincing and best of all, entirely in realtime. However, it's when leaping around in slow-mo that the Euphoria engine truly radiates.

Every time Max leaps into a wall, he slams against it with a sickening thud, stopping his leap, and breaking him out of slow-mo, rather than just diving against walls with no consequence like in the previous Max Payne games. 

The most impressive moment was when we accidentally threw Max against a low fence. As his hip connected with the metal railing, he spun around it violently and slammed into the ground, leaving us open to intense gunfire for a brief moment.

So while you can jump around like a lunatic as much as you want, you need to be spatially aware, taking your surroundings into account at all times, and making every shot count. This heightens the already considerable excitement that Max Payne 3 delivers. 

Static screenshots simply don't do the action in Max Payne 3 justice, as you really have to feel and experience them for yourself to really appreciate how all of the separate parts - the detail, gunplay, slow-mo and Euphoria physics - come together as a whole.

As such, action fans simply have to check Max Payne 3 out when it launches in Europe 18 May.

‘Fighting Entertainment’. That’s the term Team Ninja’s Yosuke Hayashi uses to describe his team’s attempt to drag Dead Or Alive back on track after years of the brand being used to sneak out swimsuit sticker albums and letchery simulators, but should this recategorisation be taken as a warning sign or the promise of an evolution within the genre?

With just four characters and a single stage so far, it’s hard to know for sure but while a lot has changed, even the most hardcore parry master couldn’t knock away the fact that it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play whatever it ends up being.

It’s all about the Power Attack in Dead Or Alive 5 and while we struggled to get our heads around the concept at first, it clicked within mere moments of picking up a stick.

The best comparison is Street Fighter IV’s Focus Attack, a charged strike that can be released at any time during the wind-up or seen through to the end to automatically launch into a killer blow.

Letting go early is perfect for scuppering attempts to interrupt the charge or find holes in incoming combos but hit the full thing (or just shy, though that may only be on counter hit like the crumple of a partial Focus) and the real fun begins.

The camera pulls in as time slows to a crawl, your fighter winding up for the killer blow but leaving you with one last part to play – choosing where your victim will end up.

On landing a successful Power Attack, targetable hazards will glow.

With a window of a second or two to redirect the opponent in roughly the direction you were facing when you launched the attack, they can be forcefully redirected into environmental hazards or over treacherous drops.

And the non-traditional punishment doesn’t stop there. The latter destination triggers what is known as a Cliffhanger moment – the most literal use of the term since the 1993 movie where Stallone hung from a cliff for 112 minutes – and subverts the action further still.

Each player retains control during what looks like a scripted sequence, the tumbling victim tasked with throwing out a hand to grab on (or electing not to, if they’d rather just take the fall damage without risk of a follow-up) while the attacker can try and nail a helpless hanger with either an attack or a throw to send them all the way to the bottom and really pile on the pain.

Again, though, prediction and guesswork can see the guy on the receiving end block, escape or reverse the attack (by hitting the same button used to launch it) and this sends both fighters to the bottom with minimal damage, sometimes even leaving the former punching bag with the upper hand.

These cunningly disguised QTEs pop up elsewhere too, though seemingly only following wherever the Power Attack leads. As seen in the Alpha build footage, opponents can be lobbed into cars and power stations, with button prompts sometimes subtly appearing in-world (hidden in a car bumper, for example) that can be pressed for bonus damage, or reportedly used by the victim to instead reduce it, though we never saw this in action.

After the initial blast, many Danger Zones continue to affect the battle. 

Still, the Power Attack is clearly the focus of the game (pun very much intended) but it’s not the all-conquering tool it might seem so far. As much as the damage potential makes it worth the odd punt, the fact that it’s a telegraphed, linear strike means that the newly improved sidestep system – which seems to also offer advanced strafing options akin to VF5’s Offensive Move – deals with it easily.

Interestingly, though, blocking a fully charged Power Attack leaves you disadvantaged, cementing the sidestep as the preferable counter option. Well, that or using a Hold to reverse the attack, but poor timing here will see this risky alternative backfire horribly.

It’s still a fighter, then, albeit one that’s not afraid to experiment with flashy set pieces akin to the likes of the better Naruto games of recent years.

With more on show (which is a risky thing to ask for with this particular series), it’ll be far easier to tell whether Team Ninja’s balancing act will work out or not, though it’s with quiet confidence that we await the next big reveal. By which we don’t mean Tina.

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• Street Fighter X Tekken: PS3, PS Vita Exclusive Characters Revealed
• Skyrim, The Queen & Obama: Having Fun With Soul Calibur 5's Character Creation 
• Soul Calibur 5 Producer Wants Multi-Fight Game Crossover

“I want to be a pirate!” That’s the first sentiment expressed by Guybrush Threepwood in the The Secret Of Monkey Island, and one that resonates with most of us. After all, who doesn’t want to be a pirate?

Towering sailing ships, swordfights, cannons, rum, adventure on the high seas and –if you’re that way inclined – an amazing beard are just a few of the benefits of joining the pirate fraternity. And don’t even get us started on the joys of making filthy landlubbers walk the plank…

It’s exactly that sort of aspiration that developer Piranha Bytes is hoping to tap into with its upcoming ‘pirates in a fantasy world’ game, Risen 2: Dark Waters.

It’s also the former PC-only developer’s second dive into console waters, and it’s hoping the franchise’s transformation from generic fantasy world to pirate romp will be a success after the rather lacklustre Risen floundered in 2010.

You certainly can’t accuse the developer of being half-hearted with Risen 2’s pirate shtick, and in its attempt to craft an RPG with a unique identity, Piranha Bytes is hoping to deliver an island-hopping pirate epic.

The whole adventure is your life as a pirate, recasting you as the hero from the first game, only now a washed-up, drunken bum, recently marooned on a pirate island. The only way to escape is to join the pirates, and so begins your journey from hobo to pirate captain.

A mug o' ale over a campfire? Pirates never were the smartest...

This being a Risen game, you’ll explore a living open world on each island you go to, and level up to unlock skills like musket-shooting, sword-fighting and all manner of dirty tricks, including throwing sand into enemies’ eyes.

You’ll also gather a crew of pirates to adventure with you based on decisions you make, and you’ll need all the help you can get to escape the authorities, battle other pirates and monsters, and see off a world-destroying magical threat.

While we quite like Risen 2’s whole Pirates Of The Caribbean meets world-saving high-fantasy vibe, it’s a little disappointing that pirate ships only transport you between islands and can’t be sailed.

Still, we’ve never really played a pirate RPG on the 360, and that’s enough for us to want to cast off in Risen 2 in search of adventure. After all, we want to be pirates as much as anyone else…

Every gamer has that ‘perfect game’ in the back of their minds, the one that, at least in their memory, was the best example of a particular genre and how it should be done.

Sure, there are rose-tinted glasses at play most of the time, but occasionally you’ll find a game that genuinely captured the spirit they’re nostalgically remembering.

For a great many Spider-Man fans, that ‘perfect’ game was Spider-Man 2 on the first Xbox. Hot on the heels of the smash film, Spider-Man 2 was like a fan’s dream come true, throwing the ol’ web-head into an open Manhattan and just letting do what he did best: swing like crazy over the city.

Sure, there were problems with it, but Treyarch managed to nail the web-swinging freedom at the heart of the Spider-Man mythos so well that nothing else has ever quite matched it.

But it’s looking like after years of messing with the Spidey formula with greater or lesser degrees of success – Spider-Man: Edge Of Time was the most recent disappointment – current Spider-Man developer Beenox is using the reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise as a chance to get back to basics. Its approach on The Amazing Spider-Man could be what drags the franchise out of the doldrums.

In it, Beenox is using the power of the 360 to craft a huge, open-world New York and pitting your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man against an army of flying robots gone rogue.

It’s certainly looking spectacular as Spidey web-swings through this world with abandon while the camera swoops, zooms and dramatically highlights his actions in battles with the mechanical menace high above the city.

While we’re not so sure that having an army of robots to fight rather than focusing on Spider-Man’s awesome rogues’ gallery is the right way to go – look at how well that’s served Batman – and are hoping those more traditional elements are eventually included, we’re just glad that this movie tie-in is promising to get Spidey back where he belongs: soaring heroically over the Big Apple.

You’re probably already aware of I Am Alive’s fall from grace, a AAA disc-based survival game that re-emerged as a downloadable XBLA and PSN game.

Now it's finally here, I Am Alive and Ubisoft Shanghai has to compete with a digital market that is becoming increasingly impressive in terms of quality and innovation.

We’ve played the opening segments of I Am Alive, and here’s how it’s shaping up:

I Am Alive Is Grey

Set in a post apocalyptic world, I Am Alive is wall-to-wall dust and fog. After an event – conveniently the only ambiguous term characters have for whatever disastrous incident occurred – the world has become caked in a thick layer of dust.

The result is a depressing, bleached play environment with little in the way of variety. Even the characters clothes or fires are saturated to the point of lacking any colour whatsoever. It worked for Fallout 3, so it must work for I Am Alive, right?

Finding the right route can be tricky - infuriatingly so at times.

Managing Stamina Is Very Important

Stamina is used for everything, whether it’s shimmying across precarious ledges, holding onto a ladder or jogging: just like life, really.

As you perform actions the stamina will deplete according to the effort required - managing this becomes the crux of the gameplay, adding an almost puzzle-like element to clambering through the apocalypse.

To accompany the significance of a tiring old man is bizarre dramatic music. It’s perhaps understandable hanging over a precipice with minimal grip left, but when running down the street? Climbing over a fence? Not quite life threatening and just a smidge ridiculous.

Search Everywhere For Supplies

It’s survival, right? You’ve got to loot to live, which means searching for painkillers underneath a set of stairs, a soda can on the roof of a lift or a fruit cocktail attached to a broken pipe on the side of a building 100 meters in the air. It’s like a post-apocalyptic game of finders keepers.

How such mundane foodstuffs found their way to the most ludicrous of locations is anyone's guess.

Then there are Retries, collectable… things that give our character a spare life to reattempt whatever it is he’s previously failed. They might be conceptual, but that doesn’t stop them being found in and around the apocalypse, or even rewarded for acts of kindness to strangers.

You'll need to find safe spots during a long climb.

Self-Narration And Camcorder Exposition

Alan Wake’s self-narration didn’t grate on anyone, did it? It didn’t jar with the whole experience and make it seem sillier that it needed to be. No sirree.

At least Alan Wake was mental and had a reason to talk to himself like he was an author. What does I Am Alive’s main character have? A camcorder. And he only uses that as a prop to tell himself what he had for lunch yesterday.

I Am Alive’s Intimidation

It’s a heralded feature of I Am Alive since it resurfaced as an XBLA game, where it is possible to trick enemies into believing you’ll shoot them – either to get them to back off into a convenient pit or so you can get close enough to hit them upside the head.

It seems there’s a bullet ration since the apocalypse, however, because everyone who has a gun only has one bullet. No more, no less. This makes each encounter a puzzle, where you must figure out the correct way of tackling each situation – the solution? Shoot one of them, beat up the rest.

It’s a shame, since in the hands-on demo it wasn’t quite as freeform as we had been led to believe. There’s no more thought to it beyond picking the right enemy to shoot. And why is everyone so aggressive after an apocalypse?

Surprise attacks are important for surviving encounters. Hopefully it keeps its novelty.

Assassin’s Creed Mixed With Fallout

Overall, the hands-on demo with I Am Alive left us with mixed emotions. Graphically it’s sub-par – even for a downloadable game – while the setting is just not utilised as well as it could be.

The parkour elements though – despite not in keeping with the main character at all - are interesting. This is especially true towards the later part of the demo where, scaling the side of a tower, it became necessary to plan the route carefully to ensure it was possible to both reach the top within the stamina limit and collect the nutritious fruit cocktail hanging from a pipe.