It’s a (mostly) symbiotic relationship. Your scrawny human protagonist can sneak behind the game’s goopy shadow enemies unnoticed, he can leap across wrecked castle walls and chat – Wild Thornberrys style – with the world’s animal cast. The muppet-faced Majin, on the other hand, is slightly less tactful in his approach. He waddles into battle, shifts large chunks of the withered environment without sweat and isn’t so hot on stealth.

It’s this comical imbalance that leads to The Forsaken Kingdom’s smart gameplay. Each section of the wasteland, crawling with bad guys and littered with platforms, is like a carefully crafted puzzle, with a handful of ways to approach the scenario.

Do you charge in headfirst and challenge the entire army to fisticuffs, or do you take the more considered approach: commanding your hulking partner to wait in the wings while you disarm crossbow-packing snipers and set up traps for the eventual battle? Your helpful Majin pal can dislodge colossal rocks and pull levels at your command, for example, so you can knowingly set up enemies to be splattered or shut behind a sealed gate.

Sometimes, if you play carefully enough, you can bypass entire fights – sneaking behind enemy lines, dispatching a few nuisance guards and hightailing it back out with the treasure. Which, in most cases, is a heavy, plump fruit to level up your monster mate.

So whereas the basic hand-to-hand combat isn’t too hot – a couple different moves, a simple combo system and some dodgy AI on both sides of the fight – acting tactically is much more fun. Each arena is meticulously constructed for strategic play, and figuring out the best plan of attack is always rewarding. It also stops the game getting stale and repetitive, more a series of smart puzzles, than an unending series of listless tussles.

But for all its clever ideas a slightly unpolished nature spoils the otherwise enjoyable game. Platforming is floaty and inconsistent, for example, resulting in much frustration as a fumbled jump ruins your perfect plan. A fast travel system would be nice to cut out the hefty back tracking, and the constant cutscenes will quickly get on your nerves.

Plus, the voice acting is truly dreadful. The charming pair, for starters, could be the most captivating new duo this side of Ratchet and Clank, but your docile Majin partner sounds like the hellish lovechild of Barney the Dinosaur and Jar Jar Binks. You can only hear the dopey call of “Me Huungry” so many times before wanting to ram your magic-encrusted blade up his Forsaken Kingdom.

It’s a slightly lower-tier crudeness to the presentation – especially following Namco’s exemplary Enslaved – that taints the entire package. The world is lush and extravagant, but feels decidedly like a level in a video game. The characters are well animated and drawn, but the graphics are sharp and tatty. And the storybook narrative is cute, but cliched and derivative.

This article contains story spoilers for Gears of War 2

Did you catch the advert for Halo: Reach on the telly, earlier this year? I did. It was certainly quite affecting, a tad emotional and a more than a little bit moving. If I wasn’t such a macho, strong-willed slab of masculinity, I might have welled up a little. It carried the sort of intense reverence that can only really be achieved with a bit of slow motion, a gunned down female soldier and a choir of girls going ‘mmm’ a lot.

So I sat down to play Halo: Reach, armed with an Xbox 360 controller and a family bucket of Kleenex, ready to blubber like a baby. I mean, if the trailer was any indication, this game was going to be more emotional that the crossover universe of Marly & Me and Old Yeller. I was expecting to be moved. Moved to tears, to be specific – whether it be a welling at the eyes, a single Indian tear down my cheek or full on tear-duct eruption. I wasn’t fussy, I was just expecting some water works.

So imagine my surprise when the game turned out to be as moving as a novelty party hat. It’s Halo – a game about shooting squabbling traffic cones and sniper rifle wielding geckos and buffoons in ape costumes with novelty sized hammers. It’s about rolling warthogs at 100 mph and never quite finishing the fight. I only cried once, but that was because the hay fever season was still upon us at the time.

We’ve been seeing this a lot this generation: game trailers and adverts that seem to imply cavernous depths of reverence, meaning and emotion, but fail to deliver on those promises. The trailers offer gut wrenching music, the game offers gut-spewing violence. I mean, how exactly did Sia’s Breathe Me or Gary Jules’ Mad World evoke the temperance or mood of Prince of Persia or Gears of War in any way?

At least Gears of War 2 could almost live up to its trailers, the ones with buff soldiers sitting in windy fields, listening to vaguely emo indie-rock ballads. It really tried to cut you with an emotional chainsaw, and smush you with a Hammer of Reverence.

Then again, Gears of War 2’s most emotional moment – where Dom offed his suffering wife – fell a little flat, for some reason. Maybe it was Dom’s comically over-sized pistol, which seemed to eclipse his wife’s head a couple times over. Maybe it was the fact that Maria’s face texture hadn’t loaded yet, making her look like a polished heap of Plasticine. Or maybe it was just because the scene of marital-mercy killing was bookended by five hours of utter vile stupidity, juvenile humour and grim violence. Chainsawing out a monster worm’s heart, brutally eviscerating about 100 enemies and just the general hilarity of controlling a man with a neck the girth of a Californian Redwood.

Still, it’s closer to some emotional resonance than anything that happened in the original Gears of War. I’m not sure what happened to that statue head Marcus was blubbing over in the Mad World trailer. Must have missed that bit.

And yet we get lured in, thinking that these games are going to have memorable, emotional and heart-felt stories, because the trailer has uplifting music and uses slow-mo like the camera effect was on sale for half price. Is it false advertising? Probably not. But is it deceitful to the audience? Absolutely.

Getting potential customers to think your game is “epic” or “emotional” with plinky plonky piano music, humming choir girls and ample slow-mo is a cheat more devastatingly powerful than the Konami Code. So unless the final product has the narrative balls to back up the immense reverence of your trailer’s soundtrack, tone it down. Consider this your final warning.

Game stories suck. They’re either bloated or anemic, confusing or brainless, melodramatic or devoid of emotion. They feature Russian ex-presidents dancing with sumo wrestlers, being a bad enough dude to save the president, self-hypnotising soldiers and wives fused into bionic arms.

Some of those were spoilers. Sorry.

But for the most part, reviewers distance a game’s crappy narrative from its mechanics. According to Metacritic, at least, a dud story can’t wreck a great game. The sulky, angsty juvenility of Prototype is numbed because you can drop kick a helicopter. The grungy, filthy breast-tattooing ethos of DiRT 2 is ignored because you can drive cool cars real fast.

Metroid: Other M changes this. It has seen critics stand up and take notice and it has polarised professional reviewers to the sharpest extremes. Some more ballsy writers have taken the game’s story seriously when evaluating its worth and they’ve done what is usually so very rare: ignored its gameplay strengths in favour of its cavernous narrative flaws.

Here’s the scoop for anyone not following the commotion online: Metroid: Other M asks players to forget practically everything they know about the character of Samus Aran. In the penultimate narrative blob of the massive 24 year old franchise, this new game rewrites her entire character.

Previously a silent cypher of a protagonist who has experienced eight games’ worth of battles and monsters and death-defying boss fights, who’s been through Metroid and Super Metroid and all three Prime games, has blown up a planet and eradicated an entire species of gelatinous monsters; Samus is now a subservient little wuss.

A quivering, obedient little girl with more daddy issues than the entire cast of Lost and wrapped up in the worry that a distant father figure might disapprove of her actions. She’s been a freelance bounty hunter who hasn’t uttered a word of worry or angst (well, she hasn’t uttered a word at all, actually) since her first steps on the NES, but now we’re supposed to believe that she’s an utterly vulnerable and fragile girl?

For those who haven’t played the game, allow me to explain. Unlike every other Metroid game, which formulaically strips Samus (oo-er) of her powers in the first five minutes so she can systematically regain them – morph ball to plasma beam – in the next 20 hours of sci-fi funtertainment, Samus has all her abilities throughout Other M.

The only thing stopping you from unleashing havoc as a screw-attacking, speed-boosting, ice-beaming, super-missile firing juggernaut is Samus’ former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, who turns up at the beginning of Other M. Little Miss Metroid decides to tag along with Adam and his band of generic men, and agrees not to use any of her awesome powers so his all-male team won’t feel insecure when the lady whips out her giant, pulsing charge beam.

Well, that might not be the exact reason, but we’ll run with it.

This means you’ll spot a door that can only be opened with super missiles, but you’ll need to wait for Adam to authorise those big, heavy rockets. You’ll be draining health like a sponge in a volcano until Adam allows you to switch to Varia mode. And enemies that once took a right royal pounding and several zillion charge shot blasts can now be downed, thanks to Adam’s helpful go-ahead, in a single icy blast to the noggin and a missile to the sphincter.

I don’t necessarily want to shout sexism, as she obediently puts her life at risk until her CO gives his permission to quit dying, but it certainly casts Samus in an different light. Which is a shame: she’s one of gaming’s strongest female leads – she’s less buxom than Lara and more badass than Jade. She had everyone convinced that she was a little pixelated bloke when she arrived on the 8-bit scene, and had 80s nerds questioning everything that was holy when she stripped down to her knickers (not her most feminist move, I’ll admit) post credits.

In Nintendo’s entire pantheon of protagonists, we see blobby mustachioed plumbers and androgynous fairy boys in thigh-high tunics – alongside a bad-ass bionic babe with shoulders the size of boulders and a gun where an arm should be. She was Nintendo’s coolest gal, and now she’s a little bitch.

In one fell swoop, Team Ninja – the icky Japanese developers who categorise Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball as a ‘Sports Game’ – has dismantled and destroyed Samus’ girl-power rep. It’s one thing to give a character depth and extra layers to her personality, it’s another to dismantle her entire essence in front of her fans.

But despite my obvious anger, it’s hard to bring too much indignation, and to produce the appropriate venomous bile to boycott and lambaste the game, when I’m enjoying Metroid: Other M so much.

Outside of its woeful storyline pratfalls, the game shines as one of the best Wii games of the year. It has the isolated exploration that we know and love, but with a handy injection of Ninja Gaiden style action. Every puzzle is smart and every boss fight is awe inspiring. I’m enamoured with it, addicted to it, but I’m not defending it.

It’s left me massively conflicted, wanting to praise the game for its mechanical prowess, but hold a protest in Tokyo for its grim characterisation balls-up. Such a clash, however, is masssively important and I’m chuffed that the critical gaming community can be bold and brave enough to admit it.

To see reviewers at popular, professional, industry outlets like G4 observe this game on more thought provoking terms than gameplay, graphics, sound and longevity gives me hope for gaming’s future storylines. If gamers quit accepting lame writing, and start questioning poor characterisation, perhaps developers will listen.

It’s about bloody time, but it could prove to be a meteoric first step in the right direction.

‘Death by white picket fence’. Probably not the most glamorous epitaph to grace the digital graveyard of gaming protagonists. But hey, when the sky uncorks and the heavens rain cultural detritus, from laundromat signage to famous paintings, you don’t really get to choose what random household object signs your death warrant.

This is, ostensibly, the ‘plot’ of The Incident, the latest must-have iPhone time waster, this time from tiny developer Big Bucket Software. Like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or the upcoming live-action Smurfs movie, this portable platformer doesn’t waste time in explaining the eponymous incident that’s caused the horrors onscreen. It’s just about dodging falling garbage as you rack up high scores.

And it’s perilously addictive, turning your iWhatever into an absolutely irresistible slab of one-more-go desire, the sort of game that’ll send you into a numb minded, zen-like state of near comatose that’ll have you burning toast, missing tube stops and sitting on the toilet till your legs go numb – ironically ruining its original intent of making those tiresome activities go faster.

But more than just good time-wasting fodder, The Incident is a solid reminder of just how lucky we are to be showered by digital downloadable treats every week. Little, inexpensive files dropped onto our consoles like a humanitarian food drop. Between melancholy digital-poem Limbo and comedy elf-whacker DeathSpank, or brawler send-up Scott Pilgrim, you can go without retail games for months without craving some high resolution polygons.

It’s also done wonders for the indie game development industry. By making games profitable – properly profitable, pay your bills profitable, quit your job profitable – instead of luckless labours of love given away on PC, services like Xbox Live Arcade and the iPhone App Store have proven that gamers want quality, creativity and unique experiences, alongside their usual dose of brainless action romps.

So, the disarming success of a game like Limbo, Joe Danger or Angry Birds means multi-million dollar budgets and hundred-strong development studios aren’t prerequisites to creating outstanding software. A healthy dose of creativity and a whole lot of effort can translate into both a great game, and your heating bill being paid for a few months.

Plus, it’s no surprise to see out-of-work developers building a digital-exclusive start-up instead of heading off to the next shooter factory, and hardy franchises like Tomb Raider and Red Faction going digital. Because, hey, as sales tank and budgets shrink, Xbox Live Arcade looks less like a curious detour for traditional developers, and more like the source of the next pay cheque.

But while I won’t pretend to know the intricate ins-and-outs of game development, what l can say with conviction is that the most interesting, exciting, refreshing and original games are often digital, downloadable and inexpensive. It’s easy to lose hope and excitement in the medium when the shelves are lined with macho-men holding oversized weaponry, but the best cure is a trip onto PlayStation Network or the iPhone App Store.

The kinetic thrill of running, jumping, soaring and bounding over obstacles is one of the most incredible thrills a game can give you, if you ask me. Forget pumping lead into half-locust-half-man monstrosities or punching mythological creatures with boxing gloves made of Cerberus heads – I’ll take a death defying leap between Venetian rooftops any day.

I’ve been playing plenty of games recently, action packed, explosion filled, bullet riddled action epics like sequels to Just Cause, Assassin’s Creed and Crackdown, but found myself eschewing bullets and hidden-blades in favour of the more simplistic stimulation of leaping between balconies, navigating concrete jungle gyms and sky-diving from helicopters.

It goes back to the games of my youth, undoubtedly. The pixel perfect physics of Mario’s effortless leap must have been infused with as much time and meticulous effort as Infinity Ward would take on crafting the perfect machine gun, with the most vicious recoil, the most delicious reloading animation and the most primal roar.

Nintendo wasn’t going for the same level of realism as a typical Call of Duty weapon – I doubt a pudgy Brooklyn plumber could hop a manhole let alone a fire breathing regal turtle – but it made for a predictable platforming system that you could pick up with ease and ultimately master in time. Pick up any random Mario-cloning garbage flash game to instantly see how just how perfect Mario’s every leap, bound and elastic bounce is.

The plumber is still going strong on Wii of course, but outside of the candy coloured worlds of bumble bees and fluffy clouds, there are a scant few games that hope to achieve a similar liberating feeling of movement in more realistic environments, a distinct dirge of experiences I so desire. And when they do exist – in the guises of Venetian conspiracy theory Assassin’s Creed or mutant slaying comic Crackdown 2 – their leaps and bounds are always interrupted by ceaseless gunfire or nuisance guards.

Even in games that offer platforming in their purest form, including the latest legacies in the dusty dungeon delving Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider franchises, you’re often made to stop to deck a few skeletons or finish off some random tigers. It brings the flow of movement to a standstill, just to slap a gun in the protagonist’s hand on the box art, because guns sell games. And, hey, don’t even talk to me about Xbox Live Arcade’s “Lara Croft and the Unrelated Spin-off”.

Personally, I’m happy to just move, jump, explore and clamber. I’m satisfied with scrambling and content with climbing, so why must I gun down goons between frantic free running sessions? Isn’t there a developer out there brave and bold enough to do a Mirror’s Edge without the cops, or unleash a Crackdown that’s just about orbs?

Because I’d snap that up in a heartbeat.

At E3 this year there were plenty of trends to note and lessons to learn. Here’s a refresher course for those not in (virtual) attendance: 3D isn’t going away any time soon, motion control is here to stay, white nerds shouldn’t dance and Valve now thinks the PS3 is totally cool.

But one thing stuck out from the press conferences more than gyrating geeks, tickling tigers and Bluetooth connection issues. The term exclusive, denoting that a game is monogamous to one platform, was bandied about a number of times, from both Microsoft and Sony in particular. But it definitely wasn’t about the games themselves.

Microsoft introduced its entire conference with Call of Duty: Black Ops, and an announcement of exclusivity. Not that the seventh game in the dude-shooting series would solely be carried in green boxes, but that the downloadable map packs would hit Xbox first, before crawling back to Sony a few months later.

Oh, and did the crowd whoop and clap and applaud. “This is brilliant news from a consumer stand point!” one said, “Thank you for limiting my options Microsoft!” exclaimed another. Those spiteful crowd members must bloody hate Sony or something, because the only people this show-opening news affects is the PlayStation faithful.

It’s not a new trend though. In fact, this entire generation has been headlined by platform exclusivity, in the traditional sense, all but disappearing – while a messy fragmentation a few layers below persists. We have entered the generation of almost zero exclusivity for games, but a tireless console manufacturer war over getting special hats, new levels and even demos on one box before the other.

Take GTA – remember when those games came out on PS2 first? Now its hard not to associate that franchise with the Xbox 360 thanks to it’s massive downloadable content. That’s what 50 million from Microsoft gets ya. And a Lamborghini.

It’s been nice to see a number of classic PlayStation brands, from Final Fantasy to Devil May Cry, shake their PS allegiance. Not out of some vindictive spite towards the PS3, but just so everyone, regardless of their console purchase, can enjoy some top games. The idea of platform exclusivity has become so foreign, that Xbox specific games like Splinter Cell Conviction are deafened by the sound of cynical whispers. Because, Microsoft totally made Ubisoft hats out of $100 bills, right?

But as soon as last generation’s messy fragmentation finally smoothed out, to a point where you can choose between a PS3 and a 360 without worry about missing out, being ostracised, receiving intense name calling and eventually giving up on gaming altogether because the Xbox port of Bully was cancelled… uh what was my point?

Oh yeah. Despite such large strides, the console manufacturers are still trying bloody hard to make our decisions for us. Nevermind that this system has achievements and a better controller (sorry Tony), or that this box o’ tech has free online, you should buy it on our system because it has a free hat.

Free hat, entire levels, challenge rooms, story lines, special editions, Blu-Ray pack-ins, worlds, Avatar clothes and massive chunks of the campaign. It makes choosing the platform to buy your games on a lesson in strenuous research. I spent more revision time on the platform exclusive features of Batman: Arkham Asylum than I did on my A-Levels. (Maybe why I failed. But my results did spell DUDE, so a win there).

I don’t really see any fix here. I’d like to sound so bold and nonchalant as to say I don’t care enough to spend the mental energy (that’s what the paragraph I just deleted said, in fact), but it’s not true. Games are expensive, and I want to get the most possible out of them, so it definitely makes purchasing decisions far tougher than I’d like.

It’s only going to get harder too. In the past months we’ve seen both Sony faithful Insomniac and Microsoft BFF Bungie announce that future games will be heading to multiple gadgets. That sounds all well and good right now, but just wait until the Xbox edition of Bungie’s game comes with a free Avatar shirt and Insomniac’s game has an extra level on PS3! Who will be laughing then?

I visited Electronic Arts’s Spring Showcase earlier this month; a spiffy four story media complex with HD tellies, wireless headphones and delicious raisin cookies. Seriously, those cookies were to die for. If EA gave me the choice of taking home Medal of Honor or a batch of those cookies, I would certainly hesitate before answering. I ate three, I’m not ashamed.

Anyway, back on topic. Between listening to presentations, playing games and missing appointments because I was engrossed in a new The Sims expansion pack, one trend stood out like a pink elephant with a sore thumb: playing with yourself is on the way out.

EA has no less than three Massively Multiplayer Games in development (APB, Star Wars and Need for Speed, for those playing along at home), a bunch of upcoming titles that hope to foster new online communities and if you’re not physically playing alongside your pals, you’ll be bragging about your skills on their Facebook walls.

Seriously, the word Facebook was used so often you’d think it was a Social Networking conference. Whether it was as a point of reference for how a game’s online features will work, or in relation to Need for Speed World’s Facebook Connect functionality, the social networking flavour of the month was a bigger inspiration to EA than Call of Duty 4.

Sorry, that was harsh.

But you know, I like playing alone. Don’t get wrong, I love Ready-Up’s gaming nights. I can’t think of any way I’d rather have played Resident Evil 5 than with my brother, two HD-TVs and two Xbox 360s sat side by side (until one red ringed, obviously). I catch up with buddies at University through Left 4 Dead 2 and look forward to seeing some of you London folk in the Trocadero for mental Bishi Bashi challenges.

But there’s something to be said for playing one on one with a game. It’s their world, you’re just playing in it. It’s their rules, you’re just playing by them. It’s like an actor and script or a chess master and pawn, instead of the tipped-over and abandoned toy box that is Ready-Up’s Grand Theft Auto IV nights.

It’s also hard for a game to have some emotional resonance, or give some real spooks, if you’ve got someone in your headset telling dick jokes or making fart noises with their armpits.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll shut off all notifications on my Xbox 360 and PS3 when playing a particularly atmospheric or narrative heavy game. Sorry pals, it’s not like I don’t appreciate your messages, but it really kills the emotional punch when the act of slicing off your own finger in Heavy Rain is bookended with ‘Newcode is online’.

Ubisoft’s Patrick Redding said gamers don’t want “a solitary experience” any more. Well no one asked me. In this brave new world of social networking and always-on internet and exciting new concepts of playing with friends, we shouldn’t forget the simple pleasures of sitting down and enjoying a nice new game, alone.

The iPhone, as a games console, often gets ignored or dismissed. It’s a little sad to see some gaming pundits so closed minded about such an exciting platform, but as an Editor at Pocket Gamer, it’s just quite frustrating to have the device that pays your bills be described as “not a real gaming platform” by some feckless nerd in a ‘Don’t make me go Zelda on you’ t-shirt.

The smart phone might not actually have the physical attributes you might associate with a gaming device, and the battery life leaves a little something to be desired (about five hours, to be precise), but its the portability and always-in-your-pocket nature that it makes it such a compelling platform.

Have you ever tried to fit a DS in your pocket? It’s about as comfortable and unobtrusive as moving a wardrobe on the London Underground. In fact, since getting my iPod Touch late last year, I think I’ve picked up my DS about three times and once was as an impromptu torch when I dropped a chocolate button under my sofa.

There is, and I can’t stress this enough, a truck load of utter horse-doodie on the App Store. Last month, Steve Jobs paraded onto the stage in Cupertino and presented a slide that showed the iPhone’s gaming library as cresting above the 50,000 mark, as if quantity suddenly murdered quality and took its place.

But hey, even if 45,000 of those games are utter crap, I mean absolutely retched and insidiously awful affronts to the very gaming culture we hold dear, that leaves a good five grand that are worth checking out.

Ozone is a jaw droppingly beautiful maze game where you play as a bubble, Sword & Poker is an RPG where you deck fantasy beasties with straights and flushes, Angry Birds has you flinging feathered friends at green pigs, and Space Miner is a mix of Asteroids and Diablo-esque loot whoring. I bet you didn’t even know you wanted that genre mash-up until you just read it.

And there’s Words with Friends, a casual scrabble by email platform in which I have so many games concurrently running that administrating triple letter score words has become a second occupation. There’s NOVA, a first person shooter that takes so many cues from Halo that you’d swear its a scathingly smart parody, instead of an embarrassing ripoff.

Plants vs Zombies and Broken Sword, two PC ports that made the portable transition in absolute style

It’s not about the size of the games, the tiny download sizes and bottom-scraping prices have taken care of that, nor the complexity, an absolute lack of buttons or controllers will certainly hamper your creative genes; it’s about the way you play them.

The DS and PSP, with their sprawling RPGs and engrossing adventures, might be perfect for lengthy commutes and giant trips, but iPhone rules the roost in five, ten minute bursts. Its timewasting games will have you craving for the next advert break, gruelling tube journey or any free moment you can spare.

We gamers often fall into the habit of being a bit snooty and elitist when it comes to choosing games. It’s understandable of course, time and money don’t grow on trees, but in our constant move from one ultra highly reviewed release to the next, it’s easy for some quality software to fall between the cracks.

Most of these recommendations come with ample caveats, of course. You’ll need to drown out 50 Cent’s background music with a foghorn before I suggest Blood on the Sand as quality entertainment. And sure, play Dark Void till the cows come home, but make sure you skip all the cutscenes and smear Vaseline over your telly.

The Saboteur, however, doesn’t do much wrong but it was still criminally ignored by the gaming hive mind.

In The Saboteur you play as walking Irish stereotype Sean Devlin; a brawling, drinking, swearing flat-cap wearing prick with a chip on his shoulder the size of Dublin. And much in the same way that a British character in an American TV show is required to say two “bloody”s and one “wanker” per sentence, Devlin litters his dialogue with more “arse”s than a Saturday night in Camden.

Speaking of the dialogue, it must have been penned by an ex-erotica author because every single conversation reads like a bad romance novel and is absolutely crammed with sly innuendos and double entendres. It gets so bad that I’m never sure if the characters want me to actually derail a Nazi train or pump a Third Reich officer full of lead, or if they’re really just bizarre euphemisms.

Anyway, The Saboteur takes place in Nazi occupied Paris and the Krauts line the pavement like street signs. It’s your job as a reluctant resistance member to sneak into Nazi bases, drop some dynamite and run out with your tail between your legs. But this stealthy sabotage doesn’t involve snaking about in the grass or crawling through air vents, it’s all about disguises.

Break a German’s neck and you can nick his uniform. Now the button that used to be “sneak about” is “walk like a Nazi”. Not a proper Faulty Towers-esque frog march, but just a painfully slow robotic walk like you’ve got a bayonet up your keister. Still, it’ll stop the Third Reich from being too suspicious.

This means that pretty much every mission in the game can be completed either as a Gears of War style run-and-gun or by slowly and carefully walking about the enemy base without raising suspicion or, worse, alarms.

It might sound boring, but you know what? It’s pretty damn exhilarating. Walk past some guards and your suspicion meter sky rockets, the tension is almost too much but you duck out of sight before they investigate. You pop a sniper with a silenced pistol – uh oh! Someone saw you and is about to blow the whistle but you snap round and cap them too. Better hightail it out of there because those bodies aren’t doing much for your credibility.

You feel a bit like Batman but with a dodgy Irish accent, a potty mouth and six kilos of dynamite stuck up his arse. I’m utterly crap at stealth games, but something about The Saboteur meant I could beat most of the missions just by sneaking, being disguised, making diversions with explosions, using a silenced pistol and climbing the sides of buildings.

It wasn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. Look up the phrase “rough around the edges” and you’ll find a screenshot of The Saboteur. It’s also got some dodgy controls, it gets a little repetitive and the title is really hard to spell.

But I loved it. The characters were stereotypes, but they had a bit of heart. The story was ludicrous, but written with some real passion. Paris had a real sense of place, the action weaved from action to stealth beautifully and blowing up Nazis just never gets old.

There are already way too many triple A, big budget blockbusters to try as it is, but you should always go off the beaten track every once in a while because you might find something you truly love.

If you’re up for it, you better get out your reading specs because the Yakuza series is chock-a-block with dialogue and description, utterly bursting at the seams with lengthy cutscenes and reams of text boxes. Plus, all the voice acting is in Japanese too, so there’s plenty of peering at subtitles on your horizon.

But if you are prepared to read, Yakuza 3 spins a good yarn that mixes childhood angst with gangland drama, narratively snaking between orphaned kids grazing their ickle knees and rape, murder, extortion and grimy political subterfuge.

Don’t worry if you’re not caught up on your Yakuza lore though. The game offers an extensive ‘Yakuza 1 and 2 for Dummies’ video that takes you through the salient plot points; all the double crosses, people turning out to be other people’s fathers, exploding towers and Kazuma ripping his shirt off with one hand, over and over. Sure he’s got a rad dragon tattoo on his back, but he must go through button-ups like nobody’s business.

Complementing the rich story is a virtual Tokyo living inside your telly. Much in the same way that Grand Theft Auto manages to paint a strikingly realistic image of modern day New York (probably, I’ve never left this room, let alone England), playing through Yakuza is like taking a whirlwind holiday to the Japanese capital.

Sure it’s a little more restricted than Liberty City, but the microcosmic eastern Petri dish makes for mind boggling attention to detail. Every shop front is painstakingly rendered, every convenience store is bursting with kooky and unique products – even back alleys are decorated and furnished. You can enter loads of buildings, buy sushi, play arcade machines and even pop off for a spot of golf.

While you’re there though, don’t be surprised if someone picks a fight with you. Yakuza isn’t just about sight-seeing and virtual golf, but also about wrecking a perfectly good bicycle on a goon’s nasal cartilage. Kazuma will settle most disputes with a blood-shedding fist fight and every encounter is deliciously enjoyable, whether you’re driving a yakuza’s face through a TV or mastering the combo system to deliver a spine crushing drop kick.

The enjoyment gained from Yakuza’s fighting system can’t be overstated. From the pure audio-visual thrill of crunching a guy’s shnoz under your snakeskin loafers to the sly tactical depth of the constantly evolving combo system, you’ll never get tired of bashing cocky gang members with a road cone.

But while Yakuza 3 might look and sound like Street Fighter or Final Fight from this review, its actually a Japanese RPG, just decked out in a clever disguise. Take Dragon Quest, but swap number crunching stat-duels with brutally violent fist fights and lose disgruntled slimes in favour of mouthy street punks and you’ve got Yakuza 3.

But as an RPG, it can often feel a little slow. I mean painfully, tooth-pullingly, bum-achingly sluggish at times. In fact, it will take a good nine hours, one lost dog, nine golf holes, ten beach-baseball home-runs and two days out with adoptive daughter Haruka before you leave the sleepy seaside town of Okinawa, ditch the Hawaiian shirt and head for the glitzy neon-palooza that is Tokyo.

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy settling trivial domestic disputes, chasing lost cats and really really slowly carrying ice cream down a busy street, but its nice to kick back once in a while and shove a garden chair into someone’s pre-frontal cortex. It just eases the soul, you know?

It’s worth mentioning that Yakuza 3 has undergone some ruthless trimming to keep it under budget and in schedule for this English translation. For a game so drenched in Japanese culture, its more than a little disappointing to lose the likes of Mahjong, Shogi and, worst of all, the Hostess Club managing sub-game. Still, with the sobering sales of Yakuza games in the West, it’s lucky we got Yakuza 3 at all, so quit moaning.

Hooray for Half Minute Hero then, a quirky slice of Japanese satire that bundles everything we associate with role playing games – blonde haired heroes, ancient goddesses, number-crunching tussles and armfuls of gold – and squeezes them into 30 second epics.

While most clichéd malevolent overlords will give the heroes 70 odd hours to save the world, plus time to faff about racing Chocobos and building a perfect Gummi Ship, the sensibly named Evil Lord of Half Minute Hero wastes no time in destroying the planet, casting a spell that ends civilisation in just 30 thousand milliseconds.

This leaves you dashing about the minuscule overworld, downing enemies in three second automated battles and cruising from town to town, finding this and collecting that as the giant on-screen clock counts down to your inevitable doom. It might sound like the sort of experience that would bring on migraines and panic-attacks from stage to stage, but there are a few concessions – you can rewind time, but it’ll cost ya (hey, benevolent time goddesses need cash too), and time grinds to a halt in villages.

What’s left is a frantic, absorbing and addictive little game that’s more about memorisation and quick reflexes than slow battles and reams of text. It has more in common with something like Crazy Taxi than Dragon Quest, rewarding players for judicious use of time, quick thinking and, in the later stages, a sadomasochistic obsession with retrying until you get it right.

If you get sick of mini RPGs on fast forward, there are a couple of other modes to keep you occupied – although each is a heavily simplified parody of its genre, and shares the 30 billion nanosecond time limit. There’s a rock-paper-scissors-esque real time strategy game with the Evil Lord, a shoot ‘em up with the Princess and a escort adventure with the Knight.

It’s all presented with a retro graphic style, a shredding guitar soundtrack and its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. It still has the lengthy text boxes of a typical RPG, but the dialogue is full of wicked sarcasm, self-mocking humour and RPG satire. To top it all off, every 30 second level ends with a full credit roll, before introducing the next half minute spurt with an epic new title screen. Just barmy.

Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short, will undoubtedly be the final nail in PC gaming’s coffin. It’s been a long and arduous death, with plenty of false alarms and premature scares, but if anything is going to force the untimely cardiac arrest of computer games it’s probably going to be these ridiculous anti-theft policies.

In a vain attempt to stop ethically-flexible web denizens from looting their latest releases, game studios across the world pack DVDs full of nuisance authentications and cruel restrictions. From limited installations to server side authorisations, modern day DRM makes it preferable to just bend the law and pirate the damn game. Or buy it on the Xbox 360. Or glue your genitals to a moving bus.

Because the loser of this battle is always the honest, paying customer. On top of actually shelling out hard earned dosh for the game, they’re limited to installing Spore five times before phoning up EA to prove their innocence. Meanwhile, morally-ambivalent pirates can play the game freely with nothing more than a torrent and a cracked exe or a fraudulent serial number.

The latest soldier in this interminable battle is Ubisoft who have announced that Assassin’s Creed II, when it launches on PC, will be repeatedly calling home like a home-sick student, to reassure itself that everything is going to be all right. If your internet goes out during play, the game screeches to a halt until connection to the Ubisoft Mothership is restored.

This Digital Rights Management is a real pain in the neck.

It’s an absolute mess of a system. Not to mention the fact that you can’t play the game if your internet goes out, you can’t load it up while travelling with a laptop, you can’t resell the game and your privacy is seriously being infringed, it’s just plain old silly. I’d be more receptive of a system where Assassin’s Creed 2 protagonist Ezio breaks out of your computer and stabs you in the jugular if you so much as glance at The Pirate Bay.

The fight between publisher and pirate has effectively ended with this scheme. I’m not suggesting that this new DRM system is utterly uncrackable and now pirates will never play AC2 for free – quite the opposite actually. Nothing spurs on illegal activity like a monstrously profitable company opening up a new protection scheme.

I’m saying that Ubisoft has just lost its head entirely. In a world of instant gratification, on-demand boobies, BBC iPlayer and two minute noodles, no one wants to faff about with “Connection to server lost, we’re taking away all our toys until your WiFi reconnects” messages. People don’t like being treated like they’re guilty until they prove their innocence – something they have to do every 6 minutes, apparently.

The reception from gamers online isn’t the most intelligent or helpful, as expected. The notion of pirating the game out of angry spite might seem like a anarchically delicious idea at the time, but it just pushes the cyclical war through another phase. People pirate because they restrict, they restrict because people pirate. Ad nauseum. But the boycotts and angry forumers and frustrated bloggers (that’s me!) are showing that this ain’t cool.

Stardock's Demigod had absolutely zero Digital Rights Management

So what’s the fix? Some publishers have dumped digital rights entirely. Most vocally, Stardock’s Brad Wardell ditched the notion of attacking legitimate customers by stripping digital rights from all their recent games. Sure there was still a hefty amount of piracy, but it also appeared high up on sales charts and they haven’t backtracked on the whole no-DRM deal yet, so I’d chalk that up as a win.

Similarly, in the music world, there is no DRM on tracks bought from iTunes anymore (I won’t go into the history, I’m not your economics professor, but it’s an interesting tale). Amusingly enough, EA Vice President Jeff Brown told the Financial Times that, “Apple’s practice of only allowing downloaded music to be played on three devices” set the standard for Spore’s restrictive access. Maybe they should take a look at how Apple handles DRM, today.

Ultimately, zero DRM seems like the best of some bad solutions. There isn’t a viable digital rights scheme on earth that would literally make a game uncrackable, plus the stricter you make the DRM, the more frustrated you make your actual legitimate, paying customers. From what I’ve witnessed, it seems the best tact is to strip out the DRM, make it as easy and accessible as possible to buy and play the game (like Steam) and just be happy with the customers you do have.

Or make a free game on Facebook and sell pretty hats for a quid.

So a cash-in sequel – without the original director and with a mulitplayer mode no less – pretty much red-lines my corporate cynicism meter.

Bioshock 2 undoubtedly borrows more than it brings, with mechanics, visuals and structures being extremely familiar to anyone who played the original. Failed underwater utopia, vainglorious scientific pursuits, harvest vs rescue, audio diaries, research cameras – the list goes on and on.

And with it, that alluring veneer of the original game has almost entirely vanished – the giggling, childish Little Sister and her looming, moaning patriarch are no longer so exciting, terrifying or mystifying. They are relegated to merely lumbering gameplay-objectives and frolicking genetic-currency. Plus, that repetitive violin-chord and those puppy-dog eyes when you choose to rescue them grates right from the start.

What Bioshock 2 does bring, though, is a brand new tale for Rapture-fans. This time around the core storyline offers a more emotional punch, hiding the original game’s psychological and philosophical themes in the shadows for you to explore and discover at your leisure.

That lore, if you choose to even dig into it at all, is as deep and engaging as ever. In one corner is Andrew “The Objectivist” Ryan, the other is Sophia “The Collectivist” Lamb, with their fiery moral debate playing out entirely through scattered audio tapes and tatty remnants of the past. It’s utterly engrossing.

The main event, too, is more than enough motivation to keep you playing. Putting you in the clonking size 25 boots of a Big Daddy, you fight your way through Rapture to save your original Little Sister – Eleanor Lamb. It puts a twist on the original game; you aren’t fighting, scavenging and killing to save yourself, you’re doing it to save her. She watches your every move, which gives a whole new meaning to the moral choices throughout the story. Would you kill out of vengeance if your daughter was peeking?

I say “you fight your way through Rapture” because Bioshock 2 has an unwelcome emphasis on combat. Your battling controls and mechanics have been greatly improved, with plasmids and weapons wielded in unison, but that doesn’t justify throwing bullet-sponge baddies and roomfuls of splicers at your every turn. Bioshock works best when the fights are thoughtful and considered; when you’re given time to manipulate the environment with traps and security bots and proximity mines before the shit hits the proverbial fan.

Like the Big Daddies and, to a lesser extent, the Big Sisters. When she starts a-wailin’ you know its time to hang up electrified wire and glowing trap darts like tinsel and baubles on an underwater Christmas tree. You’re ready, you’re prepared, you succeed.

But then the game throws a Brute Splicer or an Alpha Daddy at you – an incongruously designed nasty and a rogue Big Daddy with your blood on his mind. Suddenly the game turns into a carnival of flying rivets, electrified water and beeping security bots – oh, and your frequent death, no doubt. It feels more like Serious Sam or Doom – a reckless disregard for tactics or thought, and not really the reason I’d play a game with Bioshock in the name.

“Gaming leads to surge in rickets” was Friday’s headline on free London tube-rag, The Metro. According to top scientist blokes, today’s youth are leading such sedentary lifestyles that their ickle bodies aren’t soaking up enough of the sun’s delicious rays and are at risk of contracting all sort of horrible illnesses linked to Vitamin D deficiency – like rickets, or bone deformity if you will.

Of course, it’s a little sensationalised – this is a British tabloid of course – so while grabbing platinum medals on Bayonetta isn’t the healthiest way to spend a sunny afternoon, pretty much anything that keeps kids indoors could potentially lead to these illnesses. Watching The X Factor, twiddling your thumbs, reading a Dan Brown novel or playing ping pong with Susan Boyle CDs as paddles could be picked on, if they’re done inside, but the magical headline randomiser picks out the latest craze that some adults don’t quite get: gaming!

If gamers aren’t heading outside, they’re obviously playing the wrong games. There’s no way you can play a Legend of Zelda game, with little Link traipsing around a magical countryside finding treasure and saving princesses, and not be compelled to venture into your back garden. Everything from Pokemon to Tomb Raider, from Fallout 3 to Broken Sword, all with their heavy emphasis on exploring the natural world, led me into the wild and mysterious world of the British countryside to explore, scavenge and discover the real world.

And then there were sports games that made me forget for two seconds that I wasn’t completely inept at athletics (although I’ll kick your butt at long jump!) and led me back into the scary outside world once again. Tony Hawk and Skate didn’t make me want to sit in the dark for hours on end playing games, they made me want to get out there and learn to skateboard. Nevermind the fact that my balance sucks and I never learnt to go in a straight line, let alone pull off a 360 degree Jehovah’s Witness back-side-front-side nollie, I still hit the concrete (sometimes literally) and soaked in that awesome Vit-D. Eat that, scientists!

Don’t forget about handheld games (especially Boktai on Gameboy Advance, which boosted your powers when the special cartridge soaked up solar energy), and boiling hot afternoons spent sorting through people’s junk at the great British car boot sales, hoping to swipe a Super Metroid cartridge for 50p.

Sitting in a pitch black movie theatre or settling down with a new DVD probably isn’t boosting your Vitamin D bar or earning you anti-rickets achievements either, but films are socially acceptable and (gasp!) adults watch them too! It’s for that reason that I can’t wait for gaming to finish seeping into the mainstream, and for some new media scapegoat to materialise. “Augmented reality, poker playing, holographic sexbots lead to surge in rickets”, would be a far better headline.

The latest in a line of games that scoff at the notion of going solo, Army of Two is designed around couples, duos and tandem gamers, creating an entire game system around playing co-op. As unlikeable jerk-holes for hire Rios and Salem, you (and hopefully, a friend) combine your love for decorative masks, “pimped” guns and diamond encrusted grenades to tactically tip the dominos of war in your favour.

It does so with an underlying mechanic that’s all about aggression. Basically, when one guy is emptying clips and making himself an impromptu warzone celebrity, his partner essentially becomes invisible and can sneak about the battlefield with ease. This allows the covert colleague to flank enemies from behind or nestle up in a hidey-hole and get acquainted with a sniper rifle.

It works pretty well, giving battles a very three-dimensional feel and giving tactics a palpable reward, but it does get a little repetitive as the hours tick by. Just about every fight sees both players arguing about who’s going to be hot and who’s going to flank (although, with the in-game Rock – Paper – Scissors mechanic, you can sort it out fairly), and then the battle plays out systematically.

The game constantly throws out more formidable foes, like guys with riot shields and dudes in protected gun turrets, but everything comes down to the same core mechanic – get aggro and get flanking. The sequel adds fake surrendering and human shields, but neither shake up the game enough to subvert its constant monotony.

All this co-op carnage takes place in Shanghai, after the Chinese city’s skyline is decimated by bombs and other such bedlam. Within a few hours, buildings collapse, mercenaries descend, civilians are killed and chaos erupts. For some reason Rios and Salem are in the city, probably chilling out after whatever happened in the first game (I did complete it, but it didn’t have the most memorable plot) and for some reason they decide to take on all the armed goons.

As you can ascertain, the story isn’t exactly a pressing concern in The 40th Day. But, amongst all the reckless carnage, the game throws out a series of morality tests – little ethical dichotomies that wouldn’t be out of place in a psychology textbook. After each test, like kill a contact for a wallet-filler or leave him alive to keep your conscience clean, you’re presented with a staccato graphic novel that shows you the consequence to your choice.

But… they don’t really affect you. Not on any tangible level, unless virtual murder keeps you up at night. On one level you can choose to let an endangered tiger escape, or kill it. Letting him loose shows the giant cat mauling a thief, but maybe if the tiger attacked you on the next level it might actually register on your radar. As it stands, it’s just an incongruous bit of pseudo-morality in an otherwise amoral universe – by the end of The 40th Day, you’ve basically committed genocide – what’s one street punk with a tiger-shaped hole in his chest?

Nathan Drake and the fat one (my pet names for Salem and Rios) manage to become even more unlikeable than in the previous game. Formerly a couple of frat boys with a subversive homosexual undercurrent, they’re now just a couple of dicks. The “bro”-ness is back in full force (it’s “beer o’ clock”, apparently), but the butt-to-junk parachuting is replaced with a general obnoxiousness and some utterly bizarre anecdotes. Apparently Rios “boned” a panda – figure that one out.

In fact, Army of Two is a pretty ugly and trashy game from tip to toe. Using a dead hippo carcass as a piece of cover will upset animal lovers, and the jaggy models and low-res textures will drive graphic whores barmy.

Can we please call an emergency moratorium on Nolan North appearing in any more video games? After appearing as the loveable scamp Nathan Drake in Naughty Dog’s highly revered Uncharted series, the prolific voice actor has been passed around every game studio like a nasty infectious disease. Nowadays, it’s a relief to not hear his dulcet ‘every-man’ tones pollute another gaming protagonist.

It’s not just his indistinct Connecticut accent that’s replicated, but the entire Nathan Drake persona is shared among every character he voices. He’s cocky, self-confident and sure of himself, but isn’t quite used to the thrill of shooting dudes, driving cars over dangerous terrains and hanging perilously over yawning icy caverns. While Marcus Fenix or the entire cast of Call of Duty, all trained soldiers who have seen more battles than I’ve seen episodes of Friends, might yell out a “F**k Yeah!” or a “Hoo-Hah!” at the sight of imploded skulls and giant fiery blasts, North’s characters are more likely to say “Holy Sh*t!” or “Crap! Crap! Crap!”

It’s probably not Mr. North’s fault, I’m sure he shows up to each and every job and asks “So how do you want your protagonist to sound? I can do grizzled war veteran, Italian Mafioso gangster, Venice Beach surfer dude… oh, and I can do a mean Christopher Walken impression!” And, as if by clockwork, the developer will say “Can you do the voice you do in Uncharted? We liked that one.”

Maybe it’s just that Nathan Drake was one of the best played and thoroughly three dimensional video game characters since Pac Man’s famous drug addled, gun-toting redemption speech in Pac-Land 2 on Atari Lynx, and developers think they can borrow a little of Uncharted’s magic by just hiring the same voice actor. Or maybe Nolan North has a really good agent.

It doesn’t really work though – for one, any stalwart Uncharted fan will only ever hear his voice as Nathan Drake. Fans associate actors with their favourite roles, and it’s hard to accept them as anyone else – kind of like that film Brothers, which is pretty much about Spiderman and Donnie Darko fighting over Padmé Amidala. And secondly, Nolan North is only half of what makes Nathan Drake so great – he’s just reading the lines and infusing them with his personality; without Amy Henning’s fantastic script to read from, he’s a little lost.

Whatever the reason, after playing the demo for Dark Void on Xbox Live, he’s finally hit critical mass for me. I can’t take it anymore, he’s everywhere! For lead characters, after finishing up Uncharted he was The Prince in the latest Prince of Persia game, Romeo in Halo 3: ODST, Desmond Miles in Assassin’s Creed, Salem in Army of Two: The 40th Day, William Grey in Dark Void and Jason Flemming in Shadow Complex. According to Wikipedia he was also the Male Hero in Fable II… I guess they used his farts and belches, for that authentic game protagonist feel?

He’s also very prolific among background characters and other roles – he appeared as a random soldier in Gears of War 2, Sgt Forge in Halo Wars, Dobkin in the Terminator Salvation game and Sideswipe in the Transformers 2 game. He will play Steven Heck in Sega’s upcoming Alpha Protcol, he was Clank’s robot friend Sigmund in Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, he portrayed a bunch of characters in MadWorld and was recently Crochet in The Saboteur.

Despite absolutely adoring his character in both Uncharted games, he’s starting to get on my nerves. I can’t seem to escape his voice, no matter where I run and no matter what console I play on. Big action games, little Xbox Live Arcade games and even Ratchet and Clank! Has he no shame?

A man’s gotta eat, and I admire his dedication to the craft, but video game developers – can’t we have some variety?

Outside of the gaming sphere, Christmas is represented with tonnes of films, songs and TV specials. We all have those favourite yuletide traditions of slumping down on your sofa with a glass of milk and a tray of cookies (those were meant for me… right?) and watching our choice Crimbo movie classics. Be it Nightmare Before Christmas, Arnie’s Jingle All the Way, A Christmas Story or the version of A Christmas Carol with The Muppets, Scrooge McDuck, Barbie, Mr. Magoo, Bugs Bunny, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Jetsons, The Real Ghostbusters, Blackadder, The Flintstones, Beavis and Butthead, 101 Dalmatians, Oscar the Grouch, Looney Tunes or Dora the Explorer – all very real, I assure you.

Even considering “The Muppet DaVinci Code” and “The Muppet Bible”, this is still their best adaptation

But there’s no A Super Mario Christmas Carol, where worlds 1, 2 and 3 represent the past, present and future, or a kart racing game where Scrooge and Jacob Marley fire novelty power ups at each other. Despite the Charles Dickens’ tale – with Scrooge and Marley and the little boy with the broken leg or something and Kermit the Frog having Scrooge McDuck over for Christmas – being more recognisable than the Bible and the Keyboard Cat meme stuck together, there’s never been a (good) video game adaptation.

Obviously, releasing a game that’s only suitable for sale in one month of the year is financial suicide, but luckily for us, Indie developers on platforms like Xbox Live Arcade and the iPhone App Store cannot only pump out a game for a tiny fee, but can in fact benefit from the yuletide spirit and the opportunistic nature of a timely seasonal release. In fact, at a quick glance and with the help of my handy calculator, there are already a whopping 1200 Christmas related apps in Apple’s store, and plenty of Santa and Xmas based games on the Xbox Indies program.

Looking back, retro consoles have had their fair share of Christmas based games with Snowmen, Elves and Santa as chief protagonists and wintery wonderlands and Santa’s workshop as stags. I was going to go back with The Ghost of Christmas Past to see what little kids used to play on Christmas Eve, but he’s too busy playing Santa’s Xmas Caper on the Commodore 64. He did yell something about “Christmas NiGHTS on the Saturn” and “that terrible Elf Bowling flash game” between lives, though.

Oh, and when games had those old fashioned, archaic constructs called “levels”, before open worlds and sandboxes and phones with YouTube on them, Christmas did turn up every now and again – download Banjo Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade if you want a big steaming dollop of festive fun, delivered digitally to your console.

COME GET SOME. And by “some” I mean “thoughtfully chosen gifts”

I’m not exactly sure I really want a Christmas based video game these days – most Yuletide media is trashy, garish and, when digested any other time of the year, decidedly awful. Plus, with the action heavy focus of most games I’m not really sure how it would work anyway. Perhaps Aperture Science could invent Santa a present throwing gun, and you have to shoot gift wrapped lumps into the faces of children. Perhaps Sony could re-skin God of War as Santa having to discipline naughty children (i.e. eviscerate their organs and remove their head from their neck hole), but don’t accidentally disembowel a nice child or you’ll lose points!

I’m pretty much the biggest kid when it comes to Christmas, and often turn on my TV to whatever new catchy name they have for the music channel this week for some festive tunes, watch terrible Christmas movies (and a few good ones, too) and wait anxiously for the Christmas specials of my favourite TV shows. But in the land of video games, I’m more likely to be in Hyrule or The Capital Wasteland or Rapture, than Santa’s grotto.

Before I sat down to write this article, I wanted to beat one particular challenge in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. To reminisce, to get myself back in the mindset of Tony’s Pro Skater days and to ensure my memory wasn’t failing me.

It’s only on the third level that you get an opportunity to try it, but Escape from Alcatraz is one of the hardest missions in the entire game. After only a few hours in Tony’s latest playground, the game grabs you by the short and curlies, pulls you in real close and asks “do you really know how to ride that thing, sonny?”

It’s this ridiculous line that, in about 40 seconds, barrels you from a lookout point atop Alcatraz’s roof, down past two pools, over the construction site, through the haunted baseball yard, down to the destroyed entrance buildings, through a row of tourists and onto a boat at the prison’s jetty. Along the way you collect 33 little floating icons, and no less. There’s no silver medal for getting 32.

It’s absolutely unrelenting; you move at such a high momentum that any blunder sends you too far off course for correction, and the line has such pinpoint pacing that any attempt to rectify a mistake will obliterate the intended flow and cause imminent failure. It’s brutal, it’s demoralising and it’ll probably take over 100 attempts.

But the room will erupt when you beat it. You’ll pump your fist with satisfaction and reward, your onlookers will cheer and you’ll never say “Yes, I want to save my game!” with such gusto, ever again.

But I mean, what does this ludicrous event have to do with skateboarding, anyway? You move far too fast, leap way too high and grind with too much speed for any kind of realism to be granted, but it’s Tony Hawks at its best; lines, reflexes, memory, patterns and unfathomable digit dexterity.

As every Hawk game introduced some new key moves, Pro Skater 4 said hello to “Skitchin”; its missing ’g’ a disturbing omen of the franchise's future

Besides, the original games were as much about skateboarding as Street Fighter is about fighting or Track and Field is about running; it’s an almost unrecognisable abstraction built with enjoyable gaming in mind, rather than a realistic portrayal of the sport. Every Etnies logo, every professional skater and every unlockable deck decal is inconsequential window dressing, be it the sporting elegance of Pro Skater or the anarchic rebellion of Underground, to the main event; an abstract experience about rhythm, reflex and muscle memory, that just happens to feature skateboards.

I can’t just Ollie into a grind anymore; those days are over. With 8 years of Tony Hawk etched into my brain, I have to punctuate every leap with a score-increasing, combo-incrementing flip trick, even if there’s no score to chase. And since Tony Hawks 3, I can’t fly off a quarter pipe without reverting into a manual on the way down. Those movements are just part of my subconscious now; my thumbs perform the button combos (R1, Up, Down for the latter) before my brain can even engage them.

This level of micro-managed combos and muscle memory repetition means Hawks’ closest living relative isn’t EA’s Skate franchise, but something more along the lines of Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. The most popular Skate videos are beautifully filmed gaps and subdued, refined movements, but Pro Skater’s best flicks are billion point combos and impossible body contortions that might resemble some real skate tricks, in isolation.

A couple of years ago, Sega showed me a run-through of The Club (one of my favourite hidden gems this generation), and when they said “it has a real Tony Hawks like addictiveness”, they sure weren’t talking about putting the protagonists on skateboards.

Halo’s online mode isn’t really about shooting, Street Fighter isn’t really about fighting and Tony Hawk’s isn’t really about skateboarding. They’re about rhythm of movement, proficiency over technical controls and reflexes to situations. You wouldn’t play Halo with a lightgun or Street Fighter with Project Natal reading punches or kicks, and you certainly wouldn’t play a game with the Tony Hawks name, with anything but an analogue stick (or a D-pad, if you’re a real purist), a few face buttons and the shoulder bumpers.

Funnily enough, a skateboard is the last thing that comes into my mind when I think about Tony Hawks' games

And so far, I’ve found the experience pretty enjoyable. It’s absolutely pot luck if you’re going to receive Borderlands on launch day or get Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard instead, but it’s a great way to play games you might otherwise never have bought, try new experiences and test out games you’re unsure of.

Here are my top tips for renting games:

1: Don’t judge a book by its cover

When the only thing you’re wasting with a bad rental is the opportunity to rent something better, there’s no real worry about receiving a complete stinker on your door mat. You can try out games you might otherwise never have played and find redeeming features in games that reviewers can’t otherwise recommended.

Like 50 Cent: Bulletproof. Not being the biggest fan of Mr Cent’s musical output, I didn’t really want to buy the game, but was happy to indulge in a few hours of mindless gunplay. But after swapping out the never-ending 50 cent backing music to some more palatable custom soundtracks, I found myself having a pretty enjoyable time! It’s a little derivative, mixing Gears of War’s cover mechanic and The Club’s point racking system, but it’s a fast paced shooter with no petty limits or narrative constraints. You’ll find yourself regularly launching rockets into people’s faces and setting terrorist goons alight with incendiary bullets, all with reckless abandon and a giant Cheshire cat grin on your face.

There’s even a button to make 50 Cent “taunt” enemies post kill (for extra points!), so not only are you humiliating and intimidating enemies by filling them full of lead and wiping them off the face of the earth, but you call them a “pussy bitch” or insult their mother afterwards. And Curtis (50 Cent’s real name, if you’re curious) is a big fan of endless profanity, which just makes everything even funnier. He’s too hardcore to say “fire in the hole” when tossing a grenade at some treasure stealing shmucks – it’s got to be “fire in the motherfucking hole!”

2: Research before you rent

If you start renting games, you’re not going to stop buying them all together. Certain types of games will be ideal for renting and others with be more suitable to purchase. As I said in my previous blog, games with lots of replay value, good multiplayer modes and long campaigns make terrible rentals.

Like Need for Speed: Shift. I rented the game only to find an interesting a compelling career mode that rewarded different types of driving and had a lot of variety to the races. I realised that if I played through the entire career, without wearing out my 360’s steering wheel through overuse, I’d probably still be renting it now. So I popped it back in the post and bought it instead.

I still think fondly about blowing up Martian prefabs and demolishing enemy bases in Red Faction: Guerrilla, only to paw futilely at the empty space on my shelf. There are some games that you’re going to want to revisit time and time again, so think carefully about how much enjoyment you gleam out of certain genres before renting them.

3: You won’t be playing the newest releases

This is less of a tip, and more of a revelation that I can pass down to you. I am not playing Borderlands right now; half of Ready-Up is cooperatively looting and killing on my Xbox 360 friends list, and I’m not. Instead I’m renting Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard and the Blu-Ray version of Hot Fuzz.

There are some ancient rules and laws you can practice to truly master the art of LoveFilm queue manipulation, but it’s pretty much a full time job. If you’re as impatient and easily motivated by online hype as me, then maybe renting isn’t for you. When the Ready-Up forums and Twitter is ablaze with Batman: Arkham Asylum love, and LoveFilm gives a pathetic “there is likely to be a long wait for this title,” you might find yourself standing in Morrisons with a brand new game in your hand.

But there are some games that are completely immune – short experiences that you’ve no interest in repeating (WET, Wanted, 50 Cent), franchises you’re unsure of (Halo: ODST) and genres you rarely touch (Dragon Age). As long as you’re willing to wait a few weeks, you can dabble in some new games and try some brand new experiences, without breaking the bank.

Last week, Loz and I headed to London’s glamorous, world renowned Future Gallery, the go-to events space for stars of all industries and the speed-dial destination for the capital’s cultured literati. Well, it’s actually just a building down an alley in Leicester Square, opposite a Broadway showing of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical”, but it does have Wi-Fi and is Wheelchair Accessible and if that doesn’t scream “swanky” I don’t know what does.

But we weren’t just there to sample free wireless internet and review the Disability Discrimination Act, we were there on the ultra important mission that is “testing out rad video games”. Ubisoft had invited Ready-Up to play the socks off their upcoming winter line-up and we were the writers born to preview them.

But while we were born with thumbs for playing, eyes for staring and mouths for drooling, our collective sense of direction was seriously lacking. One stamp-sized map (printed across two pages, thanks to Loz’s technical mastery) and five minutes of walking later, we found the venue. And a doorman.

So Loz explains, with her trademarked enthusiasm, “We’re here for the Ubisoft shindig.” “Oooh, shindig! I like that one”, says the doorman, “got any others?” Now Loz starts rattling off synonyms for party like a machine gun loaded with thesauruses, “Hootenanny, bash, jamboree.”

And then he looks at me. “Your turn.” My stomach turns to butterflies, a thousand spotlights shine on me and a drumroll begins. “I’ve got nothing.” Bitter disappointment, the doorman is horrified, Loz is mortified to even be seen in the same postcode as me and I reconsider my entire future as a writer.

I should have said “hoedown”.

So thus began Ready-Up’s tour of Ubisoft’s Winter Line-up. First up was Splinter Cell: Conviction which, along with Assassin’s Creed 2, is the centrepiece for Ubisoft’s winter line-up. It even had two demo stations available while poor Your Shape Nintendo Wii Yoga had to make do with just one. What a meanie!

This time, Splinter Cell is darker and more violent than ever. In previous games, Sam finished his missions with pinpoint precision and the utmost professionalism; he was a counter terrorism agent, remember, and he wasn’t shooting guys and snapping necks for laughs. But now, with his daughter dead and vengeance on his mind, Sam is more brutal and vicious than he’s ever been – he’ll break your leg in a one-on-one standoff, he’ll shoot you in the think kettle without getting the “OK” from HQ and the interrogation scenes… let me tell you about the interrogation scenes:

In my line of work, as a games journo, I usually get answers by sending off an email, picking up the phone or scheduling an interview at a smoky London pub. If I was Sam Fisher, though, I’d be more likely to shout “How many levels are in your game!?”, and then slam your head into a tree trunk. I’d scream “What were the reasons behind removing the HUD!?” before arranging a one-on-one interview between your face and a brick wall. Finally, with nearly enough questions for my feature, I’d yell “Thank you for your time, may I have your email address for any follow up questions!?” and then shove a knife into your hand so you’re playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with a car’s bonnet.

This is the new Sam Fisher. He’s hardly got any gadgets but he’s got years (and four best-selling video games) worth of experience to call back on, as well as hard wired intuition and instinct. As such, the game has radically changed the way it presents information to you; information is no longer fed to you via earpiece, but plastered onto scenery in size 20,000 Helvetica. Your visibility isn’t communicated by an iPhone app on your backpack, but screen-wide visual cues; if you’re hidden, the game will have a grainy, sepia spasm and your last seen position will be indentified as a ghostly Sam Fisher.

But just because Sam Fisher is hallucinating that his mission objectives are written on the wall and he’s smashing people’s faces into brick walls, doesn’t mean he’s lost his touch. He can now mentally “mark” foes, and then take them all out in a cinematic camera-angled flurry of bullets that would make John Woo blush.

As game reviewers, we must push the boundaries and test the limits - that's why I stole a bus during the tutorial.

As the world’s most profane PR representative told me, “Splinter Cell can be so fucking aggravating, so we’re trying to strip that shit out”. And it shows – Conviction is a little less stressful than Fisher’s previous escapades; you won’t spend hours watching guard walking patterns or get repetitive strain injury from hanging on a pipe – it’s faster and more to the point, and a natural evolution from Double Agent’s slightly more casual focus. It’s still a hard as nails stealth game at heart (with multiple difficulties for the ninjas among you), but Conviction’s pace and brutality is amped up, to match the storyline.

While waiting for the Assassin’s Creed lines to die down, we saw a man walk past with a suspiciously gigantic piece of Victoria Sponge Cake. But with no source of the mysterious cake in sight, we plonked our keisters down at the DS table to sample C.O.P: The Recruit. Oh, running about a 3D, free-roaming world in a shooting/driving combo? Man; that is so passé. Grand Theft Auto called they want their game back. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Oh? You play a policeman this time round? That changes everything!

COP is the closest thing you’re going to get to Grand Theft Auto on the DS. And I know there’s already a Grand Theft Auto on the DS, but this is closer. None of that namby pamby top-down 2D retro styley nonsense, The Recruit is packing a fully 3D world and it has the necessary state and national licenses to use it.

You see, in a clever twist on the old formula you can hide the Grand Theft Auto influences with some handy dialogue tweaks. “Sir, please give me the use of your vehicle, I am a police officer and this is an emergency.” – C.O.P: The Recruit. “Bitch, gimme your damn car, I gotta go slaughter a bunch of innocent pedestrians!” – Grand Theft Auto. I’d tell you that you get fired and it’s Game Over every time you discharge your firearm without proper motive and cause, but that would be a lie and lying is wrong.

In terms of the storyline you play Dan Miles, bad boy anarchist with a penchant for illegal street races. But now he’s on the Criminal Overturn Program (COP), a plan that turns unlawful members of society into detectives – probably the worst idea since the Spice Girls movie.

I didn’t get too far in the game; mostly because I stole a bus and those are very slow, but I can say with conviction (man that would have been an excellent pun in the Splinter Cell preview) that it does an honourable job of replicating the free roaming experience on your tiny DS screens. This is certainly one to investigate this winter (God, I’m horrible).

Feeling a distinct tinge of HD-withdrawal-symptoms, we made our way to the closest Xbox 360 controller and sat down (fine, we stood up. Jeez, what happened to artistic license?) with Avatar. Not actually a video game based on James Cameron’s Xbox 360 Avatar, but instead one based on his upcoming movie, Avatar. It’s about alien species and strange planets; it’s about accepting different races and not succumbing to our prejudices. It’s even got a modern day Romeo and Juliet bit, and it has Sigourney Weaver with red hair dye.

That’s the film, I mean. The game is about shooting everything that moves. And even stuff that doesn’t, like plants and rocks. Sometimes with guns, sometimes with missiles fired from spaceships and sometimes you just run stuff over in jeeps. In the brief demo we played, there were tonnes of things to shoot, all set to the beautiful backdrop of a luscious alien jungle. According to Ubisoft, gamers will “discover creatures and other wildlife, the likes of which have never been seen in the world of video games before.” Well that’s because a Rhino with a Mohawk is weird, Jim.

I waggled the Wii Remote like a nut, and my character did backflips. There may or may not be a correlation.

You’ll have the chance to play as both the RDA troopers and the Na’vi (those blue skinned alien dudes from the trailers), and even choose which side to root for in a double-ending crossroad hullaballoo! The game will also support 3D glasses, if you have a telly from the future, but it wasn’t being shown at the event. Unless someone mistook the 3D glasses for their own specs and wore them home. That’s a possibility.

Finally, we plucked up some courage and made fools of ourselves on Shaun White’s Snowboarding: World Stage. Now I’m no wimp when it comes to gaming – I’ve got a platinum trophy in Uncharted, I’ll take anyone on in Call of Duty 4 and I found every pigeon in Liberty City. But I cannot make this snowboard go in a straight line for the life of me.

It uses that fancy Balance Board doohickey that Nintendo is always raving on about, to make you feel like you’re on a real snowboard. Well I’ve never been on a real snowboard, but I’m sure it feels better than wiggling around on a white piece of plastic like a belly dancer on a set of bathroom scales.

If you’re a Balance Board snowboarding aficionado, and not a bum wiggling tit like me, then you’re in luck – World Stage offers up bigger and more varied challenges than the last game, as well as the usual sequel offerings – new stages, new content, some deeper multiplayer modes and an achievement system. Spiffy.

Next Time on Ready Up hits Ubisoft…

Thong-stealing antics with some rambunctious Rabbids!

The joys of swimming in Venice!

Free sweets!