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.

TRON: Evolution

When it comes to movie tie-in games, there is usually only one outcome. A sloppy turd of a platformer with the respective movie's name on the front cover.

Tie-ins are always an obvious ploy to widen prospective audiences for the movie and to generate more money. This is absolutely no different for TRON: Evolution, but I find myself in the unique position of having played an OK movie game. There is the large and distinct possibility that the fact it's TRON has tainted my opinion somewhat. Having said that, the fact it being Tron gives it something unique over other movie games.

So we begin. The game serves as a bridge between the original film and the recently released sequel TRON: Legacy. The plot revolves around CLU's corruption and betrayal of the creator, Flynn, as well as his genocide of the Isomorphic Algorithms (ISOs). This is seen briefly in the movie, and is expanded upon to a decent degree in the game. Aside from some incontinuities, it works well as a bridge between the two films while not being essential to the plot of the movies.

What isn't touched upon in the movie, is the presence of a virus going by the name of Abraxas. Playing through, I felt this was a completely unnecessary sub-plot. While also being unoriginal in a TRON game, it derails the main plot of CLU's descent into corruption and what could be described as madness. It feels a bit tacked on for length and seemingly because the design team might have been bereft of ideas at that point.

It does turn out that Abraxas was an ISO and that CLU is using him as a ploy to gain support for his "purge". It seems to make sense, but the fact that CLU is already re-appropriating existing programs and turning them into an army he controls defeats the point slightly. Wait, I mean massively.

Then we have the player character. Now sometimes games can have nameless, faceless protagonists and it seems to work alright. Doom springs to mind, although I suppose he did have a face. A very angry face. In any case, you play as a program whose role is that of a system monitor called... System Monitor. Originality must ooze from every pore of the design team.

The same could technically be said for CLU, as his name is an acronym. Why do only two characters in the whole TRON universe have non-names? And why is the System Monitor so dull? It feels like you're playing a game as the Stig.

Some say he is a user...

Still, these annoyances aside, the game plays rather well. Again I was surprised by the inclusion of an upgrade and level system. Though not as clever as TRON 2.0, it adds another layer to gameplay. The one problem is you don't level up enough to get a lot of the upgrades quickly, forcing multiple playthroughs or foraying into the multiplayer.

Being a third person platformer, controls are hugely important. When it comes down to it, they're adequate. Not amazing, not horrible. I spent about as much time chaining vaults to wallruns as I did leaping foolhardily into vast chasms of expansive nothingness.

Of course, being TRON, lightcycles have to make an appearance. To be quite fair, I enjoyed these sections a lot. Yeah, the controls were incredibly wonky and you're going so fast you can barely see what's in front of you, but it adds to the fun. You also get to drive Flynn's cycle at one point. Squeels of delight were made.

Other sections included light tank battles, which looked almost exactly like the beginning of the original TRON, where the first CLU is destroying Recognizers. If it was intentional, it's a nice touch.

It was also good to hear Bruce Boxleitner lend his voice to TRON again and Olivia Wilde playing her role as Quorra. It helped the game merge into the TRON universe more easily. I was quite amazed to see that it wasn't Jeff Bridges voicing Flynn and CLU, because the replacement (Joe Tatasciore) sounds exactly like him. The same can't be said for Michael Sheen's replacement. Fingers down a chalkboard levels of awfulness.

Overall, the game is decent. A functioning platformer that doesn't really add or subtract anything from the genre. It's a little short, so maybe not worth the money but fun for a weekend maybe.

Alan Wake

Writing is relatively easy. Writing well is another matter all together and I cannot think of anything that can corroborate that statement more than Alan Wake.

There's a reason that games tend to have simplistic stories and tend not to dwell on complex storyline arcs that can capture the imagination that other media forms can. If you can write a good story, you write a book, a stage play or a screenplay. These formats have been around much, much longer than video games and are (and always will be) the preferred route for creative story tellers.

So now we have Alan Wake. A supposed, self identified, psychological thriller based around the titular best selling author, who has retreated to the idyllic town of Bright Falls to recover his creative spark. Little does he know a dark presence is waiting to use his novel to break from it's slumber and take over the town!

So, how do you stop the author from simply ending the novel with "and they all lived happily ever after"? With the most classical of classic plot hole covering devices, amnesia. After the opening scene, where Wake's wife is dragged away into a lake, he finds himself in a car accident with the aforementioned amnesia.

What follows for the next 5 hours can only be described as a seemingly never ending slog through the same wooded area fending off the same bad guys over and over. Honestly, Bright Falls looks like a very small town, possibly having a population of no more than a few hundred. Throughout the game Wake must kill at least half the town, judging by how many enemies the game throws at you. Which itself is a shame. I was hoping for a really scary, lonely experience, where the enemies would be few but incredibly hard to beat. Just from the amount of enemies and how easy they are to dispatch makes this game neither a thriller/horror or able to affect my psyche, rendering the game a simple third person shooter.

I will say, however, that the light versus dark mechanic is very nice. While the game does degenerate into a shooting gallery at times, at least there are some dying embers of originality. Using flares, for example, act as a repellent as if you were holding garlic to a vampire. It makes sense within the story and it works well. As does the lighting engine, making full use of volumetric lights like they were going out of fashion.

With great lighting comes great ambience responsibility. While the lighting looks great, there is far too much of it. For a game that relies heavily on the distinction between light and dark, it isn't half bright at night. Now, I've seen some pretty bright moonlit nights, but this is just outrageous. It completely takes away the feeling of being surrounded by the ominous "dark presence". It also degrades the flashlight from compulsory accessory to an overused weapon.

Once you have gone through the first 4 and a half episodes, the game starts to kick it's feet, get into gear and other intolerable cliché remarks about getting better. After being spoonfed the storyline in another example of utterly tedious walking and talking, Wake finds himself on a farm used by a pair of old rock stars, stage and all. I found this moment to be the highlight of the game, fending off ghoulies using pyrotechnics and a buttload of flashbangs. One reason I liked it more than the rest of the game is the presence of Wake's agent, Barry Wheeler. Throughout the game, Wake has been alone in his struggles and now we have some much needed comedic foil for Wake's dreary, monotonous tone. On that point, Wake's voice actor is truly terrible; trying to fake the awful gruff, manly delivery that seems so fashionable these days. I blame Christian Bale... for many things, but mostly that.

I'm the god damn Batman

As mentioned before, the game starts to pick up momentum but it maintains one of the most annoying traits in any story driven game. The arbitrary lengthening happenstance (technical term). There is not a single moment in the game where there is an A to B objective. It's always A to every other letter in the god damn alphabet to B for no discernible reason. At one point Wake has to get to Barry who has used a flare to show his location. He was behind a chest high railing and some parked cars and I was forced to go through several shops and onto some roofs. Seriously, why? At least put him behind a 20ft wall or something.

And so, we come to the ending. I'll not make it sound like I know what happened because I don't. I just don't. Wake manages to make it back to the cabin to write the ending to the manuscript, to defeat the dark presence. He writes an ending to save his wife. She emerges from the lake and we see Wake at the typewriter once more. He utters the line "It's not a lake; it's an ocean" and then... nothing. In all honesty, I just don't get it.

Intentional cliffhangers piss me off and in this day and age of downloadable content it's an obvious attempt to wring more money out of the consumer. Two pieces of DLC have been released to continue the story but no, I will not spend more money just to get another inevitable cliffhanger. I'm sorry Mr Wake, you're going to be stuck in that lake for eternity I'm afraid.

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed 2

A few hours ago in a bedroom far, far away...

... I started playing The Force Unleashed 2. Then, 4 hours later, I stopped playing. Why? Well it could have been because the game ended. Yes, I think this game could go down as one of the shortest full priced retail video games of all time. Don't go thinking that it was an attempt to speed through either, because I sat and watched every cutscene and even paused one to talk to my mother at one point.

Now, short games I don't care about. What I care about is value for money. For a game that would have cost £40+ at launch, that is absolutely atrocious. Luckily for me, I didn't pay that much.

Well, what can you say about a game that doesn't last as long as some films and costs 4 times as much? It... When... The... graphics were nice? To be fair to the game the graphics were nice. In fact that's probably the only positive about the game.

I guess I should really start by saying that if you want to continue where the first game left off, then too bad, loser. For you see, the beginning of this game ignores the choices made by the player and begins anew, disregarding continuity like a McDonald's employee disregards personal hygiene.

You begin the game as a clone of the original Starkiller being told by Vader to hate everything he loved, i.e. Juno Eclipse. Immediately the game falters and the player becomes emotionally separate from the game. This is because love stories don't translate well to video games. In films and books, we can relate to and sympathise with characters, but they always remain individual to the viewer. However, in video games you are the character. These events are happening to a character you directly control. This makes it difficult to pull off strong emotions while keeping the player emotionally invested in the story.

What doesn't help is the blind fanaticism Starkiller shows in trying to find Juno. It's not just a strong emotion, it's his only emotion, which renders half of this incredibly short game redundant. Other plot points are thrown in to try and bring back other characters, but everything always boils down to finding Juno (who's acting hasn't got any better, crikey). This also includes an incredibly brief and utterly pointless cameo by Boba Fett, who is apparently the only bounty hunter in the galaxy.

Speaking of minuscule sub plots; the freeing of General Kota (who is so in touch with the force, he doesn't need eyes) from gladiatorial captivity is a strange one. Having laid waste to most of the imperial troops in the city, you find Kota in an arena fighting various monsters. Upon your arrival, a fearful beast known as the Gorog, who resembles Popeye if he were bitten by a radioactive spinach plant, is unleashed. The attempt at gigantic scale is admirable, but it never really feels huge. Nothing about the encounter is different enough from any of the microboss encounters. It's just avoid, force lightning, avoid, force lightning over and over. It's made all the more tedious because of the fact you could have just run away. It's not like that thing could just hop on a space cruiser and come after you.

I'm strong to the finish, 'cause I eats me spinach...

After that the game is just a slog through various unimpressive locations that look vaguely Star Wars-y, with appropriate boss encounters thrown in for length, until the inevitable confrontation with Darth Vader. Seriously, Vader is getting boring now. So boring that even the developers couldn't be bothered it seems. A straight up one-on-one with some tedious platforming and quick time events. Oh, but half way through Juno gets thrown out of a window and for all Starkiller's supposed love for her, does he go and help? Nope, his hatred of Vader consumes him. Pardon my asking, but doesn't hate lead to the dark side, the very thing you're trying to avoid? Talk about a waste of time.

Then it all comes down to one simple choice. Spare Vader, or kill him. The two choices have two completely separate outcomes, neither of which can relate to each other. I'll try and explain:

• Light Side - You spare Vader, he is taken into custody, your droid tells you that he cannot revive Juno after her fall but she suddenly is all right again
• Dark Side - As you are about to kill Vader a perfectly cloned Sith Starkiller lightsabers you in the back, Kota gets hurled off the platform, Juno dies and so do you

I'm sorry, what? What happened to the sith Starkiller in the light side ending? How did Juno survive one but not the other? Stories change after a choice, not before.

In the end, it seems this game is merely filling in an inevitable trilogy sandwich. It's too bad this filling is a monolayer of greasy margarine and nothing else.

TRON 2.0

I love Tron. I wasn't even a twinkle in my Dad's eye when it came out way back in 1982, but I've loved it ever since I first saw it. It really makes me wonder how I managed to miss this game completely until quite recently.

A full 21 years after the movie's release, came TRON 2.0. A first person shooter made by Monolith, the guys more known for the F.E.A.R series.

What I found completely surprising about this game is the RPG elements. I was expecting a run and gun from start to finish, but the upgrades and customisation are a great addition to what would have been a good game to begin with. From the start you have a set amount of points for things like health and energy, but as you progress through the game you upgrade your version number, which acts as a level number. It's probably the most fitting use of a level system ever, as instead of an arbitrary number it actually has context within the world you are inhabiting.

What I love about this game is how standard FPS events are changed to fit the unique world of the Grid. Looting, for example. Each enemy you defeat drops it's core memory which gives some health and energy, and can also drop upgrades and permissions, which act as keys. Everything that you expect in an FPS is there, but so fitting to the world you are in they seem completely different.

Speaking of the Tron world, the game adheres to the original film's look really well and each area, while having the same style, feels individual. As well as looking good, each area fits it's purpose well. From deactivating a firewall to running from a reformat, each zone looks how it should. The firewall example actually has large orange forcefields which look like walls of fire. Quite brilliant.

While the world and the gameplay is tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm, the story is a little wobbly. The basic premise is that ENCOM's new owners, fCon, are planning to use the digitizing process to send in Users to gather information and bring it back to their servers. It's a more straightforward, hands-on form of hacking. The problem is their digitization program is crap and turns Users into viruses. Their first attempt creates a corrupted Master User called Thorne, who spreads the infection throughout the system.

It's a decent enough story, but it gets a bit left behind in some places. The whole middle part of the game seems to completely forget about Thorne and the infection, having you fight simple security programs. The infection story comes back toward the end of the game, where another great call back to the movie is presented. fCon are planning to use a new file transfer program to distribute the stolen data around. It's in the form of a giant ship, much like Sark's from the film. It would mean nothing to someone who had never seen the film, but to anyone else it's a great moment.

Now, it really wouldn't be Tron without those iconic lightcycles. Credit must be given, because they could have just shoehorned this in with no thought to it, but it actually is part of the overall story. One part is shoved in for filler later, but I'll let that go just because lightcycles are awesome. The only problem is that it's so damn hard. I could hardly sit down after the asskicking I took from those AI riders. It forces you to ride away and wait until they eliminate each other or there is one left. But when you actually eliminate an opponent, it doesn't half feel good.

There is one part of the story that I didn't like, however. In the film, Tron fights against tyranny from Sark and the MCP in the name of the Users. In this game, you have to find an updated version of the Tron program called Tron Legacy (someone at Disney must have played this game). Fair enough, you may think, but the updated version of Tron fights against the users and derezzes them off the grid. I can imagine that being handy once the true intentions of fCon became clear, but to have it called Tron, it goes against everything he was created for.

Still, even with that the game is great. If you are a fan of Tron and you can get a copy, I suggest you do. Great gameplay, good visuals (it's style keeps it looking good even for a 7 year old game) and an OK story. With Bruce Boxleitner reprising his role as Alan Bradley and Cindy Morgan (Lora/Yori) voicing a program called Ma3a, it does feel like Tron. The only thing missing is The Dude.

--End of Line--

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Lack of creativity is a problem that has been plaguing the video game industry for a while now. Endless rehashes and sequels that change nothing except for where you shoot terrorists populate the market. The other boil on the ass of creativity is the "re-imagining" of established stories. Now, I can abide by stories that have similar plots and characters to other works written into a unique tale, but when the characters and their names are identical, it screams "We're bereft of writing talent".

If you've never been in a special education class, you'll probably know that story is important in entertainment. The problem with re-imaginings is that the story has been told already and most likely in a better way... that's why it's being copied.

This particular game is inspired by the Chinese novel "Journey to the West", a story telling of a man's pilgrimage to India from China to find Buddhist texts. The story in Enslaved consists of a woman's return home after escaping imprisonment by robots. Yeah... robots. What I don't understand is, if you are going to change that much about an established story, why not go the extra mile and pen your own unique tale? Yes, you could draw parallels between them, but it would be separate from the inspiration material.

Anyway, the game opens to show the player character, Monkey, escaping from a slave plane. For some reason, one girl escaping has caused it to explode and crash. She causes this mess and doesn't even have the common decency to let you through a door to the escape pods. She then has the audacity to put a slave headband on you later. What a bitch.

As this game is a puzzle action platformer, repetition is going to feature at some point throughout the game. The problem is the people who made this must have regarded that as a good thing. It has to be one of the most perpetually boring games I've ever played. An incredibly high percentage of areas start out with the path ahead being scanned for robots whom you then go and destroy. There's some climbing in there, but that is it. I'd say 70-80% of the game is right there in that sentence.

It doesn't really help either that the game mechanics are awful either. The climbing gameplay is so easy due to everything climbable glowing bright white, the combat is tedious as you only have about 4 different moves and the camera... oh God, the camera. It swings around so wildly, even the controls have a hard time keeping up.

I don't want to be too down on the game, because there were some fun parts. Most of the boss battles were interesting and they actually had a size and difficulty progression, unlike a lot of other games. There is also a part where Trip nearly drives off he side of a bridge in a hilarious commentary on women's driving ability.

We then come across the character called Pigsy. Truly, one of the least likeable characters in a video game. In the Chinese tale, he shamed himself and was banished by the Gods to be reborn as a mortal human. They screwed up and he was born from a wild boar, hence why he's half-man half-pig. In the game, he is simply a fat bloke who likes pigs, judging by what he wears and what his home looks like.

Half-man, half-annoying fat idiot

The real problem with this game isn't the borrowed-then-robotified plot, the repetitive gameplay or the outrageous frame rate, but the fact I just really didn't care about anything. They're slaves, don't care. Trip's father is dead, snore. Pigsy is in love with Trip, yawn. Pigsy dies, huzzah.

Speaking of Pigsy's death, it's a strange and unnecessary sacrifice. Nearing the end of the game, you are on a massive machine called the Leviathan. The only way to destroy all the robots attacking you is to blow that mother up. Pigsy sets that in motion... then just sits there waiting for it to blow up. He had a whole minute to escape, which was evidently long enough for Monkey and Trip to get away. An utterly pointless escapade intended to make Pigsy seem like a noble and caring person.

There was only one scene that I cared enough to not mash the X button in a vain hope that it would skip, and that was the end. Everything up until that point was about Trip. Now, finally, we get something that relates to the player character. Playing for 8 hours to see it, however, was definitely not worth it. Turns out the slaves have been living in a Matrix-esque dream world from memories of a single person.

Trip and Monkey then free the slaves in an allegory for the Buddhist tradition of enlightenment. It's a pretty haphazard way of tying the two stories together after they got wildly frayed once the robots showed up, which happened to be right at the beginning.

While it's not a terrible game; the monotonous gameplay, unengaging story and one particularly bad character make it pretty bad. Time to take the blue pill.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

I both love and hate horror games. Not "horror" games which feature people carrying guns bigger than me shooting demons in space. I mean proper horror games, which pit you against nasties from the nether regions of hell with little more than a light source and one too few changes of underwear.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the latter. In fact, some of the time you don't even have a light, which makes the change of underwear even more precious.

As mentioned, games that try to be scary while giving you enough weaponry to take down a zombified Genghis Khan are not scary at all. Sure they can make you jump with cheap shock scares, but once that has worn off you can send a kilo of buckshot through their face... providing they have one.

The true horror game strives to terrorize the players mind for hours; subtly building the tension up to a pants wettingly terrifying crescendo. Or not, you never know when things are going down. This is exactly what Amnesia does, and it does it so superbly that I found myself not wanting to play it for fear that I wouldn't have clean boxers for a while. That is the hate aspect of my relationship with horror games, but I love that it can do that to me.

The story of Amnesia follows a young chap called Daniel. He awakes in a strange castle with, you guessed it, amnesia. From the very start it seems like the whole castle is alive and not terribly thrilled that you're there. He stumbles upon a note written by himself telling him it's what needed to be done and that a man must be killed. The note also explains the feeling of constant dread within the castle. The man you want dead has summoned a nameless evil which has enveloped the town. Classic horror themes, don't you agree? But hey, if it isn't broken don't fix it.

While the main genre of the game is horror, the larger aspect of the game is puzzle solving. You get the standard locked door puzzles, interspersed with things such as finding ingredients for potions and fixing sewer systems. The range is great and nothing ever really feels like a chore. However, that could just be the overlying terror crushing every other emotion I had while playing.

The only problem I found with the puzzles stemmed from my own incompetence. Several times I found myself flailing around in the dark, having wasted all my lantern oil, trying to find the one thing needed to advance the plot. In the end the thing needed would be right under my nose, which would make me feel so incredibly stupid. I didn't like it, but it's probably almost exactly what I would be doing in Daniel's situation. That and sitting in a corner crying.

Throughout the game we're given the story in that most recent of literary devices, the audio log. Although, it's not strictly an audio log, but a written diary entry read aloud in Daniel's head. They gave a great insight into why you need to kill that man, Alexander of Brennenburg, but I've always felt it's a strange way of delivering story. Even more so with hand written diary entries. Audio recordings I can understand, as they're quick to make, but sitting down to write something erudite while being chased by ghoulies... doesn't seem plausible to me.

It's even less plausible when you find these notes in some of the darkest, dankest places of the castle. Oh look, one of my diary pages in a torture chamber in a dungeon. So that's where I left it, how silly of me.

Speaking of castle locations, it's not often a game can accurately give off a sense of foreboding with something as normal as a study. When you are dreading walking around a guest bedroom for fear of having your nads lopped off by a monster from the black lagoon, the thought of setting foot in a dungeon is outrageous. Other areas include food storage (where I lost several years off my life), laboratories and book archives. I don't think there is an area in the game which you can consider safe, which ramps up the psychological terror to all new heights. This is especially evident when the room looks safe. You could argue that this could saturate the game with horror, but it balances everything so well it's never mundane or frustrating horror.

Daniel's sanity plays a big part in how you play the game. The more crazy stuff you see, the more crazy you become. What I really found great, which I only realised after playing, was that my own stress levels were mirroring Daniel's sanity level almost perfectly. If he was fine, I was fine. If he was stressed, I was stressed. I played a lot of the game with friends present and I think I can safely say we all let a little bit of wee come out at some points.

In my opinion, this is one of the scariest, creepiest and most of all best games of recent years. I can't think of many games that have drawn me into it's world and been so good at what it does. The only downsides to the game came from my own bumbling nature. It's a true horror game and it's almost perfect.

Royal Mail

Unfortunately, due to the absolute CHAOS caused by 3 inches of snow, there will be no review his week.

No wonder people think we're a nation of blundering idiots; it's because we are.

Halo: Reach

The Halo franchise has never been a favourite of mine. I regard it, admittedly from a point of complete ignorance, as "baby's first shooter". Without trying to sound completely biased against it, the fact that the player's character, Master Chief (or in Reach's case Noble 6), can jump 20 feet in the air and absorb a whole armoury before even his shield is depleted really does make it for people who might have lost some of their brain in a serious industrial accident.

Now, I try not to succumb to hype, but I have been known to buckle under the weight sometimes, even for games in a franchise that I don't like. I just thank all powerful Atheismo that I held out on buying this one. For you see, the game is not only ass, but ass made of nothing but cellulite with acne dimples you could suffocate a whale in.

All aboard the critic ship. Next port of call, the hilariously sub-par graphics. Games these days have a lot to live up to in the graphics department, so when a game comes out that looks a tad shoddy, it sticks out like an elephant in a penguin enclosure. Not that the graphics are bad per se, but compared to other games they are pretty shocking. The first thing that really caught my eye was the amount of aliasing. I was actually shocked. Console games tend to forsake anti-aliasing due to the impact on performance it has, but Jesus this needed something... anything.

Another problem with the graphics is the attempt at motion blur. While the rest of the graphics are bad in comparison with other games, this is just straight up bad. So bad in fact I thought my TV was on the blink. If you've ever played a launch PSP and seen the pretty dire ghosting that happens on that screen, that what you get in Reach. The combination of sub-par graphics and hilariously bad blur just makes me feel sorry for the people who actually like this game who have to stare at that mess for hours.

As with Call of Duty titles, there is an obvious bias in the game toward multiplayer. This leaves the single player campaign feeling tacked on and worthless, or written by people who had just taken a class in Movie Clichés 101. When a character says, with genuine sincerity, "may God help us all..." you know the writers don't care. I know I didn't after that line. All I cared about was stopping myself from dying with laughter.

When I wasn't losing vital organs from laughter, I was in a state of mild confusion. The planet Reach is where the war with the Covenant begins, so why would the characters know everything about the enemy before hand? I can imagine there being some knowledge through research and historical records, but to know everything like the game is set after all the other games is pretty stupid. While the people playing the game will most likely know everything about the enemy, the characters in the game shouldn't.

When I wasn't doing either of those things, I was losing the will to live waiting for the game to load. I can usually deal with long load times when the game has a lot to load, but when the game is as sparsely populated as Reach is, it's surprising how long it takes.

Once I had waited a life age of the Earth to get into the game I was back on the life support machine. I have never seen anything as funny as an NPC trying to navigate the terrain in a car. If these marines are the best Earth has to offer, I'm surprised the Covenant didn't go straight for Earth from the get go. Trying to drive them yourself, on the other hand, is a matter of pure frustration. I can see the attempt at having the controls mimic on foot controls, but it just doesn't work.

Now we come careening into the murky, racist 9-year-old infested waters of multiplayer. Or we would if the matchmaking had worked. I have read about Halo's matchmaking being very good, but it certainly didn't show here. For starters it tried to make me buy map packs before I had even got into the multiplayer part of the menu. I tried multiple game modes multiple times, but I never joined a game. Too bad Halo, it could have swayed my opinion. It would have been tough, and it probably would have had to perform some sort of act on my genitalia while playing to do that, but now I will never know.

What's really mind-boggling is how the series is admired by so many people. I don't know if this particular game is the errant turd in a bowl of sweets, but if the fans love it this much I'm willing to bet it's not much different to previous titles.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

I don't get Batman. Some guy murders his parents, so he decides to become a vigilante and make amazing weapons and gadgetry with the millions of dollars he inherited. If he really wanted to help crack down on crime, surely he would become Gotham City's biggest police equipment contractor, rather than beating up crooks in a stupid outfit? Imagine a whole police force of Batmen... *shudder*

It's obvious why Batman does it. His wealth and power has given him the most massive superhero ego ever. In his mind, only he can stop nefarious evil-doers with his superior detective abilities. What a tool.

So now we have another game based on this clown. The basic story is that the Joker has planned a take over of Arkham Island by having all his incarcerated gang members transferred to Arkham right before he deliberately gets caught by Batman. It's a fair enough plot, until the opening scene when Joker pretty much spells out his plan to Batman. Superior detective skills, my arse.

The whole scene itself is pretty awful. It's a 5 minute trek from the gates of Arkham Asylum to the point Joker breaks out. It's another instance of a game trying to keep the player involved when it's completely unnecessary. A minute long cutscene would be suited better than watching Batman amble at the pace of a sloth on barbiturates.

We then get a glimpse of Killer Croc, whose dialogue might as well just have been "I'm going to be a boss later raaaarrrgh!". He's also unaccompanied in a lift. How does anyone on that island think letting a 16ft monster, with teeth bigger than my hand, walk around on his own in rusty manacles is a good idea? Seriously, they would have deserved it if they all got eaten.

After sleeping through that intro, I got to actually play the game. Initially it's a fun mix of progression puzzles, hand to hand combat and stealth. The open nature of the game lends itself to the detective aspect of Batman's persona as well. However, the game pretty much cheats you of using intuition with the inclusion of "Detective Mode", an overlay on Batman's vision flat out telling you what things are. It even lets you see people through multiple walls. In essence, Batman goes through life with debug mode on.

When our man isn't fighting thugs, hiding on one of about 4 million gargoyles around Arkham or being a "detective", he's usually in a vent somewhere. For a place that wants to keep people from escaping they sure are big on vents large enough for a person to climb through that bypass most of their security systems.

That's another thing. Almost every objective is blocked by an "unhackable" electric fence at some point. The fact that they're unhackable makes it obvious that they're just an arbitrary diversion to add length to the mission. God forbid Batman use his explosive gel to destroy them. You do get a device later that can disable them (so much for unhackable), then they just move the fence controls to somewhere that's blocked by the fence you want to disable.

Once you start getting into the later stages of the game, it becomes a rather repetitive slog between infrequent boss encounters. It usually features a combination of find evidence, scan evidence, follow evidence trail, beat up on grunts on the way, crawl in several hundred vents, arrive at your destination, fight grunt hopped up on crazysauce. When you're not doing one of these things, you can bet you're in a Scarecrow hallucination.

These levels are confusing. I really can't see much of a point for them except for them being fan service. If Scarecrow was a major part of the plot, then these stages would hold more weight, but as it is it's just some asshole doping you up randomly to annoy you.

The stages themselves are pretty tedious, having to avoid Scarecrow's gaze before reaching a floodlight to blast him which makes you recover from the effects of the drug. What I did enjoy was some of the subtle mindfuckery that happened before each stage. At one point you go into a morgue from a normal corridor, go back out through the same door you just came in into... the morgue again. Those moments were great. If the drug was more of that, they would have been some of my favourite parts of the game. As they were, they were out of place and just padding for the story.

All of his leads up to the final showdown with Joker. I didn't really know what to expect in terms of a finale before playing the game, seeing as Batman is about four times the size of Joker. What I did expect was better than what it ended up being. What it turned out to be was a mass brawl between Batman and a load of goons that he had been destroying since the beginning of the game. The only instances of actually fighting Joker came down to pulling him off a ledge with the batclaw and punching him when he gets stuck in the floor. Do that 3 times and well done, you've beaten the game.

No other forms, no multiple attacks, just waves and waves of goons. It's a shame because Joker was the best character by far. Why is it that Batman always gets overshadowed by his enemies? Probably because we know he's just an egomaniacal rich boy, who doesn't want anyone to touch his toys, but wants everyone to watch him play with them.

While the game is decent, it's not great. The hand to hand mechanics are great, which would have been disastrous had they been bad, and the open world of Arkham Asylum is awesome in it's Gothic charm. The repetitive gameplay and anticlimactic end spoil a game that could have been really good.

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.