While titles like Everspace, Elite: Dangerous, and Star Wars Squadrons have been keeping the space fighter genre alive, they’re somewhat niche games. Even Squadrons, despite being a Star Wars game, was only ever going to truly appeal to dogfight fans. Even if the universe initially pulls them in, space fighter sims aren’t for everyone. The control schemes can be difficult to map to controllers, and it can be hard to convey an effective story because there’s often such a disconnect between the player and their avatar. So the big question is: how do Fishlabs, the developers of Chorus, hope to change that?

I recently got to sit in on a remote Q&A session with Fishlabs’ lead developers and designers as they gave us an in-depth look at their new space shooter. While there are things I’m still unsure (even after playing it) there’s a definite sense that they have a clearly defined vision for their game. For a start, they want to tell a story – and not just through a bunch of cutscenes and dialogue played over dogfights.

Chorus: A different kind of space shooter

Everything about Chorus’ semi-open universe is designed to build on its own mythos. It becomes even more apparent when you’re in the cockpit, too. There’s a sense that each galaxy is lived in; these are more than just pretty obstacle courses to fly a ship around. The backdrops are striking, filled with things to see and wonder over – even if you can’t physically go there. As you weave through asteroid belts and between the structures of gargantuan space stations, it’s easy to be awed by Chorus.

It tales the tale of Nara, formerly a pilot with the tyrannical Circle. Having become disenfranchised with her former masters, Nara has turned renegade. She now helps the resistance fight back against their oppressors with the help of her ship, Forsaken, a sentient Starfighter that reminds me of Titanfall 2’s B2. The relationship between Nara and Forsaken is integral to the story, but also forms the basis for Chorus’ special abilities and character progression.

To call Chorus an RPG would be a step too far, but it does feature a progression system that sees you earning money and experience to upgrade Forsaken’s weapons and defences. There are also Rites, psychic abilities Nara can access to highlight targets and teleport through barriers, for example. The galaxy is also semi open, split into huge individual areas filled with side-missions and points of interest.

Rock and a hard space

Some of these missions might be simple escort affairs; others will branch into chains. There are also choices to be made that can affect relationships with NPCs later on in the game, leading to some characters giving their aid and others denying it. It’s not anything new, exactly, but it’s not something you see very often in this genre. Nara struggles with her own morality and the demons of her past, and it comes through in her conversations and interactions.

The demo I played was relatively short, featuring only a small handful of missions and spaces to explore. I played it through Steam, although it’s coming to both current and last gen PlayStation and Xbox too. Interestingly, Fishlabs have focused on gamepad control rather than HOTAS, as would be expected. It’s important to them that players have the same experience regardless of platform (although there will graphical improvements to next-gen versions such as 4K textures and higher framerates).

Comet me, bro

It always take me a while to start getting my head around controlling ships in space shooters, but with Chorus it felt easy. Steering is all in the right stick, while the left stick is used to control thrusters and perform evasive barrel rolls. Forsaken is equipped with a gatling gun, laser cannons, and missile launchers, each of which is stronger against a specific enemy ship shield type. There’s a wonderful smoothness to the way Forsaken controls; movement is slick and easy, with a pulled-back camera that allows you to take in as much as possible. Sliding between tight spaces and navigating intense space battles is easy and fluid, although I feel the difficulty needs to be balanced a little.

During the more frantic fights you’ll be taking damage from all side, and will often need to juggle weapon types to suit the situation. In these moments I felt Forsaken was too easily damaged. The repair function has a long cooldown while objective time limits are often short, which meant I’d often have time for just one heal even during intense conflicts. Perhaps this needs tweaking by the devs; perhaps I’m just not very good. Either way it didn’t ruin my time spent with Chorus, although having to listen to repeated dialogue every time I reloaded a save was a bit of a pain.

Space ace

Where Chorus deviates from the standard formula is in its approach to story, missions, and exploration. There are Temples hidden in deep space that must be navigated using Forsaken’s full suite of abilities, not to mention the Drift system. Hitting LB will allow you to turn Forsaken on a dime while maintaining forward momentum, something hugely useful during dogfights but equally essential in Temples. These physical and environmental puzzles are almost like dungeons in a RPG, housing upgrades to Nara’s Rites and other useful items. There are no cosmetics to unlock, partly because Forsaken is as much a protagonist as Nara, but there are weapon upgrades and masteries to work towards to give you something to chase.

Built with a very clear end goal in mind, Chorus’ playspaces are gorgeous and easy to navigate. Even in the heat of battle, clicking the right stick will correct your horizon, but it goes deeper than that. The areas are designed with a clear divide between what’s up and down, what’s left and right. Even when you’re tearing around in all directions, it’s easy to stay centred and focused on objectives. Hitting the left stick will propel you forward at intergalactic speeds to eat up the distance between objective markers, but exploration has its own rewards.

Chorus: Deep space fine

One of things focused on during the Q&A session was the music. Not because the devs necessarily wanted to discuss it, but because it was so unbelievably affecting that almost everyone there had a question about it. Composed by Pedro Macedo Camacho (Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands), Chorus’ OST could be one of the year’s best if what I’ve heard is anything to go on. Sweeping orchestral music lends the game a sense of otherworldy grandeur that fits so well with its near-mystical lore.

Playing through the demo left me wanting more. A lot more. How Chorus holds up in terms of variety and, well, staying power, remains to be seen. It’s easy for games in this genre to burnout without a constant flow of new content like Elite or even No Man’s Sky, and while there’s a good spread of missions in the demo, we’ll need more to keep us truly hooked. But aside that, Chorus is looking like it could be an exceptionally fun game. The mix of exploration and space magic, the high-quality visuals and soundtrack, the simple control scheme and smooth combat – these things have me super excited to play more and see just what Fishlabs can do.

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I’m going to be upfront right away here: I enjoyed every minute I played of the Marvel Avengers beta. Before you get all uppity, though, bear in mind the following three facts: One, I’m a bit of a Marvel nerd; Two, I’m easily pleased when it comes to explosions (yes, I like Michael Bay movies); and Three, I went into this beta with very, very low expectations.

To say I wasn’t overly impressed by the reveal last year is like saying Endgame made a few quid at the box office. I didn’t like the look of the Avengers game, nor the sound, nor the concept. So it’s fair to say I needed some convincing – but knock me down with an Asgardian hammer if I’m not just a little bit more convinced after the beta.

It’s the gameplay loop I enjoyed most. Smash bad guys, break boxes, pick up loot, level up, repeat. But I found the locales to be detailed and good looking, I like the fact that most of it is destructible, and I think the character models are solid, even if the game does look like a collection of scenes from the movies that they had to shoot with the stunt doubles. In many ways – far too many, for some – it reminded me of Destiny. There’s even a “gear score” which feels completely arbitrary, and once again has no real-world applications because you won’t understand how it’s calculated. These things are like corporate bonus calculations or lottery spending, in that you’re not meant to understand them, you just have to accept that what you’re being told means something.

You suit up, pick your hero (or heroes, in most missions), select an activity from the “War Table”, and the Quinjet drops you off at your destination, where you’re required to destroy everything that moves, follow objective markers and loot everything that isn’t bolted to the concrete. So, like I said, it’s got a very Destiny feel to it.

The characters though, are cool and pretty well built. Each has a variety of unlockable moves and powers; they have traversal abilities, ranged and melee attacks, and three Hero Abilities on cool down that are universally awesome. Captain America, sadly absent after the intro due to story reasons, is great fun to play with. Iron Man and Thor can fly, Hulk can throw himself around like a wrecking ball, bounding from wall to wall, Kamala Khan can swing on her weird stretchy limbs, and Black Widow has a grappling hook.

Once you’re in a room full of goons or robots and there’s more than one of you playing (or you bought some AI bots to the party instead), it gets very, very messy. Performance was fairly steady, but the screen was busier than Picadilly Circus during the bigger encounters and, while the action is satisfyingly punchy, the target lock is as much use as a cardboard garden hose since it disengages itself more often than Katy Perry.

The thing is though, I wonder if people are expecting too much from this game. While titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man or the Arkham games can laser focus on one hero and their particular stable of nasties, an ensemble title like Avengers is different. Concessions have to be made to get everyone moving at the same speed and with a balanced experience, and Crystal Dynamics have largely achieved that. Playing as Hulk feels very different to playing as Black Widow and yet both are equally useful in a fight, bringing trademark moves, styles, outfits and animations that mark them as completely separate entities – and that’s an impressive thing in a game with so much going on.

Only after a solid length of time with the full game will we know how much content it has, but while the campaign missions felt enjoyable, with some impressive cutscenes and a couple of serviceable – if a little straightforward – boss fights, the side content feels a bit tacked on. Dropping into a mission with three other players to literally fight a room full of enemies before being told the mission was accomplished was pretty underwhelming – to the point where I began to wonder if this wouldn’t have worked better as a straight story campaign with a bit of multiplayer tacked on instead of a live service model.

The live service element is what will turn a lot of people off, too. Each Marvel Avengers character has their own battle pass-style progression tree, and though we can’t see in the beta how this will be monetised, there is definitely a premium currency involved, which means real money. Each pass unlocks a variety of things from skins to emotes, but nothing essential to the game itself. In fact, while the skins are expected in a super hero game, they do conflict with the loot system. When I’m picking up vests and bangles and Odin-knows-what from loot chests, I want to see evidence that I’m equipping them. Unfortunately, likely in service to the skins you’re supposed to grind or pay for, this doesn’t happen.

Also, Crystal Dynamics’ versions of some of the characters are hit and miss. I like Banner in this, riffing as he does off Mark Ruffalo’s awkward performance in the movies, and Natasha comes off well, too. Thor, though, sounds bloody awful. Like, “Chris Hemsworth in Snow White and the Huntsman” awful. And Stark and Cap just feel… off. But maybe that’s just because of the MCU. It didn’t matter that Sony’s Spider-Man wasn’t Tom Holland, because we’re used to seeing Peter Parker sporting different faces all the time. I don’t like Kamala much, though. They over play the giggling fangirl persona so much that it becomes irritating and, quite often, out of place to the point of being inappropriate. Be excited to see Nick Fury, by all means, but not when you think he could be leaving you a message from beyond the grave. That’s not the time for gushy fangirling and it’s irritating. Also, if I’m honest, her power is just weird and cartoony and not particularly cool at all.

There were a lot of elements in the Marvel Avengers beta that I really liked, though. I liked poking around in the Chimera, snooping in Bruce Banner’s bedroom, I liked the level of fan service paid to those who are going to look for it. And I like the movement in missions, the feel of the combat and the variety of powers. I’ll enjoy unlocking skins and mixing up my team of heroes, and I look forward to seeing who else gets added to the roster. But I can’t help but feel that people are going to come at this game ready for a fight, ready to pick it apart for faults they’d ignore elsewhere. Sometimes, you have to let something exist on its own terms.

From what I’ve played, Avengers isn’t trying to be the “new” anything; it’s an action game set in its own version of an established universe that wants to entertain first and foremost, that sets out its stall early with a bombastic, over-the-top, knowingly clichéd action sequence and then just does more of the same, which, let’s face it, is what its source material has done for almost a decade. If you’re trying to tell me the MCU is a franchise made for thinkers, you’re kidding yourself.

Either way, there’s not long left until the full release, and the Marvel Avengers beta has given me a slightly cautious thirst for more. It’s not perfect, and it’s too early to tell if it has the legs to carry it, but I genuinely enjoyed everything I played, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else Crystal Dynamics can do with this universe.

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It’s hard to really get a feel for what Star Renegades will be from just the few hours I spent with the demo. Barely lasting past an hour itself, even repeated playthroughs of the two levels shown can only scratch the surface of what promises to be a unique and emergent turn-based RPG. The few missions available are unable to showcase the 45+ playable characters, the extent of the relationship system, or the scope of the procedurally-generated campaign. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s got my attention.

Set in a galaxy plunged into inter-dimensional war, Star Renegades follows warrior Wynn Syphex, who gets shot down in the opening battle and witnesses her brother killed by the invaders. Wynn is sought out by Professor Zurek, who’s counterpart in another dimension has already witnessed the destruction of her world and sent her robot J5-T1N across dimensions to warn other galaxies.

At present it’s hard to know exactly how divergent the campaign will be, but the missions are dynamic and procedural, and the huge host of characters and classes (there are 13 classes in total) gave me serious flashbacks to Suikoden, one of my favourite JRPG series of all time. What seems likely is the small details will change, but the overall story will flow in the same direction each playthrough; it’ll just break around different obstacles every time.

An enemy hierarchy system seems borrowed from grander titles like Shadow of Mordor, whereby your opponent’s force will shift and change dependant on your successes, failures, and choices. A throneroom view enables you to appraise the enemy, watch its generals get promoted or replaced, and select your primary target. It’s not altogether new, but its inclusion in a turn-based RPG like Star Renegades feels fresh.

Combat follows a Reactive Time Battle System, which is a fancy way of saying you have an initiative meter that your party and opponents are spaced along based on which attacks or abilities you’ve chosen. The cool element in Star Renegades is that you can interrupt your opponents or counter their attacks before they make them, allowing you to disrupt their plans and even move along the meter. For example, if you can get an attack in before an enemy has a chance to launch theirs you haver a high chance of scoring a critical hit and “breaking” them, reducing their armour and forcing them back along the meter.

It’s a system that makes every battle feel different, and makes the composition of your team hugely important. Fill your squad with slow, heavy-hitters and you may well deal damage, but you’ll rarely get the chance to land crits or interrupt the enemy. Likewise, only specific characters can restore health or shields, while some can damage multiple enemies at once or use buffs and debuffs to influence the battlefield.

Beyond the combat, exploration and enemy evolution, interpersonal relationships may also be different for each player. Characters who fight together and interact during downtime between missions will form bonds. These bonds not only unlock combo attacks that can be executed once per fight for devastating damage, but can also lead to deeper relationships and children who, when grown, will become playable characters too because Star Renegades’ story spans multiple generations.

So, sure, it’s hard to appreciate or predict the ultimate scope of Star Renegades based on such a short demo, but everything about it feels ambitious and interesting. The animation is gorgeous, the muted pallet and inventive characters creating an art style that feels oddly familiar but somehow unique at the same time. It’s battle system is not the easiest to get to grips with, but it won’t take long to understand its intricacies. And I should say right away that the dialogue at this point isn’t voiced, so that’s lots of reading if it stays this way. But while some of the writing is a little on the cheesy side, it has a sense of light-hearted camaraderie and space-age derring-do about that will endear a lot of people – particularly fans of anime sci-fi.

Although I played the demo on Steam, Star Renegades is coming to consoles too, including the Nintendo Switch. I’ve got to be honest: that’s where I’m most excited to play it. Regardless of platform, though, Star Renegades is guaranteed to turn heads when it’s released later this year.

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The New Game Plus Expo digital showcase is currently being shown on Twitch featuring announcements and gameplay from many publishers including Sega, Atlus, NIS America, Koei Tecmo America, Aksys Games, and more. Aksys Games’ announcements and reveals for the event include release windows for the many otome games for Nintendo Switch, Tin and Kuna, the reveal of Pretty Princess Party for Nintendo Switch, and more.

The otome games shown at the event include Collar X Malice Unlimited which is the follow up to Collar X Malice. Collar X Malice unlimited releases this August for Nintendo Switch bringing new play modes, content, and more to the world of Collar X Malice. This is the first time Collar X Malice Unlimited is releasing in English.

Piofiore: Fated Memories for Nintendo Switch arrives this October. The otomate developed game features Liliana Adoronato who is in the middle of three criminal organizations in the city. This is another otome game never released before in English that will see a release in the West on Nintendo Switch.

Tin and Kuna is a 3D puzzle exploration game for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC arriving in October from blackriver studios in a colourful world. Originally set for just Fall 2020, Tin and Kuna arrives this October on all platforms. Watch the trailer below:

Cafe Enchante is the final otome game showcased at the event and it has you inheriting your grandfather’s cafe in Tokyo where you meet beings from different worlds including the king of demons. Cafe Enchante arrives on Nintendo Switch this November.

Pretty Princess Party is a new game set for Nintendo Switch release this December. It is a simulation game from Nippon Columbia and Aksys Games with more than a thousand items to use to decorate the caste’s various rooms.

What was your favourite reveal from the New Game Plus Expo today?

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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night from ArtPlay and 505 Games, was released recently on Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch. You can check out our review of it here, in which I said:

“Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is an incredibly well-made adventure, and a heartfelt ode to games long past. More than that though, it feels like a potential gateway to a new era of Castlevania games that could cherry pick elements from half a dozen other genres and present themselves with a modern sheen to appeal to a broad spectrum of ages and skill levels. While it at times struggles to keep up with itself and there are elements of frustration here and there, the overall package is immensely playable and lovingly made.”

Or checkout the video review here:

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Now that the dust has settled on another year of big announcements, CGI trailers, nice surprises and not-so-nice disappointments, the internet has had its say on E3 2019. The verdict? Lacklustre, apparently.

Although I’m inclined to agree, at least as far as some of the biggest names go, I couldn’t help but be drawn into the hype and the fun of the whole show. It’s the same every year and you know what? I bloody love it. I love the build-up, as we all throw our hats into the ring, trying to predict what will be shown and when that big game will finally arrive. This year’s pre-show was even better, with several games announced before the conferences even got underway. We had Death Stranding’s release date arriving with that almighty, eight-minute-long trailer that still managed to give nothing away. We had the surprise of the Darksiders Genesis reveal, brought to us by some of the series’ original creators at Airship Syndicate. We even got the long-awaited news that the creator of the stunning Divinity: Original Sin 2, Larian Studios, is making Baldur’s Gate 3! It might not be arriving anytime in the near future, but it’s still darned exciting.

When the show’s conferences began, or lack thereof in the case of this year’s EA Play, we finally got to see the gameplay for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which looks like it takes plenty of cues from The Force Unleashed, something I can certainly get behind. Yes, I’d still prefer a protagonist that wasn’t your usual human dude, but the post-Order 66 Star Wars era has so much potential and I hope Respawn does it justice. Those folks know what they’re doing when it comes to action games, so I’m quietly confident Fallen Order will deliver when it launches in November.

You know what else I love? The pre-Xbox chatter. Every year, before the Xbox, Nintendo and Sony (well, not them this year) shows, the social medias are buzzing with excitement for what the “big three” will announce. Yes okay, there are still an uncomfortably large number of people that still subscribe to the whole “console wars” thing, and love nothing more than to take shots at their perceived “enemies,” despite some of them declaring that they’re not fanboys of one particular console or another, but thankfully almost all of the people on my Twitter feed are decent folk who simply love games and want to be excited by them.

Deep down, I want to believe that most people enjoy the excitement and promise of what each first party might show, and I’m very rarely disappointed on that front. So when Xbox began announcing games left, right and centre, it was great to see the buzz online. Games like Minecraft Dungeons (still amazing to think that Microsoft is making multiplatform games) and Spiritfarer, both drawing “oohs” and “ahhs” like a circus performance; the almost unbearably delightful announcement of Forza Horizon 4’s LEGO DLC that had me grinning like a little kid, and last year’s acquisition, Ninja Theory, announcing its new PvP hero title Bleeding Edge. Okay, that one was leaked beforehand and honestly, it was disappointing to see a studio renowned for its storytelling moving away from that to pursue multiplayer stuff. Still, it’s always great to see Ninja Theory’s new games and it’s yet more proof that it’s a developer constantly pushing itself to try new things. You have to respect and admire that.

On a much more personal note, despite not really being an advocate for the next generation just yet, the Project Scarlett news and in particular that beautiful Halo: Infinite trailer and announcement that it would be a launch title for Microsoft’s next Xbox in Holiday 2020, really got me. The idea that I may get a new Xbox with a very shiny new Halo game (and probably a new Forza) was a sudden and surprisingly exciting prospect. I mean, that Halo trailer. Chills. Excuse me a moment while I go watch it again.

Of course, without Sony it was a strange E3, like something was missing. Still, Nintendo certainly didn’t skimp on the games and surprises, helping to fill the void of PlayStation’s absence. My Twitter feed was going crazy at the first appearance of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and rightly so. Tom Nook will once again own our asses in March 2020. I know we wanted it this year, but with a more invigorated team under less pressure, I think we can all appreciate what Nintendo is doing and we certainly know that we’re going to buy Animal Crossing on the Switch, regardless of when it arrives. It’s Animal Crossing, for goodness sake.

I love how Nintendo brings out the child in all of us, how we all made heart-eyes at the sight of that adorable Link’s Awakening Amiibo, and seeing Gooigi had us smiling until our cheeks hurt. The Duck Hunt dog’s appearance, before fan favourites Banjo-Kazooie pulled the old switcheroo, announcing their appearance in Smash Bros., was masterful. But in the same Nintendo Direct, CD Projekt RED’s phenomenal The Witcher 3 was revealed to be coming to Nintendo’s hybrid console, in a move that makes us all wonder just what (s)witchcraft is being performed to get it running on hardware that seems rather underpowered. What little we saw, however, made it look surprisingly good!

Speaking of CD Projekt RED, how about Keanu Reeves announcing Cyberpunk 2077’s release date, as well as his appearance in the game? A breathtaking move, you might say. Normally, celebrity appearances are a bit cringey to say the least, but Keanu’s recent re-emergence into the spotlight and his genuinely nice personality earned him the most memorable moment of the entire show. He had fun on Microsoft’s stage, the crowd loved it, and it brought a real warmth to the evening. That warmth continued, with Tango Gameworks’ Ikumi Nakamura capturing the hearts of everyone watching the otherwise dull Bethesda show, as she enthusiastically announced her new game Ghostwire Tokyo. Ubisoft got in on the action too, with Jon Bernthal bringing his dog Bam Bam onto the stage during his Ghost Recon: Breakpoint appearance. Bam Bam was a very good boy, upstaging the whole Ubisoft show.

Ubisoft was arguably one of the biggest disappointments of E3 2019, showing a bunch of brown shooters and CGI trailers, not to mention a strange mashup mobile game featuring Sam Fisher, which didn’t go down too well with Splinter Cell fans whose patience is wearing very thin at this point. I also have a huge problem with Rainbow Six: Quarantine, as it strays well away from Tom Clancy’s original vision. Yes, it’s an expansion of the limited-time event from Rainbow Six: Siege, but could have easily been made into a new IP instead of once again relying on the Tom Clancy name.

Still, in a bid to keep this positive, Ubisoft did start strong with its extended gameplay debut of the impressive-looking Watch_Dogs Legion, and ended with the tantalising tease of Gods and Monsters, the stylised new mythology-based game from the team that gave us Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I cannot wait to get more info on that.

This article wasn’t meant to be a look back at the show, but there were so many great games shown that I needed to talk about them a little bit. But that’s the point, isn’t it? We all talked about them, as we do every year. We get excited about the big AAA games like Halo, and we remain passionate about the games that disappoint us, sometimes by their absence (I’m looking at you, Ubisoft). We love the big surprises and some of the fun talking points like Keanu Reeves. We love publishers like Devolver Digital and their insane branding, all the while bringing genuinely brilliant-looking games into the spotlight, usually by small developers that deserve to be seen.

E3 is certainly going through some changes, with EA’s reduced appearance and Sony’s total absence this year, and 2019 especially felt a little like a transition as we wait for the concrete announcements of next generation consoles. That said, this year’s release schedule now looks a whole lot more enticing and the beginning of 2020 looks like it’s going to have a bigger Q1-2 than ever. Before the show, I was in a bit of a gaming funk, as we all go through now and again, unable to really find any interest in anything. I went back to older games, as new stuff didn’t bother me and while I looked forward to E3, I couldn’t see much beyond that for me to care about. Thankfully, while many saw E3 2019 as a disappointment, I still revelled in its bombast – and my faith in 2019’s games was restored.

No matter what others see in the show, it always manages to excite me. Which is exactly why I still love E3.

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This year’s E3 has been an odd one, hasn’t it? The big conferences were a mixed bag, with Microsoft and Nintendo delivering a lot of fan favourites and just tonnes of games, but the likes of Bethesda and Ubisoft being big disappointments. In amongst it all, there were a few gems from smaller studios that may have got lost in the melee. A few of them came via the PC Gaming Show, which often gets a bit overlooked, so you may have missed them.

If you’ve been following our E3 2019 coverage, you’ll have seen some wonderful opinion pieces by the Chrises, Mick and some from the returning Calvin. I chose not to focus on the biggest games and publishers however, deciding instead to focus my energies on some of the smaller titles that debuted at this year’s show.

Here are six of those games…

Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy – by Ludomotion (PC)

Quite honestly, I suspect you’ve not heard of Unexplored. I hadn’t. But when the trailer ran during the PC Gaming Show, the sort of low-poly, cel shaded visual style and the top-down, pulled-back camera is something I really like (it was the first thing that drew me to that original Below reveal) and I was well into the look of Unexplored 2.

A roguelike adventure, with a Legacy system that will see the game changing for each adventurer. Like Rogue Legacy and Swords of Ditto, death in Unexplored 2 will see a new adventurer continuing the quest to destroy the Staff of Yendor. The decisions and actions of their predecessor however, will affect the world for the next adventurer. Killing hostile wildlife may allow a village to expand, or a conquering army may ravage areas and make the game harder in later playthroughs.

Okay, it has survival elements (why do games insist on adding these?) that may eventually turn me off the game, but right now I’m really intrigued by this. Definitely one to watch.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout – by Mediatonic (PS4, PC)

I used to love Takeshi’s Castle. The absolute insanity of its setting and the ridiculously entertaining games, not to mention the almost slapstick nature of the comic violence when someone slams into a wall or does the splits during the stepping stone game, with a misstep. I also love Devolver Digital, as the publisher seems to always bring incredibly fun games to us, while never being predictable.

Thus, Mediatonic’s Fall Guys does something that I’m surprised hasn’t really been done before, bringing the Takeshi’s Castle formula to us via the Battle Royale genre. Going through various stages, each reducing the player count further during mad games, and all using a physics-based system like Gang Beasts and Human Fall Flat, for maximum hilarity.

Fall Guys looks like it could be the colourful, non-shooter game that the Battle Royale genre sorely needs.

Circuit Superstars – by Original Fire Games (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)

Racing games are totally my thing. As you may recall from earlier in this article, so is the top-down perspective. Circuit Superstars, revealed during the PC Gaming Show, combines the two, bringing a surprisingly sim-like physics model along for the ride.

There will be motorsport disciplines from different ages, with classic and modern GT cars shown off in the trailer, complete with strategic pit stops, and I am incredibly excited by the prospect of Circuit Superstars. There may not be much known so far, but this one was easily one of the nicest surprises of the show.

Conan Chop Chop – by Mighty Kingdom (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)

Another nice surprise, especially after Funcom showed yet another strange take on the Conan universe in its RTS Conan Unconquered, was that its apparent April Fool’s joke, Conan Chop Chop, was actually real all along!

A one-to-four player action-adventure, Conan Chop Chop combines stick figures and roguelike elements to create a comically ultraviolent hack and slasher that looks extremely entertaining. Okay, so it’s not exactly in keeping with the licence, but it does look fun.

Chivalry II – by Torn Banner (PC)

The original Chivalry was ace. It was also criminally overlooked, especially as it brought something a little different to the competitive multiplayer arena. It wasn’t full of guns and killstreaks, or heroes and special abilities, instead it simply gave you a choice of classes and sent you out to hack your way to victory in pitched medieval battles.

Chivalry II, currently only slated for release on PC via the Epic Games Store, looks to turn up the intensity and scale, with the trailer showing off sieges and the newly-added horses. I’m incredibly excited to see Chivalry making its return, and I’ll be keeping my eye on its development. I just hope my PC can handle it, or that a console version is announced, though that’s unlikely.

Unless you all start buying and playing the original on PS4 and Xbox One…

Spiritfarer – by Thunder Lotus (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)

Alright, so you probably did see this one. It was unveiled during the Xbox briefing, after all. The latest from the studio that gave us Jotun and Sundered, Spiritfarer looks to eschew the difficulty of its other games in favour of something a little more sedate and emotional.

Spiritfarer does exactly what it says on the tin, as you ferry the dead into the afterlife. But you’ll also be able to explore the world, finding resources that will allow you build your ferry into a floating town, and meeting new faces and welcoming them aboard your vessel.

I like the idea of forging relationships with these characters, learning all about them, only to have to say goodbye to them when they pass into their next life. I like the idea of exploring a rich and vibrant world, building a community and following the stories within. Not sure I’m keen on being made to cry by cartoon animals (I still haven’t recovered from The Lion King), but I can’t help but be drawn to Thunder Lotus’ games.

This may have been a bit of a strange E3, but it’s also been incredibly exciting at times. We’ve had some huge announcements and the next year is now packed full of games, from big and small names alike, which can only be a good thing.

Were there any hidden gems that you’ve seen, that aren’t on this list? Let us know!

The post 6 games you may have missed at E3 appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

This weekend I got a chance to play Bandai Namco’s new action game Code Vein, thanks to the Technical Test. Essentially a beta, the test offered several hours of action and adventure through the Prologue and a bit of side content designed just for the beta. Initial impressions are very positive. While it will be compared to Dark Souls and Bloodborne by everyone and his gaping dragon (Ed: beg your pardon?!), it’s fair to say that the studio behind it – headed by Hiro Yoshimura, the director of God Eater – wear their influences proudly on their sleeves. Actually “wear” is too light a term: they all but roll up said sleeve and nail their influences to their bare arm with a ruddy great sword.

That being said, they’ve taken pains to ensure that Code Vein has its own identity and, while it undoubtedly borrows several core concepts from the FromSoft playbook, the world and characters feel interesting and fresh. Having spent a good 10 hours in the beta (4 of which were probably in the excellent character creator), there’s 6 reasons Code Vein well and truly has my attention now (none of which relate to the camera angle on the lady in white… because bloody hell, lads, it’s 2019).

1. It’s about Vampires killing monsters

The world of Code Vein is a dark one. The protagonist and most of the good (and bad) guys are Revenants. That is, they’re dead, and reanimated by a parasitic implant held in check by feeding it “Blood Beads” drawn from special springs. Without regular blood, Revenants become the Lost, essentially mindless killers.

Trapped in a dead city by an otherworldly barrier, the last vestiges of humanity must forage for sources of blood without wiping out what’s left of the actual humans. Beyond this we don’t know an awful lot. Characters in the chunk we played talk about the Queen, who was defeated long ago and whose death created the barrier. The militant force your character works for are known as the Queenslayers, but it appears that early on you’ll separate from the main force and forge your own path.

Being vampires means most of your special skills and spells are drawn from or utilise blood, which makes for a gory and macabre moveset. It’s all very cool and a little bit gross.

2. It’s Dark Souls meets God Eater

It’s a crossover of styles you probably weren’t aware you wanted, but the fusion of fast-paced, combo-based combat with parrying, dodging, and punishing difficulty spikes present a weirdly compelling mix. The world design takes cues from FromSoft, too, with routes opening up to make backtracking and re-treading easier, creating a world you’ll kind of instinctively “learn” to navigate better than your own living room in the dark. And, of course, there are “bonfires”.

By now a staple of the Soulslike genre, the eponymous bonfires are here replaced by Mistles, buds of a bizarre world-covering plant that must be awakened in order to bear Blood Beads, the macabre fruit that nourishes the Revenants. With the world of Code Vein stuck in a constant loop of death and rebirth, awakening a Mistle brings all the Lost in the area back to (un)life and allows your character a brief moment of respite.

As we’re becoming accustomed to in this genre, there’s a good chance much of the story will be open to interpretation. As I ran around walloping the zombie-like Lost with my giant axe, I kept picking things up with names that made little sense out of context. How much will be explained is yet to be seen, but I’d keep your wiki open while playing if I were you.

3. It has an accessible learning curve

The beta has a fairly comprehensive tutorial that introduces you to the three primary Blood Codes (or classes), Fighter, Ranger and Caster. The Fighter is fairly straightforward, dealing with direct damage, heavy armour, and massive two-handed weapons. Players of Bloodborne will be instantly at home here, whether wielding a sword, huge axe or a pike (the three weapons I found in the beta, along with a giant hammer which was really just a hunk of concrete on the end of an iron bar).

The Ranger is the agile class, combining quick strikes with a ranged attack and primarily using a bayonet. This is the class I struggled with the most, but it’s the one that may offer the most utility when mastered. And finally the Caster is the mage class, able to draw devastating offensive spells from blood. In all honestly, the Caster felt a little overpowered, but it will all come down to how the game handles resource management and cooldown, etc, to create balance.

A key takeaway is that Code Vein doesn’t feel like you’re thrown into the deep end. While that’s something many Soulslike fans look forward to, allowing you to find your feet with the slightly complex classes and skill design (and there is a lot to understand) isn’t a bad thing. Yes, the opening hour, at least in the beta, feels easier than other games in the genre, but there’s a lot to learn going in.

4. It’s a brand new IP

I won’t pretend that new properties are particularly rare, but I will say that every one feels somewhat refreshing as it sluices out on the rushing river of sequels and reboots. Although it bares similarities to God Eater and has an Anime aesthetic that could have been pulled directly from an existing show, Code Vein is brand new.

Developed by the team behind God Eater 3, it looks and feels somewhat familiar, but the environments are more detailed and the combat more considered. How well it’ll do as a fledgling property remains to the seen, but there’s no denying the minds behind it have solid pedigree.

5. The world is potentially massive

The beta barely scratched the surface, and in fact had elements in it made purely for testing purposes. But we saw a glimpse of the potential size of the world. Given that the opening area is a destroyed cityscape held at bay by the dead Queen’s forcefield (we still don’t know what she was Queen of, if she was human, or if she was related in even a passing way to Freddie Mercury), it seems likely that the story will see you traveling beyond the forcefield and into other such biomes in the ruined world.

I only make this assumption because one dilapidated city area is going to become a little stale after 10 or 12 hours, let alone 20 – 40, and there are elements of Code Vein that suggest longevity. For a start you collect materials which will likely be used for crafting at some point, which combined with the interesting take on classes and skills hints at greater depth. Also, the game’s to which it pays homage are hardly short affairs. I could be hella wrong, but I get the sense that Code Vein will be a behemoth of a game.

6. The character creator is next level

Judge me all you want, but I spent hours and hours in the Black Desert character creator. Before that, I lost chunks of time to Skyrim – hell, even Saints Row. Its an essential part of the RPG experience for me and many others, and Code Vein boasts an impressive avatar builder. It might say certain things about me that don’t bear analysis, but I get really itchy and uncomfortable if I stride out to face the forces of evil in pants that don’t match the shade of my warhammer.

I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of options for hair and features, the numerous default outfit options (all of which is altered further by equipped gear), and the accessories. The Accessory part is actually very interesting, as you’re given a set amount of points to spend and can then choose from a bevy of accessories including chokers, gloves, hair extensions, belt chains, arm bands, glasses, hats, scarves, backpacks and tattoos.

Yes, I know it’s all cosmetic and largely pointless, but it’s still cool. My hope is that these are unlockable in-game or unlocked from the beginning as they are in the Test version, and aren’t tied to microtransactions. It’s a possibility given the current climate, but we won’t know for sure until launch.

The post Code Vein Beta Impressions | 6 Reasons why Namco’s Vampiric Soulslike has our attention appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Let’s face it, you generally know what you’re getting into before you even boot up a From Software game. It’s going to be punishingly hard, it’s going to be semi-roguelike, you’re going to die a lot and you’re going to swear so much you’ll invent new cuss words without even trying.

It’s such a masochistically popular sub-genre that it’s no wonder many other developers have tried to ape the core mechanics in an attempt to get a slice of that rage-inducing pie. But determining which are worth your time and money, and which are just pretenders is tricky, so we’ve rounded up 5 of the best examples available today.

5: IMMORTAL UNCHAINED
Toadman Interactive | 2018

Developed by indie studio Toadman Interactive, Immortal Unchained is a far-future sci-fi that attempted to subvert our expectations of a Souls game by adding guns to the mix.

Despite some technical difficulties and the challenge of working with a low budget, Toadman have done a decent job here, managing to inject some real atmosphere – as well as a few cool ideas.

Sadly, its challenge comes as much from iffy balancing as from design, resulting in a slightly uneven experience. Still, Toadman’s recent updates, as well its overall likeability, mean it’s worth picking up if you’re a fan of the genre. Besides, who doesn’t want to run around like a ‘roided-up techno-freak for a few hours?

4: THE SURGE
Deck 13 | Focus Home Interactive | 2017

The Surge is a game about a bunch of really angry robots getting upset about essentially being slaves to squishy humies, and going uniformally nuts. As a result, it’s probably the most grounded game on the list, if you ignore the endlessly respawning enemies and homemade mech suits, that is.

While it’s easy to doubt the efficacy of a human smashing robots to death with bits of scavenged iron and steel, The Surge is actually a pretty polished experience – barring a few rare bugs that will kill your progress completely, if course.

As sci-fi action games go, it’s certainly an enjoyable enough romp; it just doesn’t quite capture the magic of the titles it’s aiming to replicate.

3: LORDS OF THE FALLEN
Deck 13 | City Interactive | 2014

City Interactive was one of the first studios brave enough to attempt to dip their toes in From’s pool, as it were, with Lords of the Fallen, a pitch-dark fantasy about Harkyn, a man with all of his crimes tattooed on his burly body as a reminder of his tragic quest for redemption.

He’s a miserable bastard for sure, but also pretty handy, as you can spec him in three very different skills that genuinely make you play differently. Although too short and not as clever or nuanced as From’s games, Lords did come close to the crown for a little while.

Minor gameplay tweaks like being able to “bank” your XP, so you keep it on death but earn less as a result switched up the dynamic just a little, and God, some of it looked really nice.

2: SALT & SANCTUARY
Ska Studios | 2016

Being a 2D action platformer reminiscent of something like Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, Ska Studios indie darling had everyone fooled – until its release, when we all realised just how Souls-like it really is.

Shipwrecked on a mysterious island and shit out of luck, your protagonist must make their way through the shadowed under-belly and across the monster-haunted surface, braving dark forests, deep catacombs and trap filled dungeons in an effort to, well, survive.

But it became apparent in mere moments that Salt & Sanctuary is every inch a Souls-like, even down to the respawning enemies, dropping XP and currency on death, and the timing-based combat. It was one of the best games available for the PlayStation Vita, may it rest in peace, and the perfect example of an indie studio playing to its strengths.

1: NIOH
Team Ninja | Sony/Tecmo Koei | 2017

Doing “Dark Souls in Japan” before Sekiro was an itch in From’s jockstrap, Nioh remains the best available Soulslike not actually developed by the progenitors.

The story of Westerner William lost in the shadows of an ancient, horror-story version of Japan, Nioh features copious amounts of Oni, lots of supernatural goings – on, spirit animals and, of course, that old familiar death mechanic.

If you’re a fan of the genre at all, you really should have played Nioh – it’s worth checking out for its incredible combat, often bonkers art design, and undeniably confident swagger.

The post Ranked: Top 5 “Soulslike” games not developed by FromSoft appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but for as good as Diablo 3 is, Blizzard’s slash-happy loot-a-thon doesn’t have much in the way of competition. Step forward Big Ben, and the newest title in the Warhammer universe: Chaosbane, where the theming is definitely Warhammer, but the stylings are unmistakably Diablo. That’s right this is a game that’s all about the numbers.

You’ll stroll around hitting things to make numbers come out of them, then pick stuff up or loot items from chests to increase your stats and make the numbers bigger. And despite all the number crushing, the hordes of chaos will still insist on getting in your face. You’ll hold X to attack and intersperse this with the other face buttons and triggers to use your chosen avatar’s skills for more efficient death dealing, so, very much like a Certain Other Dungeon Crawler. However, unlike Diablo 3’s mute, nameless avatars the characters in Chaosbane talk to the NPCs that dole out the quests, which, despite being voiced in American-styled medieval lilts, does make it feel more like you’re taking part in the story, which Diablo’s cutscenes did a very good job of pulling you out of before thrusting you into the fights. Here, cutscenes are still images drawn on parchment, but interactions are fully voiced between player character and the NPC.

Making up Chaosbane’s character roster are four classes; the Empire Knight, High Elf Mage, Dwarf Slayer And Wood Elf Waywatcher, but only the Knight And Mage are available in the beta. The different classes are divided into Tank, DPS (Damage Per Second) / Crowd control, melee DPS and Ranged DPS. I took the option to play as the Knight because I just like being in the thick of things ever since I first booted up World of Warcraft, but all things considered you shouldn’t have too much issue with finding yourself a class that suits how you like to play. The Mage, for example, is your typical glass cannon, but he can do some cool things with the elements that you won’t have seen before.

The beta wasn’t exactly short despite being confined to the opening of the game, your character being tasked with repeat journeys into the Castle’s sewers to help stem the tide of enemies from a Chaos cult who recently invaded the castle and put the king in a kind of stasis. I’m not sure how the world of Warhammer was created, but these sewers seem to have been built above bottomless pits, which is a rather baffling design decision in a time considerably backwards in technology. These repeated trips are filled to the brim with fodder to turn into mushy pulp with your ever growing array of skills. New levels give extra skill points which unlock further abilities, and as you progress you unlock better versions of them which require more skill points to equip. To begin with, you won’t notice too much difference in damage output from new weapons, but as soon as you tack on an improved skill you’ll certainly notice things dying a hell of a lot quicker.

The thing is, as good as the grime and putrid nature of the sewers is rendered, the constant trips back down into these grotty catacombs did become tiresome, and I started wishing for a change in location. While there’s one point where I finally ventured to an outside area, it was unfortunately short lived and I once again found myself ankle deep in fecal matter and impish corpses. But, when you’re duking it out with a combat system that just works it’s hard to care about where you’re doing it. I love Diablo 3 and Destiny for both their mechanics and the way the loot systems make you feel powerful. Here again, a mission rarely ends without you getting an improved item for an equipment slot, and coming out of a rush of chaos grunts in a barrage of yellow numbers feels oh so good.

One thing that is missing though, is a goofy element, as Chaosbane is much more po-faced than Blizzard’s work. I guess you could liken the voice performances to an element of comic relief, but they feel more like a Shakespearean actor trying his best to elevate the local council’s nativity play than something done in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Then think of how Diablo made you feel when you happened across an enemy with a giant yellow name like ‘Thaurgnar the Regurgitator’ above it’s head, knowing you could get some good loot from it. Those silly names made defeating them feel much more fun. Granted, Chaosbane is its own game and shouldn’t try to ape Diablo 3 in every aspect, but if you’re going to wear your influences so visibly then you should pay attention to all the elements people loved so much.

This is a beta though, and there’s still time to improve on an already impressive foundation. There are some sound bugs with dialogue overlapping and the odd audio pop and the occasional frame rate drop, but generally this is a solid package even for a beta. The game’s not due out until June so there’s at least two months until it goes gold for release, giving Eko Software time to add a bit of polish – and you can be part of it with more beta periods to come. Eko are the guys behind the Handball sports games, and some games you’ve probably not really heard of – but don’t let that put you off. From what I’ve played, this could be the game that puts Eko Software firmly on the map, and I look forward to playing the full release.

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Ubisoft’s semi-sequel to last year’s sterling Far Cry 5 is here, and Chris White has reviewed it. Here’s a snippet:

“Far Cry New Dawn isn’t as robust as its predecessor, and the story is nowhere near as decent, but I still had fun re-treading old ground. It’s obvious something is missing as it never really feels like a sequel – more of a hefty expansion – and after encountering a couple of bugs that had me more than frustrated, I was left wishing Ubisoft Montreal had focused on something new, and on somewhere different to provide an entirely new adventure.”

But for those who prefer it, we’ve also produced a video narrated by our own slightly insane spiritual leader, Adam Cook. Check it out below.

Enjoy that? Now read the full written review by Chris White.

The post Far Cry New Dawn video review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

So, we just had the Anthem VIP Demo, which if you don’t know was the first public demo of Anthem, available for subscribers to EA Access and Origin, and those who preordered the game. And then those like Godisageek and other sites who were invited by EA, and content creators, streamers and influencers who were also invited by EA, and those who were friends with those who were invited by EA, and those who randomly received a code from EA on Social Media, and those who…

You get the message. It was a bit of a shit-show. The servers overloaded in the first few minutes, and thousands of people couldn’t get on. It actually took me a full 24 hours to get in. I don’t know how a company like EA or BioWare could have allowed such a circus to happen, but they did. It was like they handed us a cream cake in one hand and then smacked us with a trout in the other hand. Lots of people got upset. I got upset. Twitter and Reddit got really upset.

When I finally did get in I enjoyed myself and, although I have good and bad opinions of Anthem at this point, I’m leaning more towards positive thanks to two main reasons. One: I unlocked a second class and it is the balls, and two: I took part in, and completed, the Mine Tyrant Stronghold, and holy shit. Holy. Shit.

But there are caveats here. For example, I don’t think this demo has done EA, BioWare, or the public any real good. People who were on the fence have not been won over by this, whereas people who were fully onboard have now jumped ship quicker than a crew of drunken sailors into a sea of Jack Daniels. I for one am still mostly excited, clinging to the last vestiges of a hype that a few days ago would have floored you like a deckchair to the face. I was psyched for this, watching footage of the hands-on events and lapping up the developer vlogs while salivating like a bulldog with a gobstopper.

And I’m still keen, I’m still mostly invested. But it’s muted now, it’s like I went to see a smoking hot stripper, but sat next to her boyfriend for the whole show while he just stared at me like I was some kind of degenerate and now I’m hesitant to go back next week.

There are issues. I’m not going to get into the technical stuff too much, because this is an older build but I’m pretty sure I only sneezed once or twice just in the general direction of the Xbox One, and it booted me out like my first girlfriend’s dad. Worse than that is the stuff I’m not sure BioWare are even gonna fix because I’m not sure they even know it’s wrong.

The Javelins feel amazing in the air and pretty good underwater, but on the ground they’re sluggish and cumbersome, which is kind of befitting a 9-foot walking tank, I know, but I came here for the type of wish fulfilment you get from blowing huge chunks out of cottage-sized bugs, not a physics engine that suddenly wants to get with the Realism the minute my feet touch the floor. The dodge evade is hugely satisfying, but the melee feels imprecise to me and now and then it felt like I was wading through knee-high treacle, which may have been down to the frame rate dropping like a breeze block in almost every fight with more than two enemy soldiers.

I have major issues with the Hub, too. I imagine Fort Tarsis is important because of the story, but the frames per second there felt somewhere in the region of four and a half. Its really bad, and everything has a fuzzy look and everyone is so far from everyone else that you have to wonder exactly what BioWare are showing off and why. I guess in the full game they’ll want us to care about Random Dude with Beard, or that Steampunk Mum can’t feed Steampunk Child, but the truth is it’s just a resource drain that we don’t need. Everything in Tarsis could be done with a menu and a few talking heads, maybe some cutscenes here and there.

That being said, one major plus is that the action is just tremendous. Even with frame rate dips, bugs, glitches and disappearing enemies, I had a blast in every firefight. The special effects light up the screen, the sound of gunfire and explosions and mumbled exposition fill the airwaves. In short, it’s just spectacular every time you get into a scrape. I didn’t even mind or notice the game chugging along like a broken old tugboat at times because I was just too busy spitting “wows” and “Hell-yeahs” and smiling like someone had handed me a big bowl of chocolate ice cream and Scarlett Johansson and said, “Go nuts.”

I had almost given up hope of getting hold of a second Javelin because the demo just wouldn’t save my XP gains after missions, but eventually I got lucky. I almost went with the stealthy, wasp-like Interceptor but at the last minute snapped up Storm, which is like a mix between Magneto and Iron Man and Emperor Palpatine from that bit where he fries the ever-living shit out of Luke with Force Lightning. Storm is squishier than Ranger, but more mobile and stacked with elemental goodies.

I took Storm for a test drive in the Stronghold, a mission where you need to take a squad deep underground to investigate a group of enemies trying to make a superweapon, which leads to a subterranean showdown against the Brainbug from Starship Troopers on hella cocaine. To be honest it was this event that got me. The fight is so much fun, reviving downed teammates and flying around the cave looking for cover or safety or a vantage point where you can do some damage. It’s excellent and I fell in love despite all the other issues that could have gotten in the way, and did many times. Also, the Ultimate moves I tried are both superb, but the Storm’s move in particular is a screen-filling mass of light and noise that just explodes in your face like Christmas at Rambo’s house.

And I really like the world. Its beautiful at times, close to something like Halo aesthetically. Rivers, lakes, waterfalls, craggy outcrops of rock, huge plunges into deep dark waters, a night and day cycle, weather effects and herds of alien monstrosities, flocks of birds, little clutches of wildlife. I loved everything I saw, like a tin-shack shanty town built on a cliff-face or the rusted remains of a gargantuan mechanical strider. But, by god, the map needs the option to place waypoints. I was constantly checking my direction in relation to map icons, which is an unforgivable oversight when there’s GPS in the missions.

Another positive is the customisation. Obviously they were going to put a lot of effort into this area as its apparently the only thing they’re slapping micro-transactions on, but it seems pretty comprehensive. I spent ages pratting around with colours, materials and vinyls, and I’m hoping there’s enough opportunity to earn Coin for cosmetics inside the game. Although the prices are placeholders in the demo, you do earn Coin for completing objectives so hopefully that remains a thing.

So what did I think? Cards on the table: I really enjoyed my time with the demo when I finally got in, and Anthem won me over, albeit with some serious caveats. BioWare need to address that slow-ass hub, and if the movement is always going to be this clunky and heavy on the ground, then a patchy frame rate is the worst possible thing they could let sneak into the final build.

How will it do on launch? I just don’t know. A lot of people want this game to fail, and this demo was like EA handing those people a loaded gun and then admitting they took the last After Eight. And then boned their mum. It was a clumsy mess and one that a company like EA should have and could have avoided; hell, they could have just called it a beta and been done with it. But in the end I’ve seen more positive feedback than negative and I’m still hopeful. If the content is there (because I’ll be honest: besides the Stronghold most of the activities in the demo were pretty samey) then they might just salvage this launch. I really hope they do, because in amongst all the infinite load screens, system crashes, bugs, glitches and fails, I saw glimpses of the greatness that could be.

Anthem launches on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on February 22nd.

The post Anthem VIP Demo Impressions: Beautiful, brilliant, broken appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Whether you have played a Resident Evil game before or not, Resident Evil 2 does some things a little differently to its predecessors. Although it does give you enough information in the game to get you through, I’ve gathered together a few tips that might give you an early edge over those pesky zombies.

KNOW YOUR HERBS

Herbs have been a traditional part of the series since the original game, but you might not know that Resident Evil 2 brings in a new use for the blue herb.

There are three different herbs in the game: green, red and blue. But how do they work?

Green – on its own it will recover a small amount of health, put two together and the amount of health it restores increases.
Red – increases the potency of other herbs, especially the green herb.
Blue – removes toxins and poisons from the body.

Now, mixing green and red will produce an extremely strong restorative that will usually put you back to full health. Normally, this would be the best mixture available, but in Resident Evil 2 you can add a blue herb to that mixture that will even temporarily bolster your defences too.

So, before you go wasting that lone green herb, have a look around for others. You never know when you might need something a little more effective.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO RUN AWAY

Ammo conservation is essential to your survival in Raccoon City’s police station, and most of your enemies are slow, so don’t think that you have to clear every hallway to proceed. In fact, doing just that might leave you in a spot of bother later on, so why not try running around the shuffling undead?

SOUND IS YOUR BEST FRIEND AND WORST ENEMY

That said, you don’t always have to literally run past zombies. It might be the worst thing you can do, depending on the situation. For example, did you know that Lickers are blind? This means that they have exceptional hearing, and your awkward stumbling will only quicken your death around them. Then there’s the Tyrant. If he hears you running around or shooting, he’ll come stomping after you.

This is where you can use sound to your advantage. As you’re exploring, listen out for the telltale sounds of Lickers and the Tyrant especially. If you hear the rasping breath of a Licker coming from around the corner, slow your pace to make as little noise as possible. They won’t attack until they know where you are, so sneak past them if you must, but you’re probably best using this tactic to position yourself for the best shot. You don’t want to leave Lickers around for when the Tyrant inevitably spots you.

To avoid the Tyrant as much as possible, listen out for his heavy boots stomping around. Listen out for doors opening. If his footsteps are muffled, he’s outside somewhere, but if you hear them clearly, you know he’s in the same room as you. Either way, keep your pace slowed until you know you’ve got some distance on him, otherwise he’ll zero in on your location and begin hunting you.

USE THE MAP TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

This is one of the best things you can do in the game. When you’re being hunted by the Tyrant, open up the map and work out the best route to get around him, eventually these routes will become second nature if you study the map this way.

While exploring the environment, any items you pass are marked on your map for later, and rooms will turn from red to blue whenever you’ve found everything of note. Locked doors be noted with whatever key shape needed to unlock them, or will simply turn red if they’re locked from the other side. If you’re able to board up a window, those will also be noted on the map, and you can decide which ones you should prioritise once you’ve found another set of wooden boards.

THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB

Speaking of wooden boards, they are just one of the things you should learn to use to their greatest effect during your time in the RPD building. For example, there is a window on the first floor in the west wing, next to the darkroom. Boarding that up should be a priority, as you’ll probably be using that staircase often and you don’t want more zombies finding their way inside. You should use this way of thinking for every window you come across: is it a main path from/to the main hall? If the answer is yes, it’s worth thinking about boarding it up. You don’t want to leave yourself open to a surprise when you’re being chased by the big guy.

What about those defensive weapons? You should always keep at least one in your inventory, but which ones are best for each situation?

Knives – when your primary enemy is a zombie or three, a knife will do the job. Not just if they grab you, giving you a way to avoid a biting, but if you’ve downed one with a shot or two to the head, a few slashes of the knife can finish it off without the need to waste more ammo.

Flash grenades – these are good against most enemies in the game, at least in terms of creating an escape route. Throwing down a flash grenade will temporarily stun zombies and even the Tyrant, giving you a moment to make a run for it.

Hand grenades – these can hurt anything, even bosses. I would suggest keeping these for emergencies, but sometimes those emergencies can include running into a crowd of zombies when you’re in a hurry. Or perhaps a couple of Lickers have appeared in a tight corridor.

Defensive weapons are extremely effective, just don’t waste them.

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING

Read those reports and notes that are dotted around, they often contain information vital to discovering secrets or to solve puzzles.

Remember that you will always have access to any documents that you have picked up, via the inventory menu. So when you come across one of the puzzle statues like the lion in the main hall of the police station, remember that you may have picked up something that can offer the solution to that particular conundrum.

TAKE IT EASY – OR NOT

Choose the difficulty setting that fits your level of play, to ensure that you get the best first experience possible. Don’t worry about choosing the easiest option just because someone might scoff, your enjoyment should be your priority and that’s all there is to it.

Assisted difficulty is there to give you more ammo and health, as well as to help with your aiming and to generally make things a little less challenging for those wanting a slightly less stressful experience. It’s not an “I win” solution by any means, but it will help less confident players to experience Resident Evil 2’s story in full.

Whatever difficulty you choose, whichever character you play as first, I hope these tips help and I hope you enjoy Resident Evil 2 as much as I did.

The post A Newcomer’s Guide to staying alive in Resident Evil 2 appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

I’ve wanted to avoid using the term pre-review for a long time. When I first clapped eyes on it I thought ‘Isn’t that a preview?’, but considering I’ve been playing Ni No Kuni 2 and today is the embargo, I’m supposed to be furnishing the site with a review, yet I just don’t feel ready to do so. Previews are normally done weeks in advance on early build code, as such this is final code, hence why I’m actually using the dreaded pre-review term.

Now, while I don’t feel ready to give the game a score, I can assure you that I love it with every fibre of my being. This isn’t a short game, as many will know from playing JRPGs, but it’s one that is meticulously crafted to within an inch of its life. It’s not slow to start, the plot is not a meandering mess and the characters are actually all likeable: that’s a considerable achievement. There are several elements here, from the usual battles, to the RTS-lite and then the kingdom building, it’s all introduced at just the right time, and is all seasoned just right to make each part feel unique and yet still part of the same cohesive whole.

There’s a considerable degree of handholding here, the minimap always has your most important quest showing and as a result you’ll always be pointed in the right direction, and should always be levelled enough to be able to handle anything that gets in your way. After the regulation over-dramatic intro you’ll get into fights proper, and to be honest it all becomes second nature straight from the off. Combat is simple, yet effective, and while you’ll wince when you see an enemy that has a level much higher than your own, you’ll always have the capability to defeat it – within reason of course, don’t go taking on a level 50 when you’re 15 for crying out loud.

The new combat system feels better to me than the familiar system from the first title. Here it’s a more hands on approach, with regular and heavy attacks performed with X and Y respectively (on PC, Square and Triangle on PS4), and then special attacks executed by holding R2 and then pressing a face button. It’s simple, yet incredibly satisfying to dispatch a pack of enemies in double quick time, and even more so to establish yourself tactically in a more drawn out battle.

Here’s the thing though: the story is great, the combat system equally so, but I tell you what, I could get lost in the kingdom management side of the game forever. I’ve actually found myself wanting to get to certain milestones just so I can expand my kingdom. Laying down facilities, conducting research, recruiting new citizens… it’s just so addictive even if it does feel that F2P mechanics hold it back somewhat.

Don’t take F2P as a negative here, there are no extra purchases to be made within the game. Instead, certain elements are locked behind you accumulating new residents, others are from ensuring you have enough money to pay for them, and money is earned by time elapsed. It makes sense in the context of a kingdom and taxes, I just wish that I could expand my kingdom with a bit less pushing forward in the story. For instance, I wanted to upgrade my kingdom to level 2, but needed 25 citizens, and the only way to do that was to finish the next story chapter and then recruit them, and now I just need to ensure I have the money.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this game for hours, part of me wants to throw down all my thoughts now and whack a number at the end, but this would be doing the game a disservice. Ni No Kuni 2 deserves more than a half-assed attempt at getting hours in and an ill-informed number at the end, and you, the reader deserve more than that as well. What I will say though is that this is brilliant, it’s everything I wanted the game to be and maybe even a little bit more. Rest assured a full review is coming, but right now, I have a kingdom to create.

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LEGO Dimensions has provided a steady stream of new figures, vehicles and entire level packs since its release late last year, and so far there’s been a real variety to the licensed sets that have been released. Whether it’s really old movies (Wizard of Oz) or more child-friendly fare like LEGO’s own Ninjago, you can’t help but be impressed with the choice of figures available on the market.

In “wave 4” (the second-to-last batch of LEGO minifigures) are two DC Comics Fun Packs, a Ghostbusters Fun Pack and finally, the last of LEGO Dimensions extra Level Packs. So what’s worth buying, and what’s worth leaving on the store shelf?

First up, I spoke about these sets in the following video, but you can see my thoughts in writing after that!

Midway Arcade Pack – Retro Wreckage w/ Retro Gamer, Arcade Machine & G-6155 Spy Hunter

The final LEGO Dimensions level pack is possibly one of the most unusual and inventive. While the included level “Retro Wreckage” is incredibly short, the real draw here are the 20 unlockable arcade games that are only accessible through the Retro Gamer minifigure. If you’ve ever been curious about the strange areas of Story Mode levels containing walls plastered with Defender marquees, you’ll be pleased to know that this Level Pack solves that mystery, as driving the included Arcade Machine vehicle into these bays will unlock a classic game from Midway’s archives. Retro Wreckage will point you towards some of these unlockable games, as playing some of them is required to finish the level, but you’ll have to find the rest yourself in many of the Story Mode levels.

It’s these games that are the real draw of these Level Pack. You’ve got some real classics here, such as Defender, Rampage, Joust, Gauntlet and many, many more. If you hadn’t realised already, this is not going to be a pack that younger gamers will enjoy – it’s clearly aimed at older players, but if you think of this pack as essentially an arcade compilation, it’s hard not to appreciate the thought that has gone into the whole thing. Reaching certain goals in the arcade games themselves will even earn you stacks of studs, which will come useful in upgrading those vehicles. There’s even a few history lessons about the games themselves.

As for the included Midway Arcade World, this is a fairly decent hub world, filled with areas based on Midway games, but mainly acts as an easy way to play the arcade games you’ve already unlocked, while also giving you a better idea of where your missing arcade machines can be found. The Retro Gamer minifig has a surprising amount of abilities itself: at a touch of a button, you can cycle through all of his abilities: Super Strength, Laser Ability, Invisibility, Super Speed and Invincibility – Making this character an incredibly versatile one for finding those elusive Golden Bricks.

The Arcade Machine “vehicle” lacks any sort of real ability, bar the very important role of allowing you to unlock those arcade machines. However, having a real LEGO model of a Defender arcade cabinet is pretty damn cool, and makes me yearn for models of other classic cabs.

Finally, we come to the G-6155 Spy Hunter, the signature car from classic arcade game Spy Hunter. Initially, it’s just a car, but its upgrades do give it flight and watercraft capabilities, so it’s actually a pretty good vehicle. For most players, the figures themselves are very cool and offer some essential unique skills that no other character currently has. As a level, Retro Wreckage might be a little underwhelming, but the pack as a whole is an incredibly unique and fun way to present what is essentially a retro arcade compilation.

VERDICT: Buy it!

Ghostbusters Fun Pack – Stay Puft w/ Terror Dog

Following the Ghostbusters Level Pack from Wave 3, we move away from the heroes and onto the first of two villain sets. Next month we’ll see the release of the always-popular Slimer, but for now, we welcome The Destroyer himself, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. He’s cute, but he’s packing the Super Strength, Big Transform, and Hazard Protection abilities.

His included vehicle is the Terror Dog, the massive stone Hellhounds seen in the original Ghostbusters movie, which doesn’t have any particular abilities in its initial state, which is a shame. It can be upgraded to fly and also breath fire, but it’s nothing special. It’s great to have a little Stay Puft LEGO minifig, but there’s little else to recommend this Fun Pack, unless you are a big Ghostbusters fan.

VERDICT: Stay Puft’s abilities can be found elsewhere, making this a Fun Pack that only real fans of the ‘Busters will want.

DC Comics Fun Pack – Aquaman w/Aqua Watercraft

Yes, laugh all you want about Aquaman and his ability to communicate with sealife. But this is probably one of the essential packs to buy from an ability standpoint, especially as he is the only character with the “Atlantis” ability for summoning sea creatures and water elements.Aside from this important and required ability for completionists, he also has Underwater Swimming, the ability to grow flowers (yes, really), and he can clean hazards and Water Spray, making him a very useful character to own.

Despite being able to swim underwater, he has an Aqua Watercraft, which can swim underwater (which seems pretty redundant, considering Aquaman’s powers). If you like vehicles with flippers, then you’ve reached your nirvana.

VERDICT: Put simply, if you want to get all of those Golden Bricks, you NEED Aquaman. Simple as.

DC Comics Fun Pack – Superman w/Hover Pod

Probably one of the most iconic characters in LEGO Dimensions, it’s amazing that it’s taken this long for Supes to arrive as a Fun Pack minifig. As you would expect, he has tons of abilities: Laser Ability, Super Strength, he’s the only character to have Freeze Breath for stop enemies in their tracks, he has invulnerability, can use X-Ray vision, and of course can swim and fly. He’s truly a jack of all trades, especially for hunting Golden Bricks in hub levels. Every time he flies, the proper John Williams Superman theme plays, which is cool for the first couple of times, but like Wonder Woman, gets quite irritating.

So with a character with as many skills as this one, as you can imagine the included Hover Pod is a bit pointless and suffers from the same redundancy as Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane and Aquaman’s Aqua Watercraft. Its upgrades are a little better, offering some offensive capabilities, but these are mostly useless.

VERDICT: Superman isn’t essential, but if you like the character, his ability set makes it work picking this up.

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Recently, I have come to be ever so slightly addicted to LEGO Dimensions. Which is to say, a massive understatement. And I feel no shame in spending most of my evenings for the past month, building LEGO figures with my wife, and playing one of the best LEGO games in some time. Granted, LEGO Dimensions gameplay isn’t that much of a departure from the other license-based games from TT Games, but the addition of Toys To Life functionality with proper LEGO figures to build and interact with has brought me back to a type of game I thought I had my full of years ago.

And so, here I am with the latest batch of LEGO Dimensions Level, Team and Fun Packs – And it really seems like Warner Bros. Games are attempting to reel in both little and big kids of all ages, judging by the IP these latest sets are inspired by. With sets based on classic 80’s IP like Ghostbusters and Back To The Future, a set based on evergreen characters like Doctor Who and The Joker, plus a set based on one of LEGO’s more recent sets, Ninjago – There’s something for everybody in this batch of plastic bricks. So here’s what you can expect from each set:

Ghostbusters Level Pack – A Spook Central Adventure w/ Peter Venkman

All of the Level Packs so far have been great in different ways, with some great use of the licenses involved, and this Ghostbusters-related pack doesn’t disappoint for the most part. Apparently containing the most pieces of any of the LEGO Dimensions sets and consisting of a Peter Venkman minifig, a tiny rendition of the iconic ECTO-1, as well as the Ghostbuster’s patented Ghost Trap, this pack is just perfect for those that grew up with the ‘Busters.

A Spook Central Adventure is a pretty misleading title for this Level Pack, as this ambitious level spans practically the entire film’s plot (and took my wife and myself around the same time to play, as it would have taken to watch the film itself). It begins with the Ghostbusters’ very first callout and continues through most of the major plot points of the film, leading up to the insane battle with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man himself.

As expected, the quirkiness of the subject matter translates incredibly well to the world of bricks and minifigs, with some pretty funny jokes stemming from excellent repurposing of several audio clips from the movie. While this level is lacking in enemies to fight, and the street-based intermissions are a little empty unless you’re after Studs (and you probably are), there are plenty of great puzzles and some great movie-inspired set pieces. Being able to drive around in the ECTO-1, with that easily-identifiable siren screeching out, never fails to please, and the Ghost Trap is very well-implemented, as you are able to trap ghosts in your Proton Beam, physically lay the Ghost Trap on the pad, and pull the ghosts towards the in-game trap. It’s all incredibly well-thought out, and the whole package makes for one of the better Level Packs around.

VERDICT: Buy it!

DC Comics Team Pack – Joker & Harley Quinn

With the Suicide Squad movie on the way, both the Joker and Harley Quinn are popular choices for Wave 3. This massive pack comes with the Joker’s Chopper and Harley’s Quinn Mobile, which are admittedly fairly generic when it comes to abilities, but are fun to build. As for Joker and Harley, their abilities are also nothing special, so this is a pack that isn’t the most impressive when it comes to new moves, and with the DC Comics World already available as part of the LEGO Dimensions Starter set, there isn’t anything new in terms of levels. However, fans of the characters will want to snap these figures up (if you don’t already have other LEGO minifigs of them already).

VERDICT: Great figures, but not an essential pack to purchase.

Back To The Future Fun Pack – Doc Brown

We’ve already had a Level Pack consisting of Marty McFly, his trusty Hoverboard and the legendary time-travelling Delorian, and now it’s time for the famed and eccentric inventor, Doctor Emmett Brown to take the world of LEGO. Also included in the box is the Travelling Time-Train from Back To The Future Pt. III, and the abilities of both are quite useful. Like the Delorian, the Train is able to trigger Time Travel switches, and also standard Acceleration Switches. Meanwhile, Doc Brown can take advantage of Hacking, Fix-It, Technology and Drone abilities, making him a very versatile character. As with all LEGO Dimensions sets, this unlocks access to a character specific hub level, in this case, it’s the Back To The Future World, consisting of a Hill Valley in the past, present and future! With quips voiced by an ageing Christopher Lloyd, this is one set that earns massive nostalgia points for those of a certain age!

VERDICT: Great for fans of BTTF, and for those who need the Drone ability.

Ninjago Fun Pack – Sensei Wu

There are a ton of Ninjago sets available, but this is probably the most desirable of the lot, based on abilities alone. Consisting of Sensei Wu and an awesome Flying White Dragon, even as someone who knows nothing about Ninjago, this is certainly a very cool set. The Flying White Dragon can use the very useful Flight ability, which is incredibly useful for nabbing hard-to-find bricks in hub levels (like the included Ninjago World), while Sensei Wu has an awesome array of abilities including the Ninjago-exclusive Spinjitsu, Stealth, Pole Vault and Acrobat. If you want to get one Ninjago set (and you probably do if you want to see everything LEGO Dimensions has to offer), make it this one!

VERDICT: Buy if you want to unlock the Ninjago hub level and Spinjitsu abilities.

Doctor Who Fun Pack – Cybermen

This Fun Pack contains two of the Doctor’s deadliest rivals, a Cyberman and a Dalek! This set makes a decent complement to the Doctor. While the Dalek only has the Target ability, this pales in comparison to the Cyberman’s massive array of abilities such as Hacking, Technology, X-Ray Vision, Mind Control, Underwater Swimming, Drone and Silver LEGO Blowup. That’s a lot of abilities for one character! He’s one of only two characters to be able to use the Drone ability (the other being Doc Brown), so you’ll want at least one of these Wave 3 sets of you want access to every Gold Brick.

VERDICT: A great set of abilities, worth looking at.

Want to see these sets in action? Look no further for nearly 10 minutes of LEGO Dimensions Wave 3 Gameplay!

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Racing wheels are usually the provision of PC gamers, with their ultra realistic racing games that make Gran Turismo look like Mario Kart. With the T300 RS however, PlayStation owners have access to the best of the best, a racing wheel that is incredibly hard to fault. But that doesn’t mean you should leap in and buy it.

The unit itself oozes quality. A chunky base unit – which can be clamped to most desk surfaces quite easily – supports the wheel, a textured rubber affair with a brushed metal centre. Two metal flappy paddle gears sit behind the wheel, and there’s the full range of buttons you find on a Dualshock controller, minus the DS4’s touchpad. There’s also a switch to change between PS4 and PS3 modes.

It’s matched in quality by the pedals. The T300 comes with a brake and accelerator set – although a pedal set with a clutch is compatible. The base is plastic, with metal plates on the pedals that can be adjusted for height via the removal of two small screws.

The look of the device reflects how it feels on track. I tested the T300 primarily with DriveClub – although Grid Autosport and F1 2013 were also used – and sensitivity is spot on. The slightest turn of the wheel translates into the same on track, as does a squeeze on the accelerator, and once you stick it in manual and start flicking between gears you’ll wonder how you ever played with a pad.

As good as this is, the force-feedback is where the T300 truly shines. Lose the back end and you’ll have to wrestle to keep the car on track, but because of the accuracy of the controls you won’t overcompensate. DriveClub – which we criticised for controlling somewhere in-between a realistic racer and an arcade one – suddenly makes sense when using a wheel, with much more realistic handling.

All of this is not to say the T300 is perfect, however. The initial setup is a little confusing, locking the base and the wheel together is a matter of turning one first and then the other, something not made massively clear in the instructions. You’ll also have to spend a little bit of time in each games’ menus tailoring the feedback levels, as I found the default setting slightly too powerful, wrenching your arms around uncomfortably.

As aesthetically pleasing as the unit looks, it does have a few problems as well. The metal gear paddles are a little sharp, digging in on the edges when you need to grab them, and if you’re turning at the same time – likely if you’re slowing down into a corner – it can be painful. Another issue is that the pedal unit slips a lot unless you’re playing on carpet, so you’ll need a mat to hold it in place.

There are also several wires that make things look a little messy, from the unit to your console, to the pedals and a chunky power cable. Given that it draws its own power, I don’t see why it couldn’t connect wirelessly to your console at least. That said, connecting it to your console is easy enough, with a PS4 automatically recognising it, although PS3 compatibility is a little more hit and miss, particularly on older games.

Overall though, the T300 is a fantastic piece of kit and for the PS4 there isn’t a better wheel you can buy. The only major issue ties back into why wheels have mainly been the domain of PC gamers: you really need to be sat playing this at a desk, which is not where most of you will have your console set up, in turn relegating the wheel to the rare occasions you want a bit more realism. £300 is quite expensive for something that’s only going to see occasional use – made even worse by the lack of racing titles on the PS4 at the moment – and as it essentially doubles the price of your console, it’s maybe be one just for the true racing enthusiasts among you.

The post Thrustmaster T300 RS Gaming Wheel Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Futuridium EP Deluxe is the PlayStation 4 and Vita release of last year’s Futuridium EP, which was exclusive to mobile, and this time around you get a graphical overhaul, a handful of new modes and levels, as well as cross-buy.

For those of you who didn’t play it, Futuridium is a spaceship shooter in which you are constantly moving forwards. Your only input is to strafe up, down and side-to-side, boost, shoot and perform a 180. Using these tools, you have to clear each level of blue cubes before shooting the white ‘Core’ that appears. It’s a simple premise – with no story to worry about – but it hides a surprising amount of depth.

The main draw is Deluxe mode – which you must play through to unlock the other modes – a series of 50 levels split into five chunks. You have to beat each set of ten levels to unlock the next. To do so you must complete each level before your energy runs out; a glowing bar in the top corner slowly depletes, and is reduced further by dying but topped up by destroying cubes. Lose all of your energy and it will cost you a credit – a throwback to the arcade cabinet games that have clearly been an inspiration. Originally you’ll only start with a single credit, though as you progress you’ll unlock more.

Without a story to drive you on, Futuridium keeps you going via several incentives. First up is the scoring, with points gained from destroying cubes and multipliers from doing so quickly. It’s exactly as you would expect, complete with online leader boards. Next is a set of medals, awarded for finishing levels without dying or under a certain time, and finally a total of all cubes destroyed across all game modes unlocks new modes – such as Classic and Single Level options – as well as the extra credits and new skins for the levels.

For all the framework however, it would be nothing without gameplay to match, and luckily Futuridium has it. Racing across levels, dodging enemy fire and finding the fastest route can be glorious, made all the better by the vibrant colours and techno beat. It’s quick, instinctive and an almost primal gaming pleasure when it gets it right.

Later levels suffer from a steep difficulty curve – more frustrating than fun – and they lose focus somewhat, with no clear route to take meaning you’ll muddle your way through. Nowhere is this more prominent than in the square levels. With sideways motion limited to strafing while you race forward, it means an awkward zigzagging to find the final few cubes that you missed on your first pass over. It’s not game breaking, but it’s a definite design mistake.

Futuridium is also in the weird position of being easier to play on the PS4, while at the same time feeling more natural on the Vita. On a big screen it’s so much easier to line up on a cube and judge exactly how much space you have to do so, where on the Vita it can feel fiddly and even unfair. The flipside is that for a game on a £350 console and shiny HD TV it’s really basic – you won’t sit down for a session on it – while the “play a few levels on the bus” approach you can take with the Vita is perfect.

Futuridium EP Deluxe is a cracking little arcade game, best for playing a set of levels when you have a moment rather than a long gaming session, and while later levels can be a bit frustrating, playing it in small bites makes it much more enjoyable.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

Our Scoring Policy

Review code provided by publisher.

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The whole “undercover cop gets in too deep” storyline has been done a million times in both games and movies, to the point where it’s hard to watch a hardboiled detective story unfold without rolling your eyes and facetiously predicting the plot. “He’s a bad guy,” you say, as the veteran actor with the “and…” billing is introduced as either the hero’s mentor, superior or weirdly older friend. “Here comes the ‘difficult moral choice'”, you remark glibly, as the hero is forced to choose between his brother cops and the criminal family he has come to respect. “I bet he’s gonna die next,” you sneer, as your other half silently weighs the pros and cons of your relationship in their head.

But part of the reason such stories are so successful and watchable is that we have become accustomed to them. There’s something comforting about a well worn plot, about knowing where a narrative is going before it gets there. United Front know this, which is why Sleeping Dogs takes almost no risks with its storytelling but still manages to deliver a thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable experience.

It’s no surprise that Sleeping Dogs proved so popular. It was released in a comfortable lull, and a combination of high production values and effortless playability outweighed the various graphical glitches and performance issues that threatened to hold it back. As with many good last-gen games, Sleeping Dogs is now receiving the Definitive Edition treatment as United Front port it over to PS4 and XBO along with all 27 (count them) pieces of DLC, from the zombie infested Nightmare in Northpoint, to various costume and weapon packs.

For those who missed the original release, Sleeping Dogs is essentially a rebuilt True Crime: Streets of Hong Kong. Rather than resurrect that under-performing franchise, United Front simply took the basic framework and setting and added as much cool as possible while completely reworking it. Sleeping Dogs tells the story of Wei Shen, a former low-level Triad player turned LA cop turned undercover mole, who has relocated to his hometown in an effort to infiltrate his old gang, the Sun On Yee.

Backed up by a handful of supporting characters voiced by, among others, Tom Wilkinson, Emma Stone, and Lucy Liu, Shen is a fairly textbook undercover hero, caught halfway between cop and criminal and unsure of which path suits him best. As the story gathers pace and it becomes harder for him to trust anyone or even keep his own secret quiet, Shen struggles to decide where his true loyalties lie. Which is all well and good and makes for a compelling, well acted plot, but what it ultimately amounts to (and this is not a criticism) is shooting people, beating up thugs and driving stolen cars ridiculously fast.

Sleeping Dogs uses the GTA template ably to allow you to commit questionable acts in a open environment, helping people out or beating them down as you work your way up the proverbial food chain. Combat is combo and counter-based, like a more arcadey Batman: Arkham Asylum, with retaliatory strikes and heavy-hitting combos interspersed with some truly mean environmental attacks (ram a guy’s head into a spinning fan for extra gore points). You can also partake of various side activities like street races or helping out random strangers with small favours.

As with many Definitive Editions, you’re getting a good deal here, especially with the DLC thrown in. The main game is a good size on its own, but now you’re also seeing it running at (an albeit inconsistent) 60fps, and the improved visuals bring the dark-lit streets to life like never before. People are more tightly packed and their interactions are noticeably smoother, and they don’t force the engine to grind to a halt when more than twenty are on-screen at once. That said, United Front haven’t ironed out all the bugs with this version which is a shame. The game still stutters during the high speed chases, and enemy AI still consists of standing around waiting to get kicked, shot or run over.

The driving hasn’t been tightened like we hoped it would be, and vehicles still feel a little tricky to control. Although the shooting is decent, the main draw among the three prime gameplay tenets is the fisticuffs. Hitting the counter button at the right time causes you to block and strike back, while holding X (on PS4) grapples an enemy and allows you to interact, often brutally, with your surroundings. It’s not always pretty as weird physics can damage the illusion as easily here as when you’re running through the streets and occasionally forget to hit the contextual free-run button, and Shen awkwardly climbs over a table with unnatural, out of place animation.

Despite such middling visual complaints, an incredibly playable game remains just that on current gen, maintaining its slightly broken charm and presenting a huge, sprawling adventure with DLC that extends the already impressive runtime by several hours. Definitive Edition is not quite an essential purchase – especially if you already played and finished the original release – but it’s definitely worth picking up if you’re hankering after the kind of open world criminal action that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

Our Scoring Policy

Review code provided by publisher.

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Every year, the Skylanders team somehow surprise me. Even in the year 2014, I expect games aimed at children to be average, or worse, yet every single year, Activision has released a Skylanders game that is entertaining for all ages – and to hell with my street cred, those toys are still cool, I’d have loved them growing up.

Where they once relied on the Spyro name to sell a new franchise, Skylanders has taken on a life of its own, and with the new consoles now on the market, they’ve taken a visual leap, as Trap Team looks gorgeous. The colourful imagery is everywhere, and it’s the antithesis of so many modern games. It’s vibrant, and the action pops off the screen for all to see like an explosion of sugar and sweets.

But the basics of Skylanders are now set in stone. Since Swap Force introduced a jump button, there’s not a huge amount that feels missing – though I’d still like to see camera control and online multiplayer at some point in the future. You’ll still go to levels, move objects about, go up lifts, and attack everything that isn’t nailed down.

So really, it falls to whoever comes up with the toy ideas to create something new and interesting that will make us want to collect them all over again. Initially it seemed an odd idea, too. The ability to trap your enemies and have them fight for you? Requires a new portal? Uh-oh, this doesn’t sound good, right? Luckily, the joy these simple touches bring to a child are better in action than they sound on paper, and create a whole new way to play and explore.

The basic concept is that you have traps you insert into the portal, and you can capture enemies instead of killing them, and there are around forty to trap. Once captured, you hit the L2 button and your Skylander will be swapped out for the baddie. This is amusing, but it’s when you start taking down the big bosses that it gets really interesting.

Of course, the characters are all daft and are there mostly for comedic value, but the first boss you fight (a weird little man who controls the Chompys) is enough of a challenge that it doesn’t resort to simple button mashing, and it’s rewarding because you’ll get to trap him and then use him against other enemies. Speaking of difficulty, while it’s not overly taxing (there are hard battles, though), it’s not too easy either – it’s well balanced, as you’d hope.

Thankfully, traps are reuseable, and you can go to a larger trap and swap out villains at your leisure, though obviously only one character can be in a trap at any given time. The portal talks to you, as well, and the bad guys will comment on things as you play along. Having a Sheep Creep “baa” at you randomly doesn’t get old, and Chompy Mage never stops being annoyed that he is incarcerated.

You can’t play as them forever, though, and each time you swap one out, you can only use them for a limited time, with damage taken reducing that time. What’s especially interesting is that the variation in attacks means you can have a Skylander on the portal that shoots (thus has ranged attacks), then swap to a trapped villain that is more melee based.

There’s a raft of new toys to collect, then. New Skylanders (series four), and now traps as well. Each trap is specific to an element, so you can’t use a life trap to capture an earth enemy. It might seem cynical, but as with previous games locking off areas to certain elemental Skylanders, it’s merely an extension of that idea. And there’s no shortage of content, with wave based modes like Doom Challenge, and Arena battle giving additional things to do outside the main campaign. The hard truth is that you’re going to want to collect them anyway, I’m sorry you had to hear that, but you knew it deep inside. As always, your previous Skylanders work on the new portal, and they keep their levels and skills from the other games. It’s a small thing to note, really, but one that is continually worth mentioning.

Kaos returns, as you expect, and this time there’s a band of evil-doers possibly more villainous than him. His plan is to undermine them secretly, so they fail and turn to him as the one-true king of evil. Being a bumbling fool, I’ll let you guess how that goes. It’s full of charm, and the voice acting is excellent, with returning characters everywhere.

Like The Simpsons (well, older Simpsons, anyway) there is plenty for all ages to laugh at, and even some more cheeky nods to the older audience. Some of the toys themselves will make you laugh – for example, Chopper is a small dinosaur with a helicopter on his back, and Food Fight is a small green chap that has a gun which shoots tomatoes. It makes no sense, but it also makes complete sense. There are minis to collect, too, and the giant called Eye Brawl is now available as Eye Small. Such a silly name change, yet for some reason it really tickles me.

It’s weird to think that with the fourth game, Skylanders has fully earned my trust. Games aimed at children don’t have to be rubbish, and they can engage with them on multiple levels. As well as the game itself, the toys are highly collectible (still) and there are even trading cards that come with each toy. I harp on about this because it’s true, but as a kid, the Skylanders would have been the coolest thing I could have imagined in game form, and the quality every year stays high.

The toys still aren’t cheap, and jumping in here (the new starter pack only has two Skylanders, as it also has two traps) means you’re probably going to want to get a few extra toys right out of the gate. But Toys for Bob continue to hold fun in the highest regard, and that’s worth championing. But Lord only knows where they go next.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Sometimes the very best things don’t come right for you like a South Park deer, they blind-side you out of nowhere. A few years ago a little studio named Rocksteady came careening out of left field to hit us with what turned out to be the greatest Batman game that ever was. It’s not that we didn’t know it was coming; we’d seen trailers and hype and lofty promises, but none of us truly expected Arkham Asylum to be as good as it was. The license had been abused so much, we just couldn’t trust anyone to do it justice, not even Warner Brothers.

Five years later, and history has been repeating itself like a bad curry ever since Warner Brothers announced Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Like Batman, Tolkien’s genre-defining fantasy opus is a license that has never really been used to its potential. Occasional gems have been found among the rough, but ultimately fans of the franchise have always been left wanting something more. Initial trailers and screens for Mordor were uninspiring, showing an Assassin’s Creed-like stealth-em-up with a Middle-earth sheen. No one could blame us for feeling apprehensive.

But then I put the disc in the tray, booted up Shadow of Mordor, and experienced undeniable deja vu. Because Shadow of Mordor, against almost all our expectations, is excellent.

Set in the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, this original story takes place within Mordor itself, as resurrected Ranger Talion sets out to avenge the death of his wife and son, as well as his own. Possessed by an Elfish Wraith, Talion has been brought back from the brink of death to destroy the Black Hand of Sauron, an evil tyrant determined to see the Dark Lord return.

Where Tolkien’s original tales championed the rejection of absolute power in favour of innate courage and sacrifice, Shadow of Mordor sees Talion welcoming the power of his ghostly symbiote, openly seeking the kind of bloody vengeance that Tolkien always avoided. As a result, it’s a darker Middle-earth than we’re used to seeing, and despite the familiar themes and visuals, it feels utterly original.

Much noise has reverberated around the obvious Assassin’s Creed comparisons both pre and post-release, but the truth is that it’s a less blindingly obvious game that Mordor draws the most parallels with. When you break it down into its component parts, Mordor is also Arkham Asylum in Middle-earth. While it’s true that Talion climbs solitary towers to fill in his map and can skulk around in bushes, his version of focused vision is closer to Batman’s Detective Mode than Eagle Vision, used to track quarry across the rugged terrain and find hidden collectibles.

Enemy interaction takes several leaves from Batman’s handbook, too, as you use fear and deception to destroy and disorient your foes. The Uruks of Mordor respond like the Joker’s goons, becoming bolder the more you struggle, or turning tail when your assault proves unbreakable. If you panic and run they’ll look for you, call their brutish buddies, maybe give voice to their fears if you’ve recently proven your lethality.

The final parallel with Rocksteady’s superhero masterpiece is the combat. Counter-based and reactionary, the combat is free-flowing melee that sees Talion slinging himself around the battlefield, executing downed enemies and performing stylised instant kills whenever his Wraith-tainted sword begins to shine. Combos are tapped out with the Square button, while Cross lets you evade incoming attacks and Triangle performs a stylish counter. The number of combat animations is staggering, and there’s an undeniable beauty and grace to Talion’s epic confrontations. Throw the Warg-like Caragors and hulking Graugs into the mix, as well as ranged units and a multitude of enemy melee styles, and Mordor’s combat moves into a league of its own.

Should you fall, the Uruk that dealt the killing blow will be promoted to Captain, and join the ranks of the Uruk elite. Most of the main story missions centre on tracking and killing Captains, and it’s here, with the Nemesis System, that Shadow of Mordor elevates itself above its contemporaries. There is an entire social network at play beneath Mordor’s flesh, where Uruk Captains war for status and supremacy. This simple addition makes the world feel truly alive, as though the lives of your enemies are going on without your presence. More than this though, the Nemesis System gives each of your enemies an individual personality and memory.

If you fall in battle, the killer will remember you when you rise again from the grave. If you put a Captain down and he survives, he will remember you and thirst for vengeance, and he’ll wear the battle scars you gave him. Run away, and he’ll call you a coward, exploit his weakness, and he’ll recall your actions with either respect or contempt. Interrogating enemies will give you additional information on Captains, and make you privy to their fears. If one is afraid of fire, throw him into flames; if he’s paranoid about Caragors, let one go, Far Cry 3-style, into the Uruk encampment. It’s an exceptional system that genuinely heightens your immersion in the world and makes you feel that it’s you and you alone dictating the fate of Mordor.

Should you decide you want a break from hunting Captains, you can partake of any of half a dozen or more side concerns, such as digging up artefacts (which borrows a mechanic wholesale from the Tomb Raider reboot), or freeing human slaves. Tapping L1 will call forth the Wraith to help you track down hidden treasures. Side quests also afford you upgrades to your sword, bow and dagger. While customisation isn’t really featured, you can pick and choose your skills as you progress, and you’ll acquire runes from dead Captains that add buffs to your weaponry. The combination of weapon runes and combat skills steadily increase Talion’s power and efficiency, and as his power grows and his humanity slowly seeps away, you will feel both his unease with his strange new gifts and his growing realisation that only by using these powers can he hope to avenge his family. It’s a powerful theme and Monolith use it well, conveying the sense of reluctant power without hitting you over the head with it.

Unfortunately, such quality in the gameplay highlights flaws elsewhere. For example, the environments of Shadow of Mordor lean towards the brown end of the spectrum, so much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking the Unreal Engine was involved. That being said, the world is well-detailed and the animation is exceptional. The sound design is similarly high quality, from the stellar voice work to the quintessential Lord of the Rings ambience. The score is epic and sweeping, carrying a menacing undertone when it needs to and raising your pulse when a ruckus kicks off.

Other complaints are just as minor, but important enough to warrant mentioning. For starters, the camera is occasionally a little temperamental, and the combat suffers the same problems with clipping and collision as Batman’s did. It’s not unusual to see an enemy drop after your elbow has barely connected, or to spot a body caught in the floor or scenery. Also, there’s simply no denying that by the time you’ve finished the 12 to 15 hour campaign, the combat will have started to feel repetitive and a little by-the-numbers, despite its quality, and hoovering up all those missed artefacts and side missions may lose some of its lustre.

Just like Batman before it, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is the greatest Rings game we’ve seen, and is easily the best use of the license to date. The combat and Nemesis System alone are worth the asking price, but it’s the world itself that steals the show. Mordor is alive but dying, still vital but mortally poisoned by Sauron’s festering evil, a darkness that threatens to consume everything – even Talion himself. In a brave move, Shadow of Mordor eschews Tolkien’s almost trademark black and white hero versus villain dynamic to present a protagonist who walks in the grey places, caught between doing the right thing and satisfying his own need for vengeance and absolution.

Dark, compelling, and occasionally unflinchingly brutal, Shadow of Mordor is Lord of the Rings for grown-ups. It’s not just a good game based on an established franchise, but a fantastic game in its own right and one that deserves to be judged purely by its own merits, and not by what has come before.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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Chariot, the latest effort from Canadian Indie developer Frima Studio, is a title that has seen a lot more attention than a game of its ilk would usually enjoy, thanks largely to its launch day availability on the Games with Gold program on Xbox One. Chariot is pitched as a couch co-op 2D platformer, so is it a great time for two or should it just be left alone?

The story Chariot weaves is surprisingly dour. It tells of a recently deceased king and his loyal servants, who must drag his moody corpse to a resting place his lordship finds satisfactory. The king is surprisingly greedy for a dead guy, as he demands that you collect plenty of loot on your way to his resting place of choice. Grim the premise may be, but Chariot doesn’t dwell on it for long – this is a light and cheery take on death and the afterlife.

You assume the role of one of the king’s doting servants, pulling his wheeled casket through the Royal Catacombs on a mission to find a suitable resting place . You have the choice of pushing the royal coffin from behind, or attaching a rope to it and pulling it along. Chariot is as much about solving problems as it is about pure platforming, tasking you with pushing, pulling and riding the casket over and around all manner of obstacles. After the menu screen, Chariot gets the action started immediately, which is quite jarring, as I was fully expecting some sort of cutscene. The cutscene happened eventually, and it wasn’t long before I came to appreciate what a good idea throwing the player straight into the action is. I had to figure out the controls myself in order to get things started: tap the right trigger to lasso the coffin, use the analogue stick to move, and drag the dead guy along.

On your journey through the catacombs, you find loot in the form of gems that come in different shapes and sizes. This loot collection can be used to purchase additional items that aid you on your journey – these items can only be purchased once the Royal Scrolls that describe them (blueprints) have been found, encouraging exploration. And explore you must, as Chariot’s later levels are sprawling underground wildernesses, with many entrances and exits. You will need to revisit these levels many times to find all of their secrets; I have no doubt that many people will get lost exploring some of Chariots more elaborate mazes.

You will find a relatively easy path through the level if you follow the well placed arrow markers, but for those willing to explore to find the most treasure, there are a staggering number of little off-shoots that will pull you in. All of this can be shared with a friend, with advertised sections of every level that can only be completed by a team of two players. I managed to coax the missus into playing along for a good hour or two, the feedback being that she enjoyed it, found it accessible and that she’d be coming back for more. For my part, I really enjoyed getting involved in some couch-based 2-player action – there is something about actually being in the room with the person you are gaming with, you know?

Where Chariot’s true joy comes from is its platforming. Having to worry about two on-screen objects instead of one (the player character and the coffin) is nothing new of course, you can go all the way back to Yoshi’s Island for that, but Chariot does do it rather well. There are some brutally difficult areas here, and I found myself repeating the same jump, capture and coffin pulling exercise excessively on numerous occasions. And you know what? I did it all with a smile on my face, and this is coming from someone that is easily frustrated by repetition. What I did get mildly frustrated with is the lack of overall variety on offer – the unlockable gadgets bring new challenges to Chariot, but on the whole, you don’t see anything brand new after the third stage.

Chariot is a challenging game, and it adds a little more challenge by throwing in enemies that want to take a piece of your loot stash. “Looters” are little creatures that appear when you make too much noise, and come out of the walls to attack the king’s casket and run off with some loot, so it is advised that you keep noisy manoeuvres to a minimum. You can fend off the looters with a simple melee attack, but they add another layer of interest to a game already bursting with qualities – another challenge in a world of challenges.

This is a particularly pretty title; its bouncy cartoony characters and luscious caverns are a real feast for the eyes. The deeper into Chariot’s catacombs you get, the more awesome stuff starts to look. Pathways that either the player character or the king’s casket can use react to their presence either with a barrage of ghostly skulls or a blossom of fresh green foliage. The plants and gems all glow with glorious phosphorescence. It’s an easy game to admire.

Frima’s title is yet another one to add to your bucket list of 2D platformers. I personally am loving the indie renaissance of the last few years – the online platforms have given developers the means to create some stunning games. Chariot is up there with the best of them: its take on puzzle platforming is unique enough and challenging enough to keep you engaged for some time. It won’t capture the attention or admiration of everybody, of course, but for those of you who yearn for days gone by, Chariot is a must see.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Challenge is good. In fact, many of us seek it out in video games, ramping up the difficulty slider or finding ways to play that enhance the sense of accomplishment that comes from surmounting the seemingly insurmountable. That being said, Natural Doctrine, a strategy RPG from Kudokawa Games, just feels mean spirited.

For a start, casual gamers will find it near impenetrable. The fantasy setting bares the expected hallmarks: humans exist within a fortress city – here called Feste – and must defend against other sentient races as well as staple monsters like goblins and ogres. You play as Geoff (no, really), a young warrior initially charged with slaying goblins that infest the caves and mines around Feste. Alongside a handful of companions, including sharpshooter Anca and trademark “loud giant friend” Zeke, Geoff finds himself facing tougher and tougher challenges in an attempt to keep his city safe.

To be fair, the story is the usual JRPG fare we’ve seen many times before, with different hairstyles, and for several hours I failed to read anything into it, to the point that I resorted to skipping through the reams of text to get to the next fight – which only left me frustrated for various other reasons. As stated, this is not a game for the casual. The combat system is borderline unfair and, while it may be the case that perseverance and a gradual increase in player skill and understanding will see you through, it simply doesn’t feel balanced.

I struggled to get through the first few missions (it took me four attempts to pass the first mission after the introductory rumble), and all I was facing was goblins – up until the end of the mission, whereupon I freed a huge troll from its prison, which proceeded to more or less one-shot my entire party. It’s all about synergy, and in theory it’s a solid system.

You move your characters freely within a predetermined grid arrangement, positioning them in such a way that they form a triangular link between any two of your fighters and the encroaching enemy. This increases your chances of critical hits and evasions, and actually makes battles look quite dynamic as your characters dodge, parry, block and strike alongside one another. Unfortunately, Natural Doctrine doesn’t want to really explain anything, and besides a couple of minute-long tutorials in the opening mission, you’re left to work it out on your own. Curatives are in short supply, which means you’ll spend half the mission with at least one of your party limping around at half-speed, adding to the frustration.

If a main character dies, it’s game over, and you’ll have to restart from a checkpoint. The problem with this is that most of the missions appear to take place in fairly confined areas, so the scope for tactical strategy is narrow. When you consider how much of a factor luck is in combat (this is a number-crunching RPG after all), it all becomes very frustrating. Fiddly, unintuitive controls compound the sense of overall underpoweredness (we made that word up) and turn missions into slogs of endurance and tests of patience that rob the joy gleaned from the oddly satisfying battle animations.

Each character has a decent sized skill tree, unlocked piecemeal by way of Ability Points earned through XP. There’s not a huge variety to the different abilities, but you are able to steadily build a custom party to cater more towards your personal style of play, even if it’s not always clear what a skill does and the menu is horribly unappetising. The UI in general is cluttered, in fact, with a quarter of the screen taken up by stark red and white battle text.

Characterisation is what you’d expect, too: lifted straight from the JRPG playbook, characters are either broody, sarcastic or irritating, while the sinister are needlessly hammy. None of it is helped by the relentlessly brown colour palette and stock visuals, or the teeth-shatteringly repetitive battle music. Natural Doctrine’s worst crime is that it does absolutely nothing to immerse you in its world or its systems. It’s combat is so needlessly, artificially difficult, that you rarely feel like you’re progressing smoothly, the story is uninteresting, the sub-par visuals are marred by the clunky, over-burdened UI and the music is impossible to like.

Certain elements of Natural Doctrine do feel new. The combat mechanics are interesting on paper, and – if refined – might even be considered original. Sadly, as they stand they’re simply imbalanced and combat feels like an uphill struggle every time, ponderous and one-sided. What could be an interesting story full of JRPG whimsy comes over as stilted and underdeveloped, and the simple joys of watching a goblin’s head get stoved in is drained by the fact that it takes so long to actually achieve that, and when you do it feels more like luck than skill.

Hardcore strategy RPG fans may find a decent experience here. In fact, it may simply be the case that Natural Doctrine’s blend of punishing difficulty and simple presentation don’t gel with everyone. One thing that is certain is that Natural Doctrine us not designed for the casual crowd, and unless you’re prepared to invest time and energy into learning its systems inside out – and then are still prepared to try and try again when you do know what you’re doing – you’d be advised to away from this one.

DECENT. A 6/10 indicates that, while this game could be much better, it still has a fair amount to offer the player. It might be an interesting title sabotaged by its own ambition, or a game denied greater praise by some questionable design choices. Don’t avoid it outright, but approach it with caution.

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“Definitive” is the latest buzzword to be introduced to an industry seemingly built on them, but what it actually means is “now on next-gen consoles”. As we wait patiently for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to fill up their catalogues with new titles, we’re being treated (and most of them are treats) to re-jigged versions of already-released titles, more often than not tweaked for 1080p and 60fps – a graphical upgrade which seems enough to justify a re-release all on its own.

CastleStorm, from Zen Studios (the team behind several awesome Pinball series, among other things), is the most recent title to make the transfer across generations, and it’s a welcome addition to the line-up despite the lack of significant change. A hybrid of RTS, Tower Defence, action and Angry Birds, CastleStorm is one of the more interesting titles to occupy that odd middle ground between indie and AAA, combining highly addictive gameplay with bright, colourful visuals to deliver an experience that is nothing short of charming.

The narrative centres on a fantasy world where knights and Vikings warred for centuries, until a Goddess cried two tears that turned to magical crystals. Each side took one, and peace reigned for decades, until the Vikings got greedy and decided they wanted both. Your part in the ensuing war is to defend your king and country as Protector of the Realm, a quintessential hero knight with blond hair, blue eyes and shiny shining armour. Armed with a sword and shield or a bow, you’ll be tasked with either heading out to meet the enemy head on, or leading the royal defenses to repel invaders.

Initially presented as a 2D physics game, CastleStorm gives you a meagre arsenal to begin with, affording you nothing but a ballistae with which to perforate hairy Viking skulls. As the game progresses you’ll unlock more, from huge spiked bolas to explosive missiles, and you’ll be able to deploy troops to defend you on the ground. The strategy element exists because troops cost food, and food costs time, so you’ll need to use your weaponry (all working on cooldowns) to keep the enemy at bay until you can field reinforcements.

From ground troops and archers to trolls, direwolves and champions, the enemy comes at you in steady waves, mixing it up enough that you’ll need to employ a combination of defensive strategies to stay in the game. If they take down your wall and make it back to base with your flag, it’s over. As with most games of this ilk, you can be riding high one minute and in a world of doodoo the next thanks to one bad decision or imprecise shot. If you do win the day, you’ll be rewarded with gold to spend on upgrades and new weapons or soldiers.

The targeting isn’t always as exact as you’d like, and sometimes the bright colours make it hard to discern exactly what’s going on during a fight or how much damage you’re doing to the enemy castle, but patience is usually the key to victory. Taking your time to line up a shot is way more effective than blind-firing, especially when you’re aiming to clean up on bonuses for, say, getting 20 headshot kills. The controls are simple enough, even during the missions where your plucky, chiselled hero heads out onto the field himself and you take total, single control of him. It’s an excellent change of pace, even if he does move a little ponderously sometimes.

The multiplayer mode ups the ante by pitting you against another devious and free-thinking human being, but besides this the core game is identical. The AI is tough enough during later stages that I never found myself hankering after a PvP game, but the option is there for those who prefer the challenge of out-thinking a person. If nothing else, playing against a player makes every match less predictable, and demands that you use everything you’ve got to win.

A castle building mode rounds off the package, allowing you to design your own base. There are plenty of options to fortify and defend your creation, but the controls can feel a little clunky and for some reason it never feels that satisfying to use your own base – partly because the pre-made ones are perfectly functional and, despite the inclusion of some half-decent buffs, all you’re really doing is adding layers and making it harder to bring down. Though, that’s the point, I suppose.

Although CastleStorm seemed right at home on the Vita, it fits the PS4 very well, too. The bright visuals pop and sing thanks to the increased power and the game runs as smooth as butter at all times. Addictive and entertaining, CastleStorm’s mix of fairytale whimsy and challenging strategy – as well as its mishmash of play styles – makes it a solid and enticing prospect whatever the platform.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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From the moment you begin, the atmosphere is dripping from every corner of Alien: Isolation. Creative Assembly have successfully created not only an expansive world to explore and traverse, but also the fear that an Alien should instil. You don’t want to run into the perfect killing machine, and after the first time, you actually don’t ever want to see it again. But like Resident Evil’s Nemesis, the titular Alien stalks you as prey, and you’ll never truly feel able to assault it.

Let’s be clear about this: Isolation is one-hundred-percent a stealth game. Not a stealth game like Dishonored, where you can kill people and escape. No, if you are pulling your revolver out here, you’re doing it wrong and are either going to die, or have to hope you get lucky.

This is in part thanks to the relentless AI. It’s worth saying that, if you do encounter the Alien and it sees you, you’re dead. If you’re lucky enough that it appears and doesn’t see you, sure, you can hide and escape, but there are other enemies on the Sevastopol space station that are just as deadly. Scavenger humans, in fact, are the easiest to kill, but appear in groups and are smart enough to patrol in a manner that makes you easy to spot. Synthetics are brutally difficult to take down, requiring almost all of your ammo in one go, which is likely to attract more enemies thanks to the noise. In fact, they’re possibly too hard (even on the medium difficultly level), and can happily grab your melee weapon and throttle you, causing you to smash buttons to escape, then run for cover.

Everything wants to kill you, and as Amanda Ripley, you’re woefully under-prepared to fight back. Amanda has chosen to go on a company mission to the vast Sevastopol because there’s a hint that her mother might be there. Arriving with her colleagues, it’s apparent right away that something is wrong. Entering the station, an accident occurs and Ripley is left on her own, trying to uncover the mystery of what has happened there, and to reconnect with her colleagues before eventually escaping.

Characters are portrayed well, and respectfully – though perhaps more importantly, they’re all believable. Ripley is like her mother: strong, but frightened. She knows she can’t hold her own in a fight, but she’s smart and nimble. It’s early on when everything goes to pot that the incredible audio design first becomes apparent. A space walk to Sevastopol causes everything to become muted outside Amanda’s helmet, intensifying the audio and helping to create the bleak, hopeless atmosphere. Despite the vast expanse of space, she’s alone. Even entering a huge space station doesn’t help, because the people are scattered, frightened, and half the ship isn’t working.

It looks great, too. Every nook and cranny has been beautifully rendered, and the lighting effects are some of the best I’ve seen in a long, long time. But it’s the authenticity that truly makes it. The clanking sound of the Alien in the vents, the beeping of the motion tracker, the awkward speech of synthetic workers. It’s just brilliant, and there’s not a single misstep here.

You’ll be sneaking around, using all sorts of tools to help keep you safe, along with the motion tracker. A nice effect is that as you raise the tracker to view it (it shows your objective direction, as well) the rest of your view loses focus, blurring out. The shift of visual focus in this manner is something I can honestly recall seeing done, and you can hold a trigger to shift your focus back to the background, blurring the tracker out temporarily.

There are plenty of small mini-games that involve hacking, but they’re actually entertaining due to the feeling that you’re never safe. Stopping to hack a door when the Alien could be anywhere, ready to kill you, is horrible (in a good way), and every time you do it, you’ll feel panicked. Along with crafting noisemakers (and other assorted distraction weapons) from scavenged parts (don’t use up your torch batteries!), you can also tap into security systems and turn off lights, or the air purifier to create a smoky room, or even just make speakers malfunction to grab a patrolling synthetic’s attention – but you’re always risking your life doing so.

Even saving your game isn’t safe, as you’ll be warned that enemies are nearby, and it’s here that the biggest issue with Isolation rears its head: you can only hard-save. Harking back to days when games were harder, there is no auto-save at all. If you die, you’re going back to the last save you committed to. Forgotten to save for forty minutes and die? That’s forty minutes of progress you’ve just lost. The idea seems to be that quick-saving would remove all fear from Isolation, and while that’s believable, the lack of any form of checkpointing means that there will be moments of unnecessary frustration.

This, coupled with the difficulty of most enemy encounters, means that anything and everything positive I have to say (and there’s so much positive here, it’s ridiculous), needs to be read with the caveat that the save system will not be to everyone’s tastes. If you do make a mistake, and save somewhere dangerous, you can revert to the previous save, but that’s it. At one point I lost forty minutes, but it’s a testament to the quality of the game that I didn’t mind that much, and continued on for another hour beyond that. In fact, such is the quality here, that my first play sessions was four hours (the game is around fifteen hours long, though never outstays its welcome even for a second), and that’s not something I can say very often.

There are some nice features found in the PS4 version, such as the DualShock 4 speaker offering warning of motion nearby. A static beep lets you know you’re not alone in the area, and you can then lift the tracker up and study it. The PlayStation Camera (and Kinect on Xbox One) offers head tracking. Holding L1 lets you use the left stick to lean around corners, but with the camera, you can physically lean. It’s a nice touch that you’ll use for a few hours, then revert back to the controller. It’ll also (if you enable it) pick up audio from the camera’s microphone, giving away your position if you suddenly make lots of noise. Another nice idea, but one that is slightly at odds with the actual gameplay. If you’re sneaking around perfectly, but then sneeze or cough, you’ve given away the game.

But when all is said and done, you’re playing Alien: Isolation for the atmosphere and the alien, and Isolation delivers in spades. It’s a smart beast, and eventually the fear you have turns to respect. You’ll learn that you can (and will) die often, but if you play your cards right, it can kill your enemies before turning its eye on you. Brutal death sequences quickly remind you that it’s a killer and not a toy, but appearances are sparing in the first half, though often enough to never let you forget, before really ratcheting up the tension as it stalks you. The audio is so well designed that any sudden noise will have you jumping and going for your motion detector, and this is a game that unsettles as much as it scares.

Technically, for the most part, Isolation is a marvel, but not completely without issue. There’s an odd thing with the cut-scenes that looks like a frame-rate problem. There’s not so many of them that it affects the overall game, but it’s noticeable when it happens. Elsewhere, the UI is minimalist and there’s a glorious 80s vibe going on, especially during loading screens, with tracking lines everywhere, even on hint-text as it appears. It’s a loveletter to the era the Alien franchise came from, and it absolutely works.

There’s a clear option to return on higher difficulties, and potentially speed-run the game, because after you know what to expect, for the most part you can complete sections in double time. Survival mode adds a completely different aspect to Isolation, and instead of rewarding patience and slow-movement, asks you to quickly complete bite-sized tasks.

Alien: Isolation is a phenomenal title marred by only one major issue that some will overlook, and others will find a deal-breaker. It’s comfortably the best Alien game ever made, and delivers authenticity along with a new story that is worth seeing, experiencing, and fleeing from into the darkness. Never once allowing the immersion to be broken, Creative Assembly have done it. They have actually done it.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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There was a time when video games left you to your own devices and allowed you to explore every nook and cranny without obtrusive tutorials. Whilst those days seem like a distant memory for most, some titles do employ this tactic and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a prime example. Even before you begin your journey, you’re informed that your narrative-driven adventure game plaything won’t be holding your hand – the hand of supernatural detective, Paul Prospero.

Ethan Carter has called upon the services of Prospero to investigate some weird happenings in his home village of Red Creek Valley. A mystical power is affecting family relations within the Carter household and Prospero is just the man to investigate. Mainly because he has supernatural abilities that any mystical power would dream of.

Naturally, you’ll be required to flex your sleuthing muscles and uncover some truths about what’s going in the sleepy village of Red Creek Valley. The place is seemingly empty – it’s just Prospero, some old buildings and a number of dead bodies. These corpses act as the catylst for the rather simple puzzles The Vanishing has to offer. The first one you’ll find will be along a train track where, upon inspection, Prospero will show he’s a big fan of Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock and quickly rattle off a whole host of words, deciphering a portion of the mystery before your very eyes.

Every puzzle requires you to grab a number of items and put them in the right places, then go back to said human remains and inspect once again. Approximately four or five spectre-like groupings will appear in front of you, telling an unorganised account of the murder, and your job is to number these story beats in sequential order, in an effort to find out how the human being became a human dead. They’re not taxing and don’t require an awful lot of thought, but are telling a fairly satisfying narrative, albeit one that isn’t groundbreaking and allows you to telegraph its direction. The problem here is that as Prospero, you’re a passive participant in the tale. Like someone regaling you with a wonderful yarn, then proceeding to tell you that you had to be there. With that said, even as a mere onlooker, it’s enjoyable.

With regard to the puzzles, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter doesn’t want to tell you anything, so it’s very easy to pass by any number of these murder mysteries and be none the wiser, due to the fact that Red Creek Valley is an open playpen. To call it an open world would be a bit misleading as it’s not a sprawling map filled with points of interests. It’s more like you’re fenced in and certain areas are off limits, but The Vanishing gives off the impression that it is an open-world adventure. You are free to approach your time here in any way you like and in that regard, some will find that they’ll play puzzles in a different order to the next person. It doesn’t punish you for approaching things in your own way, but trying to find non-highlighted puzzle instigators that are hidden in the beautiful bushes of Red Creek Valley might suggest that some little form of direction would have been welcome. I had to backtrack in an effort to find at least two of The Vanishing’s brain-busters, which, once found, aren’t all that brain-busting. These puzzles do engage you somewhat, though. The term “walking simulator” is bandied around at any first person affair in which you don’t fire an AK47, but The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is an adventure game, first. A beautiful adventure game.

Red Creek Valley sits on a beautiful lake, with lucious greenery surrounding its perimeter. Honestly, the detail is truly breathtaking. Even the little details like the chipped railing on a bridge, to the individual specks of moss on cave dwelling rocks, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will most certainly be one of the best looking things you’ll see this year. I rarely recommend something on looks alone, as I believe that there needs to be something more to your average game than just a pretty face, but even if The Vanishing’s number ordering pastime doesn’t sound appealing, you’ll be in awe of the exquisite landscape.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter leans heavily on its Lovecraftian vibe with the peculiar paranormal happenings, and the ambient sounds of Red Creek Valley can have your skin crawling. There’s no real fail state (bar one area, though the punishment isn’t colossal), yet the developers have successfully sculpted a world in which you’ll be looking over your shoulder, just in case.

I admire The Astronauts and their declaration that they won’t hold your hand. In this day-and-age, it’s a rarity. However, it’s a step too far at times. Leaving an area and continuing your journey, before realising you have to go back and hunt pixels in the shrubbery for a puzzle is a frustration one can do without.

The relatively gratifying story and straightforward puzzles aren’t the real reasons to visit Red Creek Valley. The location is a good enough reason itself. More often than not people look to graphics as an indication for this medium’s progression and even though that’s somewhat of a falsehood, it has to be said that this spirit story’s looks are otherworldly.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

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Sherlock Holmes has recently become a force to be reckoned with in entertainment. The BBC TV series is arguably one of the most popular shows they’ve aired in recent years, the Robert Downey Jr movies received solid reviews and the Elementary TV show with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu is incredibly entertaining despite the questionable casting. With so much great Sherlock based entertainment. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments has a lot of expectation riding on it.

The main source of Sherlock’s popularity are the fascinating mysteries, usually with incredible twists that you don’t see coming. Crimes and Punishments features a total of 6 cases to solve and, while they may not be on the same level as other Sherlock stories, they are easily enough to hold your interest. None are particularly easy to guess from the beginning, and a couple manage to make you think you have figured out the solution, before throwing in a twist that changes everything at the last minute.

The majority of cases involve a murder of some kind and it’s down to Sherlock (with assistance from Watson, as you would expect) to find the killer. In order to come to a conclusion you must find clues and link them together to discover what actually happened. Clues can be found by wandering the crime scene and investigating items by pressing X (on PlayStation). Finding clues isn’t particularly difficult, as whenever you can examine something a notification pops up. Due to the amount of evidence and the space between each piece, collecting it will take up the majority of your time.

Sherlock also has a number of abilities he can use to find evidence. Firstly, he can use his imagination to see missing items or imagine what may have happened at the scene. He can also use his superior mind and senses to notice clues that may seem like nothing but actually play a vital role. Both of these features are used regularly and create that extra sense of being Sherlock. Also available is the ability to use disguises, however this isn’t vital often enough and seems quite unnecessary when it is used.

Some pieces of evidence will need further examination to be useful. This may involve heading back to Baker Street to search for information in the archives, conduct an experiment on the evidence, or get Sherlock’s dog Toby to follow a scent. The evidence analysis mini games (along with lock picking) offer a nice change of pace and break up the game well. None are overly challenging but if you do get stuck they can all be skipped.

Finding hard evidence isn’t the only way to solve the cases; you must also interview witnesses, suspects and victims. For all the important characters in the case you can perform a character portrait, which allows you to pinpoint small visible details from the interviewee to form a quick profile about them. Information picked up in these portraits, along with other evidence, can occasionally be used to call out lies during an interrogation. The interactions with the other characters are what will mainly influence your suspicions. There were a few times where I would discount hard evidence because I trusted what someone had said.

Once you have enough evidence and you have linked it all together you can deduce who is guilty. However, it is possible to make the wrong decision. With all the evidence the guilty party is usually fairly obvious but if you miss something (like I did in the 2nd case) you will come away with an incorrect decision and may end up wrongfully punishing someone. When I discovered I had wrongly punished someone I did genuinely feel bad, especially because I dished out the harsher of the two punishment options.

The crime scenes are varied to say the least: some take place in London’s back alleys while others see Sherlock and Watson travel to Kew Gardens, ancient temples and a circus. Each of the areas is quite well designed, evidence isn’t always obvious (and would be truly difficult to find if the button prompt wasn’t present) and in some cases the layout of the area is a clue itself.

Unfortunately the visuals are sub-par for a game on the PS4 and Xbox One. Add in frequent frame rate drops, texture pop and obvious tearing and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments becomes difficult to look at without feeling disappointed. The voice acting isn’t exactly great either; some characters are better than others, and Sherlock’s voice does grow on you after a few hours but the majority of the voice work is poor and leads to a few irritating characters.

Each of the cases offers a unique and interesting story, and discovering what happened at each location is fascinating. While constantly pressing X to examine what seems like every object in a room becomes tedious it is easily offset by eureka moments that pop up every so often. The environments you explore are great but are unfortunately not helped by ropey visuals and a slew of technical issues. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments’ greatest achievement is how guilty you feel when you punish an innocent person – even just being able to get it wrong is a superb idea.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

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Review code provided by publisher.

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After an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign in 2012, you might be forgiven for having thought that we may never see a sequel to the popular 2008 tower defense title Defense Grid: The Awakening. However, 505 Games and a private backer stepped in to bankroll development, and Defense Grid 2 is finally seeing the light of day, two years later. With twenty single-player stages and some new co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes, this sequel isn’t just a visual upgrade.

There is a basic story that introduces the new worlds involved in the title, but this is paper-thin and only serves as background noise really. You are here for some tower defense action, and that is what the game provides. You will need to build up your towers in order to survive between twenty to thirty waves of enemy attack. A variety of different towers are at your disposal, with new ones being unlocked the further you progress. Each can also be upgraded three times in order to make them more effective, but sadly there is no real customisation or evolution as they level-up. The twenty campaign stages can all be played solo or via local or online multiplayer, as well as the competitive multiplayer mode which is included.

This is all standard fare, but there are a few nice features that Defense Grid 2 possesses that makes it stand out from other tower defense titles. One welcome addition is the fast-forward button. There will be times where you feel you have created as good a defense network as possible, and simply want to see how it does against the aliens. Hit RB once and the game spins into overdrive and the waves will whizz along. Being a one-touch on and off feature, you can easily drop back to normal speed if something looks amiss and needs your attention. This makes proceedings far less tedious, and is a great idea.

Other than that, the level design allows space in each stage so that the player can direct the enemy and cause them to maze through their towers. With careful planning you can send the aliens round and round, in between your guns, forcing them to pass by as many of your high-ranked weapons as possible, thus causing extra damage and slowing them down. This is very satisfying when you make it work to your advantage, and is a great tactical option.

Also, rather than your core being damaged once enemies reach it, they take away individual energy cores, and try to escape the level with them. This gives you an opportunity to regain your energy, but also allows the aliens to chain up if one is killed, allowing the next nearby alien to pick up the ball and run with it. This creates an interesting tug of war situation, where you need to keep an eye on the position of your orbs on the map and give them time to slowly return to your base.

As each chapter loads up, you can customise each individual mission as well. There are a series of different modifiers to select, which can positively effect your scores if applied. For instance, you may choose to start a level with limited resources, in order to score a better top score, and to pose more of a challenge to yourself. On top of this, tower load-outs can be customised and you can unlock extra passive upgrades for different weaponry after successful missions. These different options really let you adjust the game to make the gameplay just how you want it; whether that be easier or more intense.

Co-operative modes work similarly both online and offline, with the two participants helping to build defenses and co-ordinate upgrades. There are toggles to share resources and positions, or to allocate each player separate scores and resources, so it can be played in a variety of ways depending on how independent each player wants to be. The competitive mode actually sees the enemies defeated by one player added to the attacking forces laying siege to the base of the opposing player – meaning you can pile the pressure on your opponent more the better you play. Multiplayer in tower defense titles is often such an afterthought, but the modes on offer here are thoroughly enjoyable additions to the game.

Defense Grid 2 may not be the most original idea, and lacks any real character in its story and presentation, but it is the unique gameplay ideas that make it a success. Hidden Path have tried to inject a few new tweaks and provide a twist on your expected tower defense conventions, and they all add enjoyment and streamline your experience. Yes, it may lack depth with the lack of skill trees for your towers, and there is little variety in the enemies which you are constantly mowing down, but the lack of complexity allows it to be an easy title to jump in and out of with a friend, and kick some alien behind.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

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Review code provided by publisher.

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Rhythm-action isn’t a terribly complex genre. Taking the most basic essence of videogames – the button press – and distilling it so thoroughly that it becomes engaging enough to form a game in its own right is no mean feat, but the product of said refining is always going to be a little one-note. And if you’re a one trick pony, that trick has to be bloody good.

Guitar Hero is rightly lauded because it got this theory spot on. Meeting the prompts had a tangible reward, missing them a clear punishment in the form of the bum-note in the middle of your favourite riff. Kickbeat though… well, Kickbeat doesn’t do any of this.

Transplant the chords from Guitar Hero’s instrument to the face buttons on your gamepad and the special power to L1. Instead of hitting scrolling notes as a rock-god, you’re now beating up goons as they approach from the compass points around protagonist Lee, all in time to music. Concept-wise it isn’t hard to grasp.

The backdrop for this is straight-to-DVD stuff. All of the music on Earth – housed in the ‘Music Sphere’ – has been stolen from the monastery of its caretaker monks. As a young Kung-Fu apprentice, it is up to you to get it back, fighting across a selection of songs that have been left behind in a handful of environments with four or five cutscenes fleshing out the narrative. It’s not a bad story, but there isn’t much there – aside from a Bieber gag that is so out of place with Kickbeat’s target audience it’s almost funny.

Enemies approach 90 degrees anti-clockwise from where they will attack you, allowing for a bit of forward-planning while keeping your view focused on the action, with Lee striking out in the direction you send him. Colour coding helps sort your rhythm, with Yellow grunts filing in one at a time, Blues striking in couples or triplets on alternate half-beats and Reds attacking in pairs.

Perfect hits build your Chi meter – which when unleashed adds points to your score – whilst your life will drop if you are hit too many times. Bonuses are also available from some enemies, either points or a health boost, claimed by double tapping the relevant face button when they attack.

It really is all very basic, and as such it should be tight as a drum – especially when you consider that this is a port of last year’s PS3 and Vita release. Kickbeat is not tight. For this genre, every successful button press should feel like a triumph. Instead you miss most of the action, focused as you are on the periphery rather than what Lee is doing: there’s no reward. Even worse is when you do spare a glance, you realise that his punches don’t always connect, and his kicks are just off.

Kickbeat’s cardinal sin, though, is that it doesn’t always get the rhythm right. Where Guitar Hero covers you when you’re a fraction late, here Lee isn’t tuned to the music, but to you. Press a fraction late, he’ll react a fraction late. It’s good in a sense that there’s generous timing, but it feels wrong.

Similarly wrong is the scroll in of your attackers. Coming from the left of the button needed to strike them, they approach in a perfect curve, before taking a tiny shuffle forward into the attack box. You’ll learn to adjust, but that direction change breaks the flow more than you’d imagine. It can also be a pain to work out what colour an enemy is on some of the stages – particularly the earlier ones – as they blend into the neon backgrounds, and the shaky camera zooming in and out of the action only makes things more frustrating, rather than harder.

Graphically, Kickbeat looks quite pretty, even if enemies are identikit clones, but some in-engine close-ups are dominated by muddy textures that you just don’t expect on this generation. With only 24 tracks (highlights include Pendulum and Marilyn Manson) there’s not much here in the way of longevity. Harder difficulties and a survival mode might interest you, but only if the track list as a whole grabs your attention. Sadly, the music importer of the Steam release isn’t included.

Kickbeat is a fairly generic rhythm-action title, hampered by loose core gameplay – something that really needed to be solid when there is so little in the way of content. It’s hard to recommend it when there are better examples of the genre out there.

AVERAGE. The epitome of a 50/50 game, this title will be unspectacular but inoffensive, charmless but amiable. We aren’t condemning a game by scoring it a 5, but we certainly aren’t championing it, either.

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In last year’s FIFA review, I joked that EA Sports might one day rebrand the game as Sky Sports’ FIFA, and it appears that my attempt at humour was bang on the money. A host of changes once again pervade the latest iteration of EA’s blockbuster football game, and while some are more successful than others, there are also areas that have been all but ignored for FIFA 15.

But let’s get one of the biggest changes out of the way right now: the presentation. FIFA 15 looks so much like a Sky Sports presentation, it’s uncanny. You could walk in the room as a match is starting up and double-take, it’s that well done. But aside from the graphical overlays that tell us who is playing where, an attention to detail has been given to the audio department, too. EA are quick to promote the fact they’ve been to the twenty premiership grounds and captured the various crowds in action – and when this is evident in-game, it’s fairly spectacular. The crowd singing “You’ll never walk alone” is something that could even make the hairs on the back of an Everton fan’s neck stand up. When a goal is scored, the volume increases like an explosion of passion and delight, and the camera visibly shakes to match the crowd’s raucous celebration. It’s fantastic, there’s really no other way to put it. Smaller but noticeable features like the pitch wearing as the match progresses are nice and add to the immersion, but the crowds break it a little as they still don’t look quite right.

That said, the presentation can take centre-stage too often, and unskippable scenes during matches are annoying. After you’ve seen the ref brandish a yellow card, where the players react and show the much vaunted emotion of FIFA 15 for the tenth time, you just want to skip it – but you can’t. It’s inexplicable as to when it happens, but it’s almost always when a card is flashed, or when you’re in a hurry and want to get on with the game. On the subject of the “emotion”, I honestly haven’t spotted too much of it. Players will look annoyed when a striker misses instead of passing, or fall out when things are going against them, but it doesn’t seem as big a deal as you’d think.

But it’s the on-the pitch action that matters, and the changes to the gameplay are both a blessing and a curse. First of all, attacking play in FIFA 15 is some of the most satisfying I’ve ever experienced – when it works. There does seem to be a propensity for shots that go in (or wide) off-the-bar, almost as though EA Canada are trying to give you wow-moments, as the audio of the bar being hit is like a dynamite explosion. However, this could also be because wing-play is a lot harder, and swinging a ball in seems to have had its effectiveness reduced. Expect to run down the left with a nippy winger and hit a cross that either doesn’t reach the target, or is ably defended against. Headers are not easy to score on anything above semi-pro difficulty any more, though when you do, they’re often screamers.

This results in a lot of attacking play coming through the middle, where the more realistic dribbling either works really well, or frustrates beyond belief. You can’t turn on a sixpence any more, and you’ll have to learn how to use the sprint button and trick stick to get by, or else rely on quick movement and passing. It’s an impressive re-enactment of the beautiful game, but it also reduces the fun factor. Those who hanker for a more realistic football experience will delight in this, but those of you who just want to lose yourself in a video game may find it less fun.

For once, the players feel unique, though. A quick winger will be muscled off the ball by a strong-arming defender; likewise, a slow centre back will be left for dead by a Navas, Walcott, or Messi. The more lifelike physics mean that if you mistime a tackle, that player is out of the game. Ray Wilkins would love FIFA 15, because it’s all about staying on your feet and making it count. If you aren’t sure you’re going to win the ball, then you need to contain the attacker instead, or bring in a second player to hustle them away from goal as you step in for the tackle.

Sadly, there are still moments of extreme frustration when defending. Three successful tackles and they’ve still got the ball? That’s still in, I’m afraid. It’s a steep learning curve, so expect to drop back a difficulty to begin with, just for the defending part of the game alone. It’s a strange beast, actually – often you’ll feel as though you are fighting the physics, because there are so many individual components that maintain the random nature of the game, that it doesn’t always work for the game.

Keepers have been vastly improved, too. Don’t expect many one-sided batterings here, unless you’re playing on Beginner. They will parry, save, punch or otherwise stop you from easy goals, and that’s if the defenders even let you get a shot away in the first place, as they throw their body into the way as if their life depends on it. Keepers can be inconsistent, though, and you’ll go from the sublime to the ridiculous; suddenly scoring the most outrageous long-shot you’ve ever seen, before then taking part in a complete shut-out in the following game.

One touch that is most welcome is the ability to switch to the receiver when taking a corner or a throw-in. A flick of the right stick allows you to command a player and call for the ball. With throw-ins this seems a far more effective way of actually getting the ball, though corners are hit or miss; though this led to me taking a lot of short corners and calling for a runner.

The ball feels looser here, as well. Often in previous FIFA titles no matter how hard you hit the ball, it always felt like it was pre-ordained to arrive to the target. Here, the ball is a physical object. You’ll sky it over everyone for a throw-in, but because the players are physically realistic, you’ll also miss that last ditch attempt to keep the ball in. But there are anomalies, and I lost count of the times the defensive AI would hit a huge panicked clearance that bypasses the entire midfield and coincidentally lands at their attacking man, who is now in a one-on-one with my last defender.

But oh, when it all works, it’s delicious. I lost count of the times I shouted “Xbox, record that!” or hit the Share button. Numerous times I visibly jumped from my seat in excitement, the swelling of the crowd cheering me on. Despite it all, there are moments of absolute gaming bliss to be had here.

Ultimate Team has had numerous additions, though most of them are short-term prospects. The idea of loaning one of the best players in the game is ace, but once you’ve used them, that’s it, and the Football Catalog has a limited number of loanable players, which (like everything in EASFC, which itself has undergone an upgrade, allowing you to share, comment, like and dislike happenings) are one-time use. You can’t loan legends on Xbox One, either, which feels a missed opportunity. Concept Squads are nice, allowing you to create (but not play with) a dream squad and share with your friends, and these are at least slightly more long-term, allowing you to see how a potential player might gel with your squad, then go out and buy him. The biggest new feature to FUT is friendly seasons, meaning you can play against your friends, rather than random online players that you’d have to normally.

Disappointingly, Career Mode has been all-but ignored this year, bar a few cosmetic changes. that are present in the rest of the game anyway. The team management is now a more visual affair, with player’s faces appearing on a pitch, allowing you to move their positions on the fly (PES has done this for years, just FYI). Unfortunately, it’s a mixed bag, and takes up far more real estate than the old version, which was admittedly slow and cumbersome. You can create and name multiple teams, so you can (as we all do, every year) decide on a team for the league, and one for cups.

There’re some nice touches in the commentary during Career Mode, though. It feels more true to life to hear Alan Smith comment how you won the last match convincingly, but that it was against Crystal Palace, and Everton might pose a more severe threat. They did, incidentally, hammering my Arsenal 2-0. I could barely get a shot away. It’s also in Career Mode that the new tactical offerings such as all-out attack or park the bus appear more often. Seeing that Everton literally park the bus once 2-0 up was impressive, but frustrating. You can’t be too mad about a gameplan being executed by the AI, though.

Elsewhere, aside cosmetic touches, the only major change is to the online lobbies, which are far better to use, and show you live updates and scores while you wait to join the next match. You can also have more control over scouting players to join your Pro Club, but in truth, it’s likely most people are going to stick with their friend-group, anyway.

FIFA 15 provides moments of exquisite pleasure, and also obscene frustration. When the planets align and you score a wonder strike, you’ll feel like a God, but when you’re playing away on a rainy night in Stoke, unable to breach a parked bus defence, you’ll long for less realism altogether, even though the on-the-fly tactical changes are themselves very impressive.

EA Canada can’t win in that respect, because whichever angle they cater toward, they’ll always be upsetting someone else. It’s a shame Career Mode has seen such little love this year, but regardless, there are enough changes overall that FIFA feels a very different game this year. They’ve not reinvented the wheel, just put shinier trims on it, and perhaps this isn’t the year that the presentation needed to take centre stage.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

Our Scoring Policy

Review code provided by publisher.

The post FIFA 15 Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

The Wii U is increasingly becoming the indie developers (and indeed indie gamer’s) best friend, with an ever increasing number of once PC only gems finding themselves at home on the Wii U’s eShop. The latest title to make the jump from PC to Nintendo’s living room console is Teslagrad, from Norwegian dev team Rain Games.

Teslagrad can be best categorised as a 2D puzzle platformer, but that description only scratches the surface of what’s on offer here. After a moody menu screen backed by a melodic backdrop, Teslagrad throws you straight into its dark and unforgiving world. Rain lashes down from a dimly lit sky, pounding off every surface. A hard-nosed looking man darts from house to house, scaring people into fleeing for their lives. Most of them get caught, but one boy makes a success of running away. You take control of the boy, and the game begins.

Running and jumping across rooftops, the backdrop slowly changes from a scene that is dreary and residential, to the fiery heart of an industrial furnace. Teslagrad’s entirely wordless narrative is brought to life by the excellent art direction. The mixture of classic steampunk and 50’s style animation is absolutely gorgeous, and brings to life a fusion of the worlds of Limbo, Steamworld and Disney’s Pinocchio all at once. The story that unfolds shows us a world ruled by a ruthless king, who has suppressed a race of technological wizards that once resided in a massive tower in the centre of the city of Teslagrad.

So we know it looks good and tells a nice story, but how does Teslagrad actually play? From the offset, it’s obvious that this isn’t a pure platformer, as the way your character handles isn’t exactly genre-defining. Jumping can be imprecise and floaty, and it kind of feels like you’re running on ice most of the time. Thankfully, Teslagrad redeems itself by slowly ratcheting up the complexity, throwing in special abilities that you find along the way.

Early on our little hero discovers a pair of gloves that allow him to punch specific objects in the environment and turn them either red or blue. The red or blue colouring indicates that object’s magnetic polarity – and that is where the most of Teslagrad’s puzzling comes from. Being clever with magnetism is nothing new, however Teslagrad plays the magnet card very well indeed. You can use different coloured blocks to defeat enemies, open new pathways and create a magic carpet which you can use to cruise around the level. The use of magnetism isn’t restricted to objects in the environment, with your character able to take on a red or blue hue, allowing him to float above objects of the opposite colour. You take on the red or blue hue either by interacting with one of the many little robots wandering about, or walking through strategically placed plants (all of which are either red or blue in colour, indicating their polarity).

Another power afforded to you is the ability to teleport a couple of feet in front of the direction your character is facing, Dishonoured style. This power is the easiest to get to grips with, which is great, because it’s also the most fun. Darting around Teslagrad’s beautifully realised world is great fun, and does a good job of disguising the otherwise ropey handling. Put all of these puzzle elements together (something that happens early in the game), and you have a recipe for some real brain teasers. The deeper into Teslagrad’s world I got, the more out of my depth I became. This is coming from someone that has played 2D scrollers my entire life: Teslagrad is nails. You will flit from a real sense of achievement to unsolvable puzzlement, immense frustration and back again – and that’s just in the first hour or so.

Combat is pretty much non-existent, since our little dude dies at the slightest touch – adding to the games prominent “old school” feel. Level areas are bookended by boss battles – huge mechanical beasts that will push your skills to breaking point. You need to jump, dodge and teleport to avoid the boss’ attacks, all the while trying to hit it with a dose of magnetised death. In a world of one-hit kills, these are bosses that will test the most hardened of gamers. The difficulty here will really polarise (get it?) opinions on Teslagrad – 16-bit era gamers will love its unforgiving nature and will battle through to the end; as for everyone else? I’m not so sure.

Rain Games have created something beautiful in Teslagrad. Its opening scene alone should win some kind of award. Its mix of mind bending puzzles and unforgiving boss battles, not to mention some pretty hit and miss platforming, make it a game that will really split opinions. Fans of the genre will find a new hero in Teslagrad – but casual gamers should be wary.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

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Review code provided by publisher.

The post Teslagrad Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

If you were to give out awards for putting your best foot forward, Disney Infinity 2.0 wouldn’t be anywhere near even qualifying. A horribly long load time into the Marvel Super Heroes play set (included with the starter pack), and clunky, heavy-to-control characters dominate the opening mission which introduces us to Disney Infinity again.

The general idea is that our heroes have just unfrozen themselves and need to save Avenger/Stark Tower before it’s overrun by Loki’s Frost Giant minions. The combat begins and it’s pure button mashing repetition; everything is linear and you just go from corridor to corridor before ending the level, and choosing whether to continue the Marvel story, or be introduced to the Toy Box mode.

Thank God, then, that immediately after the dreary opening mission, the larger, more open area of the city is yours to play in. Suddenly you’re allowed to take to the skies as Iron Man or Thor and can explore the world with freedom, gathering all manner of collectibles, some of which add to the Toy Box mode, while others just unlock concept art. Interestingly, among the multitude of collectibles, there are crossover tokens, which, once ten are collected, allow characters to appear in each other’s playset.

Immediately, Infinity 2.0 feels a better game. Initial fears subside, and you start to enjoy the mechanics far more. Button-mashing combos are still prevalent, but as you progress through the skill trees and level up your individual heroes (the cap is twenty for all heroes, including ones from the previous game), more options become available. Super moves and changes to standard combos change things up, and you can improve core skills as well. One problem that rears its head early on is that the environments seem tailored towards characters who can fly. You can climb via jump pads and lifts, but overall, you’ll initially play more as Thor and Iron Man, just because they are more fun to navigate the world with – you’ll end up playing Black Widow mainly when you transition to the indoor missions, then later when you unlock a certain vehicle that lets everyone take to the skies. It’s an interesting way to add movement speed to the non-flying characters, because the motorbike you unlock first handles very heavily, and is best avoided.

There’s not a huge amount of variety to missions, either. There’s certainly an attempt to change things up, adding things like motorbike races or horde-style combat challenges – but they’re not enjoyable enough to make you want to come back and improve your time, let alone try and top the leaderboards. Indeed, most missions will involve going from place to place, beating up on some guys, then doing it all again in the next mission. The enemies do get progressively harder, but the techniques to beat them don’t really change.

Things are improved when playing with a friend (or one of your children), as you can both explore the world at your leisure, before joining up for a story mission. If you find it too easy, simply adjust the difficulty. There are also numerous mission nodes around the playsets that allow you to play competitively, and these are a surprising amount of fun. As Iron Man, facing off against your son as Thor is silly, especially when you both take to the skies in your enclosed battle arena, seeing who will blink and go to ground first, which is where the combat is really intended to be.

Thankfully, the technical issues that plagued the previous game appear to have been ironed out. The open-world sandbox area of the Marvel play set is hitch-free, and the frame rate is mostly solid, but prone to major drops in missions that take place inside. It’s not the most visually taxing game for the hardware, but it looks pretty when cutscenes play, and though the city itself is a little on the bland side, the colour comes from the characters. There are elements of humour, and occasionally the gags work really well, but there’s no mistaking this is a game aimed at children. That said, the voice acting is fun, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is a lovely bonus. Generally speaking, the atmosphere and character is there for all to see on screen.

Interestingly, both of my children jumped immediately into the Toy Box mode. This is a clean slate where you can add environments of your choosing, as well as characters, enemies and, well, basically everything that’s in the game. While the truly creative will go for the absolutely empty sandbox, you can choose from numerous presets to get you started. This time around, you can save and share your boxes with other people, and if you don’t feel like spending hours making missions and worlds for others, you can just download community created content. Some are better than others, and the devs have created a few to give everyone ideas. One platforming based level I tried was okay, but the controls aren’t precise enough to really make overly taxing jumping much fun.

Without question, the Toy Box is where Infinity still shines. A sandbox that truly lets your imagination run wild, only now you can share or download creations via the internet. But the play sets are a vast improvement over the first game and a lot of fun in their own right, while the technical performance is far better, too. Being able to bring your existing Infinity toys into 2.0 is a nice touch, but something you’d expect.

It’s going to cost you a fortune, though, because once you start to enjoy dashing through the air as Iron Man, you’ll want more of those pricey heroes to throw into your game, because they’re wonderful little toys that look and feel good. On that note, this seems an ideal time to remind you that we don’t accept any responsibility for any overdraft charges you may incur after playing Disney Infinity 2.0.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

Our Scoring Policy

Review code provided by publisher.

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Destiny is not Halo. Nor is it Borderlands. Nor is it an amalgamation or bastardisation of either. This is something I feel needs pointing out because Destiny is its own entity and, while it isn’t the game-changing, genre-defining behemoth we were promised, it’s still a worthy achievement on Bungie’s part. A handful of expansion packs, patches, tweaks and updates down the line and it may well come close to that uber-game we so desperately wanted it to be, but right now (when it counts, you might say) Destiny is little more than a tasty meal with a few ingredients missing.

I use a food analogy because that’s what it’s like: it’s like taking a mouthful of something almost delicious and then obsessing for the duration of the meal over what’s making it taste funny. Destiny’s flaws are not all obviously apparent.

As I said in my review-in-progress, the story takes place in the distant future and casts you as a Guardian, an elite warrior tasked with defending the Light of the Traveller, a powerful itinerant entity that boosted human understanding by a few centuries. Having established colonies on a handful of worlds and moons in our galaxy, they were attacked by a mysterious Darkness hell-bent on destroying the Traveller. In the ensuing conflict, known as the Collapse, almost everything was lost, and now they huddle together in one sprawling city under the shadow of a weakened benefactor.

As a set-up it’s delicious. Intriguing. Compelling, even. In practice, however, Bungie squander such a wonderful backstory by locking exposition away on their website. There are no lore entries in-game which, when they’ve gone to such pains to craft a unique game-world, beggars belief. Instead you collect Grimoire Cards that unlock codex entries on Bungie.net. Immediately this robs you of the immersion you – and Destiny’s world – deserve. The wonderful high sci-fi hokum that would (and should) have wrapped us all up tight in its LED-sequinned folds is hamstrung from the outset.

As a result, we’re left scratching our heads as to what the hell a “Mote of Light” is for. We don’t know where the Fallen came from, nor the Vex or the Cabal. We don’t know why there are benevolent races (the Awoken and the Exo) besides humanity. We don’t know how they came to co-exist or why. If we want to know these things, we need to take a break from playing and go read a Wiki. It’s an appalling narrative decision, because without context, all you’re doing is blasting monsters in the face over and over again, while Peter Dinklage’s bored AI Ghost drones on about your objectives in a voice that suggests he’d rather be doing anything else than spouting rhetoric about grumpkins and snarks and wizards that came from the moon.

It’s compounded by the fact that Bungie don’t seem entirely sure of themselves. A meeting mid-game with an Awoken Queen makes no sense when you play as an Awoken yourself, as she acts like you’re not. She introduces herself, her race, and makes no mention of your shared lineage. It’s almost as though Bungie only ever had one playable race in mind for Destiny, and added the Awoken and Exo later in an effort to inject some variety. Sadly, the different races and classes don’t add up to much more than aesthetic preference.

You’re able to choose a Hunter, Titan or Warlock (basically DPS, Tank and Support), but aside different starting stats and slightly varying abilities, there isn’t enough between them to really force a change of tactics. Having played with all three, I haven’t really been able to select a favourite because they’re all so similar when you get down to brass tacks. My choice is informed purely by the fact that the Warlocks look cooler than the other two. They all have an energy drain skill, a grenade on a cooldown timer, and a super attack. They all have unlockable skills that improve stats and alter the behaviour of their grenades. They all use the same weapons and have the same stats on their armour. Player skill is a major factor, as a talented player can make a Warlock seem just as hardy as a Titan, which means you could have easily had no classes at all, and simply taken your skills down a multi-branching tree.

Playing Destiny, I couldn’t help but feel that Bungie had the concept for a Halo-style, story-driven campaign shooter and added everything else in after one of their suits coughed up the “shared world” idea. It sounds horribly cynical, perhaps, but having spent a full week and well over thirty hours in Bungie’s world (not to mention the countless hours spend in the alpha and beta, too), I can’t escape the fact that all the disparate elements simply don’t marry up as they should. It doesn’t feel organic; everything feels added-on. Such a theory may be unintentionally disparaging, but it explains the unexplained races, it explains the Grimoire Cards, it explains the limited number of game areas and the lack of real difference in the classes.

So where’s the flavour? Where’s the taste that makes the meal edible despite its flaws? In the combat, of course – this is a Bungie game after all. Luckily, Destiny’s redeeming feature happens to be its biggest hook and primary mechanic: the gunplay is amazing. Those comparisons to Halo seem petty until you start shooting, and then you remember why Bungie have their reputation. The combat is precise, frantic, balanced, frenetic, and damn satisfying. Enemy AI is as good here as I’ve seen anywhere else, the terrain is crafted as a sandbox battleground; just like Reach’s wide open spaces encouraged you to flank enemies, set up choke points and go vertical to get the drop on them, Destiny’s arenas do the same. Cover is everywhere, though less blatant and idiot-proof than, say, a Gears of War. The double-jump jet-pack skill that every class has allows you to play for height, scaling rocky outcrops and jumping up to balconies that in other games would be background filler.

Guns issue thunder-claps that hammer enemies clean off their feet, heads pop in wisps of smoky vapour, and super-charged blasts of plasma arc from your very palm to disintegrate groups of charging aliens in a glimmering light show that puts inFAMOUS to shame. This is what a shooter should be, and when Destiny hits you with its ground-game, away from all the garbled, half-explained sci-fi posturing, it’s one of the most competent and confident shooters ever created.

As with many games of its type – and despite Bungie’s protestations, there are indeed many games of its type – Destiny is better enjoyed with others. Once you hit later levels, you will unlock the Strike playlist. A Strike is a mission with increased difficulty and rewards, meant to be played in a team of three. The most successful trios will use headsets to communicate strategy and reinforce synergy, but in truth most are no more taxing than regular story missions – they are just a lot more fun. Stand-out moments become so commonplace that they don’t stand out any more, but that’s a good thing: it means it works.

At later levels, you’ll also unlock Raids. These are six-player, multi-layered missions designed to test you to the limit. But while they’re a great place to find better gear, they are restricted by the requirement that you play only with people on your friends list. Without an update to fix that, Raids will quickly become the bastion of the hardcore alone, filled with clans honing their skills and upping their gear before going online and dominating the relatively small-scale multiplayer. In contrast to the stellar shooting, the handling of raids suggests an overconfidence on Bungie’s part.

When juxtaposed beside the campaign offering, the competitive multiplayer seems somewhat dry. Because you take your character into the Crucible from the campaign, early forays into the arena are horrifically one-sided as you square up against level 25s and find yourself one-shotted before you can even get your sights up. With only a handful of modes containing nothing more exotic than Capture the Flag and Control (Destiny’s version of Hardpoint), the multiplayer feels half-baked. You can earn rewards specific to PvP, but they don’t do anything the campaign rewards don’t. The maps are large enough, reminiscent of some of Reach’s mid-sized arenas, but they aren’t varied enough when examined beside the campaign zones. There was enormous potential to do something exciting here that Bungie have squandered by delivering purpose-built maps for shooting other players in, none of which offer anything you haven’t seen before elsewhere.

From a technical standpoint Destiny walks a narrow line between astounding and over-reaching. While the servers held up admirably during the launch, I have been kicked five or six times mid-mission for no apparent reason. Small bugs and glitches are noticeable but excusable given the scale, but the loading times are often shocking. It’s not uncommon to wait a minute while transitioning between a mission zone and the tower hub, and the fact that in order to leave you must select “go to orbit” means you can’t just hit a button to go back if you forgot something; you have to reload the whole area again. Likewise, indulging in a spot of patrolling to earn marks and money (glimmer is the currency name) requires you to go to orbit when you’re done, even if you want to play a campaign mission or strike in the exact same zone. You have to quit and reload; you can’t just walk to a specific point. It’s irritating, more than anything, and really shouldn’t be happening.

Some of it is made up for by the fact that Destiny looks incredible. The individual planets have their own personality and, while the worlds may feel curiously empty at times, they always look vibrant. The jungles of Venus are stunning, and the Moon has some truly breathtaking vistas, but it’s a beauty painted on to hide the cracks, and it doesn’t always succeed.

The decision to lock away the best content until you hit level twenty is a curious choice on Bungie’s part, and one that points to either lack of confidence or a worrying hubris. Not explaining what Vanguard or Crucible Marks are or how they’re earned until you can use them is fine, provided you don’t make them visible only for people to scratch their heads over.

What’s sad, is that Destiny could have been the world-beating mammoth Bungie envisioned it as and, perhaps foolishly, claimed it would be, but it falls short of their lofty aims. That said, there’s a sense when playing Destiny that this is a long-term investment. Only a week from launch and people have already hit that level cap and smashed right through it; they’ve mopped up the story mode, earned entire outfits of legendary gear and overcome every strike. Bungie have promised more content in the future, which would suggest a raising of the cap, more missions, new zones, new enemies, tweaks and updates to the existing formula that will, piece by piece, bring Destiny closer to the game we all hoped it was going to be.

But it’s not that game right now. Destiny is a confident, solid, sometimes stunningly beautiful shooter with RPG mechanics that add longevity and depth, and the beginnings of what could be an incredible online universe. But it feels like the tip of the glacier, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing to be more excited about what a game might one day be, than what it actually is.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Review code provided by publisher.

The post Destiny Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Of all the major American sports, ice hockey is perhaps the most dramatic and entertaining. The nature of the sport allows for surprise comebacks, high intensity goals, and emotional plays much like football, whereas the likes of baseball or NFL struggle to gain the same intensity thanks to the constant stoppages. So it amazes me that, with all its similarities to our national sport, ice hockey has not become popular in the UK. With the first release on the new consoles, however, NHL 15 is sure to bring in a lot of new fans.

The core of any sports title is the act of playing the sport itself, and this is where NHL 15 excels. The action is an almost perfect simulation with the correct settings. The pace of the game feels great, the puck moves unbelievably realistically, and the players traverse the ice as expected. If a simulation style isn’t what you are after, you can easily change to a more arcade style, which makes for a much simpler and easier to play option for newcomers. The settings can be extensively customized, so if you want a realistic sim but think icing is a ridiculous rule you can turn it off.

Regardless of your chosen settings, the gameplay of NHL 15 is fun. Trying to worm your way though the defence to get an open shot is hugely satisfying. Perhaps even more surprising, is the fact that defence can actually be fun to play. Making a big hit feels great; players smash into the ice, their bodies contort in violently realistic ways and the vibration feedback helps convey the force of the collision. Occasionally it feels like an opponent has managed to hold onto the puck unfairly, which means trying to intercept a pass is usually a safer option than chasing down a player to poke away the puck.

Your AI team-mates could use a bit of work, though. On defence they fail to pick up players, and seem to take an age to transition from one end of the ice to the other. They also fail to offer any assistance when against the boards, which happens quite a lot thanks to board animations kicking in whenever you are in the vicinity. That being said, they do occasionally create a brilliant bit of space, which often results in a goal.

While the actual gameplay is superb, it is severely let down by the missing game modes and features. While it may seem harsh to complain about something that isn’t there, the lack of options really do limit how much you can play the game. Simple “play now” games obviously aren’t enough to hold your attention for long, and online head to heads offer a nice change to playing against the AI, but can become repetitive, and the NHL Moments Live is currently lacking in content – although more will be added during the season.

Hockey Ultimate Team is very similar to that of the FIFA mode. You build a fantasy team of players and compete against the AI and real-world opponents. This is the mode many will play for hours, but it’s easy to burn out on. I had only played for a few days but was already tired of my squad. HUT is perhaps NHL 15’s biggest mode, and the best bet for extended hours of play.

Elsewhere, Be A Pro mode is disappointingly bare. You still control one player on the ice, which can be great, but the mode is missing basic features. The draft is effectively random; the minor leagues have gone, and working your way up the rankings is non-existent, as you instantly become a starter upon signing. Here the questionable AI becomes even more obvious, and the ability to skip time when not playing is nowhere to be seen, so expect to watch a lot from the bench.

Finally we have Be A GM mode, which is now the only way to take a whole team throughout a complete NHL season. Fortunately the mode remains largely unchanged, which isn’t a bad thing. Online functionality is nowhere to be seen, though, so if you want a deep online mode HUT is the only way to go.

As you’d expect, NHL 15 is very impressive, visually. Players look great and, apart from the odd mistimed animation, move realistically. The ice itself changes throughout the game, and small particle effects add that extra bit of quality. The crowd isn’t perfect (people will often be doing the same animation) but it’s a lot better than other sports titles.

On the commentary front Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick and Eddie Olczyk provide the voiceover. The variation in the lines is surprisingly good and the delivery is great – the only issue is the occasional misplaced comment. The NBC hockey broadcast style is one that is sure to please people, and it looks great, but does little for those in non-USA territories.

VERDICT: On the ice, NHL 15 is great. Gameplay is smooth and fun to play, and the plethora of customization options means everyone should be able to find an enjoyable setting. The visuals and commentary round out the package that is only let down by the occasionally questionable AI. Where NHL 15 falls down is with its replayability and game modes. Not only are fan favorite modes missing, but the ones we do get are not feature complete. If you can deal with only having a few modes, then NHL 15 is well worth buying, but the lack of variation is sure to become an issue over time.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

Our Scoring Policy

Review code provided by publisher.

The post NHL 15 Review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

At this point, a day or two after launch, there’s not much point introducing you to the “most pre-ordered non-sequel ever”, or explaining why our review is going to be so late (everyone’s is, such is life). Instead, I’m just going to share my impressions as they stand so far, to be updated as I play more.

Those who are still yet to take the plunge and buy Bungie’s sci-fi shooter-cum-RPG will likely only have one question on their minds: does it live up to the hype? Although I’ve a long way to go before I can answer that fully, the short answer is no, not really.

Before you click away, allow me to explain. Firstly: the ridiculous hype surrounding Destiny is so potent and powerful that nothing could ever hope to live up to it, and, secondly: I said “not really”, so it’s not a complete dismissal.

The biggest problem so far is an almost complete lack of context. We know that it’s set in the far distant future, and that the story follows the coming of the Traveller, a huge moon-sized entity whose arrival catapulted human knowledge forward a few centuries. Having established colonies on Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Moon (that we know of), humanity was brought to its knees by the Darkness, the antithesis of the Traveller, who wiped out almost all life on Earth for reasons unknown. You’re a Guardian, a mortal vessel for the “light of the Traveller”, born to fight the Darkness, recently resurrected by a Ghost, a little AI that serves the Traveller in an unknown capacity.

“Unknown” is a word that will crop up a lot in writings about Destiny. What is the Traveller? Unknown. Why does the Darkness hunt it? Unknown. What is a Ghost? Unknown. What is an Awoken (one of the selectable races)? Unknown, unknown, unknown. Destiny seems to delight in telling you bugger all. You were brought back to life, but why? If you’re so special and unique, why are there hundreds, nay thousands, of other Guardians doing the same as you? Destiny throws questions at you with every minute that passes, so frequently that you start to long for those usually-hated lore entries in other RPGs. It’s almost a form of trolling, creating a huge world for you to explore and be awed by, then leaving you scratching your head.

But it’s early days, and the story is slowly divulging more and more details, it’s just a shame Bungie aren’t more willing to show off their new universe and let us in fully. That said, Destiny does balance such blindfolding with quality in other areas.

For a start, the gunplay is bloody good. Obviously, being developed by the creators of Halo raises a certain level of expectation that was always going to be daunting, but Destiny holds its own. There aren’t a great many enemies so far (the Hive and the Fallen are all I’ve met up until now although I know others are coming), but the AI is mostly solid. When you consider that the Halo franchise is home to some of the best AI in the genre, it seems a little disappointing that the enemy behaviour in Destiny isn’t always particularly smart. They cover and retreat well enough, but will occasionally degenerate into simply running back and forth while shooting at you.

Luckily, the weaponry is excellent. Guns pack a real kick, and the Guardians have enough skills and tricks to stop firefights becoming dull. In fact, the underdeveloped story and lifeless hub (the Tower is ok, but somewhat empty and pale when juxtaposed with the vast, twinkling city far below it that you can’t visit) are forgotten when the bullets start flying. Gun barrels flare with a satisfying whip-crack, each class’s special ability flashes and sparks and blossoms with a sense of real power and, if it all goes wrong, summoning your Star Wars-like Sparrow speeder and getting the hell out of trouble is just as thrilling as hurling yourself into a fight.

But while running around alone is fun, it’s when you cross paths with others that Destiny really starts to sing. Whether dipping into the Crucible (comfortably re-balanced since the beta), joining three-man fireteams or simply running into battle with a giant walking tank alongside a bunch of other Guardians in a Defiance-style public event, Destiny is a game designed for enjoying together.

While it’s still far too early to fully and fairly judge Bungie’s game, at this moment I can safely say that it’s shaping up nicely. There are issues that may or may not straighten themselves out, and concerns with the story and variety of content, but I don’t think Destiny is in any danger of being overly short or particularly disappointing.

I’ve yet to explore other worlds (so far I’ve only seen the moon and Earth in around seven to eight hours of play and exploration) and I haven’t put that much time into PvP or co-op yet (I’ll explore that in the next instalment), but it’s fair to say that Bungie’s biggest hurdle is a wall of their own making – a mountain of hype that no game in history could realistically surmount. As a result, it’s hard not to feel just slightly underwhelmed, despite Destiny’s obvious quality, beauty and scale.

We’ll update this article as we play further, leading to an eventual full review – published as a separate article.

The post Destiny Review in Progress appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Flockers is instantly recognisable, for a variety of reasons. The latest puzzler from veteran developer Team 17 is an attempt to bring the maniacal spirit and gameplay of Lemmings to the new generation. Take away the Lemmings and replace them with sheep, is that what we have here? Well, not exactly…

Ah, Lemmings, what a classic. I remember Lemmings very fondly, those green haired suicidal cuties (as for many people) were a part of my gaming education. So it was with great enthusiasm that I picked up Team 17’s take on this classic game mechanic. Before I get too ahead of myself, let me explain what to expect for the uninitiated. Flockers takes place in a 2D environment, with your job being to guide a heard of zombie minded, endlessly walking sheep to safety. Always wanted to be a shepherd? Well here’s your chance.

Your flock of sheep will vary in size from level to level, dropping from the stage entrance ready for you to help them on their way. Those of you familiar with this brand of A-to-B puzzling will find the powers you can afford to your sheep familiar. You can make them jump, stop, stand on each other’s shoulders, and build stairs for their woolly friends. Team 17’s heritage comes into play with the addition of the Super Sheep power. All sheep lucky enough to get this power will don a fetching red cape and have the ability to fly up vertical structures. There is one more power on offer from the get go, which, though not new, leads me to one of Flockers more unexpected features: the exploding sheep power. This can be used to detonate one of your flock and clear obstacles, and also showers the environment in a spray of blood and sheep entrails.

The first time you pick up Flockers, it will only be a few seconds before you see your first massacre, with the screaming, desperate sheep tumbling onto an array of deadly implements. Buzz-saws, spikes, and gravity itself are all waiting to claim the lives of your flock. Where Flockers really excels is with the intricate level design, as each level progressively provides more of a challenge than the last. It’s not just a case (as with previous titles Flockers borrows from) of building bridges and getting from A to B, Flockers requires far more thought than that, especially if you want to finish the level with a respectable number of your flock still intact.

Your flock will unwittingly walk over buttons that trigger traps, and it’s up to you to come up with ways to avoid them. Sacrifice a sheep, or two, or three? Do it once , maybe twice, but suddenly your back is up against the wall and you only have one exploding sheep left. Getting your timing right is crucial if you are to avoid a bloody mess, especially when you have two distinct flocks of sheep plodding around the level, having come out of two different level entrances. This isn’t a game for the easily deterred. Those who persevere will try to get three stars on every level, as points are earned by the number of sheep saved and the amount of time left on the clock.

Flockers’ steampunk art style lends itself well to some of the more complex level’s set pieces. Your flock of sheep will find themselves riding on gloriously constructed vehicles that have the sort of throwaway charm seen in LittleBigPlanet. Your journey through Flockers will take you through three distinct worlds, from the steampunk beginnings, to lush farmyard inspired fields, and all the way to the desert. Most of the levels are constructed out of bits of old pipe and rusty tools, with the sheep looking most at home in the grassy surroundings of the second world. Flockers is a charming beast to look at, if a little unspectacular. Worms fans should look out for a few familiar artefacts, too.

Where would a Team 17 game be without an array of ludicrous sound effects? Flockers comes fully loaded with the sort of audio we have come to expect, that being absolutely class. A moody soundtrack gets lost behind a wall of visceral chainsaws, sheep squeals and general chaos. Delightful.

Flockers comes with nearly seventy levels to navigate your way through, with the challenge of achieving a three star score on all of them likely to take even the best players to the edge of their sanity. There a number of unlockable, and quite dashing, sheep to unlock, and online leaderboards if that is your thing. There is no question that the challenge will put off the less patient player, and my attention was beginning to waver dramatically at just past the half way point, as there really isn’t much the game does differently to keep things feeling fresh throughout – and this is a key point, if you can’t concentrate, you can’t possibly hope to save any of your flock.

VERDICT: Flockers is a welcome new IP from Team 17. How lovely it must have been to work on something different after so many years of putting out Worms sequels. Flockers brings new life to the A to B puzzler, with its use of new age tech and brilliant level design making it a must see for fans of the genre, and a great place to start for those who have never seen a Lemming with green hair.

GOOD. A game that scores 7/10 is worthy of note, but unworthy of fanfare. It does many things well, but only a few of them incredibly well and, despite a handful of good qualities, fresh ideas and solid mechanics, it fails to overwhelm.

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The Orochi series is a combination of several of Koei’s other franchises, but where, say, Dynasty Warriors is loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Orochi takes place in a separate dimension and pits you against a demon threat. The “Ultimate” tag comes from the fact that this is the third re-release of Warriors Orochi 3, with a slew of new features and characters.

My first impression was much as I expected. You run around a battlefield, smashing square until everything on screen is dead, occasionally hitting R1 for a special attack. “Enjoyable,” I thought, “but a bit simplistic.” Take some time, though, and the nuances of Orochi grow on you. First up are the characters, of which you pick three to take into battle and switch on the fly. There are nearly 150 to choose from, although they are unlocked over the course of the campaign, and each has their own fighting style and special moves: some are quick, some have a long range, others have a knockback that buys you some space to manoeuvre.

Switching character in combat triggers a special power, contextually offensive or defensive, and there’s a rudimentary combo system as well, using triangle alongside square to dance through crowds of enemies. It’s rare that you’ll stop moving, and your kill count from each battle will regularly top 1,000. When not using your other team members they’ll retreat to heal, but you can get them to fight by your side by hitting down on the d-pad.

All of the above combine to create a solid core of fun, trying out different characters and combinations, before you add in the different weapon upgrades you can find or buy for all of them and the mini-bosses that dot the levels and require a bit more thought to defeat. Occasionally you’ll have to wrestle with the camera to focus back on the action, and boss fights can become a little chaotic – losing your target in the mass of bodies on screen is commonplace – but overall it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

The story mode sees you travelling back in time to recruit members for your army to tackle the demon menace – in the starting timeline they have all perished in the war by this point. It’s a little silly, but easy enough to follow. All the voice acting is in the original Japanese, and happily the translation job in the subtitles makes sense. The exposition during battles isn’t great though, as you’ve no time to read subtitles while ploughing through a press of bodies. This is even more of a shame because Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate makes use of the controller’s speaker to deliver dialogue – something I’m surprised hasn’t been done before – adding a layer of 3D into the audio. It sounds weird, but it’s a great feature.

As well as obtaining weapon upgrades, characters level up as you use them, increasing damage and speed, for instance. This could threaten to unbalance things, forcing you to use the same team as they are higher levelled, but spare points are accrued during each battle and can be used to level up any character of your choosing, freeing you to experiment with your team. And while the level cap may be 100, you can reset it back to 1 for a permanent bonus to that character, encouraging replayability.

Duel mode has you pick three characters and use them to fight another team of three. It’s almost a pseudo fighting game but, with only two fighters squaring off against each other in an arena, it highlights the looseness of Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate’s attacks and the camera difficulties tied to them: it’s just too hard to focus on one opponent.

Other modes include Shin Musou mode, which allows you to create your own scenarios on maps cleared in the campaign and upload them for other players to enjoy, and Unlimited mode, in which you use a five man team to clear a multi-levelled dungeon. In truth none of them are as enjoyable to play as the story mode, but experience and weapons earned from them can be brought back into your campaign game. For good measure, two player co-op is supported in most modes either locally or online, with the second player controlling another member of your team, or the other fighter in Duel mode.

As this is an updated version of a last-gen game, you won’t be surprised to learn that it won’t push the limits of your new console. Enemies – of which there can be up to 150 on-screen at a time thanks to the new hardware – are identically stamped from a handful of molds, and the stages aren’t visually arresting, although the playable characters are nicely detailed.

VERDICT: I’m sure fans will need no convincing to pick this up, but as someone new to Musou battle games I found this an excellent entry point. Getting a rhythm going as you charge across the battlefield can be quite hypnotic, and while it is easy for anyone to pick up and play, mastering it will take much, much longer.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Did you ever play Theme Hospital? Who am I kidding, of course you did, it’s brilliant. Surgeon Simulator feels a lot like you’re controlling one of the doctors in that late 90’s classic. A patient needs a heart transplant? You just need to rip open his chest cavity, pull everything out and fling a new one in! Left your watch inside of him? No matter, he wanted a new ticker anyway! Ha ha ha.

For those of you who don’t know, Surgeon Simulator: Anniversary Edition is the PS4 version of last year’s PC game. You control a hand, using a variety of surgical tools to complete various operations without killing your patient.

While it could be a bleak training game, Surgeon Simulator instead goes down the comedy route, with ungainly controls making your life as difficult as possible. Your disembodied hand is rotated either with motion control or the right stick, moved around with the left and lowered with L2. R1 meanwhile grasps with the forefinger and thumb, whilst R2 closes the remaining fingers.

Operations have you clumsily grabbing scalpels, bone-saws, lasers etc. and transplanting various organs into and out of your unfortunate patient without him loosing to much blood. Along the way you can accidentally drug yourself by touching a syringe, drop vital equipment on the floor or in the patient, and even electrocute yourself.

It has all the trappings of a comedic game, and you’ll giggle the first few times you play it, but the novelty soon wears off. The line between fun and frustration is a tight one in games such as this, and unfortunately Surgeon Simulator crosses it far too often.

Wrestling with the controls is kind of the point – there would be no challenge otherwise, so it’s hard to pick on that as a flaw – but the system is tied to incredibly specific points on each organ that can be cut. Bone isn’t so bad – in fact you can see lines separating the sections it will break into if you look close enough – but removing the large intestine in the kidney operation requires you to cut two points that are slightly darker than the rest. It’s a level of finesse that is almost impossible to pull off, particularly when you can’t change the angle of the scalpel you’re using.

Your arm further compounds things, completely obscuring lower sections you need to cut, making the entire thing guesswork, and I had to restart one level because the replacement organ I dropped in fell the wrong way round and I had no way to flip it over. Most operations – at least the first few times – devolve into aimlessly mangling the patient’s insides with something sharp to find the points that can be cut, before reattempting on a “serious” run.

Later stages replay the same handful of operations, but in different environments – a corridor, the back of an ambulance and even in space – adding a bit of longevity, but by that point you have seen all that Surgeon Simulator: Anniversary Edition has to offer. Each successful operation is ranked and timed, though I doubt you’ll want to go back.

At least it looks okay, and the music suits it down to a tee, but it does nothing to show off the power of your PS4. It’s also surprisingly buggy; items glitch through your hand regularly, or just fall out even when you have a solid grip.

VERDICT: Surgeon Simulator: Anniversary Edition is a one trick pony, and once you’ve played through the first operation enough times to complete it you’ll have stopped laughing. The controls err on frustrating far too often, and while deliberately clumsy, the entire system is too inconsistent to provide much fun.

POOR. Games tagged 4/10 will be playable, perhaps even enjoyable, but will be let down by a slew of negative elements that undermine their quality and value. Best avoided by any but hardcore genre fans.

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Beginning life as a PS Mini, the original Velocity garnered such an adoring audience that it came to the Vita as a fully fledged title. FuturLab took the concept and added important touches to put the age-old concept of the shoot ‘em up into the hands of the modern-day gamer. Velocity 2X expands on those ideas and, even with a few hiccups along the way, produces a title worthy of adulation.

As Lt. Kai Tana, you are awoken on an operating table by the chattering of two unknown figures that have captured you after crashing your spacecraft, the Quarp Jet. With the help of new ally Ralan, you escape from the clutches of your captors and attempt to free the Jintinda from the imprisonment of the Vokh. By traversing the galaxy, picking up Jintinda scientists and collecting Rekenium crystals, Tana vows to free Ralan’s people from the Vokh’s incarceration and return to her homeland. We’ve seen many space tales like Velocity 2X before, but the lack of personality in the protagonist and her right-hand man make flicking through the short sequences before levels a chore. The art design in these story stills is beautiful, but sadly that doesn’t take away from the mundanity of the narrative.

Like the wonderful art direction in the pre-level story scenes, the frenetic gameplay of Velocity 2X is made all the more enjoyable by the wonderful pigmentation being thrown in your face. Like a fireworks display on the 31st December, explosions are happening all around you and you may find yourself gawping in awe at your telly. While the story fails to grab the imagination, visually, it’s inspired.

Velocity 2X is a spacecraft shoot ‘em up first, and getting behind the controls of the physics-defying Jet is a joy. Unlike your regular vertical scrolling shooter where it’s as simple as sending everything that moves to an early grave and reaching the finish line, Velocity 2X sees players having to teleport their way to their goal… on top of sending everything that moves to an early grave, of course. Each map will vary in its complexity, with some courses requiring you to pass through walls and that’s where you must utilise your teleportation capabilities. Holding square will allow you to use an aiming reticule and thrust your ship into another area, with ease. In the same way the Quarp Jet’s maiden voyage was a joy, the ship sections are bliss. Accelerating through space with an effortlessly maneuverable craft and downing the array of adversaries is as satisfying as pretty much anything you’ll play this year.

Many of the maps will require you to unlock gated areas by deactivating numbered switches along the way. By shooting them with your front-facing laser, or hurling bombs in their direction, you can advance past the once fatal blockade. This is also where Telepods come into play. At any particular point in a level, you can drop a marker you can return to at any point in that specific stage. As you progress, more elaborate levels will require deeper thought and extensive planning via the available map, because of deviating paths. This introduces a puzzle-like element and breaks up the play between more straightforward, aggressive action and a more measured approach.

The big addition to the series is Lt. Kai Tana’s desire to get out of her spaceship and attack the situation on-foot. FuturLab deserve a lot of credit for creating a platforming portion of Velocity 2X that is just as strong as the shmup element, bar one mechanic that slows gameplay to a snail’s pace and ultimately kills the enjoyment of certain levels. For the most part, Tana controls like the Quarp Jet. The twitch style gameplay works well in the parts where the Lieutenant is annihilating the Vokh with her rifle and features such as teleporting also transfer over with ease. However, where it all falls down is when you have to employ the Telepod technique.

Certain areas require Tana to fire a spherical telepod at a wall, so it bounces up to a higher platform that cannot be reached merely by leaping onto it. By holding Triangle, an aiming arc will appear on screen to dictate the throw of your telepod. This arc will also show the trajectory of the ‘pod after it bounces off an object, giving you an idea of where it’ll end up. In theory, it’s interesting, but the execution kills all momentum. In Velocity 2X, as the name would suggest, speed is paramount and platforming stages come to a screeching halt when Tana attempts to place a telepod in the location of her choosing. Aiming demands an uncomfortable amount of time due to it being so loose, and trying to fine-tune your throw is as frustrating as anything I’ve come across in recent memory. Stalling of this magnitude can hinder a potentially fantastic time on a level and see you picking up a silver medal rather than the much coveted gold.

Replayability is here in spades, though. You’ll eventually have to replay levels to gain more XP in order to unlock later levels anyway, but you’ll want to – it’s not a chore. XP is doled out for stellar showings in your recorded time, high numbers of Jintinda rescued (which appear as floating blue objects), the number of pink Rekenium crystals collected and your high score from eradicating enemies. Velocity 2X is incredibly moreish and you’ll find yourself constantly going back, repeating stages over and over until you’ve driven yourself up the leaderboards.

Another new aspect to this installment of the series is the inclusion of boss fights. These are excellently laid out and are certainly not just thrown in for the hell of it. At the very beginning, it’ll seem like a spray of bullets is all you need, but these boss battles are not cookie cutter. Some incorporate switches, some incorporate both flying and platforming – and they’re all terrific.

VERDICT: Velocity 2X is a sequel that takes the original idea and expands on it. Unlike a lot of follow-ups, though, it has added a whole new way to play the game. The greatest triumph is in how the spacecraft gameplay and platforming sections feel similar in parts, while also retaining some individuality. It’s disappointing that a number of factors cause Velocity 2X to experience a little turbulence, because generally, it’s a great flight.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Until now, the only moral dilemma in relation to pinball took place in California’s Bay Area, where the popular arcade staple was inexplicably banned by Oakland authorities, who believed it to be a youth-corrupting force of gambling evil. But that eighty-year old ban was recently lifted, and now we have this mind-blowing new virtual table based on the first season of Telltale’s Walking Dead, that gem of branching moral choices and harrowing zombie heartbreak.

Whether you have played the source material or not, the claustrophobia and cloying sense of fear and desperation are obvious in The Walking Dead. You undertake missions based on key moments from the original game, each of them involving a crushing decision to make – involving such doozies as choosing whether or not to reveal that infected bite, or deciding which person to leave behind. In pinball terms, these “missions” of course translate to the table by setting targets to hit, combos to rack up, or locking down balls – but there are also some other cool touches like an excellent sniper section that employs use of the flippers, face buttons and touch screen to pick off “walkers” in the distance.

The table is beautifully designed, too. There are some wonderful, wonderful moments – like the crushingly poignant minigame that sees the ball transformed into a football (of the soccer variety) and a task that involves Lee breaking up the continuous undead horror by having a kickabout with the kids. Sound effects and music are ripped straight out of the original game, with some new voice acting thrown into the mix to boot. The music is eerie, atmospheric and perfectly measured, and sounds particularly ace when played on your Vita through a set of half decent headphones. Yet again the physics, the wealth of options, the cross-platform play, everything is just sickeningly spot-on.

Never the most obvious inspiration for some flipper-on-ball action, the dark and sombre world of Clementine and Lee is nonetheless transferred effortlessly into the realms of Zen Pinball. Fans of the game Godisageek nominated as our GOTY will love this clever companion piece and be hoping for a similar treatment for Season 2. Everyone else will love this fine table for what it is, and probably get a craving for sampling the inspiration, the same way our zombie buddies crave braaaaaains.

VERDICT: We are starting to sound like a broken record here, but Zen’s mastery and understanding of both table design and expert use of a license put them right up there with the best that gaming 2014 has to offer. There are so many more gaming worlds for Zen to conquer, and we look forward to pinging a shiny silver ball through as many of them as possible.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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September is about to roll around once again which can only mean one thing: football season is back. The pads are being readied, the playbooks are finalized, and the players are ready to show us what they can do. But it wouldn’t be the start of a new season without the release of a new Madden game, so step forward Madden NFL 15.

The major new features this year revolve around the defense. In previous years, playing defense was a fairly uninteresting, as tackling involved running into a player, as did trying to break through the line to the QB. Basically, the majority of defense involved running into players. This year, however, things are different. New tackling mechanics, a new defensive camera, and a way of quickly reacting to the snap makes defense enjoyable.

Instantly noticeable are the changes to the defensive new tackle cone. When in control of a defensive player, a green highlighted cone will show the area where they can tackle in front of them. This makes judging the right moment to tackle a lot easier: now you have no excuse for missing the game winning dive at an opponent. The reworked tackle mechanics also give you the option to go for conservative or aggressive tackles. A conservative tackle is more likely to bring down an opponent, but aggressive tackles can possibly cause a fumble, and they look much more impressive.

The slightly updated physics engine also helps with tackling, as they now appear more realistic – as does dodging tackles. But that’s not to say the tackling is perfect, and there have been a couple of times where the slightest bit of contact has resulted in to tip to the floor, or being allowed to run through a tackle that shouldn’t have been possible. Speaking of the physics engine, the often hilarious post play pile ups are still present, but aren’t quite as bad as previous years.

A new off the line pass rush mechanic has also been introduced to give the defense a slight edge. Pressing R2 (on PS4) as the ball is snapped will result in a quick first step giving the defense an advantage against blockers. Mistime the button press and the offense will take the advantage. It’s not easy to time the press on every play, but it’s certainly worth the risk, as hitting it perfectly will usually result in a very strong defensive play.

Other defensive additions include a new camera; which stares down at the QB from a defensive perspective, some new pass rush moves to beat blockers, and new animations and logic to try and combat the slightly overpowered running QB’s from Madden 25. All of these additions make for the most realistic, and more importantly, fun-to-play defensive experience in any Madden game.

Elsewhere the play calling system has been overhauled to make it much easier to navigate. The new coach suggestions of plays on both the offensive and defensive will give you three plays that could feasibly work in the current situation. Some suggestions are based on what the opposite team is likely to do, what other players have called in similar situations and what some of your favorite plays are. The new system is sure to make life a lot easier for new players, who don’t even have to think about the play too much. For experienced fans who want to select the exact play, it’s still possible, and a better menu layout makes selecting the play a lot smoother.

The offensive side of the ball has remained largely unchanged. A few areas have been slightly tightened up, and the improved defensive AI makes everything seem more realistic.

In terms of game modes there is the standard play now and online head to head modes you would expect, along with Madden Ultimate Team and Connected Franchise. MUT has been slightly reworked to focus more on your starting team (and not about reserves), but other than that remains largely unchanged. It’s a similar story for connected franchise. The biggest new feature here is the addition of confidence to players. The higher the player’s confidence; the better they will perform. New coaching drills allow you to boost confidence or XP – some are interactive mini training scenarios, whereas other are just a case of pushing a button to improve.

Visually, Madden 15 is very impressive. Players, uniforms, and the environments all look great and react realistically, showing the extra power of the new machines. Unfortunately, the crowd remains fairly poor, but it’s not exactly a game breaking issue.

The TV style presentation returns, and continues to work fairly well. The stat graphics, half time report, and player comparisons all add to the production value, but it is let down by the sub-par commentary team who love to say it was a close incomplete pass when you spike the ball intentionally.

VERDICT: The defensive improvements make playing defense fun for the first time in quite a while. The improved tackling offers more challenge and choice while the guessing of the snap gives you something to work at when pass rushing. No longer does it feel like you are waiting for an offensive mistake, it actually feels like you can make an impact defensively. The tightening up of other systems on the pitch make Madden 15 perhaps the most simulation like entry in the series, it’s still not perfect but it’s very close. Overall, Madden NFL 15 is a great game. There are a few niggling issues (such as the still slightly dodgy physics), but the impact they have on the game is tiny.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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Despite focussing entirely on Fetch as the playable character, Sucker Punch have failed to correct the most grievous error from inFamous Second Son: the characters. You see, in Second Son she was a one-note character, used as a vehicle for the personality-vacuum that was Delsin to get his rocks off, and make inappropriate comments toward. Here, she’s portrayed as a silly girl, for yet more people to hit on and use for their gain. Being the most powerful person (we’re talking super powers, here) you’d think that as Fetch grows, she becomes more feared – yet she only becomes the victim of scorn and more threats.

Throughout the entire game it’s hammered home how badly she needs the man in her life, because he keeps her centred. This, unfortunately, means that although she has a million times more character than Delsin, she doesn’t really feel like the star of her own game – which is a real shame, and no amount of cheeky quips can save that.

Revisiting inFamous Second Son’s redesigned Seattle, now tweaked for Fetch and her neon powers, feels great, though. A streamlined approach due to Fetch’s singular power-base means that overall it’s more fun to navigate, and the activities are simply better. The graffiti mini-game returns (as do random good guy activities), but it’s less laborious, and new side-quests like the races are just excellent entertainment. Where Delsin’s Seattle focuses more on absorbing the abilities of others, Fetch just has neon, so there are small pockets of neon gas dotted around that speed her up. These are everywhere, and are a necessity if you want to get the Lumens, which is how you upgrade your abilities. Run through a pocket of neon and you can jump higher to grab that out of reach Lumen.

In fact, the races invoke strong memories of Crackdown, as you chase a fleeing Lumen and must catch it before it escapes. It’s excellent, and helps the feeling that this Seattle really is Fetch’s playground.  In fact, the focus on neon just makes everything better. The fact you are upgrading a single power means you generally get more out of it. It was the best power in Second Son, and First Light proves it.

Unfortunately, the story just isn’t on par with the rest of the game – again. Shifting between the events right before Second Son, and a period two years earlier (Fetch’s origin story, really) there are inconsistencies. It’s all a little obvious, and I couldn’t help feeling like I missed the Sucker Punch who genuinely shocked me in that first inFamous’ ending. The moral choice idea has been removed from First Light, which also lends to a stronger narrative.

The current day activity is merely a vehicle to teach you the game mechanics, and to introduce the new battle arena. This is a place where you can try your best in various challenges to attempt to top the leaderboards. In a nice touch, these are playable as Delsin if you own Second Son, and they’re a great idea, adding longevity to the four to five hours it’ll take you to complete the story, depending on which difficulty you play on.

Weirdly, in the present day section, you also learn a new skill which is unlocked to play in the past. As a narrative conceit, that just doesn’t work. It’s a tried and tested idea to lock powers away from you during the early game, but that first time it just seems odd.

The best part is that the missions feel varied due to the shorter running time. Of course it is combat-heavy, but even the melee action is far better. I’d strongly recommend you quickly upgrade your focus ability, as that means you can zoom in and slow the action down while you pick off the weak points. It all adds up to feeling somehow very satisfying. One minute you’ll be sniping bad guys to protect a target, the next you’re attacking vans to destroy their content. It’s not chalk and cheese, but it’s nice to not just be gunning folk down.

Unlike Second Son, First Light doesn’t ask you to take ownership of territories to reduce DUP presence. In fact, the first half only mentions the DUP, and is better for it. The rapid movement of DUP conduits means that the combat isn’t without frustration, but their late arrival means it’s only after the halfway mark that First Light falters slightly, because it’s otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

VERDICT: As with Second Son before it, First Light is stunning to look at, and has a wonderful soundtrack, which is hidden for true fanatics to search out and enjoy. The addition of challenges that reward trying different things is excellent, and the battle arena is a solid idea, executed well.

It feels odd to say it, but I actually prefer First Light to Second Son. The shorter run-time and more direct story could have reduced the feeling of freedom, but instead it benefits almost every area of the game. As a standalone product, its low price and superb gameplay means that it’s definitely recommended.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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If there’s one thing the Metro series is exceptionally good at, it’s creating atmosphere. Where so many games fall flat is where 4A Games’ post-apocalyptic shooter soars, moulding a deeply oppressive and hopelessly grim game world out of rusted iron and flickering lights, and swathing it all in a cloak of shadows and fear. It forces you – in the weary boots of young protagonist Artyom – to not only exist within its sombre, sepulchral world, but to survive in it, an altogether less simple task.

2009’s Metro 2033 came out of nowhere, delivering a bleak, cold-hearted adventure set in a post-nuclear world where the survivors huddle together in the blackness of the underground Metro system, struggling to get by while facing off against surface radiation, mutated beasts, a Nazi resurgence and the enigmatic Dark Ones. It didn’t get everything right: the overall experience was let down at times by its unrelenting grimness, inconsistent checkpointing, difficulty spikes and a general lack of polish. Last year’s sequel, Metro: Last Light, went a long way to correcting the mistakes made by its predecessor, rocking a new engine and improved enemy AI.

Now bundled together as one entity, Metro Redux offers both games and all the DLC for PC and the new generation of consoles. While Last Light remains largely unchanged (and you can read our review of that game, here), 2033 has undergone some serious improvements. The entire game has been rebuilt with the sequel’s superior engine, taking care of the ropey visuals and bringing it in-line with the series’ high point. As a result, Artyom’s world is now even more terrifying, but feels more alive and organic – and that wonderful, frightening atmosphere is even more palpable.

The UI has been redesigned, too, and now matches Last Light’s improved interface in every way. Playing the games back to back, it’s hard to tell the difference, although Last Light still looks the superior offering in terms of aesthetics. Across both games, 4A have introduced several new animations (most notably, the new up-close kills) and have tightened up on things like enemy movement and ally AI. The sound remains the same, however, but then the mostly solid voice-work and stellar sound design wasn’t in need of an overhaul anyway. It all pales in comparison to the incredible lighting effects, though, which prove once again that 4A Games could show Starbreeze a thing or two about effective use of shadow.

Looks aside, the real differences between the two games are found in the gameplay itself. For a start, Last Light has more vehicle sections per square foot than 2033, while the first game simply feels less focused, and the sections between your forays into the darkness seem a little emptier. Luckily, the gunplay is excellent. Rusty old guns and battered blades are the order of the day, but they can all be upgraded and improved as you go. Bullets come in two forms in the world of Metro: the standard, practical kind and the higher-quality, more powerful variety, which also act as the main currency. Much more valuable than Fallout 3’s disposable bottle caps, forcing you to choose between spending bullets on essential gear or using them to defend against the demonic denizens of Moscow’s underground is a masterstroke, upping the stakes and turning what could have been a simple shooter experience into a real survival horror in one subtle move.

2033’s early game is a harrowing nightmare, as you slowly uncover clues to Artyom’s singular destiny and face off against the darkness with sub-standard weaponry and a measly flashlight. Bullets have little impact at this point, and stingy checkpoints can breed frustration – especially when coupled with unpredictable enemy behaviour and Metro’s habit of suddenly hurling monsters at you. It’s less of a problem in Last Light, but the difficulty may still prove an occasional stumbling block to newcomers.

Expeditions to the surface and into sudden radiation hotspots add an extra layer of fear, as your gasmask becomes your best friend. The filters are finite, however, as is the power of your flashlight. There’s always a background worry nagging at your mind that you’re going to lose one of both of them at any moment, either plunging you into darkness or leaving you choking to death on your knees as the mutants close in. Resource management is just as essential as a good aim.

What makes both games so compelling is the air of mystery underpinning the action. Uncovering the truth behind the Dark Ones and piecing together Artyom’s fate provides a powerful hook to swing you from one haunted tunnel and intense firefight to the next; that this world is faithfully based on a series of novels (by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky) is as apparent here as it is in CD Projeckt RED’s Witcher games. The world feels old and vital and, more importantly, full, as though there’s always something to discover around every corner and in every abandoned tin shack.

A host of game modes promote replayability and make up for the lack of a multiplayer mode. The two main experiences are Ranger and Spartan, the former a more survival-focused mode with limited resources; the latter closer to a traditional FPS, giving you extra ammo and gasmask filters and putting less onus on conservation and careful planning. Beyond that, different sub-difficulties offer greater challenge. Hardcore mode is the most intriguing and, frankly, masochistic. This removes the HUD completely, even going so far as to stop you being able to select weapons from the menu, and forces you to rely on your watch and compass to navigate and survive. You can’t even see quick-time events, which is utterly terrifying when a mutant gets hold of you. Some will argue that this is the purest way to play, but it’s not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

VERDICT: Even if you played the original releases, Metro Redux is still an attractive proposition. The improvements to 2033 are substantial, while the more minor tweaks to Last Light simply refine a fantastic experience. In one package, these games together offer a huge amount of gameplay and one of the most arresting game-worlds you’ll ever see in a shooter. If, on the other hand, you’ve never delved into Glukhovsky’s subterranean nightmare, Redux is more than worth the asking price.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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On the surface, Counterspy appears to ape recent Metroidvania-style games like Shadow Complex and Blackgate, offering a 2.5D world to run through, shoot up and explore in little bite-sized chunks. While it certainly shares similarities with the genre, Dynamighty have made clear efforts to distance their game from the crop. For the most part they’ve succeeded, but sometimes originality can be a bit of a double-edged sword.

You see, Counterspy’s levels are short, procedurally-generated missions that have you moving from one end of a grid of rooms to the other, collecting launch codes, blueprints, formulas, and cash as you go. Every level harbours a load of hidden collectibles and plenty of enemies to stealth by or murder as you see fit. The biggest problem this set-up poses is that once a level is done, no matter what you may have missed, you can’t go back. There’s no gearing up and re-treading your steps when you can reach new areas, no way of going back and hoovering up what you missed. Instead, any blueprints or launch plans you didn’t get are reshuffled and repurposed for the next mission. The thrill of exploration and discovery is still present, but it feels less progressive.

The story puts you in control of a world class spy working for C.O.U.N.T.E.R, a global intelligence network. As two superpowers (essentially the US and Russia, circa the Cold War) fight over nuclear launch codes that will trigger a world war, you must infiltrate their various bases and misappropriate the codes yourself to avert a worldwide catastrophe.

You do this by slinking through each mission and reaching the terminal at the end, being careful at all times to avoid raising the DefCon level. Triggering cameras, upsetting guards and generally being an utter bufoon will all increase your DefCon level, increasing the number of guards and making them more likely to see and hear you. If you do get into trouble, hitting circle will slam your agent into cover, whereupon you can lean out like any other cover shooter and engage the bad guys in a shoot-out, or use your silenced pistol to perforate their heads all stealthy like. Points are awarded for pretty much everything, and go towards your online leaderboard placement.

Finding blueprints will unlock new guns to buy in the store, from shotguns to rocket launchers, while collecting chemical formulas allows you to brew performance enhancing elixirs between missions, which award special buffs like reduced camera effectiveness and a lower DefCon level upon mission start. It’s nothing overly complicated, but it is nice to unlock increasingly powerful kit as you play. Counterspy’s no-nonsense approach to level design is a breath of fresh air, though you may occasionally find yourself wishing for more complexity. That said, the randomised nature means things tend not to get boring – though more hazards and varied enemies would have been welcome.

Aesthetically, it’s a striking game. Geometric shapes and bold colours make for a beautiful presentation, and the pay-off of long loading times between missions is a smooth, fluid experience as you roll, sneak, and leap around the relatively small levels.

VERDICT: Counterspy is a solid game that makes up for a lack of immediate depth with solid over-the-shoulder combat, competent stealth and randomised levels. The collectible buzz might be tempered slightly by the lack of any real Shadow Complex-style character progression, but there’s still loads to look for and plenty of reasons to explore – and it’s gorgeous to look at, too.

Arguably a better fit for the Vita than the larger consoles, the cross-save function negates any need for favouritism and allows you to continue your fight against tyranny wherever you are. Humorous and well-designed, Counterspy is certainly worth investigating if you like your espionage in short, fast-paced chunks.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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There has always been a strong case that gaming should be considered an art form, as opposed to a mere recreational entertainment media. History is chequered with moments where titles have transcended their intended purpose and crossed over to be far more than just gameplay. Developers have never been more bold, brave and creative – giving us experiences that straddle the worlds of music, sensory immersion and artistic endeavour. It is an exciting time to be alive, if you are looking for something more than convention; something to get lost in.

Hohokum is the latest treat to ride this wonderfully artsy zeitgeist, and is another oblique, abstract charmer. It is another example of design that refuses to conform to accepted gaming norms. The structure is free-flowing, with no guidance or hand-holding. All you know is that you are in charge of piloting a swirling, snake-like entity through what is initially an inky darkness. Interacting with rune-like objects in the blackness trigger bursts of vivid colour and affect the superb soundtrack. You soon work out that by touching certain points, or swimming your way through certain areas of the ether, further serpentine pals reveal themselves and join your avatar, each one a different hue, eventually forming a squiggling, ever-moving, aesthetically pleasing formation.

For long periods you will find yourself enjoying the precision controls, the way you can alter the velocity of your movement, the way that tilting the analogue sticks create eye-popping patterns and thrilling changes of direction. When things happen they are genuinely surprising; the world you are thrown into does not reveal its secrets easily, and there is no way of predicting what will happen next. And just when you think that you are confined to the initial light/dark mechanic of the initial area, you begin to discover portals to new dimensions, and things become even more compulsive and spellbinding.

It becomes apparent that linking up with your fellow swirling, kite-like friends is the aim of Hohokum, but you are not alone in the seventeen different worlds, and have to interact with all manner of denizens along the way. Oddball characters ride upon your trail, seeking assistance for their own problems which then grant access to your unlockable snakey pals. You become embroiled in such diverse tasks as building a rollercoaster, working on a farm, seeking out collectibles, trying to initiate cloudbursting explosions of technicolour polka-dots, altering the palette and indeed the very fabric of the world you inhabit.

VERDICT: Your enjoyment of Hohokum will depend entirely on how open you are to the idea of immersing yourself in its ambient, unconventional nature. It is more of an exploratory journey as opposed to a signposted adventure. A place where you employ the smoothly animated tendrils of your craft to seek out the new, to trigger the next sugar-rush of sound and vision. It is the antithesis of what most blockbuster titles seek to achieve. It lends itself well to a pair of headphones and a complete disconnect from your expectations of what the artform – and yes, it is an artform – can bring to the table.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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The Golf Club comes to us at a time when EA has put Tiger on hiatus, suspending the officially licensed series that has dominated the golf game market for the last decade. This presents a great opportunity for a new challenger – enter The Golf Club, a golf sim whose headline feature is the possibility to never play the same course twice, thanks to an in-built course designer.

At the centre of any sports sim is the sport itself, and the sport here happens to be golf. I came into the Golf Club as something of a golf sim newbie – I have dabbled but never hung around for long. I booted up The Golf Club for the first time hoping to find some tutorials or videos to get me started, however after some time it became apparent that this is not a title for the impatient or uninitiated; this tour around the greens is hardened stuff, and comes with an expectation that you know your putter from your 9 iron. That said, there are all manner of tutorials on the game’s official website.

When you find yourself on the tee for the first time, ready to smack the ball down the fairway and onto almost certain frustration, it’s up to you to figure out the controls and all of The Golf Club’s other little intricacies. There are no shot trajectory graphics on show here, no power bar to aim for, no gimmicks, bells or whistles. Instead, at the start, it’s just you, a badly dressed man, and the right analogue stick. Dial the stick down for power, and swing it back up to strike the ball. It’s as simple as that. Well, sort of.

The Golf Club has a steep learning curve, sure, but after several trips to the bushes, bunkers and bar, you start to pick up on the finesse the title’s controls require. Before long, I found myself cruising around the holes picking up bogeys and even the occasional par. Yes I know that doesn’t sound great, but as a self taught sim-golfer, I’m pretty pleased with that.

You can choose to take on a single, randomly generated hole, an entire course, or even enter a tournament with other players. On several occasions during my time with The Golf Club, I chose to play a course either created by another player or one of the several pre-made representations of real world golf-courses, and here I ran into one of The Golf Clubs more intuitive features. My march around the fairways was joined by several other players, in “ghost” form – this added a real edge to play, as I was eager not to completely show myself up.

Needless to say, I failed, ending up no closer than 5 shots behind my nearest rival on every occasion. The other players are represented by colourful on-screen lines and curves, showing their shot trajectories. It would have been great to have this option as a live player, to be able to show a shot trajectory seems like an obvious feature to me, even just as a way to get to grips with the controls and intricacies of the game.

The Golf Clubs headline feature is its Greg Norman branded Course Designer, which offers players the chance to never play the same course twice. With a few button presses, you can create a randomly generated course that is totally unique. First you select a course theme, with Rural, Alpine, Autumn and Desert among the available options, then you dial in the amount of tree, water and hill cover you want, and the game engine goes to work creating a new landscape for you to gawk at. The best elements of the course creator are found in the finer details – think Sim City’s terrain editor, throw in a load of golf options and you’re there. If you have the patience, you can carve out the golf course of your dreams, adding lakes, bridges, fairways and bunkers until your heart’s content.

The course creator is a great idea, for golf enthusiasts the tools on offer here are brilliant. However, The Golf Club suffers a fate so often seen in ambitious projects such as this: bright ideas let down by bad implementation. Every button press in The Golf Club is a slow, laborious exercise. From the pause menu to the course creator, The Golf Club suffers from crippling lag. In the Course Designer, for example, you can expect a wait of around 5 seconds to place one bunker, the onscreen load indicator frozen in place, giving no indication of what is happening in the background. I suffered several glitches and crashes in my time with The Golf Club – but thankfully the Xbox One remained responsive throughout and I was able to close the game and restart without powering down. The bugs will likely be ironed out after release, but the lag is a fundamental flaw.

If The Golf Club was a beautiful title with next-gen lighting perhaps the lag could be forgiven, but given that it looks like decidedly last-gen, things just go from bad to worse. Rough edges, flaky foliage and horrible v-sync issues make it look like a title running on out-of- date hardware at the start of a new generation. The PC version is likely your best bet; the Course Designer in particular would be far easier to use with a mouse and keyboard.

VERDICT: The Golf Club promises a lot but falls down on its implementation. Golf fans will find a lot to like here, though, with the Designer and the solid gameplay providing an expansive experience. Unfortunately, last-gen visuals and a series of frustrating issues make this a hard game to recommend to all but the golf obsessed.

DECENT. A 6/10 indicates that, while this game could be much better, it still has a fair amount to offer the player. It might be an interesting title sabotaged by its own ambition, or a game denied greater praise by some questionable design choices. Don’t avoid it outright, but approach it with caution.

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Time heals all wounds, so someone once wrote, and though it may be trite, it’s mostly true. Diablo 3’s original PC-exclusive launch was plagued with technical issues and mostly justifiable consumer anger, while later, controversy over a hideously unpopular real money auction house and a smattering of balancing issues mired the first year of one of the most anticipated games of the last decade.

By the time the console version launched last year, most of those issues had been resolved. The auction house was gone, and a suite of patches had addressed inconsistent loot and various other complaints. The console version, graphics aside, was called superior by many, the more immediate action, tactical roll and redesigned inventory system proving massively popular with the console crowd.

Now, just under a year on, the first major PC expansion, Reaper of Souls, comes to consoles (both new and old gen) and it feels like Diablo 3 has finally, painstakingly, arrived. To call the Ultimate Evil Edition “definitive” undermines the stellar PC version a little, but in truth that’s just what it is. This is Diablo 3 as it was intended to be and, while there are still minor elements that aren’t quite there, it’s the most robust base Blizzard have so far delivered for a game that they clearly aren’t done with yet.

So, the story is unchanged for the first four acts, as you guide your rugged, kleptomaniac-hero from the iconic hamlet of Tristram to the steps of the High Heavens, but a host of tweaks, large and small, polish the experience to a high shine. Improved drop rates for rare and legendary items are a boon, while an overhauled system now governs the Massacre experience bonuses, rewarding you handsomely for chaining kills. Levelling, as a result, is noticeably quicker from level 1 to around level 25, which services the increased cap of 70.

Once you do hit the limit, it has been made easier to track your Paragon level and keep plugging away through the new end-game Adventure Mode, which allows you to replay areas with varied difficulty to farm the best, most impressive loot available. It’s unlocked once you complete the fifth act and take down the Angel of Death, Malthael – which as any Diablo fan knows, is not the end anyway. This is a game designed for re-runs, with new game plus modes as far as the eye can see. Elsewhere, an Apprentice Mode allows lower level characters to run co-op on an even keel with veterans.

At a glance, the Crusader class seems analogous to Diablo 2’s Paladin, but it’s actually something altogether new. Still rocking religious-themed skills like Smite and Law of Justice, the Crusader is closer to a warrior-cleric, less concerned with Auras and more concerned with smashing things to bits with a bloody big hammer. An early passive skill facilitates this by allowing you to wield a two-handed weapon and a shield. Other skills involve group buffs and, well, smiting things in the face.

Like the Crusader, the fifth act is a powerhouse, plunging you neck-deep into the action and adding a new trader in the form of a transmographer, a talented individual who can alter the look of your gear with different plans, taking the impressive customisation even further. A decent length, act five doesn’t really improve on the core game, but rather bolsters and complements it. The new bounties extend the longevity and replayability further, but, as with Adventure Mode, these could benefit from a little more variety in future patches or expansions.

The Nemesis system adds a social element that feels both organic and fun, whereby a special elite may turn up to kill you, before announcing it to your friends list. They can then hunt it down to avenge you, with each kill making it stronger and tougher. Trade between players is now taken care of, too, thanks to a nifty mailbox that allows messages and goods to be sent to your friends.

Finally, if you were among those who found the original crafting system over-complicated and cluttered, you’ll be pleased to know that the process has been refined in Reaper of Souls. The number of reagents you can harvest has been greatly reduced, and they now drop in the field. Also, you need fewer to craft an item – and crafting higher level items makes more sense, as you will often need to provide a base item as a foundation. More plans, more levels for your crafters and a streamlined system make Diablo 3’s crafting much easier to understand and keep a track of.

VERDICT: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition is the game Diablo fans deserve. Granted, there are still areas to improve – Adventure Mode, for example, still feels a little like an experiment rather than the finished article – but this is as close to perfect as we’ve yet been. Still the undisputed King of the Action RPG lootathon, Diablo 3: RoS adds so many tiny little bonuses alongside the major changes that you can’t help but admire Blizzard’s dedication and perseverance.

INCREDIBLE. This is the pinnacle of our scoring spectrum, reserved for games that truly affect us, that capture our imagination so completely that they affect the standard by which we measure future games. 10/10 is not a declaration of perfection, but an assurance that the game in question is of amazingly high quality and has exceeded our expectations.

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Despite the fact that it stars a WWE Superstar, a CGI raccoon, and Vin Diesel lending his guttural vocal talents to an anthropomorphic tree, Guardians of the Galaxy has been a wildly successful new entry to the Marvel cinematic universe, taking one of the more kooky, left-field superhero teams in their canon and slotting them into a well-received, good humoured old-school romp.

The same way other key Marvel-verse movies and characters have been transformed into kick-ass pinball tables, Zen Studios have released a tie-in effort, which takes choice elements from the source comic material, as well as the new celluloid treat. Serving as both a fine way to familiarise yourself with the oddball quintet, and a downright excellent game of pinball in its own right, this is yet another tick in the win column for Zen, and quite comfortably sits alongside the Infinity Gauntlet as the best Marvel entry yet.

Kicking off each game with an instant minute-long multiball is a hell of a bold move – but this shocking tactic works a treat – as you are immediately put in control of four balls, each one designed to identify with a corresponding Guardian, in a wild free-for-all as you bust the gang out of their Kyln prison, and even attempt to salvage Star-Lord’s cassette tape of 1970s chart toppers. It is an awesome way to open proceedings, grasping your attention and setting the scene with a series of excellently-voiced one liners courtesy of Mr Quill, the irrepressible Rocket and the rumbling tones of Groot. Even though the voice talent from the flick aren’t participating here – those that are provide an excellently cheesy script to accompany proceedings.

Once the action gets underway, incorporating an imaginative skill-shot mechanic, you enter a superbly designed table – tricky yet fair springs to mind – which entertains a number of cracking set-pieces including shootouts and hand to hand combat with Ronan the Accuser, a puzzling mini-table where you light up flags to help Gomora defeat Nebula, and defending yourself from a full-on Necrocraft assault. There are numerous opportunities for further multiball thrills, including a Collector-themed mode which can reap huge rewards if you manage to lock down three Guardian balls.

The table does get quite busy at times – with plenty going on, various animated characters hopping around, shooting and trading blows with each other – but it never becomes too much of a distraction, and it looks excellent as you would expect from Zen – whether you are playing in HD on one of your big consoles or on the smart OLED of the Vita.

VERDICT: Some may argue that having to begin each play-through with the multiball sequence becomes a bit of a chore, but the opportunities to rack up big points early doors should appeal to old school pinball heads, and hey: at least it’s something a bit different – just like the skill-shot that heralds the start of each ball is something we have never seen before. This is another brilliant table from Zen, who seem to have developed a knack for both innovative table design and how to put a licence to good use.

SUPERB. This is the mark of greatness, only awarded to games that engage us from start to finish. Titles that score 9/10 will have very few problems or negative issues, and will deliver high quality and value for money across all aspects of their design.

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Review code provided by publisher.

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The first thing you’ll notice about Pure Pool is how good it looks. The table could be real, the balls glimmer as they catch the light and people go about their business in the background while you play. Truly it is one of the best looking settings I’ve ever seen.

Which is a very, very good thing, because you’ll spend a lot of time gazing at the table while you’re playing Pure Pool. Aside from a slightly lengthy initial loading screen when you boot it up, you’ll have the pool table infront of you the entire time. Immediately a free-play game is set up for you to practise in, with the Options button bringing up the main menu overlay. It’s a brilliant feature that really immerses you in the game; no matter what mode you’re in the rest of the game is only a button press away.

A short tutorial teaches you the ropes. The right stick controls the cue, pulling back as far as you want to, then flicking forward to stroke the white ball. The left stick deals with the direction of the shot and the pitch, with circle applying spin and x allowing for a finer aim. It all feels very intuitive and can be picked up and played by anyone.

The gameplay itself couldn’t be more realistic. The balls really feel weighted, and the amount of power you want to use translates perfectly from the sticks to the cue – a concession to the fact is a series of lines that show where the shot will go, but this can be disabled, but otherwise it’s a fair representation of real pool.

Bringing up the menu allows you to choose from several game modes. Offline there is a career for you to progress through, over several tournaments and across two game types. US 8-Ball is your standard pool game, with players either spots or stripes depending on what is potted first, while 9-Ball is a race to pot the number nine ball, but with the twist that you must first at least hit the next ball in order.

There are three difficulty levels for the two game types, with five tournaments at each level, which themselves contain on average ten matches to win. Mostly they are basic matches, but there are also speed pot and perfect potter challenges to break up the flow. While nice diversions, they also allow you to progress to the next tournament a little easier. Each is unlocked when you gain a certain number of stars, won by performing certain tasks during a match: pot from the other end of the table, or win without committing a foul for example.

The other side to the game is the online matches. Quick Game pits you against another player, and is great if you fancy a quick match. When you finish, you’re given the option to hit square for a rematch, and most players seem up for it. A nice touch is that Pure Pool keeps score of who’s won; I spent an hour playing a stranger, trading wins, which he edged out 4-3. There’s also a league system, though I haven’t had a chance to try that out yet (connection issues at my end, I’ll update the review at the weekend).

A host of customisation options allow you to change your cue, table colour and decoration. It doesn’t make a difference to how you play, but being able to tailor the view you spend so much time looking at is a neat touch.

Pure Pool isn’t perfect, though. When everything is so quick, so slick, waiting for the computer to make a move can feel like an age. It wouldn’t be too bad if you could see what they were doing, but even though you’re locked into the same first person view down the cue, once the direction has been chosen the cue stays still on the centre of the ball until they play a shot: you can’t see if they’re putting spin on the ball for example, but the wait as they do so is still there.

VERDICT: Pure Pool’s greatest trick is its immediacy. Once the table is in front of you, you can just play over and over and over with no wait. With a variety of game modes to try out and the online suite there’s plenty to keep you entertained, but while it may be a near-perfect simulation of pool, it doesn’t come close to playing the real thing. People buy Gran Turismo because they’re never going to be a racing driver or own a Ferrari. You can go down the local and pay 50p for a game of pool with your mates. Just saying.

VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.

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Review code provided by publisher.

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There are a few different groups of people that will be interested in the PlayStation 4 version of The Last of Us. Most interestingly, there’s a group of people who will have been predominantly Xbox 360 gamers for the last nine years, but have made the platform switch and be chomping at the bit to play one of the very best games of those last nine years.

Those people don’t need convincing; they’ve already got a pre-order in and will be playing it as soon as is possible. And I won’t go over the story or mechanics here, either, because you can read about all of that in my original review of the PS3 game, here. Thankfully, the remastered treatment is delicious, and that 10/10 score still stands (and that’s a treat for those of you that like to skip to the end).

But there are plenty of people who loved The Last of Us, and like me, consider it one of the best games in recent memory. And it’s fair to assume that re-releasing the game for their latest platform offers a conundrum for the cash strapped gamer: should you buy it?

The answer is complicated. It’s still an incredible game that marries storytelling and gameplay exquisitely. It is a game that creates unbearable tension, and has character interactions and relationships that are so well done, you buy them completely. In fact, with the remastered edition, it even includes the add-on content, Left Behind, which is one of the best pieces of DLC I’ve ever played.

But don’t expect it to look as good as a game like Infamous: Second Son. The Last of Us still looks gorgeous, with an art direction that matches up to all the other departments. Joel and Ellie’s facial animation is excellent, and this helps create believable characters. In fact, if this had been released six to eight months ago, it’d probably look like one of the best games around. But fire up that PS3 game, and you’ll see it has aged a little, and the PS4 remastered edition smooths over the rough edges, and gives us the 1080p visuals. It looks great, but it doesn’t look as good as you might expect it to.

The frame-rate, however, is one of the stars of the show. A smooth 60fps for most of the time (only stuttering occasionally in high-stress sections, and even then, not very much), this is one of the things that makes it feel at home on Sony’s new console. Offering the option to lock it to 30fps is a nice touch, because it prevents any complaints of motion sickness due to the 60fps default option.

A string to the PS4’s bow at the moment is the photo mode that has been included in Second Son, which returns for The Last of Us. You simply enable the function in the options menu, then, when you see a photo-worthy moment, click the left stick in and can move around the image, change all manner of settings, and even make it black and white (Instagramers, rejoice!), then remove the UI and snap your pic. It’s a fantastic feature, and although it’s not a system seller, it’s a nice way to feel invested in the title, grabbing your own personal snaps.

VERDICT: The best game on PlayStation 3 is now the best game on PlayStation 4. Despite some decent titles on Sony’s new machine, you can’t deny the quality of Naughty Dog’s masterpiece. Even the staunchest of advocates that want original experiences on their new console will struggle to find much wrong with The Last of Us. Truly magical.

INCREDIBLE. This is the pinnacle of our scoring spectrum, reserved for games that truly affect us, that capture our imagination so completely that they affect the standard by which we measure future games. 10/10 is not a declaration of perfection, but an assurance that the game in question is of amazingly high quality and has exceeded our expectations.

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