Bulletstorm

When it comes to portraying a story about betrayal, revenge, and ultimately redemption, what would be the best course of action?

Making a shooter featuring more swearing than a dinner party with Gordon Ramsey and the ability to kick people into cacti for points probably isn't the preferred route.

Bulletstorm is a decidedly mixed narrative, wound around the idea of being scored on how you progress through the game. It's an interesting premise. While being an obvious extension to the XP gain system most shooters feature these days the amount of different kills, or Skillshots as they are called, is impressive. The points you earn from the Skillshots are then used as currency for weapons and upgrades at lockers called drop points. While giving the point system meaning, it also gives the player an incentive to actually expend effort in pulling off the shots.

From the outset it's evident as to what this game is about. It wants you to be brutal and sadistic while it tries to make you laugh by saying naughty words. It has a feel of self parody about it. It's like the game knows it's being puerile, that it's catering to the most base of base humour and it's fine with that. But there's always the niggling doubt behind all that swearing, that there should really be some substance to the story.

This builds up in the background until the game's climax where it bursts to the forefront, confusingly jarring the stand out themes from one extreme to the other. It felt forced and because it spent most of the time behind a façade of toilet humour, it disconnected me from the emotions I felt toward the characters to begin with.

Perplexing tonal shifts aside, Bulletstorm plays really well. I've not experienced a shooter where you feel quite this powerful close up. A lot of games tend to make you keep the enemy at a distance. Thanks to one of the strongest kicks in all gaming, you can dispatch multiple ne'er-do-wells in an instant. Coupled with the stasis effect applied after the kick, which leaves your prey hanging in mid air for a few seconds, it really is one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

A joke about Sparta would seem necessary here

The star of the show would have to be the Leash. Acquired early on, it allows you to interact with objects in the world and to pull baddies toward you, Scorpion style, to dole out some toe-capped justice. Enemies that can't be leashed can then be Thumped. A blast of energy that flings most goons 30 feet into the air and slams mini-bosses to the ground. 

There is an awkward reason it takes centre stage, however. Aside from a pretty amazing pistol and a gun that fires a sort of bolo-mine, most of the weapons are pretty forgetful. The main weapon looking like it was ripped straight from Gears of War.

Which leads me to the look of the game. I don't know if it's the engine beginning to show it's age or derivative design, but the whole game has a distinct Gears of War clone-iness feel to it. In no way does the game play like GoW, but it looks like it could inhabit the same universe.

Having said that, there is really nothing wrong with wanting to look as good as Gears of War. It tries admirably, certainly injecting more colour into the environments. Overall it looks decent, like most Unreal 3 games do, just nothing incredible.

However, the most major downside to the entire game would be how much it holds your hand throughout. Now, games need some sort of on screen help for certain events in the game world, but to have these appear as bright blue button prompts actually straight up telling you what to do is asinine. It could be dismissed if said prompts happened once, or even twice, as a means to get you to learn the game's processes, with each event thereafter having just a visual hint like a glow or outline. Having every single event have a pop-up prompt appear from as much as 40 yards away removes all thought from the gameplay. This type of thing has to stop.

In ending, it's a very fun game. The player character controls very well, the mechanics are sharp and some of the dialogue can be genuinely funny. There's also a part where you control an giant mechanical Godzilla. Need I say more?

Duke Nukem Forever

There comes a time in the development cycle of a video game where people give up hope. The anticipation of imminent release is replaced by the bitter pill of disappointment. The one game that embodies all that built up expectancy and subsequent despondency would be Duke Nukem Forever.

First announced back in 1997 as a sequel to the massively successful Duke Nukem 3D, Forever has had the most torrid development of any video game in history. The length of time involved tells it's own story.

And so, after 14 years in a development cycle marred by lawsuits and studio collapses, we find ourselves with a final retail release of Duke Nukem Forever. From this day forth, June 10th 2011 shall be a day that will live in infamy. A day when the impossible became reality. When all the waiting and hoping would come to fruition and gamers all over the world could play the game that time forgot. We would marvel in it's magnificence and worship Duke as the Messiah of the industry.

Or not.

You see, while the point of no return came and went, the sheer amount of time the game has been in development taints the vision somewhat. Once re-announced by Gearbox Software the game could never live up to the expectation cast upon it. What troubles me is a lot of people will see the 14 years and think they will have all been spent making the game in it's current form. People will believe the team will have worked constantly on the same exact game for all that time, ignoring the lawsuits and leavers and expect a mammoth shooter with the best graphics, Oscar-worthy story and a multiplayer mode that makes Call of Duty look like a BBC Micro game.

The reason it troubles me is because Forever is a good game. The controls are a bit clunky and the game looks like it's from a few years ago, but that's because it is.

What the game represents is a throwback to an intermediate time between when shooters were four hundred locked doors between a nameless man and the end of the level and now, when shooters are a linear, story-driven, shooting gallery set-piece-athon.

Forever is bang in the middle. It's a linear, story-driven spectacle interspersed with platforming, puzzle solving and minigames. What the game avoided, by the grace of almighty God, is a lack of variety. Without trying to spoil too much, in the first 3 hours the game features standard run-n-gun, puzzles, driving, being shrunk, solving more puzzles while shrunk, driving an RC car while shrunk, on rails sections, turret gameplay and pool. That is more to do than most shooters feature in an entire franchise.

Hey, it worked once

So, what about the actual game part of the game? Well as you might expect, a complex story is not on the cards. The basic premise is "aliens bad, Duke good, babes better". Aliens invade Earth after Duke made them look stupid the first time round and start stealing all of Earth's hottest babes. This will not stand. Duke snaps into action, against the will of the President, to defeat the alien scum and reclaim the babes. Perfect, simple setting.

What I will say about the game that is better than any recent shooter release, is the lack of utterly useless handholding (so long as you turn hints off). Most games these days seem to regard you as little more than a toddler, gently guiding you through sections that require no more brainpower than that of a lobotomised horse. Forever can be tricky, but you usually know what to do and where to go through indirect direction... you heard me.

Graphics quality is always a contentious issue in games. Is visual style more important than pure realism, or do graphics even matter at all? The only thing that need be said is if Forever came out three or four years ago, the graphics would still only be considered good, not great. This is in no way to the detriment of the game. End of story.

These days, a game has to have multiplayer. If a game wants to have a successful multiplayer, you give up and realise nobody plays anything but Call of Duty and Halo. Some games try and leach some of the success from those two franchises by copying them almost exactly, especially CoD. Thankfully Forever doesn't really try and be anything amazing. It features the multiplayer fad du jour of earning XP and leveling but only to unlock items in your online pad, which is a nice change. Everything is played on an even playing field and has a discernibly old school feel to it.

When it comes to making a decision about this game, ignore the 14 years. Take it for what it is; a callback to games of old. Before big budgets and pomposity took hold. When games had less heads and more boots up asses.

LittleBigPlanet 2

I'm going to start this review with the ending, just because I can. LittleBigPlanet 2 is awesome. So mind-bendingly, unequivocally awesome.

One thing that is not awesome, through no fault of the game, is the absolutely dreadful state PlayStation Network has been in over the past month or so. While I understand that there have been many problems, a 13MB update should not take nearly 2 minutes to download on a 37Mb internet connection. Ever.

When the game loaded up it was nice to see the old pod from LittleBigPlanet 1 again, just how I had left it. Or should I say how a friend had left it, since the last time we played together. Many a flower had been stapled on my slick, black walls leaving it looking like a goth entry into the Chelsea flower show.

Surprisingly (or in hindsight, not), my sackboy also appeared wearing the exact costume I left him in while playing LBP1. However, I thought a painted black space suit made him look too much like a dwarf wearing a gimp suit so I decided to check out the customisation options again. Ah, the vast emptiness. Having not played any of the game yet, I was stuck with pretty much nothing.

And so, I hopped gleefully into the story. One of the nicest changes to the story mode is the use of fully voiced cutscenes. In the original game, we were stuck with reading all of the story which made the game trudge along a bit slowly. While those text boxes appear again in the actual levels, the bulk of the story is driven superbly through the pre and post level cutscenes.

The use of cuscenes also had the advantage of being able to use fully animated characters. Before, we had the stiff cardboard cutouts, mumbling to themselves while bobbing up and down. While adding nothing to gameplay, it really helps you to connect more with the characters.

When it comes to the look of LittleBigPlanet 2, it really is stunningly pretty. The slight graphical update since the original has meant the game has blossomed into something beautiful. Textures are sharp, models are smooth and the motion blur has been made significantly better. Other effects like fire, water and electricity are back with added features like fire propagation and electrical currents.

What I find incredible is the amount of detail that can be achieved on just three planes of a 2 dimensional game. Some moments packed in more action into that tiny space than the latest blockbuster 3D title.

Sackboy's lonely hearts ad proved fruitful

When it comes to user created content, LittleBigPlanet is the console king. The original spawned over 2 million custom levels, all of which are still playable in the sequel. Even my pathetic excuse for an attempt should still be there.

That does lead me to a personal problem with LittleBigPlanet, as well as all games with user generated content. I can see amazing ideas in my head, but when it comes to making them, my brain turns to putty. It's like the game is taunting me with the fantastic level editor and then giving me a lobotomy before I can make anything. I guess I'll have to play other people's level and deal with being green with envy.

Speaking of the level editor, so much has been improved or added to it that now, players can create whole games rather than single levels. It does sound like an advertising hook (and it was), but it's damn true. Just a small poke around the community reveals such creativity previously unseen on console. Anything is possible from high score minigames, to multi-level story-driven epics.

With the simple idea of a character made of cloth hopping around, Media Molecule are becoming giants in the gaming industry. LittleBigPlanet has become the series to beat if you want to make a successful contender to it's crown. What's more, it's fully deserved. If you want a game that will entertain, thrill, delight and capture your imagination, get LittleBigPlanet 2 right now.