Luckily for me the folks over at Zen Studios have given me a few easy new things to talk about with this version also being in 3D and portable; pretty much the only two things the Nintendo 3DS has to brag about. I’d like to kick things off with the 3D as that usually tends to be the sore spot when it comes to 3DS games. Allow me to put all fears to rest when I say Zen Pinball should be played with 3D on at all times. Yes, really. Pinball is a game which requires depth and the 3D on the 3DS delivers it perfectly. You can see the multiple layers of the table clearly, which gives this version a huge leg up on its console counterparts, and it also makes the beautiful art and design that goes into every table stand out (if you’ll pardon the pun). It’s one of the rare gems of the 3DS’ library where I felt that the 3D element was a necessity the entire time that I played it.

That nicely covered and out of the way, let’s talk about what you’ll be getting for your £4.50 downloadable. There are four tables, with their own mini-games hidden if you are skilled enough to trigger them, each with their own themes which are: medieval, tribal, treasure hunter, and science fiction. Every table has its own unique multiplier bonuses, style, feel, and play style so there will certainly be at least one table which you will be unable to resist going back to time and time again. This is par for the course with Zen Studio titles as they always provide something for everybody with no substitution of quality of any of the options. My personal favourite was the sci-fi one because: 1) The table is called ‘Earth Defence’, 2) Having a giant robot over look any of my proceedings in a game makes me happy, and 3) Because I was able to get #1 on my local leaderboards on my first attempt – BOOYAH!

There is, of course, a highscore table for both local and online play which will cause joyous glee to show on your face as you leap into the air and proclaim victory while at the same time make the person sitting next to you on the bus want to murder you slowly with a rolling pin. Zen Studios know their audience; we’re a right bunch of score-whores if there ever was one, and they know that one way to make sure a downloadable title remains worthwhile is with extreme competition across a series of skilled levels. If you can nail that 80,000 bonus on the tribal table five times in a row you’ll be in good stead on those leaderboards. That tip is free on me.

Overall? Do I really need to say more. It’s cheap, it’s got insane replayability, it’s got an addictive highscore system, and you can carry it with you at all times and hope your eyeballs don’t pop-out from being unable to turn the 3D off the entire time you play it. If I were to criticise it in any way, it’d be the size of the screen. The 3DS does not have a screen size worth envying and so the default camera position can make it very difficult to pick out some of the finest details and shots on the table. My solution? Switch to Camera 5. Follows the ball the whole time and makes EVERYTHING a Hell of a lot easier. Done and dusted! Rack another winner up to Zen Studios. I’ll see you on the leaderboards (I’m ‘DNK’).

It’s a concept which is not foreign to the mobile marketplace – getting a liquid from the start to the end of each level – but it’s added a few unique twists which help it to raise its head above the ocean of its rival pick-up-and-play iPhone counterparts. You have more of an objective than just sloshing to the finish, you also have to touch every single inch of the walls to help planets grow, douse seeds to make flowers pop out, and if you’re a super completionist complete the levels in a certain time to gather all the stars. Plus, of course, as it is an iPhone game you must do all of this using all 360 degrees of the devices’ motion control technology.

Understand how rare an occurrence it is when I say that this works really well. Normally motion controls either feel half-assed and unnecessary or they destroy the whole flow of the game. Sploosh, on the other hand, is great fun to have with the motion control. You’re simply spinning the level round while the screen is facing you, and if you point the screen upwards the water physics switch, effectively, to anti-gravity mode where you can gain more control over its direction (if you’re skilled enough). Normally on this platform I have to dedicate a paragraph or so to why the controls DIDN’T work as well as I’d hoped. This time, however, they exceeded my expectations and I congratulate Spooky Moon for accomplishing that.

All of the above, blended with a beautiful and colourful setting, and a ukulele-style soundtrack, means I have no choice but to give Sploosh two thumbs up. It’s a well priced, thoroughly addictive, iPhone game which will certainly give you your money’s worth back in entertainment. Though there are only 12 levels being offered with it right now, more are going to be coming, trying to get all four stars on every stage will keep you coming back for far longer than you’d expect (I still can’t get all four on the 11th one!). Don’t buy this expecting it to change your world of mobile gaming; don’t even buy this because I’m telling you that you should; buy it because Sploosh will make you smile.

NO! Of course the answer is no, and luckily for us the guys over at Capcom agree with this unanimous cry, because they are now inviting ANYBODY to compete, head-to-head, in a three round campaign for greatness. Want to be involved? GOOD! It’s for charity as well, Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) to be exact. They aim to reduce suicide in men under 35, currently the biggest single cause of death for young men in the UK, so now you don’t have ANY excuse not to take part in this thing. So headphones off, hands on desk, pick your side, and listen up; here’s the breakdown of this campaign:

Round #1 – MUSIC! Addictive TV, you may have heard of them, are launching this campaign this month! So you’ve got no time to waste. Think you can produce the most epic, awesome tune ever heard by mankind? Yes? I don’t believe you! Prove it. Do it. Enter it. Then maybe we’ll talk. Until then keep your eyes and ear peeled on the website and get your music fingers limbering because you’re going to need to bring your A game to the table.

Round #2 – DANCING! Wait… What? Dancing, are you kidding me? NOPE. This isn’t just any old dancing; Fight Club regulars One Motion will be taking care of this puppy by breakdancing. Not just any break dancing, though, they’ll be showing off their best Street Fighter & Tekken moves incorporated into the dancing. Know you can do better? Get going then! Come up with the best moves, get labelled as the best. Simple as that.

Round #3 – ART! Oh, do we need to draw something for this one? NOPE. Easier than that. 30 exclusive character prints signed by the legendary producers Ono-san (Street Fighter) and Harada-san (Tekken) will be put up for charity auction in late January. If you want a piece of some of that action, just start saving and stay tuned. It’s basic, sure, but with only 30 prints the competition will be FIERCE! Plus, it’s for charity, and you know you want one. Hell, I want one, so you don’t even have to feel guilty about wanting it so bad you will fight, and bid, just to make sure somebody else who isn’t you doesn’t get it.

Kazuya Mishima is deathly allergic to Powerade, you know.

There’s a chance that, if you’re some sort of crazy person, none of this will interest you. Well, you may have heard of this thing called Fight Club (the one you can actually talk about). Well Ready Up will be hitting it hard this week on 14th January 2012 in Edinburgh at the The Caves, Niddry Street South.

Street Fight X Tekken will be on show (duh…) as well as Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, plus Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition. Capcom will also be giving away a Viewlix Arcade Cabinet converted to run PS3 games, some exclusive titles for your PS3/Xbox Street Fighter profiles, and some sweet art prints as well! I also hear that there will be free food and drink to boot.

If you want some of that action, then all you have to do is write why you really want to go on to a postcard and then… throw it in the bin because entry is FREE! Just be sure to not slack. The London event was insane and this event will likely be just as packed. Over 18’s only so we can all get drunk together, and if you see a Ready Up shirt then do step up and see if you can beat the-best-of-the-best at Marvel Vs. Capcom.

So gear up, get ready, and pick a corner. LET’S GET IT ON!

First off: THERE’S NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER! What the Hell, doublesix? Don’t get me wrong, I love that you included local multiplayer, there are not enough arcade games making that level of sofa-action-based, but don’t take away the online component as a ritual sacrifice! I can only hope, and pray, that there was a very good reason written somewhere on a Post-It in your office that explains this lack of Internet playability on a downloadable only title. Sadly, as I cannot read that note from all the way over here, I’m afraid I’ve got to dock a point or two off.

That ball of bile firmly excreted from my brain, the rest of All Zombies Must Die is actually pretty nicely put together. As previously mentioned, it’s not the most original idea to ever hit the Interwebs but it has made some very smart design choices to help make up for that fact. They seem to have taken to the Dead Rising 2 style of zombie killing by making weapon creations a joy to behold and use. Flaming katanas, electrified cricket bats, and megaphones are but a taste of some of the extremely satisfying ways of wiping out the undead hordes. I give some extra kudos to the weapon and level design though because matched with the cartoon-like graphics they do begin to feel even more arcade-y than perhaps they would otherwise have felt. Yes, arcade-y is now an acceptable descriptive word.

We’ve now firmly established that the weapons are brilliant, the graphics are fitting, that the characters are good if not a tad random, and that the lack of online multiplayer has left me wanting. Excellent! Now for my two remaining pet-peeves: respawning zombies, and back-tracking. These two must be grouped together because when your quests involve backtracking through areas with constantly respawning enemies it does tend to start getting on your nerves the third or fourth time you must crawl back to your base. Your base, I should note, can vary depending on where you want it and zombies will not continue to respawn in that particular area. It’s the curse of non-linear gameplay because I’m certain I’d be calling the game dull had I simply been trouncing back through empty areas to pick up whatever maguffin is required to complete the quest I was on. I think the key element is that it’s impossible to clear out an area that is not designated your base, which makes finding various levelling items and new weapons quite a tedious chore because I just want to look in that final bin. It’s right there. I can see it just let me look! GET BACK YOU BLASTED ZOMBIES!

Actually… Come to think of it, it was a rather fitting way of coding the game. Zombies, by nature, are supposed to be infinite and irritating and leave you struggling to survive. Plus, with the visual aesthetics and giggle worthy weapons it’s quite a good laugh having to hop back to your base with one leg and a minute sliver of lifebar. Especially because I was fortunate enough to have a party of four people arguing over sofa space to play this with over the holidays. Credit to you, doublesix. I actually had a thoroughly FUN time with your game. However, I will end this rather positive review with just one, mini, small question: Y U NO HAVE ONLINE MULTIPLAYER AS WELL?!

Tens of thousands took to the streets all across the world, while I slumbered peacefully inside my blanketed vault. Protected, safe, and ignorant of what was happening on the outside. The world outside was changing while I lay dormant, walled-up, sheltered from the magnitude of a release so huge I could not have ever fathomed what would come-forth from it. For on November 11th I would awaken into a new world, into an entirely new life, one which no human should ever be forced to traverse. A world where I was the soul survivor of the most devastating catastrophe to plague mankind. A life which I had not chosen but one which had been thrust upon me through a merging of fate, luck, and lack of disposable income. A life outside of Skyrim.

I slept in. Slept in very late in fact. By the time I’d emerged, and prepared myself for the day, it was almost 4pm. That was a full 16 hours after release. I had no solid plans for the day, I’d known well in advance that a majority of my friends would have already purchased their copy, so I had decided to head into Central London for some Red Bull. I didn’t have to make it far out out the door before saw the horror before me. While I had slept the city I once loved had all but burned to the ground. London lay in ruins as the people had long abandoned the streets, shopping centres, public transportation, and all public services. I scoured the city for others. There was nobody else, not even a trace, they had completely vanished. There were no bodies, no remains, not so much as a God damned hair left of a single human. I saw a dog, he even walked up to me and looked up hopelessly before I kept trudging in search of life. I named him Buck. Buck was the only sign of life I had encountered. Even more disconcerting, there was not a copy of Skyrim to be found. I had looted every Xbox, Playstation and PC I came across but all were empty. There was nothing but rubble, fire, and unanswered questions.

I found notes, letters, papers which had been hastily scribbled on after Skyrim had been released among the public. Most were gibberish: endless rants about taking an arrow to the knee with the word ‘FUS’ scrawled all over the pages. Ramblings of man men and women desperate and scared, yet pumped to the very brink of destruction with euphoria. Among the shattered pieces of the world however I found hope; one chance to rebuild;  single document claiming to know the path to enlightenment and truth. It was written by a person who went by the name of ‘A. Erring’, they spoke of a location, far from the centre of the ruined city of yore, in the countryside. Two trees in a field, each one taller than the other, where the right path is wrong. I made haste and left the crippled city of my birth, and searched for answers outside of the city limits. I had to find Skyrim.

I read the scraps of A. Erring’s words as I hiked towards the final step of my journey: the field. I attempted to use the scripture to piece together the timeline of events I missed over those 16 final hours. It had spread so fast, once the midnight launch showed the world just how awe-inspiring Skyrim was, it took less than six hours for the major cities of the country to implode. According to what I could decipher France had held out the longest, Paris had been the final city to fall. The people simply couldn’t resist, the game absorbed them to such a degree that they simply failed to exist in this world anymore. They became part of Skyrim. Twitter near exploded from the talk of Skyrim. Celebrities had even jumped on board and were busy talking about it on live interviews and television. The world was drained of all life as the human race abandoned every basic instinct in favour of the game. They stopped eating, drinking, working, and eventually moving. Skyrim wanted more, though. The life-force an average human burns should have given them a few days. Instead, while playing Skyrim, the game sped up the process. Some took to the streets to stop people buying the game, but upon realising there were no police – they soon gave in and looted. The urges were too great, and the original saviours would start looting a copies for themselves. Then there was nobody. I don’t know if A. Erring was the last to give in, or just the last to have kept documenting the phenomenon, but their writing promised the tree would hold a book. Inside the book there would be answers. Answers which would help to overcome what the others could not. A way to save Skyrim.

I arrived at the field. I walked, among a forest of trees, possibly for hours, pondering the riddle. No two trees seemed any more important than the rest. Then I smiled. Two trees stood, one on either side of the only path. One to the left, one to the right. I slowly stepped over the the left tree, I could smell syntax trickery a mile away, and glanced down to the ground at its foot. A small glimmer, a silver glint amongst the tangled brush and brambles, a book lay. A book which held the key to salvation.

I lay on that field for days on end. I read every single page of information on offer. Every race, every weapon, every area map between its covers. I wanted it more than ever. An unholy dragon blood lust coursed through my entire being. I wanted Skyrim, nay, I NEEDED Skyrim. On the final page, once I had all the knowledges of the lands my brain could hold, it showed me the ultimate goal. It showed me the power and I wanted it. An axe, an axe which lay under the tree to the right, which I would soon call Róta, after the Norse Valkyrie. An axe that could only be wielded by one who were truly worthy. The one who survived the plague inside a vault of solitude and still braved to venture out The one who had the heart and soul passionate enough to fight the plague among the long destroyed lands. Next to that axe, lay a copy of Skyrim.

I was ready. The world around me may have fallen into disarray from this game, but I would not, I would not falter. I would stand and I would fight. I raised my axe to the Heavens above and I screamed a war cry sound so loud the Gods themselves trembled in fear. The trees shook as the mighty roar escaped my lungs and I lowered Róta. I smirked, I had never felt such power before. My voice felt as if I could command the Universe. My mind had access to all knowledge of the world of Skyrim, but now I held the power to go there and fight and become the greatest adventurer of all time – arrows be damned!

With the copy of Skyrim gripped tightly in one hand and Róta in the other I ran. I ran as fast as my boots could manage, like a bat out of Hell towards the city limits. I sprinted back into urban civilisation and searched out the nearest television with a console attached to it. It was an army station, it looked temporary, appeared to be nothing more than a fancy tent covered in camouflage, it was likely a hub for the crowd control riot-squads before they too were overrun with desire to play the game themselves. I ripped off the wrapping and reached down for the disc when I paused… A. Erring. The name, that name which had guided me to this point suddenly felt too familiar. It was a man, I didn’t know how I knew but I did, it was a Mr. A. Erring… Arngeir. Like a flash flood the information came rushing into my head. A. Erring was an anagram of Arngeir, the elder who serves as instructor and mentor in The Way of the Voice, and the axe is one of the most common weapons you receive at the beginning of your journey. I was not the sole survivor – I was Skyrim’s final victim!

I dropped the game case a disc to the floor and slowly backed away from the television. I turned and rushed through what I thought was the tent’s exit, instead I had frantically stumbled into the arsenal section. M4 carbines, M16s, pump-action shotguns, revolvers, MP5s and more all lay in front of me in a beautiful formation of destruction. With my mind still going a thousand miles and hour as I recovered from the shock of my own realisation I saw it. The G36C, the ultimate killing machine, as Call of Duty had taught me, placed on the table before me. I stepped towards it and lovingly lowered Róta down next to it, and gripped it by the Grip. It was only then that I knew what I had to do.

With the G36C still loosely carried in my hand I walked out of the tent. I could feel the pull, the invisible force pulling me back towards the tent, trying to drag me back to the table where I had left Róta and the book. I didn’t need them anymore, those were not the weapons I would need to win this fight. I walked at a new pace, solemn and determined, as I entered back to where this all had begun. The burning, crumbled section of London where I had first encountered this awful disaster. I removed my right glove and raised my hand to my mouth, letting out a screeching whistle which echoed throughout the concrete piles. I stared blankly toward the smoke, waiting, hoping. A minute passed, and just as I stood up to turn away I heard the patter of paws. I turned back and there he was. Buck was back, wagging his tail and smiling up at me. No longer did he have a look of sadness or worry in his eyes, but a sparkle and vigour which had not been there before. I smiled back at him, almost as if he could feel what I was feeling, and patted him on the head before turning back towards the centre of London.

“I’m sorry, Buck. I’m sorry that the best you’ve got is this barely functional fighter with a rusted old gun. You deserve better. This world deserves better. There may be others though, like me, out there somewhere. We’re going to go and see if we can find them. I can’t leave this world, not now, not yet. I must save this world before I save Skyrim.”

I lifted the G36C and swung it over my shoulder and tied it around. I took a deep breath and lowered my hood, feeling the breeze filled with dust and a rotting stench run through my hair, and slowly stepped towards the centre. I didn’t know what was out there, or if anyone was still alive, like me, but I had to be sure. I may not have chosen a life outside of Skyrim, but I was damn sure going to explore the Fallout that Skyrim had left behind.

So many games. So little time...

Having done several laps of the show-floor with my partner in crime and shoved a sumptuous free hotdog into my face (so sumptuous in fact that I had to accept very early on that there was no way I was going to be able to eat it with any element of dignity intact), I set off of the epic journey of PS Vita gaming! First though, briefly, before we talk about the games, I’d like to give a quick overview of the console itself. Sorry, I promise, it needs to be done. If you’re already a 5UP3R 1337 GaM3R and know everything about the PS Vita ever, or simply don’t care one bit about hearing me harp on about the console itself and just want to know about the games then skip on down three paragraphs. Otherwise, get comfortable and let’s have a quick talk about this little black beauty on its own.

As we are all aware of by now, the PS Vita is claiming to be the most powerful handheld ever, and has impressive specs in the hardware to back it up. Not to mention it also has a monumental list of extra features which include dual games card slots, two cameras (forward facing and backward facing), a touch screen, a touch-pad on the back, dual analogue sticks and 3G – all within a super thin and light console. That, I think we can all agree, is a ridiculous set of assets for a handheld gaming console to be coming with on launch. Though with a hefty price tag of £220+ expected it needs to be bringing a lot to the table to replace all that food you won’t be eating come February!

The key issue with these new features, though, and one that many gamers have already expressed concern about, is will they enhance the experience of the games and truly make this the most powerful handheld, or will they simply encourage them to be used as cheap gimmicks and unnecessary gameplay elements. I’m pleased to say, as an overall view, that it is most definitely the former rather than the latter. However, to really get to the bottom of it, I believe a breakdown of each game individually is now in order.

My partner in crime for the night. She's too cool for headphones.

During my time at the event I was able to get decent hands-on time with TWELVE whole PS Vita games, and obviously not all were finalised. Some were just demos, and some were event demos that were in Japanese for most of the time. Therefore, I will not be conducting full reviews as that would be GROSSLY unfair and near impossible. What I’m going to go ahead and do instead is dedicate around 250 words to my general impression of each one I tried out. That way you can pick and choose which ones you spend your time reading about. I’ll even have an extra special “Top three PS Vita Titles of Awesomeness” award going to, shockingly, my Top three favourites of the night. This will make this all a much more manageable… 3,000 words?! Damn you, maths. Well, if you’re really excited about the PS Vita (and you should be) and want to know about every single game I played, I hope you can put up with my caffeine fuelled ramblings on them for the next 3,000 words.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss – Let’s start off big. Uncharted is probably one of the most anticipated titles for the Vita, and the visuals alone have left many mouths agape. Mine included. I am pleased to report that the graphics are just as mind-blowing for a handheld as they have been advertised (this is likely to be praise which I shall bestow on many of the PS Vita games being mentioned in this feature). Nathan Drake looks beautiful in your hands (giggity) and it really is a joy to behold such a rich, in-depth game and have the looks to back it up on a handheld device. One particular chapter contained a lot of fire effects and it blew me away. I cannot possibly emphasise just how unbelievable this game looked. What’s better, is that the control also felt extremely fluent with the high end graphics. The gameplay didn’t feel at all limited and in fact the hand-to-hand combat and various clambering Nathan is known for felt just as high-end as any of his PlayStation 3 counterparts. The only new feature of the Vita which was used (at least on the section available) was the touch screen, which was used for solving certain puzzles and exploration of the environment. The key example was having to slash on the screen to get Nathan to cut something with his machete. It didn’t feel forced, and with most of the run, gun, and climb action not using it it’s a welcome extra to a game that already stands tall as one of the Vita’s premium launch titles.

Little Big Planet – Yet another big name right out of the gate, and another launch title, but also the first game to be awarded the coveted “Top 3 PS Vita Titles of Awesomeness” award. This shocked even me because I was expecting just another Little Big Planet game, only on a handheld device, which I could say was bright and colourful and has a cute main mascot and then move on from there. It has all those things, fret not, but this was the game which convinced me that all of the PS Vita’s new features could be used to create some brilliant new gaming experiences on the go. The motion controls were used to move various environmental elements to solve puzzles, the touch screen was used to drag moveable scenery, and the camera could be used to take photos of whatever you want and then import them into the game as textures or scenery or ANYTHING in your own custom levels. My favourite moment being a puzzle where you used the touch screen to push a block to the back, and the touch-pad on the back to push the blocks forward to create a stairway for Sackboy to climb up. Also, ALL of the tools and items from Little Big Planet 1 and 2 on the PS3 are in this game. In your hand. Whenever you want. Thumbs up to Media Molecule for showing not only what the PS Vita can do when pushed but with a launch title no less!

Touch My Katamari – If you’ve never played a Katamari game before I highly recommend that you do so. Nowhere else will you ever be able to find such a bizarre blend of ridiculously simple yet addictive gameplay and straight out ridiculous dialogue. This is one of the more basic games but it fits the handheld market so damn well that I must heap praise on it. You use the dual analogue sticks to control your ball which sticks to things and as it gets bigger and bigger you can stick to bigger and bigger things until the level ends. DONE! You can use the touch-pad and touch screen to morph the shape of the ball, by making it thin and tall or wide and flat. It’s just a basic, highly addictive, flat out crazy game. I love Katamari games, and by glancing at just one of the Tweeted dialogue photos from the night will show you that the gameplay only brings about around half the laughs. This would have been in my Top three, but I’m uncertain if it’s whacky charm is infectious to everyone or if I am one of the rare breed who now have it under their skin and have formed some kind of strange addiction to it.

Here's a picture of an awesome sofa from the event to help break up all that text!

WipEout 2048 – Ignoring the eternally irritating capitalisation on the title, this is is definitely one of my “Top three PS Vita Titles of Awesomeness” award winners. The graphics are stunning, but even more hard-hitting is the frame-rate and smoothness which comes along with this game. If you’ve played WipEout before you know how hectic and fast-paced it can be, and the PS Vita handles it all beautifully without downgrading any of it to compensate for its handheld limitations. This is a tremendous, uncompromising, high-octane WipEout game which you can play ANYWHERE. There are other racers coming out for the PS Vita on launch but, in my opinion, this one right here is the clear champion. You use the shoulder buttons for air braking, the analogue sticks for basic handling and the camera angle respectively, and, if you’re really feeling fancy, you can use the motion controls and the back touch-pad. Motion control-wise? It’s fantastically responsive, if that’s your kind of thing, but to me the back touch-pad was the King when it came to the PS Vita’s extra features being utilised here. Why? Because you can set it to use your power-ups. Meaning you never have to move any of your fingers off any of the required buttons at any point. PERFECT!

Little Deviants – From what I understand (and don’t quote me on this) this is one of the PS Vita’s downloadable titles. I could be wrong, but it was labelled as an ‘arcade’ game which I’m going to go ahead and take as meaning ‘downloadable’. This gives it a little bit of leeway for not being quite as spectacular as some of the other titles on show. It was still good, but it really was just good. Not great. It’s a selection of mini-games which are clearly designed around the PS Vita newly added features. Some people will definitely be into this, but to me it just felt so forced. Standard methods like using the motion control to direct a character through hoops or tapping on the touch screen at the right time. The only one I honestly enjoyed was a game where you directed a balled up character around by using the touch-pad on the back to lift the ground and direct the ball’s rolling direction. If this ends up being a cheap downloadable I’d say it’s worthwhile just for the ‘iPhone’ disposable level of portable gaming, but I have a feeling this will be taking a good £19.99 out of your wallet and it just felt like a rather long demo reel. At least with the other games the new features being used felt organically implemented. Here they did not.

ModNation Racers: Roadtrip – Another racing game? Alright! This I’m okay with. ModNation Racers have become quite a fan favourite among PlayStation players and the PS Vita version seems to bring everything that made the series as popular as it is to the handheld. Lots of customisable options (unsurprisingly), entertaining cartoon-y graphics, and, let’s be honest here, a rather party-racer feel throughout. The game is amazing fun on its own, but the true greatness lies within the Ad-Hoc gameplay. The PS Vita, like any good handheld should, has an Ad-Hoc network options for many of its games which picks up nearby PS Vitas for some some multiplayer mayhem. ModNation Racers has this option and that alone is what will make this game worth the money in my books. Great graphics, entertaining gameplay and ridiculous Ad-Hoc multiplayer action? That’s how you make a party racer. Sold.

Hey, look! It's another photo from the event to break up the huge chunks of text...

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz – Really?! Ergh. Okay, come on, Duncan, be impartial… It’s another Super Monkey Ball game! No. It doesn’t do anything differently. You’re a monkey. In a ball. Collecting bananas. Some of which may or may not have ‘Split’ at some point. You can use the motion controls if you want to lose every level faster, or you can use the dual analogue sticks and get bored before you fail. I’m sorry. I’m done with this game appearing on every electronic device to the point my microwave screen could probably handle it and I’d still find it tedious in the time it took to make a Tesco Value Mini Pizza in the thing. Buy it, don’t buy it, do whatever you want to. If you like the series and must own it on another platform, or just can’t go another second without more banana collecting non-stop thrilling action, this is for you. I can’t bear to talk about this right now when there are so many better games available for me to talk about…

Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 – … Like this one! People who know me know that I am not a massive fighting game fan. Mostly because when I play them I suck harder than Jenna Jameson earning a pay cheque. Marvel Vs. Capcom, though, is a different case because I confess to be rather a comic book geek and Marvel contains a vast majority of my favourite characters (Ironman AND Deadpool?! Sold.). The big issues for fighting game aficionados is the ease of controls and the smoothness of the multiplayer; as I understand it anyway. First off, the controls are fantastic for a handheld fighting game. You can use either the classic PlayStation D-pad or the analogue sticks for the moves, and because the Vita holds so easily in the hands, pulling off combo moves was easy enough that even I was able to master some! (one…) I’m afraid I can’t vouch for the 3G multiplayer, but there was an Ad-Hoc option that was breath-takingly quick. Being able to hold up two PS Vitas together you could see that they were in perfect sync. Plus, as it’s the Ultimate edition, you know it has to be good. It has ULTIMATE in the title.

Resistance: Burning Skies – A first person shooter?! On a handheld device he’s already praised so highly he’d only add more if it were to come with a lifetime supply of bacon?! This must be his final Top three selection. Right? WRONG! Resistance: Burning Skies is an awesome example of how first person shooters can work on handheld devices, but it’s not perfect. With the dual analogue sticks you do finally get the control scheme which all FPS fans have been craving on a handheld device, but it feels too confined. The controls are great, but the gameplay reminds me too much of ‘Coded Arms’ on the original PSP. Even on the hardest difficulty setting I breezed through the demo because it seems that the developers had a crippling fear that gamers would need an easier curve to compensate for the controls. They don’t. The controls and graphics were spot-on. If this were a Call of Duty game Bobby Kotick would already be high-fiving his accountants over it right now. However, if they do a little bit of updating and ramp up the challenge a bit more for release this will definitely be the game which turns the sceptics of FPS on the go. On a side note because this game impression deserves to end on a high note, the music in the game was absolutely phenomenal.

Hey isn't that DJ a bit blurry for a usable phot... SHUT UP AND KEEP MOVING!

Frobisher Says – This one is an interesting one, because this is a game I admit I really didn’t like but could see that it was quite a terrific game. It is the Star Wars of PS Vita games for me. I know that this is probably very good to many people, but I am not one of those people. This is, basically, a non-copyright infringing version of Simon Says for the PlayStation Vita. You do various things which include pointing the camera at certain colours, saying certain phrases into the microphone, tracing pictures on the touch screen and using augmented reality to catch various creatures around your house using the camera. All within a set time limit of course. It’s a good game and one I can see being really fun for either kids, or a University party full of drunken gamers, but sadly I wasn’t in one of those situations. I was just pointing the PS Vita around like I was trying to ballroom dance with it as everyone who hadn’t tried it yet wondered what kind of drug I was on and where they could get some at that time of night. I would also like to share the anecdote which came from when my partner in crime had a go on it and was asked to say her name, which she did. Then she was asked to say it ‘In Canadian’. There are no words.

Virtua Tennis 4 – Hopefully I won’t be the only gamer out there who cares about this, otherwise I’m about to waste 250 off words of energy harping on about how much I loved Virtua Tennis 4. I’m a big tennis nut and tennis games have always been really good to me, in that there is always a great tennis game on the market for each particular generation of consoles. But there’s never been one for the handheld market. Virtua Tennis 4 is that handheld tennis game I’ve been waiting for. It doesn’t boil anything down. The movement, the feel, the controls, the graphics, the physics and the modes are all there. It was amazing to behold that the lighting effects and the players movements are all just as realistic and fluent as the big brother console games. This is the kind of game that makes me believe, truly believe, that all this smoke that Sony has been blowing about the PS Vita being the best and most powerful handheld of all time may be more than just an advertising campaign. I loved this game. I will buy this game. BUT… I can’t put it in my Top three. Not because I fear I may be one of the few tennis game lovers out there, but because that title has to go to…

Gravity Rush/Daze – GRAVITY RUSH! (Or Gravity Daze if you’re in the NTSC region) That’s right, we now have our final piece of the Holy Trinity that is the “Top 3 PS Vita Titles of Awesomeness”. This one caught me off guard because I had never heard anything about it prior to my partner in crime running over to me and telling me I had to get off WipEout and come and play this game. It’s a third person action/adventure game, as far as I can tell because all the subtitles were in Japanese, where you play a girl who can control the laws of gravity. You press the L1 button to remove all gravity and float, then redirect which direction you want gravity to be and press it again. You can also set it so you can have some sweet mid-air battles with the enemies by pressing L1 and then selecting your flying kick/punch, etc. It was nothing more than a gameplay mechanic but it gave the whole game a fantastic feel. The graphics had a very grungy, animé/comic book vibe to them which made the gelatinous inky blobs which were your main foes quite daunting. I had to put this in my Top three because not only did I adore every second of the game I played, but I haven’t seen or heard enough about it anywhere else and it deserves the attention of gamers. There’s also a cat, for reasons unknown. Did I mention there’s a CAT?! The partner in crime also agreed with this decision and spent a good chunk of the train journey home talking about the game at length and she’s more knowledgeable than me on the subject because she could read the Japanese. So check it out! I’ll even link you to a trailer for this one. I liked it that much!

Just wanted to give a final shout-out to my Partner in Crime. My faceless Partner in Crime.

There we have it! Phew. That was an epic journey across many different genres and games. Thank you very much if you have been able to stick it out with me all the way to the end! I hope I have imparted enough knowledge onto you, fellow gamer, that you now know enough to go out there and tell all your significant other(s) that what you want for Valentine’s Day is a PS Vita! Because we’re sure as Hell not going to be getting this stunning piece of kit in the UK any time near Christmas.

No, this does not mean I want you to scream like a spoilt baby at me down a microphone with a voice which sounds like Gilbert Godfrey on helium informing me of how many people have had sexual intercourse with my mother (apologies in advance for when she reads this, because she will, but I’m afraid it does happen, Ma). It means I want more people to stop being such passive players. Yes, I know, you think you’re being ’sneaky’ or ’smart’ when you use Assassin, or you think that by equipping Blast Shield that it increases your worth as a man because you can take explosions as if grenades were made of marshmallows and rainbows. The truth of the matter, though, is that you’re not any more skilled for having these perks, you’re just admitting that you are a weaker player without them.

Caption undetectable by screen.

It’s such a passive approach to playing. If I choose to do nothing, say I refuse to use my earned UAVs/Sentry Guns or grenades/explosives, your perks mean NOTHING. They’re as useful to you as a condom to a Runescape player (ZING!). This is why I despise the playing style so harshly. It doesn’t reward you for being better, it merely helps to push this frustrating façade that I didn’t actually earn those three kills in a row for my killstreak or nail you perfectly in your cowardly fat face with my frag grenade. It’s a get out of jail free card for the players who believe before the game begins that the enemy is going to be better than them so they’d better counteract their success in advance.

Sniper rifles, shotguns, spawn killing, camping, random grenades, kill boosting, noob tubing, and the rest all make me want to rip my skin off in anger as well, but at least they’re methods which are used under the intention of trying to defeat other players by having an aggressive advantage. There’s a reason that there is a game mode available which completely eliminates Ghost as a perk option on Black Ops.

I want to encourage all of you Assassin-using, ballistic knife spinning cowardly players to step forward, put down that bush you’re wearing as a suit and, in the words of an immortal:

Xbox Live Gamertag: Nerd Fighter

There’s my Gamertag. Open to whole world and I will add anybody until my friend’s list fills. So put away your damn passive perks, take a deep breath to calm your nerves, and just bring it, bitch!

While that may be considered a tad harsh, the previous game before wasn’t exactly terrible, but it was, at best, a time-filler in hope that one day a developer would step up to the plate and make a deserving rugby game for the fans. So, rugby fans, I’d like you to meet Sidhe. A New Zealand (YES!) based developer who has finally created a rugby game which I can say, hand on heart, is a really superb example of the genre.

For me, the issues with previous rugby games has always been the lack of feel to the gameplay. I never felt as if I was really in control of the players or the game as much as I was vaguely guiding them in the direction I wanted and hoping that the dice landed on my number. JLRC though has really shown that by tightening up the controls that the gameplay quality is dramatically increased. Passing has finally been perfected, with short and long passes to selected players down the line being an absolute breeze, and line outs and scrubs now boil down to timing a certain action on the controller at the right time, but also the timing required is based around the stats of the grouping of players involved which is a brilliant balance and keeps the flow going during the slower elements of the game.

Loose balls are also now finally something other than sheer luck of whether or not your player had decided to take a sit down on that particular part of the field or not. As you can individually control the players throughout the game, you can either play ahead or manually grab your nearest man and make a break for the ball. Seems unimpressive when explained so blandly, but being able to have that control and then go on to grab it, kick it, or do a quick pass or chip is just another building block of what helps make JLRC the best rugby game available out there right now. Plus, when taking kicks, be they penalties, kicking for touch or drop goals, the motion and controls feel fluent and always very sharp, especially with the addition of bullet-time mode while making the kick. Assuming of course that you have enough space on the pitch around you for the game to justify it, otherwise you’re just going to have to be lightning quick! Simply put: The controls make this game.

On top of all this, though, you still have a ‘Rugby Dollar’ system to keep you occupied which can be used on some of the (limited) customisation options within the game, and gives you a little more encouragement to try and max out every training and match mode possible. It can feel a tad unnecessary as the game goes on, but it’s great to start getting you into the feel of the game.

There are still a few gripes which need to be aired out, though. As Rugby World Cup 2011 owns the licences to all of the Six Nations teams, it means that you need to be a big International fan to want to jump on board with The Wallabies and The All Blacks who are licensed for this game. In an ideal world, we would have them all in one. There are also some graphical glitches, and the graphics are not the most gorgeous ones on Earth as it stands, and at times the games loading times can feel rather slack. They are small, minor issues which add up to a point or so being docked, but Jonah Lomu Rugby Challenge is a very, VERY strong 8. It’s the game all rugby fans have been waiting for! If only it hadn’t taken so long to arrive.

YES! Of course it’s good. Come on, this is a surprise to nobody. There are definitely some haters out there, some of whom will likely pounce all over the comment section, but Modern Warfare 3 is a good game. An excellent game. A superb game. A terrific ending to the trilogy and a marvelous game to experience in nearly every way. It’s such an enjoyable game with such a huge following that it’s actually incredibly difficult for me to review it! However, for you, three people who will ever read this, I will power through it and hopefully not pull a Laura.

From that last paragraph alone, you’re likely to skip down to the bottom and look at the score and go about the rest of your day. However, I am now going to address what have been widely regarded as the games biggest failing: “It’s the same as all the other ones.” Which is occasionally, and very cleverly, expressed on The Internet with the phrase “It’s just a £40 Modern Warfare 2 map pack.” I disagree. Therefore, the following paragraph will be me explaining why I take that stance.

This is what we humans call a ‘franchise’. A franchise is, by definition, “A media franchise is an intellectual property involving the characters, setting and trademarks of an original work of media (usually a work of fiction), such as a film, a work of literature, a television program or a video game. Generally, a whole series is made in a particular medium, along with merchandising and endorsements. Multiple sequels are often planned well in advance” [citation]. Call of Duty is a franchise, and Modern Warfare is a series within that franchise. This means that whole characters and story remain consistent and they are placed in new situations with a continued story. This is Modern Warfare 3. There is a whole new campaign to complete, with a conclusion to the previous two Modern Warfare games (it worries me that I have to state that), another entirely new set of Spec Ops mission, and a multiplayer mode which consists of nothing but brand new multiplayer maps. Three modes. All brand new. With added gameplay elements. Okay? We clear on all that? Brilliant! Haters section has now been tackled. On with the review.

The campaign is short. I’ll break that news as quickly and as bluntly as possible because it is somewhat predictable to the franchise. I would say the average length would be around six hours, but a dedicated shooter fan could probably gun their way through in about four hours. However, the campaign does make up for its brevity by being as intense and exciting as possible. There are more twists in the story than M. Night Shyamalan’s entire movie career, with one particular ten minute long section of it leaving me speechless with my mouth agasp to the point I stopped drinking energy drinks for the whole time. The story and conclusion has been mildly improved by being more coherently told than Modern Warfare 2’s slightly skewed idea of plot execution, which was welcomed by me with open arms and a tear in my eye. An amazing, heart-pounding, Red Bull-chugging, non-stop thrill ride from start to finish and I honestly can’t think of anymore metaphors to describe it! Therefore, campaign is now reviewed. Cool? Cool.

Spec Ops is back and doing what it does best: epic co-op fun. Make sure to tackle these with either a friend who you whole-heartedly believe would attend your funeral even if they found out you were sleeping with their partner, after running over their dog, and then taking money from their wallet and spending it on prophylactics and new tires to repeat the process until your death, OR a friend who you are happy to get rid of as soon as you’ve gathered all of the stars, because these Spec Ops missions can be a true challenge. If you plan on going for Veteran expect to have many hours ahead of you because there are no mid-mission checkpoints and some missions can take up to 15-20 minutes and dying at the final hurdle sends you both all the way back. The missions themselves, though, mostly revolve around getting from Point A to Objective A, then getting from Objective A to The Finish. It’s the standard Modern Warfare co-op affair, but it’s exactly what made the mode so epic and popular in the first place so it’s no bad thing. Plus, they’re all new missions for Modern Warfare 3. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT! I loved them all. I almost lost a friend in favour of them, and if you palm this mode off as a waste then you are missing out. NEXT.

What about the multiplayer? IT’S AWESOME! There have been quite a few edits from previous Modern Warfare/Call of Duty games so I’m going to go ahead and just lazily list them because there’s too many to break down one-by-one: There are now three flavours of killstreaks which are called Assault (your streak attacks the enemy. I.e. Predator Missile), Support (your streak benefits your team. I.e. Sam Turrets), and Specialist (your streak adds extra perks to your loadout with every two kills). You can now level up individual weapons which will not only gain you attachments and camos, but also allow you to gain extra perks for that particular weapon (which include reduced recoil, duel attachments, reduced flinching when shot and MORE!). Killstreaks are technically now point streaks so capturing flags, domination points or destroying enemy equipment all count towards your overall streak. There are also new killstreaks among all three varieties, new weapons, new attachments, new leveling systems for almost every facet of your loadout and (as of the moment of posting) the multiplayer has not been hacked yet. That last one shouldn’t really need to be mentioned, but tragically it does. BOOM! Multiplayer done.

Am I done? I’M DONE! YES! There you go, Modern Warfare 3. Go. Buy it. Rent it. Borrow it. Just play it and enjoy it for the manic, brilliant experience that is it. I just hope they don’t make a Modern Warfare 4. That would taint the series. This was the perfect ending.

PIRATES! Sorry, sorry, need to calm down a bit. I’ve always been a huge supporter of ninjas in the Pirate Vs. Nina Internet debate, but not when it comes to video games. As far as video games are concerned I’m all about the pirates. Which is why I wasn’t going to miss a chance to get my hands on Risen 2: Dark Waters! As it turns out it was a visual only event where I got to watch some of the guys from Deep Silver play the game in front of me… taunting me… mocking me. However, I did learn a lot of juicy information and they did give me a bottle of rum. So as I swig away on that let’s get down to brass taxes and talk about what Risen 2 is bringing to the table in early-mid 2012!

For those with a lack of common sense, Risen 2: Dark Waters is the sequel to 2009’s Risen, a fantasy RPG with a bad habit of having clunky controls and a myriad of vegetation and creatures. Risen 2 places you back into those big swaggery pirate boots of Nameless Hero #9 from the original Risen. Only now he’s a bit down on his luck and has been seemingly abandoned on yet another desert island without any food, supplies or friends. However, just like myself, he is still packing plenty of rum.

He's a pirate.

To kick things off on a positive note, Risen 2 has promised that the combat system will be improved over the original with particular attention to fighting multiple enemies at once. Just going off what I saw the sword fighting appeared to take a more Assassin’s Creed approach to fending off enemies when in large groups, and definitely looked to be a lot smoother than the combat from back in the stone-age year of 2009.

The second most notable difference which was discernible before anybody had even picked up a controller was the graphics were vastly improved. The original Risen was not the ugliest beast at the ball, but I think I’m safe in saying that it could definitely have used an extra coast of paint in certain areas. Risen 2 is quick to address that by looking absolutely stunning. Both the PC and Xbox 360 versions which were on display were beautiful to gaze upon. I’d give the slight edge to the PC (of course) but I was impressed with the 360 version, especially given the promises being laid down at just how huge Risen 2 was going to be. The textures looked bright and crisp, the local foliage had little to no pixelation, and the shadow and lighting was perfect for a game that is primarily set on bright, sunny desert islands.

I wonder how long I can go before mentioning CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow...

What Deep Silver was very talkative about was the idea of being more immersed in the world of Risen 2. Every character interaction will give you multiple dialogue options, the NPCs you walk past or stand by will actually gossip about various actions and decisions you’ve made throughout the game (sometimes even possibly hinting at treasures you may or may not have been close to), and giving a lot of the races in the game more of a solid backstory.

The race of Gnomes from Risen are back and this time we are promised that they will have a much richer story to them and their race. Luckily they no longer only speak their own undecipherable language from the original, now some have learned how to speak English thanks to the local pirates which means they drop F Bombs like they’re going out of fashion and CeX hasn’t reduced their trade-in price yet. This means as the game goes on you gradually learn more about their history, how they came to be, and how many times a game developer can slip the word ‘fuck’ into dialogue before it, by law, has to become a rap song.

There are some extra gameplay elements which have also been worked in to help really draw you into the universe of Risen 2. For example, they have implemented a day and night cycle which acts very much like Castlevania 2 only without that damned annoying pop-up box to inform you that it’s happening. Shops will be closed at night, guards will be on higher alert, and you’ll also be able to sleep your way through whatever hours of the day you please so now you can be lazy in a video game while you’re being lazy playing a video game. YES!

My favourite mention during Deep Silver’s ‘immersion’ discussion was the quests. I’ve already dropped all the information I know about the multiple dialogue options, but Deep Silver has promised that every quest in the game will have multiple ways to complete it. The one we were shown, for example, claimed to have three possible solutions which each have a specific effect on the characters involved and the surrounding area. Though two of those options were left a mystery to us, I can verify that simply stealing the thing you want by busting in through the window is one solution which does not seem to ever not be a choice.

He sounded like Jar Jar Binks... Jar Jar Binks if he swore a lot.

Now, I’ve gone ahead and broken the sacred rule of journalism and I’ve saved the two best bits for last. Two new components which will be coming to the Risen experience with Dark Waters are the ability to gather and control a crew of AI characters and a monkey.

That’s right, you heard me right folks, the ability to gather and control a fully fledged crew. Just like Captain Jack Sparrow (DAMMIT!), in true Pirates of the Caribbean style as you are down on your luck, high on blood alcohol content and with nary two planks of wood to rub together you are after a pirate crew to help you gain a ship and presumably plunder, pillage or rescue various fair maidens (Deep Silver were very cryptic about the plot-line thus far). I’d love to delve into it in more detail but, aside from explaining that gathering a crew is a rather prominent feature in Risen 2, Deep Silver were very hush hush about the whole thing so the best I can tell you is that it is definitely a thing that is happening.

Who cares about any of the previous 1,000 words, though, because MONKEY! Again, Deep Silver were not willing to divulge the full extent of how the monkey comes into play but they did let a few gems slip out. First, and most important, of all: yes the monkey is playable. As far as what was shown, playable on command. This means whenever the situation suits you, Nameless Hero de jour is able to ask his little chum to run into a house to steal supplies, distract guards, swipe keys off belts and get into smaller areas through very convenient monkey-sized holes. I doubt the monkey itself has a set name, but even if it does I full intent to call mine ‘Fuzzylumpkins’ and hope that it’s possible to not have to control anyone or any thing else for the entire game.

No pictures of the monkey were available so have this spider waving at you instead.

That was all that was revealed at this super secret first look event… or was it? Well, yes. We did however get an awesome interview with the two Deep Silver guys who did reveal one or two extra bonus chunks of information! So if you’re hankering for some more Risen 2: Dark Waters talk then be sure to constantly Tweet Us until our feed is filled with nothing but talk of promiscuous ladies, booze and monkeys!  Or stay tuned for the exclusive Ready Up interview next week. Whichever takes your fancy.

THE TIME HAS COME! As gamers and developers worldwide continue to debate which is going to be the best first person shooter of 2011, we here at Ready Up have gotten our first hands-on preview of one of the competitors for the title. In order for a fair fight two of us were deployed to the event: myself, the cynic who stands by the Call of Duty series, and Michael ‘Chucklebuck’ Slevin, who shall be representing the Battlefield loyal. We got our hands on some full-on multiplayer, the campaign AND a single co-op mission to boot. Let’s get on with it and delve into my immediate thoughts, shall we?

As already mentioned, I was going into this as the person who needed to be swayed. I like Battlefield, I think it’s a thoroughly well built franchise, but I would never choose it over my beloved Call of Duty. So DICE had a task ahead of them as I strolled through the door with a Red Bull in hand. They had done an excellent job with the ‘Caspian Border‘ trailer, because I was hankering for a chance in a jet. That moment where the pilot screams: “ENEMY LOCK! ENEMY LOCK!” gives me goosebumps every time and I wanted to experience that moment for myself. As I was so excited for this moment I’ll skip the first 15 minutes I spent in regular multiplayer games doing regular multiplayer kills using regular multiplayer weapons. If you download the free BETA you can experience that yourselves, you don’t need me here for that. The jets, though, I wanted in one of those jets! Sadly I did not experience that moment of letting a missile tear across the sky in a beautiful stream of death and glory because after finally getting my hands on a jet I realised it was impossible to hit anything, anywhere, that wasn’t a huge, expansive patch of foliage on the ground below me.

This static image is more of a tutorial than I got!

I was heartbroken. The biggest draw I had to Battlefield 3, and its multiplayer in particular, was the blend of different battles it offered within its multiplayer modes. Sure, Call of Duty has had vehicles before but even I confess they’ve never really been implemented well in the series. This lead me to believe, what with all the trailers, that the vehicles in Battlefield 3 would totally revitalise the idea and show the kind of manic, insane, brilliant multiplayer games which could be accomplished with them. I swear, I spent over 25 minutes trying to pilot this jet. I didn’t shoot anyone, I didn’t achieve anything, I only just barely was able to stay over or around the battlefield because the controls drove me crazy. The same goes for any machine available in the game that wasn’t a bog standard Jeep or tank. Maybe I’m a ‘n00b’, I’ll throw my hands up if this is so, but I play first person shooters and I play flight combat games and these vehicles were the worst I’ve ever attempted to control. I wasn’t alone either. I would say at least three other members of my team were using the jets as a fast travel system and simply bailed out of their out of control jet whenever they were lucky enough to navigate their crash over a capture point.

The rest of the multiplayer, while admittedly the most amazing first person shooter graphically I’ve ever seen, didn’t feel special to me. The maps were huge, and I mean HUGE, but the terrain was always the same dull destroyed buildings or big open fields. This just meant that after the first 30 or so minutes of gasping in awe at the tremendous expanse of field sprinkled with burning jet remains that I just had to run further after I got sniped for the 1,805,915th time by the same sniper who I can’t locate because showing me him lying down on a green patch of grass after he’s shot me IS NOT THE SAME AS A KILLCAM!

That looks a tad precarious...

Ahem. Anyway, enough multiplayer rage, let’s drill down to the campaign. It was painfully mundane. I don’t mean to be too blunt, but Battlefield should do better than this. It’s long, linear paths with far distant checkpoints and respawning enemies. I can never, and will never, forgive respawning enemies in current generation AAA first person shooters. Modern Warfare 3 I swear I will call you out on this bullshit as well! Stop it. At one point I was defending a bridge shooting the same white t-shirted, black trousered, blue sunglasses wearing guy over and over and over (etc…) as he died and walked back around the corner immediately. Not even a loading delay, and I did this for about 40 seconds straight before I was told to move on. I even reloaded a checkpoint and took cover behind a wall and waited. 40 seconds later I got told my objective was completed. SUPER! I all but expected an achievement.

The issue with the campaign (or at least the first chapters which I played) was that it felt as if they were trying to get too much of a Call of Duty theme. There was little tension, just grand explosions hoping to shock and awe more than anything. Call of Duty can only just barely get away with it, but at one point a skyscraper building was falling on my character (!) and he raised his hand up to try and stop it. I know, I know, it’s what you’d do in real life but it just felt so forced in hopes of drawing excitement, terror or emotion that it just seemed like the fat kid at the back of the class eating worms hoping to garner some form of attention. Maybe the campaign got better and the first few levels were just a setup to what was to be an epic tale that would span generations for centuries to come. A harrowing plot which would twist and turn like a rollercoaster in Hell made of knifes which stabbed and cut at the very fabric of your mental being until you were left crying in the fetal position weeping for mummy while praying to God all at the same time… frankly, though, I don’t know. The game crashed on me and I had to start again and I never made it past the skyscraper pancaking me due to time restraints. The graphics were stunning, though, truly incredible to behold.

I'm pretty sure this is how Scientology started.

Okay, let’s super quickly cover the co-op mission (just the one) we were allowed to play. My first impression? DEATH. Death everywhere. The average survival time of the mission on our first 10 attempts couldn’t have been longer than 30 seconds. This was on normal as well! The difficulty curve was more broken than Duke Nukem Forever’s loading times. Eventually, though, we memorised the entry pattern of the enemies and made it through a decent chunk of the mission. A good 15-20 minutes in we could sense we were at the end, but no! Chuckles was down. I valiantly dashed to revive him but there was a cheap cowardly AI with a shotgun who tore me apart. Menu screen. Wait, MENU SCREEN?! No checkpoints? No save points? NOTHING?! It didn’t even dump us back into the mission’s menu, we had to go all the way back in from the Main Menu. The entire mission objective was just to survive until the end. At least, I think that was the objective. At one point we made it to a door which the game told us to hit B to open and it didn’t open. We shot every bullet at it until we were told by one of the developers that they couldn’t tell if the game had glitched or if that was the end. As we were 30 minutes into the mission and we couldn’t reload a checkpoint that didn’t exist we called it there.

Now, I may have seemed like a rather rant filled Call of Duty fanboy (come at me, bro) but I went in hoping to be turned to the Battlefield side and felt burned that it didn’t happen. Luckily, I had Michael alongside me the whole time who can now give you his experience in 700 words or less and is required by law to refer to me as ‘Dunk’ because that used to be my name on our (absolutely-excellent-which-you-should-totally-join) forum before I had to be all professional and stuff:

Michael 'Chuckles' Slevin.

“So I sat down in front of one of the 360s set up for multiplayer and jumped into my first match. I didn’t start well. I couldn’t hit shit due to the recoil. Every time I fired, my gun would go flying wildly around the screen. I know Battlefield is meant to be more realistic, but this was silly. In fact, I was having major problems hitting targets. Precision aiming was impossible as the right-stick was so sensitive. As a result, I watched my K/D ratio decrease ever more and a wave of disappointment overcame me: I just wasn’t finding Battlefield 3’s multiplayer fun.

I was determined to give it another chance, though, so I steeled myself as the next map loaded. It was then a brainwave hit me: I should be able to change the sensitivity, shouldn’t I? After lowering it (quite a degree), I became much more adept and back to my usual Battlefield ways. I was mowing down other players left right and centre. Since this was a more compact urban environment compared to the previous map, I opted for a sweet-looking shotgun to cut off any enemies patrolling the cramped alleyways.

I ambushed unsuspecting enemies, blinding them with my laser sights before taking them out with a shot to the head or two to the torso and snuck up behind cowardly snipers. There’s nothing more satisfying than knifing an unsuspecting player in the neck. With the ensuing victory came a much greater sense of glee and a greater appreciation of how fun Battlefield 3 could actually be. For our final multiplayer game, we hopped into a huge open field, where Dunk and I got our mitts on the most intriguing new features: jets.

We took off, flew about the level a bit, tried to shoot each other down… and almost instantly crashed into some trees. This went on for a little bit longer. I’m sure with time, we’ll become much more competent pilots. For now, though, all we could do was admire DICE’s colourful foliage.

Next up, we hurtled ourselves into the single player campaign. The story starts off with a rather interesting QTE-laced action sequence involving running from undefined enemies on a speeding subway car. Following this, we’re then shown Staff Sergeant Blackburn being interrogated by a superior over the events that have taken place over the last few days. So far, so very Call of Duty. In fact, at one moment that’s so very obviously designed to make you gasp, I asked Dunk to confirm that we weren’t actually playing Activision’s flagship title. That was all that we played, though, since he crashed the console at that point.

After a quick reset, we then teamed up to tackle the co-op missions. Starting off in a room on the verge of being breached by enemy troops, we laid down mines and covered doorways and waited for the enemy to burst in. When they did, we died. So we tried again and died once more. Then again. And again. And again. We sucked so much, we were more or less being instantly fucked the second the first enemy smashed open the door.

CHHHAAARRRGGGEEE!

With the aid of some tactics and common sense, however, we survived the initial onslaught and quickly breezed through the rest of the level. We covered each others’ backs, rushing to revive each other when we were down and kicking some serious ass. Our time with the preview once again ended prematurely, though: we broke the game once again when a door we were meant to open simply wouldn’t, no matter how many bullets we pumped into it.

All in all, our preview of Battlefield was an eye-opener. It’s refreshing and admirable to see DICE mixing things up to keep things fresh, unlike other, more turgid sequels out there. While it’s initially worrying to see just how much the gameplay’s changed, we’re sure with time we’ll become more familiar – and thus more deadly – with Battlefield’s enhancements.

P.S. Sorry if this seems concise and shit, Dunk made me stick to a 700-word limit on penalty of a boot in the bawz.”

It’s true, I did make him keep it to 700 to stop this feature being a full on 3,000 epic journey from start to finish. So, there you have it. Pick a side, people, it’s what all the cool kid gamers are doing these days! (Or buy them both. New. Not used. That kills the industry apparently.)

As some of you stalkers (I love you all) out there may remember, a while back I did a Preview on Men of War: Assault Squad and gave a reasonably positive overview of the game as a whole. I stand by that, because it felt as if the game had been carefully constructed to have a high focus on challenging strategy and thorough advance planning to be required from the player to succeed. Vietnam however, gives the feeling that it was rushed through to completion and leaves the player to spend more time doing trial and error tactics than any logical battle plans. Most of the time what seemed to be the soundest strategy would be automatic death whereas running three of your men in face first to distract the enemy from the sniper three feet away from them was a super quick victory for you, General!

The AI wasn’t broken, by which I mean there was never a point where I’d see one try and climb a rock or hump a nearby Jeep instead of attacking, but it wasn’t even remotely intelligent. The best tactic available to the player is to just keep your sniper alive. Then you’re done. Game over and have a nice weekend. Enemies won’t advance unless your standard soldiers are within range, and as long as your sniper can gain the high ground, which he can about 80% of the time, then the difficulty curve rapidly plummets. Of course the remaining 20% of the time it flies back to the clouds because, again, you and the enemy have the same range on weapons and they never move which leaves you simply trial and erroring each side of their encampment until you find the one particular flank the designer thought you’d find the most tempting and clear them out from there.

Now, if you’ll pardon me to be shallow for a paragraph, but Men of War: Vietnam also looks… just… terrible. There’s no justification for it. I was running this on an upgraded Alienware Aurora with the settings turned up to 11 and I was still convinced I’d been sent a game from a bargain bin four years in the past. It would never be a deal breaker for me, but the pixelation and appalling character models just couldn’t slip past my radar with the gameplay they were teamed with. Even if Vietnam had the potential to be the next Starcraft for gameplay I would still have dropped points off for the solider animation alone.

I would recommend Men of War. I would especially recommend Assault Squad as that was challenging but in all the right ways. Men of War: Vietnam though is a hastily cobbled together set of two campaigns which never satisfied nor thrilled me with any method other than ending.

Yeah, that’s the one, not. I will kick things off with a congratulatory pat on the back to Red Orchestra 2 because it is definitely one of the most realistic World War II first person shooters I’ve ever experienced. The gun sounds are magnificent, and I truly mean they are some of the best I’ve ever heard, bar none, and the atmosphere the game creates really does get the adrenaline pumping when you want to be able to push that extra couple of metres into enemy territory for your country and the proud men who stand alongside you. Not to mention that the attention to level design must have been painstaking because every brick, house, bush and piece of artillery look absolutely stunning for the Unreal 3 Engine. The problem is that from there on out the overall experience slowly gets whittled down piece by piece of small, yet notable, annoyances and glitches.

The first, and for me the most glaring, point to make is that this is a multiplayer game. STOP! Do not read the back of the box or the stats on Steam because I know it says that its got single player as well, but it is the most half arsed attempt that I’m not going to allow it. It’s singleplayer the way Brink was singleplayer. They shove you into a multiplayer mode with a group of AI controlled teammates and enemies and leave you to scream at them glitching into a fence for thirty odd minutes. If you want to play with bots then yes the singleplayer will cater to that and tie a very loose plot around it, but I’m from the age when having bots was part of the multiplayer so I’m labelling this as a multiplayer only game with some mildly misleading marketing.

The multiplayer in itself, ignoring the glitches of course, is a highly detailed (let me stress that again: HIGHLY. DETAILED) experience with enough command keys, strategies and voice commands to make any standard Call of Duty player weep tears of blood in fear. I played as much of this game as I possibly could prior to reviewing, even completing the ’singleplayer’ experience before going online, and I am still clueless as to what at least half the command keys do. Please leave your purse by the front door because unless you know what you’re stepping into you will not walk out with 10 fingers by the end of it. You can command squadmates, form strategies, drop precision strikes, specify objectives in certain missions, target fire specific targets and about 50 other options I couldn’t even begin to get my head around. I still label this level of detail as a huge plus for the game’s side, because that’s the game that Red Orchestra 2 is trying to be, but I will still throw a casual caution to the wind that you need to know the number of hours you’ll need to put in to even understand all the controls. Noobs best steer clear unless you’re into the gaming equivalent of  S&M.

The biggest fault in the game as it stands right now is the glitches. The matchmaking threw me around for ages before locking me into a game, the ping rates were extortionate to the point my ping bordered on Facebook money levels, and graphical glitches plagued almost every game I stepped into online. Some nowhere near as dangerous as others. Often it would be something as simple as a bush inside of a wall or a corpse lying down in mid-air, small cosmetic stuff, but it went as far as some enemies flashing through walls, invisible vehicles and in one very rare instance I even fell through the floor into oblivion during a heavy lag period when it claimed my ping was high.

I’m sure that Triptech will fix these issues, they’re very good to their PC user base, and that the multiplayer will smooth itself out a few weeks from now – but I can only review what I have in front of me. Assuming that you read somewhere that they have a patch released, feel free to throw an extra mark onto the overall score and make it a very solid 8. The current score is still based on the experience I had being both fun and satisfying. Unlike most first person shooters I felt genuinely proud to have got a kill or captured an objective, which really bumped up the game from glitchy and mediocre to quite good… and glitchy.

It's a good feeling.

It is that day, my friends. This is not just any day – oh no! Today is THE day. It is that day which many may cower in fear of while others drop to their knees and raise their hands to the sky in joyous celebration. The day where beer and wine and vodka flows freely betwixt parched lips across the country with merriment and worry draped over all who grip tightly to their drink. I was one of merriment, however. For this day, as I speak to you fine people, is the day that I AM FREE.

For the first time in nearly two decades I am free of the tyranny of full time education. That is right, my friends. I am now exiting the darkness of University and stepping bleary eyed into the world of unemployment and poverty. Why the happiness then? I hear you ask in hushed tones; because now there are video games. Nothing but video games.

We all know of this great feeling! For some it’s the weekend, for others it is the summer holidays, and even for some tragic few it is limited to the Christmas period – but we all know that feeling where you are totally free to game in whatever fashion you desire without the need for guilt. You don’t have work which you really should get around to, you don’t have to think about packing for moving back to University and you don’t have any family commitments which must be fulfilled under punishment of tedious nagging.

This is now my time, friends. I’m currently stuck in that beautiful limbo that is between student life and actual employment. Well, I’m not so much stuck as I am sipping a mojito in a rocking chair, gazing longingly into the distance, with Andrew W.K. blaring out of a nearby sound system with a huge smirk on my face. Not even lying, right now I’m listening to Andrew W.K. – I don’t care that all the songs sound the same because I like the one song! All I have to do right now is sit around, likely in whatever clothes I wore yesterday and to bed, and play some games. I have the FREEDOM!

Here is a visual example of my inner feelings right now.

I’ve been meaning to finally play and complete Half Life, I received Dead Island two days early, I’ve had L.A. Noire sitting on my shelf still sealed since July 6th, I’m not even ranked on Starcraft 2 anymore and my Steam library contains Dino D-Day with zero hours clocked on it. DINO FREAKIN’ D-DAY! (special shout out to Dan for sending me that, by the way. Expect many words written about it after I’m done celebrating here!). The only limits upon me are how many hours I’m able to stay awake to play all of these wondrous experiences. For those who know me, you know my level of caffination, but for those who don’t I likely drink enough on a weekly basis to kill most human beings. I’m almost the Charlie Sheen of caffeine.

Anyway, it feels fantastic to be back into the world of gaming and writing and out of the world of strict deadlines, biased tutors and irritating textbooks. This has been a very self-masturbatory blog about my newly acquired FREEDOM, I’m well aware of this and I apologise, but I just had to get all of the feelings out. I hope soon you will feel as I do now, very soon in fact, and that when you do you shall raise your controller of choice into the air and cry FREEDOM! Or at least come play Dino D-Day with me. Anyone? It’s NAZI DINOSAURS! How can you turn that down? Add me on Steam. Seriously… FREEDOM!

It felt very Top Gear. That was no bad thing!

After carefully dodging the champagne, to avoid looking even stupider than I did being in such a fancy location in a hooded shirt, and finding a cold beer I was treated to the Miss Need for Speed competition. This was apparently a search which has been going on for a while before the event but I was totally unaware of the contest and was asked not to take any photos during it. However, we here at Ready Up practice good journalism and we bring you ALL the information we can. The important part is that they did announce a winner and it was NOT the one I voted for which made me sad. Now, let us speak no more of it as without photos it feels rather weak. Maybe we should talk more about the video which was on show.

It was well publicised to us at the very beginning that what was on show that day was an early build and that what we were playing was not a final product and that it would be rather limited. The key part to mention was the limitations of what was on show. For starters, item B from our previous list wasn’t even on show! We were locked into our cars like a puppy on a hot day and never saw a second of on-foot action. This was a tragic start because I was dead excited to see how this new element was going to work in a Need for Speed game, but apparently I must put my Quick Time Event dreams back in their little box and wait for the game to be released, or at least another preview event. Luckily items A and C were firmly on display and looking fantastic so now it’s time to heap some praise on what WAS on show for us to enjoy.

Reminds me of the video for 'Gorillaz - Stylo'. (Youtube it)

We were given two races to flick our fingers to, the first being a section called ‘Run to the Hills’. You are dropped into a desert dirt track and are required to overtake 10 cars to complete the stage. It was an interesting new twist because you didn’t start in 10th position, oh no no no, you started in 180th place. This is where that item A really starts to come into play because it does give the game a feeling of being HUGE. You have a certain section of this stage to gear shift your way into 170th place or an environmental hazard will crush your soul along with your shiny new Porsche. Of course, once you jump into 170th place the stage ends and (presumably) you would be transported to the next stage in the completed version. Ours of course just ended with either a ‘FAIL’ or a ‘WIN’ because of what was on offer.

I will let the slightly off graphics go due to the preview nature of the build, but what I doubt will change will be the handling. It just felt a tad off. Cornering felt clunky and the drifting felt near impossible. It took me several runs to nail a single turn accurately and even then it was usually down to learning to compensate for the lack of drifting rather than mastering the skill. This may change by the final product but it really felt teeth-grindingly awkward at times which made me feel I have a duty to report it. Other than the handling, though, the stage was superb. Good set hazards, clever shortcuts and the collision animation and physics worked really well. I mastered the ability to side-swipe an AI out of my way and into a nearby rock far easier than I learnt how to brake my way around a tight, dusty corner. The briefing beforehand has even stated that the physics were still being tweaked and improved, which, if true, means the final product should be of excellent calibre.

SEE! DRIFTING! Grrr.

The second level, Buried Alive, was much more to my tastes. It didn’t have the sense of grandeur which Run to the Hills did, but the gameplay and environment was far more exciting and adrenaline pumping. The objective was to simply overtake a single opponent, in itself a rather tough task even on the normal difficulty setting, but the environmental elements and fast-paced nature of the stage was what set it apart for me as why The Run may stand a chance of being more than just good… it could become great!

You’re hurtling down a snow-sprinkled hillside at over 100 MPH, either kissing your opponent’s exhaust pipe (no homo) or trying to shake them off your tail, as missiles rain down from the sky causing avalanches and rocks to cascade down onto you, your opponent and the path ahead. Swerving the rivers of rocks flowing into your path with a panicked glance to the heavens in hopes that you can crawl your way through something as basic as the next corner without meshing your flesh with the frame of your BMW is the kind of gameplay which made me want more of Need for Speed: The Run. Up until this point the preview had done little to really get me excited about the title, I was merely curious. Buried Alive, though, showed what this Frostbite 2 engine and high-octane racing action can do when paired together in a wonderful marriage of carnage and speed.

DAMN GLARE! Last thing I need. Can't you see I'm in 157th?!

I have owned Need for Speed games in the past, and they have always been a very secure and well-built franchise to grab when in need of a good racing game fix, but The Run may be the first I’ve ever been excited about. In the past I have normally merely come across the franchise on the shelf rather than looking a few months ahead and tracking down trailers to see a bit more gameplay. So, for that, kudos to Black Box studios. This may be the first ever Need for Speed game I pick up on release day with some sweat on my brow from anticipation. Excellent work! I just have to bank on the on-foot sequences being as good as their pre-rendered cut-scenes appear to convey them as.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You control Titus, a Space Marine and part of the human army, who’s fighting against The Orks, a race of green aliens who appear to be technologically stable but rather lacking in the intellectual department, and The Forces of Chaos, Space Marines who’ve turned evil and somehow gained the ability to summon daemon creatures in from another realm (?). You are then thrust into the… slightly behind the right shoulder perspective, handed your Bolt Gun and sent on your merry way to kill things. I’m not attempting to make the plot-line sound bland or anything, but the preview event consisted of very disjointed sections of the campaign mode so I wouldn’t want to pass any sort of guess work or judgement until the full experience is available.

Hold on, Duncan! I hear the cry of many eleven year old XBox Live gamers out there (who obviously read my words as if they were gospel). Isn’t Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine just copying Gears of War?

Okay? I’ve seen this on The Internet. In magazines. Even at the event people mentioned in hushed whispers if it would be taboo to say it reminded them of it. Warhammer 40,000 started in 1987. Through a tragic tale of woe and lack of forethought this has simply taken Games Workshop a tad too long to make. Thus, Gears of War was able to take A LOT of inspiration from the Warhammer 40K Universe and use it in their own game first. Now, no speaking of this again or I’ll tell your father not to buy you that new 18+ super-gory sexy game you want for your 12th Birthday.

Aim for the brain! (click to enlarge)

First impressions were superb. The controls were solid, the graphics were not going to melt any faces off but they suited the Warhammer setting perfectly and the enemies were filled with smooth, warm red blood which was soon splattered satisfyingly across my LCD screen. It took a while to adjust to the grenade throwing, and almost every gun which didn’t have unlimited ammo drank bullets like an Irishman with an open bar, but it had a very distinct and enjoyable feel to it. There was no cover system in place (take note eleven year olds!) which I really think was a huge boost in Space Marines’ favour. YOU were the cover. You have armour. You have technology. Why would you hide behind a two foot high pile of collapsing bricks? You wouldn’t. You don’t; and I was damn happy about that.

The biggest frustration, for me anyway, turned out to be the difficulty curve. The fact that if you are able to stun an enemy, and then pull off a Quick Time Event grapple manoeuvre (which looked beautifully brutal, by the way) then surrounding enemies can still hit you throughout the sequence. I can understand the logic, but a lot of the time you’re surrounded by a good five to ten enemies and pulling off these grapple moves is the only way to regenerate health so a lot of the time you can end up losing more than you’ve gained (especially on Hard. Dear. Lord!). It never became in tense, as in, I never felt the compulsion to throw the controller on the floor and slap every person in the face on my way out, but after dying for the 18th time trying to complete a level the QTE death did start to become a rather large annoyance to me and my mental health.

Other than that I’m left with nothing but positive things left to say about the campaign. The melee combat is perfectly implemented so flipping between running and gunning and axing your enemies into chopped Ork liver was never simpler. The three flavours of melee weapons (Chainsaw, Axe, and Hammer) were each balanced and had a real sense of weight behind them with each swing – my favourite being the hammer because not only was it powerful as all Hell, but it gave me a rather confidence boosting Thor vibe.

I really wish there was more to say but due to the limited preview laid out before me I must move on to multiplayer for the time being (but be sure to tune in to Ready Up on September 6th for our FULL REVIEW of the game! WINK!).

... Directed by MICHAEL BAY! EXPLOSIONS! BOOM! KABLAM! (click to enlarge)

UNHOLY SUPREME CUSTOMISATION BATMAN! So. Many. Options. We’ve all seen the classes/customisation multiplayer trailer, so the first thing I (along with everyone else in the room) did was leap into that glorious world filled with mismatched arm armour and bright pink chainsaws. Eventually of course it all boils down to just changing what your armour looks like and the various colours but it was so terribly addictive! We had one marine who had gone on a mission to try and fit as many difficult colours onto his armour as possible (I named him Skittles…), we had a bright pink power ranger (in fact, several) and I was kitted out in full on lime green Chaos Marine gear (I got nicknamed ‘The Hulk’, which pleased me greatly). There was way too much enjoyment taken from the customisation, is what I’m saying. The PR team actually had to wrangle us all into the lobby to get the game started.

We were treated to two multiplayer maps; ‘Annihilation’, a simple team-on-team deathmatch with a highscore of 41 kills, and ‘Seize Ground’, a King of the Hill style mode where we needed to gain and maintain the majority of the three (or four, depending on the map) control points. If I were to choose a straight out favourite I’d say it’d be Annihilation because grenade spam makes my skin itch. You’re equipped with custom loadouts, various perks available, and you can have JUMPPACKS! Not jetpacks, as it was pointed out to me on Twitter by Spinex, but jumppacks, and they’re AWESOME. They’re as irritating as a crying baby who just crapped himself in a Ford Focus when you’re against them, but when you’re one of them it is time to get your jump on!

Seriously; AWESOME! (click to enlarge)

There’s even a levelling system (circa Call of Duty and many others) which will keep you crawling towards that almighty Level 41. The brief glimpse I got of the multiplayer did show that perhaps the levelling system wouldn’t be the only thing to keep you hooked. I was actually impressed at the spawning system, which let you set either default, a capture point, or a fellow teammate as your spawn location, and the hectic class-based action did lead to quite a lot of tense moments fending off a wave of jumppack using pink power rangers while you frantically spammed the grenade button and prayed they didn’t get within melee range.

The true test of the multiplayer though won’t come through until the full version is released. What I experienced was a jolly, good-natured LAN party between games journalists who were sat two feet away from each other. Even I felt wary camping in a set spot for too long or trying to hip-fire a sniper rifle. Without a mini-map or a killcam there does seem to be a system which is ripe for abuse once it hits the online realm. I hope I’m wrong and that the experience I got with the multiplayer is the way the final product ends up, because it was good! Really good. The lack of cover system and carefully balanced maps actually got me enjoying this multiplayer more than Gears of War (you know, that game this one ISN’T ripping off?) and I’m pretty sure that’s a sentence that will likely get me beaten to death if Laura ever ends up reading this far into my article.

That's some HOT Marine on Marine action. (click to enlarge)

To go for a quick, snappy summary I would say the hype Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has going for it so far is not unjustified. If you’re already a Warhammer fan then rest assured that your pre-order receipt is definitely a worthy investment. Otherwise, start getting excited! Download the demo on your respective platform, check out our review (which is released on the 6th! Mark it down!) and start looking for a good launch day pre-order because this one looks like it’s turning out to be one bloody good party.

About a month or two back I started to get into Starcraft II, REALLY into Starcraft II, and this inevitably lead me to The Internet where I traversed the sea of endless video replays, commentaries and teachings of the game. I still don’t know why, but Starcraft was just a game I really wanted to become great at. I’ve been an RTS fan for as long as I’ve been gaming, but Starcraft was the first to bring the determination to compete at a more than casual level. I started with The Day[9] Daily, which I was tipped off about by “Arkayla” over on our awesome forum (WINK!), and before I knew it I had become a regular viewer of Husky and JustinTV’s MANY live streams.

So many hours spent over on WarpPrism.com

I began to love watching other people play. People better than me, playing video games for money in a way I dare not dream of, who I will likely never know or even interact with in any capacity. It was a very bizarre pleasure which I’d never experienced before. I’ve always been a heavy player and a light watcher but the enjoyment of watching some of these masters go to town live was strangely exhilarating. This was when Kotaku’s writer jumped out of nowhere to twist a professional gamer’s words into declaring that eSports were on the decline and that they were only enjoyed by weird, lonely freaks among the gaming community. Driving the point that she had a particular distaste for the idea home as hard as possible with the closing line: “Here’s to staying one of the Regular People.”

I realise I’m nearly a month late to the party, and most people’s pitchforks have been laid down and the torches extinguished, but SCREW THAT NOISE! What must happen to break this social standing surrounding games if even other gamers cannot resist the urge to look down their noses at others who love the same hobby as they do? Nearly 23 million people from over 150 countries tuned in to the MLG gaming event in June. Over $100,000 in prize money was won at the Global Starcraft League tournament. Not to mention the ridiculous sponsorships from some of the largest brands on the globe. I realise I’m new to this scene, having only been involved with it for a few months, but I will not stand idly by and not shout from the rooftops that eSports are the future for me.

Dreamhack 2011. I can't see this as a 'downturn.'

Regular sports have always been rather dull to me, so maybe it’s the same for a lot of others when it comes to eSports, but when I first got into them I thought I was but one of a few. Thanks to Kotaku I found out that this is not the case as the uproar caused, from just that single article, showed me that there is a strong eSports community – and that I’m proud to be a part of it. I highly recommend that if you’re even remotely into the idea that you check out some eSports that are out there. Doesn’t even have to be Starcraft II, there are a shockingly high number of eSport games played out there right now. I’ve even seen some freaks playing Street Fighter IV!

Did you know Dead Island takes place on a tropical island? Did you also know it has zombies in it? Did you also know that it looks as awesome as a baby koala riding a skateboard backwards? Of course you did! Because everybody knew these facts as soon as it was debuted at E3 a mere month ago.

I remember when the Dead Island announcement trailer first hit the Internet, I felt for sure it was going to be this year’s E3 run away winner for best trailer. Not meaning to brag or anything, but that was exactly what happened because the Internet lit up like a fat kid being handed a free cake and has been pining over the beauty of that trailer ever since. Which, rather unorthodoxly, I’m going to post right now because on the 1/1,000,000 chance you haven’t seen it yet you NEED to see it before I tell you exactly what went down this week when Deep Silver let me jump into their exotic paradise for 90 minutes of non-stop zombie splicing mayhem:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you see it? Did you see it? AHHH! So good. Still makes me sad every time I watch it. Anyway, in the wake of the announcement trailer release we have since been sprinkled with information that Dead Island will: have four-player drop-in/drop-out co-op play, take place in an open world environment, be available for all the leading platforms and have a heavily melee/survival focused gameplay style. Apart from this, though, we were mostly left in the dark for a few weeks to simply bask in the glow of the trailer. Now, however, I’ve got some of the goods on Dead Island!

This past week Deep Silver were generous enough to help chaperon me and two other of the gaming industry’s finest journalists around a section of Dead Island’s beautifully destroyed scenery for 90 minutes of four-player co-op action. We were controlling four survivors who were held up in a church (because it is always a church) with a group of others attempting to ride out the storm. We, apparently, being the only four souls brave enough to go outside and take on the undead scourge. Either that or they drew straws before we took over and we just happened upon the four unluckiest playable characters ever. Our “mission” was to place some posters up around the city for one of our fellow survivors to help find his wife and kid – or something along those lines. I place “mission” in speech marks because frankly I barely remember paying attention to the fact we had any kind of set goal once we wandered out onto the streets of Banoi.

The streets were so long, windy and packed full of scavengable debris (not to mention zombies) that out of the 90 minutes I can quite confidently say that we spent a good 75 minutes strolling off the mission’s path to climb roofs, explore buildings and open every dumpster in the hopes of finding a discarded shotgun. The world is so open and rife for probing that our expert guide had to keep snapping us into line because they were worried we’d play it for 90 minutes and wouldn’t finish a single mission! In the end, you’ll be relieved to know that we did indeed complete ONE mission. Just. The problem is that the game has an almost dynamic mission objective system where when you stumble into an area you can easily find yourself caught up in a totally different mission just by walking down an alley and taking interest in a burning trash bin. It’s a fascinating way to play the game because they feel a lot less like side missions and a lot more like they’re genuinely trying to flesh out the experience of surviving. Not just buying time or adding them in for the sake of an achievement.

That was almost the entirety of my 90 minute experience though. I got so lost and interested in the world I was in that the time just disappeared before my fingertips and I was left begging for a larger fix like Charlie Sheen on a Friday night. I rarely get that immersed in games, especially zombie-based games, because as fun as Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead are, there is a feeling that you are able to either survive easily or follow a simple linear direction and make it to the end. In Dead Island though I found immense pleasure bashing a zombie head in with an electrified spanner, jumping up onto a car to avoid the remaining horde clamming after me, and leaping heroically to a nearby balcony to scrounge through their bins for duct tape while my partners looked up at me with envy. Even despite all this Spiderman, trash-searching madness, when we returned to the church to collect our XP and have a hearty snack of Coca Cola and apples I still stared at a pause menu map that was roughly 70% green. “Is that just the sections we’re unable to get to? Or just the areas locked for this event?” I asked. “Neither,” they responded, “those are just the sections of this area which you didn’t explore.” My jaw damn near hit the desk in front of me. This one area could entertain me for days and it was merely one of many, and I didn’t even see all of it! It sounds too good to be true but the combination of first person melee combat, zombies in many different and varied flavours, huge environments, and well executed RPG elements really do get you hooked on this kind of stupid stuff once you’re unleashed into the Palms Resort.

Now that was my experience while in the game, but this is a Preview Feature! I know that you are all looking for some juicy previously unknown (or at least, rarely known) information about the game itself. Well, panic not, my friends, for I drilled down to the game’s core and snatched as much data about it as I possibly could with the build of the game I was presented with. There are a few basics which I’d like to get out of the way in a quick list just to confirm that these are happening: all characters will share the XP and cash when a mission is completed but XP and cash found/earned in the world will not be; every melee weapon in the game is throwable, should the event call for it, but you will obviously have to go and pick it back up; all limbs can be dismembered and can be specifically targeted; the four playable characters have different skills and different class advantages, and all melee weapons can be combined and customised with other items to make them even more deadly (ala Dead Rising 2). There are some of the basics out of the way, now let’s get down to some of the less likely elements in Dead Island.

No Teammate AI – There will be no friendly AI at all. No, really. It may be four player co-op, but without human players behind the controls you are on your own. Therefore you’d better get some friends going as soon as possible or accept the fact you’re going to be fighting the zombie apocalypse solo, come September!

The Skill Tree – If you’ve played Borderlands, think that system but with more options and move on. If you’ve never played Borderlands, then there are three categories (Fury, Combat, and Survival) which match up to strength, weapon efficiency and health bonuses. Every time you kill an enemy, it contributes towards an achievement, complete an objective or mission and pick a lock, you get XP which helps you level up and build up your Skill Tree as you see fit. It’s one of the strongest RPG elements in the game and I think it’s long overdue in a zombie-based survival game.

The Playable Characters – We’ve already mentioned that each character has different skill possibilities and different special attacks, but the one that caught me off guard was that the zombies react differently to every playable character. For example, I was randomly selected to be ‘Sam B’ who apparently is the most favoured between the zombies because he is big and well built and therefore looks like a T-Bone steak on legs to them. Some of the smaller, female characters however will be happily thrown aside by standard zombies to get their bloody hands on my sweet tender-loin of a right bicep. I found that a beautiful little touch because it not only adds a tiny bit of depth to each character but throws in another strategic element in as well when you’re playing with some buddies. Speaking of which: buddies of the future I play this game with – I am NOT, EVER, being Sam B.

Weapons – Vague title, no? However a game mechanic which I definitely feel is worth mentioning. Weapons appear on the map, are randomly generated for both stats and weapon type, and are even named based on how awesome they are compared to other weapons you have available. Hence why, out of seemingly nowhere, I ended up with an axe with the power of Mjolnir called ‘Weak Ultimate Viking Lancer Axe,’ or words to that effect. This made me really, really happy and proud to hold in my virtual hands.

Human Enemies – As I think we can all predict, not every remaining survivor is going to welcome you with open arms and a warm mug of friendliness. The difference is that you can’t always tell which are which, and the human enemies are purposefully more intelligent than the standard zombies. For example, one survivor we ran into asked if we could help him find a certain box for him; as it turned out the alley he claimed it was in was full of other humans ready to ambush us. It’s another small piece of a much larger puzzle, but I thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected and intelligent nature of both friends and enemy human AI.

This was sadly when I was dragged kicking and screaming away from my controller because I didn’t want to stop. I had barely stood up and thrown my jacket on before I wanted to pick the controller up for an extra minute while nobody else was looking. I felt every hollow thud shuddering down my arm, a look of glee upon my face, as I hammered a steel pipe into each and every undead skull which came across my path. It had felt so good that I was even beginning to question my own mental health, but I was willing to forego the worry in exchange for more Dead Island to to come soon. Believe the hype, the trailer’s intense boost to this game was actually well deserved. Dead Island is going to blow your brains all over the wall and leave you slowly licking it off begging for more when it releases in 60 or so days on September 9th.

The hardest part of reviewing Duke Nukem Forever is this: it is not a good game but I loved every second of it that I played. The game has been beaten, battered and bloodied ever since it was first announced, and has been passed reluctantly on to the next developer contestant until finally Gearbox grew some balls and created and released a finished product. Of course the gameplay, the tone, the level design and the various game mechanics are as schizophrenic as all Hell. Of course certain aspects are going to be outdated and questionable – Duke Nukem Forever’s history all but guarantees that this would happen. Any game that went through this particular brand of developer purgatory would face the same inevitable fate. The gameplay can feel dull, the platforming sections are at times ridiculously tedious, and the loading… Oh. Dear. God. The loading! 37 seconds every time you die and respawn or complete a level. Yes, I timed it. I had a lot of time on my hands during loading! It clocks up to 56 if you don’t have it installed to the hard drive. That’s even ignoring the occasional glitching and barely duct-taped-together game engine which DNF runs on.

However, the series had one thing, and one thing only, going for it – Duke Nukem.

The Internet and its respective users have been throttling this game against the wall and punching for the balls as if this game was always the golden God of gaming and was the pinnacle of what we were going to achieve in the medium. It’s DUKE NUKEM. His most famous quotation comes from a Bruce Campbell B-Movie from the early 90s! Why anybody expected the next evolutionary step in First Person Shooters with all this in mind is beyond me. DNF provides what it has always promised: a physical copy of the game (which turned out to be a rather tall order of a promise) and Duke Nukem drinking, swearing, making dumb references and boobs. Let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what the series has always been about and it’s stayed true to the base formula through all of it.

There are a few minor gripes, such as the two weapon limit system and regenerating health, which could be considered a bit of a misstep. However, it does not destroy the feel of the game, it was just a bit of a slip by somebody at some point in the development process. This is the only element of the game which I judge on modern standards because I’d have preferred the old school hundred weapon and medipack system. But shouldn’t you judge the entire game based on modern standards because it’s been released in 2011? NO! Let’s nail this on the head: Duke Nukem Forever is a fan service. If you’ve never played a Duke Nukem game in your life DON’T BUY THIS GAME. Don’t even rent it, don’t even look at a copy on the shelf, completely disregard it and never speak of it again. This game exists because Randy Pitchford at Gearbox was given an opportunity to finally complete and release Duke Nukem Forever and he did it for the fans. He did it because he loved The Duke, because there were still people out there who loved The Duke, and because after 13 years of waiting he wanted to deliver a final product. Not the perfect final product, not a life changing final product, just a final product.

Randy Pitchford was famously quoted as saying “The world needs Duke,” and he is right. In a time where saying the word ’shit’ has become such a taboo that the word will likely be edited out of my review, and I’m not even brave enough to post a link to a picture of boobs, I’m glad that Duke Nukem is back in action. It wasn’t worth the wait, I’m not in denial about that, but the weight has now been lifted. It’s out there, it’s finished, we can go on with our lives. Gearbox now owns the franchise, and I think we all know this is not going to be the end of The Duke, so with the burden finally released into stores we can give Duke a game which he is worthy of starring in. If he can survive Forever, he can survive anything.

Now… my review score… there is no official singular score. I can’t do it. If you love Duke Nukem, and I mean LOVE, then it’s an easy 9. There are a few tweaks which could have been made but if you’re going in with pure, unadulterated lust for the character and the tone he sets then you will likely love just being able to experience the game in full. If you’ve never played or enjoyed a Duke Nukem game before? If you don’t love his world and all he stands for? Then look at the score I had to scrawl out in my own blood. It’s not completely broken, but you will find no joy in paying for it and playing the product. Nostalgia is a powerful drug and it is what Duke Nukem Forever will thrive on. I’m open and honest about it, the game is an awful, appalling, mangled mess and I am forced to write a number at the end of this review which reflects that; but The Duke? The Duke will always be awesome.

I will stand by you Duke, Forever. Hail to the King, baby.

Luckily for Milestone, they’ve definitely been able to add some superb additions, tweaks and improvements to boost that justification. First though, I’ll note the big thing which haven’t changed for the most part: The Career mode – it’s a very similar feel and system to SBK X, but that would make sense as the World Championship hasn’t really changed, so we’ll stick a “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” sticker on that one. Just something to keep in mind if you’re one of those people who need a brand new experience every time to slide a disc into the console. Aside from that, though, it’s all about the new additions which means it’s time give SBK 2011 two paragraphs of sweet, sweet praise.

The most obvious note, which I must get out of the way now, is that all the bikes, tracks and riders from the SBK World Championship season of 2011 are included in the game. However, it gets even better than that as they’ve added 17 classic riders into their rightfully deserved ‘Legends’ class as well. Probably my favourite add-on which Milestone threw in because year-on-year release games rarely throw in a tip-of-the-hat to the bygone days without releasing it as a game in its own right – great form as far as I’m concerned. They’ve also improved the graphics so they’re incredibly crisp. Not a sliver of sarcasm or embellishment comes from my lips when I say some screen-grabs I took from the in-game reply could easily fool me without close scrutiny. Oh! And there have been some slight tweaks to the handling mechanics. Now you don’t end up chewing a chunk of your own ass-cheek any time you dare to try and accelerate out of a corner without a reaction time which could only be achieved through heavy doses of ADD medication. Which, again, is quite a strength in my books – though I still crashed a lot.

Without a doubt, though, the best newcomer to SBK 2011 has to be SBK Tour mode. This is simply a challenge mode. I know it may not sound thrilling to begin with, but you compete in a series of challenges with two key sets of goals laid out. Completing the Basic objectives just completes the challenge and unlocks some cool new e-gear, while beating the Advanced objectives at the same time ‘Storms’ the challenge and gives you even more and rarer goodies for the game. The basic goals are usually, for obvious reasons, very simple; such as not bailing or beating a laptime. The Advanced goals, though, are where the true meat lies with tasks sometimes going as far as to ask you to beat a laptime… while sliding for a total of 40 seconds… in only two laps… in the rain. It can get quite brutal, but this is the key to unlocking some of the juiciest unlockables in the game, like new helmets, extra Legendary riders and even new tracks entirely.

On the off chance somebody claims I didn’t play the multiplayer component I will say this: I did. It was smooth, quick, easy to find a lobby and I can confirm that you can get up to 16 players into one extremely hectic race. There’s an experience meter which builds up your ‘rank’ from 1-100, but as far as I could tell it didn’t make an ounce of difference to the gameplay. It worked and delivered everything the single player experience did. Other than that, I honestly can’t think of anything worth noting.

The big question, though, despite being a MotoGP fanatic, is do I recommend SBK 2011? Actually, yes. It may have actually turned me from my previously favourite franchise. The sheer depth of all difficulties, from easy to damn difficult simulation level, as well as some really enjoyable and refreshing challenges and racing experiences means I have to raise a glass to SBK for finally creating a product that can dethrone MotoGP from atop my shelf. If I were forced to let fall the hammer of Damocles, though, I would suggest that you play the entire game with the music option turned off. It’s the default setting, thankfully, but you may get tempted as I did to turn it on to rock out while you ride. Do not get tempted. It sounds like something you’d hear on Kerrang! Radio at 11AM in 2003. Plug your iPod in, or just bask in the glory of your glorious Ducati.