Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Back in 1996 Tomb Raider became a massive hit, sporting fiendish puzzles mixed with slightly wonky gunplay. Now, or I should say back in 2009, Lara is back in action with short hair, no boobs, a dick and has changed her name to Nathan.

That's all the Uncharted series really is, it's the Americanized version of Tomb Raider. It's also the better playing version of Tomb Raider. While you could say that it was the product of a different gaming generation, and you'd be right, Tomb Raider began as a stiff, unmanageable platformer and stayed like that all the way up to Legend in 2006.

Story was never really Tomb Raider's strong point, which is a tradition that continues in Uncharted as it's story is about as strong as a vegetarian who has given up eating his greens for Lent. The basic premise is that an evil war criminal is looking for Shambhala, an ancient Tibetan holy land where the people live long and everyone is happy. He probably just wants a nice holiday and who are we to say no? Oh yeah, he has a big scar on his face so he must be super evil. Quick, someone arrest Carlos Tevez before he starts looking for Shangri La.

Anyway, the game begins with you hanging off a cliff in a train. You've been shot and you need to get the hell out of there. It's a great start to the game, but merely serves as a tutorial for the climbing and platforming mechanics.

The game then begins proper, by way of flashback, to a meeting between our hero, Drake, his supposedly good buddy Flynn and some broad Chloe. There's apparently some back story between Drake and Chloe, which I never paid any attention too because every time she was on screen I kept thinking "Jesus, what's wrong with your face?". They obviously tried to make her look ethnically attractive, even though she's only Australian, but it looks like she's taken a shovel to the face.

It becomes clear that Flynn's client is after an artefact that could lead to Shambhala, in a very indirect way, so they all decide to screw him over and go after it themselves. This then leads to the strangest betrayal I've ever seen. Flynn, supposedly Drakes friend, leaves him to take the rap for the heist they just pulled on some museum, which only employs deaf, dumb and blind security guards judging by how inept they are at spotting two fully grown men in bright lights.

It's never really explained why this happens. From the banter between the two before and after the event it seems like it's born through mere jealousy. What a crappy reason to shoot someone and leave them dangling over a cliff on a train. Although, to be honest, Drake is such a smarmy git I'd probably shoot him too.

While the game starts with some great puzzle solving and few firefights, it did seem as though the game descended into a straight up third person shooter toward the end. There was still some climbing and jumping around, but it just knit one encounter to another with no real purpose.

Some parts earlier on in the game are truly fantastic. The level that takes place on the train just before you reach the part where the game started is a wonderful mix of climbing, platforming and shooting. The only part where I can even begin to criticize is the unnecessary mini-boss fight half way through. One of Lazarevic's men is somehow more impervious to bullets while wearing half as much armour as all the other hired goons.

However, other instances of gameplay are not so great. At one point you're tasked with defending a Tibetan village from a tank. It wasn't that this part wasn't as good as the others, it was just straight up bad. There was no direction other than "find an RPG", too much running around in plain sight and trying to fight off shotgun wielding goons. It was messy, uncoordinated and probably not needed at all. Also, how did the tank even get to a mountaintop village in Tibet? Maybe Lazarevic hired... the A-Team.

After that, the game continues on it's formula of:

• Get to location
• Climb tall building
• See destination
• Spend 2 hours fighting bad guys
• Arrive at destination
  
• Puzzle indicating next location
  

While the formula is simple, the variety of gameplay locations adds unique changes to each set piece.

This continues on, unerring, until the crew finally reach the fabled Shambhala. Now, there seems to be a slight problem with this part of the storyline, especially in the age we live in.

It would seem as if the entirety of the game is a complete waste of everyone's time. If anybody had a smartphone on them, they could locate Shambhala in a few minutes. In fact it would have been found years ago.

In any case, you manage to reach Shambhala after being forced to by the bad guy. I can't really say that the finale to the game and the final showdown between Drake and Lazarevic is either good or bad. What I can state is that, in regards to earlier in the game, it's a touch anticlimactic.

Lazarevic has drunk the sap from the Tree of Life (yeah, I know), which has seemingly turned him into Wolverine, giving him regenerative health and super strength. Then after all that he gets killed by the Blue Man Group.

Uncharted 2 is a rainy day film of a game. It's not got the greatest story ever told, but in some places it tells it really well, others not so well. I wouldn't recommend jumping into this one before playing through the first, as I rather stupidly did, but I would recommend getting them both.

Hrm, the second good PS3 exclusive in a row. The world must be about to end.

God of War 3

The definition of epic stands as:

-adjective :-
heroic; majestic; God of War 3; impressively great;

For you see, that is exactly what this game is. The problem these days is that the word is thrown around all too easily. Anything that is good, bad or anything in between has the word epic thrown at it, usually by idiots. I hereby reclaim the word to be used on only things worthy of such an epic word... oh you see, now I'm doing it!

I haven't played much of God of War games in the past. I have Chains of Olympus on PSP, but only because that brick is so starved of half decent titles. I never really got into the hack 'n' slash genre of gaming, possibly due to my outrageously short attention span, but this game had me gripped for a lot longer than most games.

As soon as the game loaded I was treated to what I can only describe as a Greek mythology style James Bond intro. Live and Let Kill Everything in Sight would be it's name. Well, it's more of a "previously, on..." kind of intro. It sets the mood right with angry music and plenty of bloodshed.

Once the game starts up proper, you get one of the best starting levels of any game. It begins with the Titans climbing up Mount Olympus to lay some ancient smackdown on Zeus, when it becomes evident that our man, Kratos, is coming along for the ride. The whole intro to the game is played out on the back of the earth titan, Gaia, while fighting Poseidon and his minions. Even in text, that is an amazing intro.

After the inevitable fall from Gaia, you lose your powers and the game begins for real. After such an awesome intro, it's hard not to feel like the game has lost a lot of pace. Still, if you slow from 250mph to 70mph in a car, you're still going pretty fast. You end up coming across Athena, an ethereal figure who I assume dies in a previous game. She gives you your new blades and you can begin chopping people up again. Huzzah!

One thing that can really bug me about a game is how the character controls. Games like GTAIV and Resident Evil 4/5 have got it totally wrong in my opinion. Granted these games are nothing like GOW3, but the point is, get it wrong and it can ruin a game. Kratos, on the other hand, controls superbly making the combat not only easy, but incredibly fulfilling. Slicing minions of Hades up a treat has never been so fun. It's not just combat that benefits from the great controls.

That pretty poor link leads me to the other aspect of the game. Puzzles are a big part of the game, tying most brawls together in an interesting way, rather than just jumping from one fight to another. Some of them are truly wonderful too. At one point it feels like your playing inside an M. C. Escher painting while trying to figure out how to escape the Gardens of Olympus. The other major puzzle is Daedalus' Labyrinth. A fantastical piece of ancient engineering deep underground. Moments like these are hard to find in games these days, and to have multiple examples in a single game is astounding.

Some parts of the game, however, are pure frustration. The series is big on quick time events, like, seriously is in love with them. Fair enough, a lot of them are good and let you feel like you're still playing a game, but others are thrown in randomly and can catch you completely off guard. Especially those half circle moments that are nigh on impossible. Now, I have no shame in saying I played on the easiest difficulty setting, but when I nearly get killed by Hermes kicking me in the face after taking out Poseidon and Hades with ease, something is wrong there. Also, another small point is that Kratos' strength is wildly inconsistant. At one point he's stopping himself from being crushed between the building sized hands of a titan, the next he's being stopped by doors that need keys. Just punch your way through, Kratos, you've obviously got the strength.

When it comes to Kratos as a character, he can be painfully one dimensional at some points. His rage at the Gods of Olympus makes him seem like he's just angry at everything. Fortunately we see other sides of him at later points in the game. The character list for the game is pretty short after Kratos. Most other characters are merely façades put in place so Kratos can fight them. Only Zeus, Athena, Hermes and Pandora have any say in the story of the game other than Kratos. Some others make an appearance, but are really just a means to deliver objectives, such as Haephestus and Daedalus.

After everything that has happened in the game so far, the ending becomes incredibly important. Battles with other Gods have been superb and dangerously awesome so far, so when it comes to the battle with the big daddy of all Gods, Zeus, they should have something pretty amazing lined up, right? Well... no, they didn't. To begin with it's a straight up one on one, which is fair enough, you don't want to exhaust the awesome in the first 5 minutes. Then Gaia makes an unwanted appearance to try and kill Zeus herself. This really broke the flow of the battle, which was pretty disappointing. I'm trying to kill the king of the Gods here, lady, piss off.

You finally get rid of her then battle Zeus' final form, which is just him again. I was expecting a 200ft behemoth ready to shove lightning bolts up various holes in my anatomy. Zeus then manages to kill you, sending you on a Max Payne style trip. This leads Kratos to forgive himself for killing his family. The whole sequence could have been done via cutscene, with it condensed to 2 or 3 minutes instead of 10 minutes of running around in nothingness.

Kratos' soul then returns to his body and he beats the living shit out of Zeus. This really is probably the most brutal game I've ever played. Any game that ends with you mashing the O button to repeatedly punch a God in the face while the screen slowly gets completely covered in blood is pretty brutal. He also rips Helios' head off with his bare hands earlier in the game, which is badass.

Anyway, the game properly ends with the inevitable redemption of Kratos. You've been used by Athena to recover a weapon she put in Pandora's box upon it's creation. It turns out Kratos' will to defeat Zeus has come from this weapon, which is... hope. Awww, how very Disney.

As you've killed pretty much every God keeping the world in shape, everything has gone to shit. The only way for man to recover is to give them hope. You see where this is heading? Kratos sacrifices himself with a gigantic sword to release hope to the world. I suppose this ending was necessary to give Kratos some development, but it felt a bit too lovey-dovey to me. I was expecting Kratos to tell man to "eat a dick" while he goes round killing people for fun. Maybe it's for the best that I don't write stories for video games.

Overall, this game is excellent. Games that have no multiplayer have to stand up solely on their story mode, and what it offers is simply superb. Yes, it gets a little Disney at the end, but to be honest, it's needed after all the bloodshed. This is one game that should be in everyone's collection.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

When it comes to Call of Duty, there seems to be a part of most peoples brains that turns off when trying to review it. They proceed to type wildly on the keyboard, ignoring what they have actually just seen, and rave about it being one of the best games they've ever played. Perhaps it's more to do with their pockets being too deep, but what do I know?

A lot of people buy Call of Duty for the multiplayer, and I'll get to that, but I have to point out the vast mound of sweaty ballsack that is the single player campaign.

Call of Duty games have changed a lot since their conception in 2003. They used to make you feel like a cog in a machine, working with all the other cogs to achieve victory over the evil Nazi war machine. Now, you are the machine. You, and only you, can stop whatever menace is about to unleash such a terrible atrocity on the world. The only way you can do this is to blow up everything in sight and slaughter thousands of nameless henchmen along the way.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is boring. There, I said it. From start to end it is a processional shooting gallery from your insertion to your objective. Occasionally there will be a set piece to try and hold your attention, but these become woefully stale and repetitive. At some points I was even able to call when the player would be knocked down by an explosion mere feet from the objective. Some set pieces where even rip-offs of moments in other, better, Call of Duty games.

After playing completely through the game, I realised what I had just played. I had sat through 7 hours of Call of Duty: Black Ops - A Michael Bay production. Except it wasn't all Michael Bay, no. Someone on the writing staff clearly has a thing for conspiracy theories. The fact the story unfolds to reveal, unsurprisingly, that you have been brainwashed into killing Kennedy and the final still is of a picture of Kennedy in Dallas with the player's character, Alex Mason, in the crowd shows someone has a massive boner for grassy knolls. Tom Clancy got nothing on this horseshit.

Good moments were few and far between. The most memorable, for me, was when the player is transported back to 1945. Come to think of it, with the revelation that the character Reznov is dead the whole time and is merely in your head, that becomes a flashback within a flashback. Anyway, the player is tasked with finding a mysterious chemical weapon known as Nova 6. At this point you have no idea what it is or what it does. The setting of a large, frozen boat that has run aground lends to the spooky nature of the mission. Too bad it descends into a mindless firefight like every other mission. Oh well.

After sitting through that turgid mess of a campaign, multiplayer had to be sampled. Now, if this was any different to Modern Warfare 2, I would devote a larger section to it. The truth is, it's almost identical. Save for a few instances of better player customization and the introduction of COD Points as a form of in-game currency, it's the exact same multiplayer.

Let's focus on these COD points. Now, when I heard about it I thought "Hmm, now that sounds like a good idea, let the player buy what they want to unlock". Turns out you have to unlock the option to buy the item. What the hell? What is the point of COD points if you have to rank up to unlock them anyway?

There are some notable additions. Fileshare being the best. The game records you playing and saves it to your console. You can then review these later with other people. It's not a video either, the player can change camera angles, view from other peoples perspectives and change the play speed. Could be great for machinima.

Split screen makes a return from MW2, this time with everything unlocked offline. This has to go down as another major plus. At least someone is doing their job at Treyarch.

To be fair, I don't really care for zombies. I don't succumb to a nerdgasm when they're mentioned and I don't really feel the need for them in Call of Duty. Or at least in the way they are implemented. What I want to know is, why am I defending myself from the zombie apocalypse in a place where it looks like it already hit months ago? As an epilogue to the campaign, you can play a zombie survival map set in the Whitehouse (or was it the Pentagon, I wasn't paying attention). That works. It's a stronghold where the zombies haven't got to yet. Run down buildings with debris everywhere are boring.

As with Modern Warfare 2, this game picked up massive amounts of hype through Activision's marketing department. They know how to make a turd look like diamonds.

This game lacks story, drama, and originality in all aspects. The series has become so stale and filled with multiplayer bloat that it's irreversibly damaged. Too bad people eat it up.

LA Noire Trailer

A few years ago now, a game was announced called LA Noire. A game based on 1940's detectives in, massive spoilers, Los Angeles.

After a CG trailer at E3 and some confusion over if it would be a PS3 exclusive or not, the game dropped off everyones radar for a bit. Now Rockstar have jut released a new trailer for it, featuring 100% in-game footage.

Video Games | L.A. Noire | The Case That Makes You Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

The first thing that astound me is the level of detail in the facial animations. I have never seen anything this good in a game... ever. There was mention of the motion capture suite being used was one of the best in the world so I guess that explains it. It's not just the motions, but the facial deformations that are amazing. Each movement of the face comes with appropriate wrinkles and creases.

Finally, it's just good to see a game that looks like it might require intuition and cunning rather than twitch reactions or just holding shoot until everyone becomes meat pâté.

Lead and Gold - Gangs of the Wild West (PC)

When it comes to digital distribution, you can't really do any better than Steam. Forever, it sits there, taunting you with deals you can't resist. Many a pound has been spent on games from Steam by myself, with the £5 spent on Lead and Gold being no exception. Had it not been for that 50% off sale I probably would have ignored the game completely.

Lead and Gold is a multiplayer only third person shooter, from FatShark, set in a caricature version of the American wild west. For starters there really aren't enough wild west shooters around, so that makes it stand out a bit already.

As for modes and maps the game comes fully stocked, featuring 7 gameplay modes and 6 maps. For a £10 game that's great. A few full price titles have less content than that.

The game modes themselves are the standard affair, with the typical team deathmatch, domination and assault modes being rebranded to fit the style of the game.

The only game mode which feels slightly disjointed and unfinished is the co-op mode called Gold Fever. 2 players stand off against increasing waves of AI enemies while also trying to steal gold sacks. To begin with it's only 2 players, which isn't enough in my opinion, but there is only one map for it and it's far too easy.

Maps come in a wonderful variety, ranging from a deserted frontier town at dusk to a railway bridge between snow frosted mountain peaks.

Playing Greed on the map "Jacob's Bridge"

Some maps do have some slight balancing issues though, with one in particular placing a gattling gun turret just a bit closer to one team spawn than the other.

Now, some people like to throw around the word "clone" for almost any game that features something that could possibly be in another game. In my personal opinion, people who do that should go flash their unmentionables to a honey badger. I bring that up because any game that has class based gamepay and stylised looks is going to immediately be called a Team Fortress 2 clone. To me, the game does enough differently to make it escape this dishonorary title. Too bad people are stupid.

As I said, the game has 4 classes to choose from. You can pick between the Trapper, who carries a sniper rifle and can lay bear traps, the Blaster, weilds a double barrel shotgun and throws dynamite, the Deputy, his weapon of choice is a repeater carbine, and my personal favourite, the Gunslinger.

The Gunslinger is the only class that puts me in the Wild West, in my view. The others are interchangable with classes from other games, but the Gunslinger features just a sixshooter and fast-as-lightning hands.

Each class comes with a secondary trait. As mentioned above this comes in the form of dynamite or bear traps, whereas the gunslinger unloads a mighty barrage of lead, unloading all six chambers in a matter of moments.

When it comes to taking out the enemy, it's not as simple as it seems. Non-critical hits only down an enemy, which can lead to extremely emarassing moments where you can be killed by the player you thought you just killed.

The game does have some flaws. For example the server menu is a bit cluttered and unorganised, and there's no friend/lobby system from what I can tell, which means trying to play on the same team as your friends is pretty hard. Even getting into the same server can be a hassle. I'm not going to dwell on these as even having a server list in these days of quickjoining and matchmaking is a credit to the devs.

All in all, this game is great fun. I don't think I've once found myself complaining or blaming the game for my own incompetance. For £10, too, you can't really say no.