When you’re part of team Ready Up, you only really have to do one thing: play games. Wait, two things. Play games and write the occasional blog about them. Play games, write about them and do the odd review. Three things! Play games, write about them, do reviews and attend the occasional event. Four! Wait, I’ll come in again.

Unfortunately for me in recent weeks, I’ve been struggling to live up to my end of the bargain when it comes to playing games. It’s the little s at the end of the previous sentence which is causing all the problems ‒ the s in games. I’ve been on my console as much as usual, but only playing the one game ‒ Battlefield 3. The combination of my deep and unexpected love for this game, combined with a lack of other titles that interest me, has left me a one game man. I’ve left 9,000+ corpses, thousands of vehicles and 300 hours of my spare time behind me in tattered pieces since it came out.

My friend Stuart demonstrating a laid back approach to rock 'n' roll...

I haven’t been entirely faithful to my beloved Battlefield, though ‒ I recently took the PS3 away on a holiday to the Lake District (expecting rain, as you do in a UK drought) and played a fair bit of Guitar Hero with friends. I also purchased Fez after watching ten seconds of gameplay footage on YouTube, but despite enjoying it at first, it has fallen by the wayside as I found myself wandering back and forth through levels I had been through far too many times before. I don’t think it helped that the rotation animation seems to make my head ache, either.

I’m going to get myself out of this monogamous gaming rut soon, and get myself back out on to the gaming scene to see if I can pick up some hot new titles, though. There’s a nice young man named Max Payne who has caught my eye recently, so I’ll definitely be giving him a shot in a couple of weeks. I might also consider a dalliance with some old flames too – I heard Ratchet & Clank will be back on the scene too, and the gossip is they’ve both had a lot of cosmetic work done, so I might well be able to fit them into my slot. Resistance: Burning Skies for Vita isn’t too far out either, and I’m definitely looking forward to some red hot two stick action with my handheld machine.

Until then, though, I’ll be curling up in front of a warming oil refinery fire, toasting noobs, with my one, my only, my Battlefield.

One of my pet peeves in the gaming world, and indeed, the world in general, is people who think that the world owes them a favour. People with a huge sense of entitlement, people who think they deserve the moon on a stick… and they deserve it NOW.

This came to the forefront recently in the gaming world, with the whole Mass Effect 3 ending thing. Some gamers are so disappointed by the ending of the trilogy that they are demanding a different one. This baffles me. Why should Bioware listen to these people? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying games companies should ignore their audiences, but it appears that some people think because they bought one copy of the game they are entitled to choose exactly how the narrative ends. This is like buying one share in Apple and then being disappointed when Tim Cook doesn’t pop around to your house to ask you what exactly you want to see in the new iPhone.

Of course, I haven’t actually played Mass Effect 3. I’ve been busying myself with other RPGs ‒ not to mention assault rifles, carbines, light machine guns and handguns. I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 non-stop since it came out, and I’ve also seen this sense of entitlement coming out over at the Battlefield blog. Battlefield 3 is in the process of having a large patch applied to it, to even out some irritating emergent gameplay behaviour (snipers riding UAVs to the top of buildings) and a few unfortunately unbalanced weapons (the USAS-12 shotgun, or the “portable apocalypse weapon” as I call it). The patch has been a while coming, but let’s not forget, this is not paid for DLC. The developers could have said, no, sod it, that’ll do. The game is perfectly playable, but ironing out these niggles will make it better.

When DICE announced that the patch was coming out on PS3 earlier than on both 360 and PC, there was uproar. From the comments on their blog you’d think that they had announced that they were going to come to every single non-PS3 player’s house to shit through their letterbox. Reading the comments depressed me. I even saw someone refer to DICE as “stealing their game”, which I suppose at least shows a fantastic emotional attachment to the experience that DICE have actually created.

The sense of entitlement was incredibly annoying to me, until I was suddenly struck by a thought. Maybe these people have more right to complain than ever before, and I can tell you why in two words: Online pass. For most games multiplayer is almost a bonus add-on that comes free with the main campaign, but with a game like Battlefield, does the fact that you paid for an online pass suddenly mean that you have the right to expect improvements in the online mode? Or is the argument that you are only paying for the servers, and if you end up stuck with the game as it was when it launched, tough luck?

Personally, I’ll take any add ons I can get, and keep on squeezing Battlefield 3 for entertainment hours like a huge, juicy, gaming lemon. I’m nearly 8,000 kills and 260 hours down, and may there be many, many more to come.

Like the PSP, the PSV is a nicely made piece of equipment. It’s light enough to hold comfortably, but heavy enough to feel like you’re holding something worthwhile. When I first turned on the screen, I was reminded of the first time I saw an iPhone 4’s screen. The PSP had a nice screen, but the PSV’s screen is something else. It’s a whopping 5″ OLED screen which looks fantastic. The picture below does no justice to it at all.

The Vita is all about the big OLED screen.

Of course, no self-respecting piece of handheld hardware would be seen dead these days without the de rigeur touchscreen, and the Vita has one, and a good one at that. It’s extremely responsive to your touch, and supports multitouch inputs too. However, this does lead to one of my niggles with the PSV. Gone is the XMB, and games and apps are now launched via a new interface, which is entirely controlled by touch. The sticks, D-pads, buttons and triggers all do nothing at all on this main screen, which seems a bit daft to me. Still, it works well enough, though.

Small, but proper, sticks replace the PSP's nub.

With the Vita, Sony have gone insanely overboard with the amount of ways it is possible to interact with the device. Two cameras, two touch sensitive surfaces, two sticks, two shoulder buttons, a microphone and all the usual face buttons seems like a lot. I have to say, though, that the only input that persuaded me to buy the PSV was the second stick on the right. The lack of it was my least favourite thing about the PSP, and it felt to me like it crippled the whole console. Also, when I said second stick, I meant stick. Gone is the half-stick half-nipple device, replaced with a small but perfectly functional proper stick. It works well, although it does make the PSV a little harder to put into your pocket. It’s a sacrifice I was more than willing to make.

The second stick (finally!) and the small face buttons.

Given that the device is actually physically larger than the PSP, it is surprising that they have chosen to make the face buttons a little bit smaller. I have to say, in use it’s never an issue but I was surprised to find that when comparing the two devices. Ergonomically, I’d say the Vita is more comfortable than my PSP Slim ‘n’ Lite, but nothing like as comfortable to hold for long periods as a PS3 or 360 controller. It almost feels too thin, and if I’m playing a game where I am using the shoulder buttons for any period of time I do find my finger gets a bit tense.

The rear camera at the top, and the rear touchpad.

The cameras on the PSV are pretty much exactly what you’d expect: kinda crappy. Sure, they work well enough for the bundled Augmented Reality games, and you can take quick snaps with them, but they’re not a patch on even the cheapest smartphone out there. In fairness, though, there is one hugely successful device out there that the PSV could absolutely demolish in a photography contest: the iPad 2. The rear touchpad is an interesting gimmick, but in the games I have only Uncharted: Golden Abyss has used it yet. In Uncharted, you use the rear touchpad to manipulate a 3D object. It works surprisingly well, and gives you an odd sensation of actually holding something in your hand and turning it over and over. A bit of a gimmick then, but quite well done.

Looks like USB in the picture, but it isn't.

After going all a bit crazy with the PS3, and using all standard USB connectors, Sony are back to their old tricks again with the PSV. The PSV has a proprietary connector at the bottom, meaning you can’t just use a normal micro-USB connector like a lot of other devices, and need to carry the PSV specific cable. Bad Sony! They’ve also invented another new memory card format, which is a little irritating, and people are raving about how expensive they are compared to standard cards like Micro-SD cards, or even Sony’s own Memory Stick Duo. It’s true enough, and I wish they hadn’t, but it was something I factored into my decision when I chose to buy one. It’s still significantly cheaper than you used to pay per mb when compared to the old PS2 memory units!

The top of the unit. From left to right: volume buttons, (tiny) memory card slot, game card slot, power button.

The memory card is really something that Sony don’t want you messing about with. It’s clear it has been designed for you to put it in once and then NEVER TOUCH AGAIN. This is partly because the card is so small you could easily lose it inside a matchbox and partly because they tie everything on it to one PSN account. As the only person who uses my PSV, the only time I’m going to care about this is if I fill my memory card and have to mess about swapping it for another.

Small box, even smaller game.

I think I’ll also be needing somewhere to put my games, too. Despite being even smaller than the PSP game boxes, at the same width and two thirds of the height, PSV game boxes are still ludicrously large compared to the tiny memory card that lurks within. I have no doubt that even as we speak five million different PSV cases are either on the market or on their way to it, and I’ll be one of the customers in line.

So that’s the hardware briefly covered. Check out Ready Up’s reviews of the launch titles for a feel for the games, which I personally think make up one of the strongest launch line-ups for any console. Right. I’m off to play Motorstorm RC. Add me on PSN (NewCode) and I’ll see you on the leaderboards.

Well, it looks like they’ve done it again. WipEout 2048, effectively a prequel to the previous WipEout games, is another corker. It’s testament to both the developers of the game and the hardware in the Vita that 2048 looks as good on that OLED screen as WipEout HD does on the PS3.

The tracks are set in a near future version of New York, blending an interesting mix of well known landmarks (Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge) with high-tech, neon infused lighting. Like all WipEout games, it is fast, but even with eight racers battling at once with futuristic (and very colourful) weapons, the game keeps everything fast and super smooth, never missing a beat. On the topic of beats, the pumping electronic soundtrack and sci-fi sound effects come together to create an extremely intense aural experience through your headphones.

In terms of game modes, there is a decent single player campaign. It consists of time trial events, race events against seven other racers, combat events where the aim is to do as much damage to other racers as possible, and Zone mode. Zone mode challenges you to simply survive as long as possible, and pass a number of zones to pass the event. In Zone, you don’t accelerate, your ship does that for you. The longer you survive, the faster you go. Zone also features a fantastic colour effect, where the entire track is coloured bright neon colours, which really pop out on the Vita’s colourful screen. It’s a wonderfully trippy experience, racing through the bright colours as you get faster and faster and faster.

There is a decent amount of replayability added in by the fact that you can both Pass an event and Elite Pass an event, so there’s is usually something to aim for if you return to an older event. Each event also has timed leaderboards, so if you have a nemesis like me (SteMacD) then you can battle against their times.

Online Campaign pits you against other players on the Playstation Network, but adds different challenges to the mix, such as hitting two players with a weapon in one race to earn extra ranking points as well as the obvious – trying to win the race. It all works well with no obvious lagging or jittering in any of the games I played. There’s also an ad-hoc mode for playing against local friends with other Vita consoles but I didn’t have anyone handy to test that out.

There’s also a mode called Cross-Play, where you can apparently play against PS3 players of WipEout HD, but I have to say I never had any luck finding a game to join. The built-in manual also completely failed to mention how this mode was actually supposed to work, which was unfortunate, but hardly a deal-breaker with a game of this quality. The only tiny negative that springs to mind is that the tracks are a little slow to load, but at least if you fail an event and retry it is much quicker the second time around, so if you’re struggling with an individual event you’re not looking at loading screens all the time.

Ridge Racer, it seems, doesn’t really have what you’d call a single player campaign, with only three race modes on offer. World Race is your multiplayer racing mode, Spot Race is a sort of Quick Race mode against AI cars, and Time Attack is exactly what it sounds like, a best lap time mode. All of these modes earn you credits, which you can use to upgrade your car, which is then used across all three modes. There’s no separate multiplayer progression here.

World Race seems to be the bulk of the game, where you can race online against people over the internet with up to eight online players per race. You can also race against other people’s uploaded ghosts to try and beat their times, or play a face to face battle against someone else with a Vita in your immediate vicinity. The online racing mode works well enough, with decent lobbies that are only marred by the irritating fact that there is only one song that plays while you’re in them, over and over again like you’re on hold.

So, to the actual racing. You get to race on one of only three tracks, which have been stretched out to a dubious six by the addition of letting you drive around them backwards. The graphics look nice and bright on the Vita’s wonderful screen, and the game flows smoothly along. There’s a tremendous sense of speed conveyed. The racing is extremely arcadey, which will come as no surprise to anyone who played Ridge Racer before. Drift is the name of the game, as you get your car sideways through even the gentlest of corners to keep up your speed and build up nitrous for use on the straights.

Take your Vita away from a network connection, though, and you are only left with Spot Race and Time Attack. Spot Race is fine, but how many times are you really going to want to race against AI racers on the same three tracks? Time Attack comes with all the prerequisite leader boards, so if seeing your name in lights is what flicks your switch, you could get quite a lot out of that mode. Again, though, with just three tracks you could quite easily become bored.

The closest you get to that childlike feeling of joy as a gamer comes far less frequently than once a year ‒ at the launch of a new console. I’ve recently preordered a Playstation Vita and as the tantalising prospect of finally being able to play proper two-stick games on a portable console comes into view, I got thinking of consoles gone by, and the stories associated with getting hold of them.

I think it was 2001 when I finally ordered a PS2, after cleverly deciding to not get one until after my university exams. In a moment which was to be repeated throughout my life, it turned up when I was out. Upon finding the card I headed off to the sorting office in Colchester to collect it. On my pushbike. I’ll never forget that precarious ride through Essex traffic with a weighty PS2 dangling from one handlebar of my bike as a I weaved unsteadily home. It was worth it.

Not actually a Photoshop job ‒ it took twenty men to get the 16 ton weight on there, and another forty to get the Xbox alongside.

I made a similar mistake with the original Xbox in 2004. This time I owned a car, but the shops were quite a way from the car park. In a moment of insanity, I also decided to buy a full set of rubber car mats from Halfords that day. Let me tell you now, travelling that reasonably short distance with a heavy set of car mats on one arm and the ridiculous weight of the Xbox on the other, was one of the longest trips of my life. I felt like one of those World’s Strongest Man guys lugging around those enormous balls. The concrete ones, pervert.

There’s also the humorous story of how I ended up with two separate £425 Playstation 3’s on launch day, but that will have to wait for another time. My favourite new console story, though, doesn’t even involve my new console. It was Xbox 360 launch day, back in 2007, and I was round at Ready Up founder Dan’s house. We’d been out to Woolworths (remember Woolies?) to pick up his and Anthony’s preordered consoles, and had returned to the house eager to play the (in hindsight, dreadful) launch day titles. As Dan unpacked the console and leads, I was tasked with the duty of putting the batteries into the media remote control that came free with launch day machines. Dan finished connecting the cables, sat back and said “Right, here we go.” as he pressed the power button.

What Dan wanted to see...

The green ring spun up as the 360 whirred into life, then suddenly stopped. Puzzled, Dan looked at his console, checking the cables again. Then he tried again. The console sprung to life, only to go off again a second later. I could see the blood drain from his face as he considered that he might have a duff console. Then he looked at me sitting behind him, and saw me sitting there with my finger on the “off” button on the remote control. I’d been pressing it deliberately every time he turned the console on, just to wind him up. His face was a picture, and I fell about laughing.

Something tells me I’m unlikely to be invited round to his house when he gets an Xbox 720.

As a big fan of the original game Syndicate, and the often overlooked Syndicate Wars, I was excited to see what EA had up their sleeves for a brand new Syndicate reboot. The original games had a very unique style, and also two quite brilliant intro movies. For anyone who didn’t play the 1993 original, Syndicate was an isometric game where you controlled a squad of four cybernetically altered agents, who are charged with completing a number of missions, such as stealing information, kidnapping scientists and assassinating rival Syndicate’s VIPs. Doing this allowed your corporation to exert influence over an area, and eventually take over the world.

The new Syndicate takes the basics of this, and spins it into a very modern game. Gone is the old fashioned isometric viewpoint, replaced instead with a first person perspective. The characters look has been changed too, from the very 90s sunglasses and trench coats look of the original to a futuristic cross between a character from Mass Effect and Killzone. The demo we were given to play was the four-player online cooperative mode, on a mission to find and kill a rival Syndicate’s Colonel. There were three classes of agent to choose from, Offense, Defense and Support, so for the first game I picked Defense. (I say picked, I just hit Start and that was what I got) This gave my character a pretty hefty machine gun, and we waded into battle.

One of the first things we all noticed was that this is not your typical FPS, in that you are not just a team in name only. Even on normal difficulty you do need to stick together, work as a team and make sure you don’t get flanked. And the enemies will flank you, a lot. We were frequently stunned, at first, to find that an enemy had sneaked around and somehow got himself right into the middle of our foursome. This improved once our gracious host, Dan, fiddled with the settings on the PS3s we were using and got the voice working on the rather snazzy SteelSeries gaming headsets we had been provided with. It’s definitely a game you’ll want to be playing with headsets on, and preferably with people you know, particularly if you play on Hard (see later).

Syndicate features a hacking button, being L2 on the PS3 and LB on the 360. Hacking abilities are selected by using the D-pad, but the one you’ll use the most is Heal. You can repair your squadmates’ cybernetic systems wirelessly from a considerable distance, which adds an interesting element to the game, as you can heal while keeping yourself out of trouble. You can also hack incoming grenades, allowing you to defuse them before they’ve even landed, if you’re quick enough. Later in the game, certain enemies have special armour, which is impervious to damage until you can get close enough to hack their system and shut it down. This, again, lends itself very well to team play, with several of you diverting a particularly tough bad guys attention away while another sneaks up and hacks him.

Remember the Colonel I mentioned earlier, who we were being sent to kill? He’s one of those bad guys who has the special armour, and also a terrifying mini gun which rips you to shreds in seconds. Keeping out of his way is crucial to staying alive, but with a little bit of work we soon nailed him.

As there was only one level on display, we swapped consoles to the Xbox 360 for a second playthrough, this time on Hard. Hard seriously lived up to its name. About four feet into the level two of our team were down and requiring a system reboot (the Syndicate equivalent of a revive). This quickly led to a change of tactics. With enemies swarming all over us we had to stick even closer together and keep a spare finger on that oh-so-useful Heal button. It is tough. In fact, I’d highly recommend Syndicate on Hard mode as a corporate team building exercise. I started playing the game with three strangers, but by the end of the level we were a team. Tactics were created on the fly, pairings spontaneously formed, and at the end of the level, I don’t think so many swear words have been thrown at a Colonel since the head of PETA met Colonel Sanders*. (*Note – this may not have actually happened).

I left with a very favourable impression of Syndicate. It wasn’t really what I had expected, but as a big fan of shooters where you work as a team like in Battlefield, it was right up my alley. It looks and sounds good, and I got the impression that the load of new weapons and upgrades that we didn’t have access to at this point could be really fun.

The Syndicate demo is available now on Xbox 360 & on February 1st on PSN.

At first I thought it was a clever system to avoid repricing every time a currency fluctuates. You make a game 1200 points, but vary how much in your local currency it costs to buy 1200 points, thereby simplifying the process, and cleverly making it look like the game costs the same worldwide, when it doesn’t. However, I later realised that this isn’t how it works at all. When Major Nelson blogs about new XBLA titles, it frequently says “Click here to see the price in your country”, which means it is not just one worldwide price at all. So why not just charge in your local currency?

Taken for a ride: Microsoft's fairground ride of pricing.

The real masterstroke of evil genius in the MS fun bucks plan is as follows:

On the day of writing, these were the points bundles you can buy online via Xbox.com and your console, and their equivalent UK price:

500 Microsoft Points – £4.25
1000 Microsoft Points – £8.50
2000 Microsoft Points – £17.00
5000 Microsoft Points – £42.50
6000 Microsoft Points – £51.00

Now let’s take a look at some popular downloadable titles and add-ons:

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand – 1200 funbucks.
Trials HD – 1200 funbucks.
Peggle – 800 funbucks.
From Dust – 1200 funbucks.

Like most add ons and games, now, Back to Karkand costs a perfectly inconsistent 1200 MS funbucks...

Notice anything about those prices? The two don’t add up. Whichever pack of points you buy to buy a single item, you are left with “spare” points. I tried to remember where I had seen this scheme before, and it hit me. When I was a kid we went to a fairground where they sold you tickets at the gate that you exchanged for rides at the fair. Of course, they sold the tickets in packs of ten and all the rides cost 3 tickets, so you always had one ticket left. Just like XBLA, you could get around it by buying a lot of tickets (30, in this case), but in general you didn’t want that many and ended up wasting one or two.

Of course, the left-over fairground ticket was entirely useless. In fact, the only thing you could do with it was give it to someone else coming in to the fair, so that they could get some use from it. And that, right there, is why Microsoft don’t let you gift your artificially “spare” fun bucks to your friends (or indeed gift at all).

As it is, you either gradually collect up your “spare” points until you have enough for a decent purchase, or you do as many others do, and spend their “spare” points on Xbox Live avatar clothing. And for you people, I have but one thing to say: “CHUMP!”

I’m not entirely sure what exactly it is I like about Battlefield 3. Like many of the other big titles that came out in this year’s silly season, it is more evolutionary than revolutionary. It features a new engine, sure, but if you had to review it in 100 words that review would definitely start “It’s like Battlefield Bad Company 2 but…”.

What it does have that I love is teamwork. (Right about here I was going to make a joke about their being no “I” in “team”, but then I realised there is one in “Battlefield” so the joke fell somewhat flat). And I’m not talking about the sort of “teamwork” you’ll find in a Call of Duty “team deathmatch”, I’m talking about people actually helping each other out and turning the tide of the battle in their teams favour. Of course, there are still a number of players who play the game in a “lone wolf” style, but the great thing about Battlefield is that those people don’t do all that well.

Hide on a rooftop with a sniper rifle? Sure, you might get 20 kills and only one or two deaths, but at the end of the game you’ll be beaten by the player who died 15 times for zero kills, but revived and healed thirty different team mates and took several different objectives. Get yourself in a squad of buddies with headsets and you’ll generally do well.

Can’t shoot straight like me? You’ll get a boat load of “suppression assist” points for keeping your enemies heads down while the decent players kill them. Can’t drive a tank? Hide behind it with a repair tool and watch the repair points roll in as the RPG fire does. Can’t fly a jet further than 20 feet without hitting a building? (Me again.) Stop on the ground and laser designate airborne and ground targets for your fellow pilots who make the whole not-flying-into-things bit look easy.

I think it is the supporting roles that I love the most about Battlefield. I don’t have the caffeine and Haribo fuelled twitch reflexes needed for some multiplayer shooters, but in Battlefield I’m never useless because of it.

And at the end of the day, I’d rather score highly on a winning side where I scored no kills, than be on the losing team with a huge kill death ratio.

Goooooooooo team!

Of course, I soon saw people playing it, so I checked out some reviews. They all said, sure it’s a bit rough, a bit unpolished, but what really shone through from all the reviews was that it was a lot of fun. Buoyed by this, and the fact I didn’t have to buy Assassin’s Creed: Revelations because I got a copy from Ready Up to review, I decided to invest.

And what did I get? A rough around the edges, flawed game with the series’ trademark terrible frame rate that still makes my head hurt. And despite all the madness with parachuting, interesting vehicles, running around naked, punching people in the nuts, calling in air-strikes, etc, I’m just not really enjoying it all that much. I’ve been thinking it through, and trying to figure out where it goes wrong for me.

GTA IV. Serious, yes. But seriously high quality with it.

1) Quality. It appears that I have more trouble overlooking rough edges than a lot of people. Even blazing around town in a pimped up sports car isn’t much fun when every corner makes my brain wince.

2) It’s not a sandbox, it’s a toy box. This seems like an odd one. One of my favourite things to do in GTA IV was just to play the game either alone or in multiplayer free mode and just mess around in the city. In GTA IV though, that felt like you were in a real city, going crazy and doing things you could never do in a real city. It was like they had put up a sign saying “Please do not attack the police”, which of course instantly makes you want to whip out a shotgun and go on a rampage. You felt like you shouldn’t be doing those things. Saints Row 3, on the other hand says, “Here’s a tank. Here’s a button to punch people in the nuts. Here’s an air-strike. Why don’t you go nuts?” While this is still fun, it suddenly doesn’t feel like a guilty pleasure.

It's important to accessorise - the right mini gun can really bring out your eyes.

3) Too much randomness. Sometimes you’d see something hilarious in GTA IV, often quite by accident, as a car crashes and explodes with no input from the player. It was always funny to see such oddness, as mostly the city ran pretty smoothly. In Saints Row 3, something insane is happening on the street every few seconds, as the engine frequently goes mental. It sort of takes away from the comedy of the randomness when it happens ALL the time.

All that said, as much as I love GTA IV, I have to admit that the following never happened to me in Liberty City: I was in a gunfight with the police (miles from the airport) when an airport baggage handler carrying four men dressed as hotdogs turned up out of the blue and crashed into the police car.

Now that WAS funny, Saints Row 3.

Revelations continues the story of Ezio Auditore, the hero of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood, and also, to a lesser degree, the story of Desmond Miles, the modern day protagonist who is the link to his ancient ancestors via the Animus machine. In this game, the bulk of the action takes place in Constantinople, as a much older (now fifty plus) Ezio searches for the keys to Altair’s hidden library and the unknown treasures within.

Like all the Assassin’s Creed games, the city is brilliantly realised, with people bustling about going about their business while Ezio stalks among (or above) them. The sights and sounds of the city do a wonderful job of really transporting you to 16th Century Constantinople. Ezio clambers effortlessly over buildings and leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and battles any enemies who live long enough to fight in a smoothly flowing combat system. However, all that is true of all of the previous games, and this hints at the weakest part of this game. As good as it (and it is good) there isn’t a huge amount that is new. Returning from Brotherhood are the Assassin’s Guild missions, where you level up your assassins and send them off on missions. You can still buy shops, take over regions of the (now all city) map and pretty much do anything you could do in the previous game. The only thing I noticed that had been removed from the game was riding horses, as Constantinople is just a standalone city with no explorable region around it, unlike the larger but sparser areas in Brotherhood. There are also only two main maps, but quite a lot of underground caverns and other small sections.

So, what has been added? You can now “zip” down handy rooftop zip lines and assassinate from off of them, which is nice. Ezio very quickly obtains a hook blade which gives him new combat moves, but is primarily used to extend his reach, allowing him to climb further and faster. If you cause too much trouble in an area that you have taken over for the Assassins, the Templar enemies will attack your den, prompting a rather out-of-place tower defence game as Ezio places units to defeat waves of enemies, who rather oddly always attack from the same route. I’ll admit this is one of the few parts of the game that I didn’t care for, but then I have to confess to having never really enjoyed any tower defence game ever, so it could just be me.

A new aspect to the game I did really enjoy were several very cinematic parts, a couple of which left me thinking of Uncharted, as Ezio scrambles to climb across burning boats, falling ledges or chases a boat as it rushes down the rapids below. Oddly, despite the sandbox nature of the game, these very fixed route parts somehow shone the brightest for me.

Another part that I found fascinating is actually totally optional. Collecting animus data fragments from around Constantinople unlocks memories of Desmond’s childhood and adult life before the Animus, and these play out in a wonderfully trippy way. The game switches to a first-person perspective and you enter a sort of mini-game which is best described as a cross between Portal and Tetris, as you spawn blocks to traverse across weird blocky rooms projected with images of Desmond’s memories. This bits are as tricky as they are interesting, as Desmond’s almost poetic recollection of his childhood sounds out as you struggle to spawn blocks to cross huge voids. It’s very hard to describe but works really well in the game, and does a good job of filling the back story in.

Which leads me to the story, which is where I could easily write hundreds of words, but would, unfortunately, spoil the game for everyone. I’ll just say that Revelations does move the overall story along, but not by a huge amount. There is a fairly big revelation (geddit?) at the end, though. Series regulars will get a kick out of playing several short new sections as Assassin’s Creed’s first protagonist, Altair, into his later life, and Ezio’s story is as interesting as ever. With a focused mind, it took me 12 hours to complete the main story, but that is without really scratching the surface of finding all the treasure, collectibles, opening all the shops etc. There are many, many hours of entertainment here for the completionist.

Obviously Insomniac Games got exactly the same sort of comments, so this new platforming blaster is all about the co-op. You can play with up to four people, mixing up on-couch buddies with online players. The storyline throws traditional heroes Ratchet and Clank together with intergalactic dimwit Captain Qwark, and unhappily making up the foursome is Dr Nefarious. For those unfamiliar with the series, Dr Nefarious is ordinarily Ratchet and Clanks’ nemesis, but here is forced by circumstances to work with them for the duration of the game.

The game looks and sounds as fantastic as Ratchet and Clank has always done, with brightly coloured alien worlds lighting up the screen. It’s a real treat to play something so colourful when so many games these days go for “gritty realism” (read: lots of brown). The engine is pretty impressive, with four players, loads of enemies, lasers, bombs, blasters and bolts all swirling about the screen without missing a beat. The Ratchet and Clank sense of humour is well represented here, with plenty of jokey dialogue (mostly at Captain Qwark’s expense) and one or two genuinely funny moments of physical comedy too.

The game still has a wonderful collection of crazy weapons, from vacuum cleaners to electric whips to a weapon that turns enemies into a harmless pig. (People who played the previous game A Crack In Time will be disappointed to note that the disco dancing weapon of mass destruction, the Groovitron, is sadly absent.) The game introduces a new mechanic where if two or more players are firing at the same enemy with the same weapon, the effect is greatly enhanced. Some guns do loads more damage when two or more people use them, and some expand the area of effect onto surrounding enemies. It works well, and encourages you to play as a team, using the same weapons. Later on, there are also (relatively simple) puzzles that require two people to solve, which works well when playing with friends.

And this leads to a problem. The previous Ratchet and Clank games were, as mentioned earlier, purely single-player, and they did that brilliantly. Playing All 4 One on your own is simply not as much fun. When you play on your own, you have Clank riding around on your back (as he did in all the previous games) and he pops out whenever you need a co-operative friend. Unfortunately, he pops out, and does exactly what needs to be done instantly, sometimes before you’ve even figured it out. It’s a bit of a shame as I played probably 80% of the game on my own. However, I played a couple of levels in offline co-op mode, and a few levels in online co-op mode with random players, and it instantly made the game a far, far more enjoyable experience. Battling for bolts while helping out the other players at the same time made the game a much more fulfilling experience.

The game is also far more linear than before, and the hidden golden bolts that have been a stalwart of the series are now very much dumbed down. In A Crack In Time, you would frequently see a gold bolt, just off to one side of the screen, but you’d have no idea how to get to it. It would often take an obscure route to locate it, but now, if you see a golden bolt you can collect it. They’re most often just off the front of the screen meaning you have to walk towards the camera a bit to get them. There are also no sections where you go off and just play alone as Clank like in some of the other games. Obviously because that would leave the three other players sitting there twiddling their thumbs. It’s a shame, though, and people who particularly enjoyed these elements in the old games will find it disappointing.

I’m rather less excited than that, though. Oddly, the word I would use to describe my feelings towards this, as yet, unreleased game is this: Resentful.

Damn you! *shakes fist*

Now, hear me out. I’m not some Battlefield fanboy badmouthing Modern Warfare because it isn’t my favourite series, or just taking a pop at it because it is popular. I’m not one of those people who hates Activision with all the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I’m not being negative to generate page hits. The fact is, I really like first person shooters. And I am sure, one hundred percent sure, that Modern Warfare 3 will be a rock solid shooter. It’ll be chock full of thrills, spills and kills. It’ll look tremendous and play as smoothly as a well-greased otter.

The reason I already feel resentful is this: when it comes out, I will fire up my Xbox (and no doubt, my PS3 too) and my ENTIRE friends list will be playing it. I mainly use my Xbox 360 for multiplayer, so I will come online looking for a game, and there will simply be one option. Modern Warfare 3. If I don’t buy it, Xbox Live will become as useless to me as a group Skype conversation. A group Skype conversation where everyone else is really badly distracted and not interested in what you are saying.

I looked into my crystal ball and this is what I saw...

And I’m stubborn. I rally against any kind of being pressured into doing, saying or buying something. In fact, the harder people push me the more stubborn I get. Laura will tell you that I don’t fall for the classic “Oh, let’s just have one more game” ruse. When I’m done, I say goodbye and log off. If I’m down the pub and I’ve had enough beer and want to go home, no amount of “Come on, one last pint” will get me to stay. If I didn’t feel like I had to buy it, I’d quite happily buy it.

So despite the fact I will certainly enjoy playing both the single and multiplayer parts of Modern Warfare 3, at least for a while, I’m really going to resent the fact I will have no other choice but to buy it. Especially as I was just getting the hang of Gears of War 3 multiplayer. Damn.

What a game, though, and right up the alley of someone like me who loves all things Splinter Cell. I played Deus Ex HR in a very sneaky way, always trying to remain unseen if at all possible, but progress was SLOW. We’re  talking a heavily loaded snail going up hill through treacle slow. It took me over an hour to navigate down two floors in the police station, primarily because I didn’t want to kill any policemen, and my stun gun had a very short range. I persevered, though, determined that I wouldn’t just let rip with my combat rifle unless it really was him or me. I carried around, for many hours, a whole series of inventory-filling weapons that I had never fired. In fact, I’m pretty sure I completed the game without ever firing the 10mm pistol, the shotgun, or the machine pistol.

Late in the game, though, I snapped, and went right off the reservation. After being seen trying to be sneaky far for times than I was comfortable with, I’d had enough. I found a handy turret guarding an outdoor section and commandeered it using one of my hacking perks. I already had the Geoff Capes arms perk, so I picked up my heavy turret buddy and carried it… through an entire level. Sure, I had to stop to let my energy regain a fair number of times, and the designers had clearly put in a set of very quick closing doors to try and prevent you taking the turret along, but I managed to prevail. Top tip, walk backwards through the door and you can wedge it with your body as you pick up the turret.

I’d come to a doorway into a huge room. Multilevel, with guards everywhere. It looked like it would be a living nightmare to sneak through. Opening the door, I hefted my turret, stuck it in the gap and waited around the corner.

Are you still there?

It was a massacre. There must have been more than 20 guards killed, and for most of the rest of the level I hardly saw another guard, even if I tripped an alarm, as the reinforcements had already been wiped out. I did see one, but Mr Turrety made short work of him once I stuck him through the door into the room he was in.

At the end of the level, Mr Turrety also provided some light comic relief and a fair degree of help. Can you remember the last time you were in a boss fight, and you were the one with a laser guided machine gun turret?

This doesn’t make you a bad guy, as during the storyline of the first two Resistance games Hale was slowly succumbing to the virus that has caused the majority of the planet to convert into hideous alien beasts, the Chimera. During the massive down-ending of Resistance 2, the Earth was pretty much doomed, and to top if off the character you’d fought tooth and nail with for two games took a bullet to the brain, rather than turn Chimera.

Resistance 3 starts off with this same gloomy premise. 90% of the planet’s population has either turned, or been killed. There is, however, finally some hope. Hale’s blood has been used to create a vaccine to the Chimera virus, and the remaining survivors have all been inoculated. It’s up to you, as Capelli, to lead a final desperate attempt to save the world.

And what a world you are trying to save; it looks simply stunning. As I was playing this game I was frequently stunned by the graphics. It just looks fantastic in all the environments. Creeping around a darkened section of forest trying to avoid snipers and a circling alien dropship was a particularly beautiful moment. I took cover in a rickety shed, and found myself transfixed by the way the dropship’s moving spotlight shone between the shed’s rickety planks, casting stark shadows. In fact, the lighting engine seemed so good I found myself wondering if some of the levels were designed especially to show it off!

The core gameplay is just as solid and well done as in the first two Resistance games, and the meat of the shooting is all done off to a tee. Weapons feel like they have some real poke, and blasting Chimera never gets old. New to this instalment is the way that weapons upgrade as you use them. I was pleased to see that upgrading the shotgun caused it to then fire incendiary shells. The weapons are actually very good and innovative in Resistance 3, with a particular favourite of mine being the sadistic “Mutator”. The Mutator fires a heavily concentrated burst of the Chimera virus, causing humans and Chimera alike to bubble up into huge pus filled blisters, whereupon they either collapse to the ground and burst, or run into other enemies and pass it on. It’s gross, but incredibly effective and imaginative. Most of the weapons offer something interesting, even if only as secondary fire, and these fascinating weapons are one of the main things that Resistance 3 can really call its own.

The levels are all beautiful and well designed, but, like Resistance 2, I had the feeling they were all thought of separately, and then jammed into the story. Train section? Check. Creepy village with zombie type aliens? Check. Spaceship? Check. Boat section? Check. Section in a mine? Check. Snow level? Check. Don’t get me wrong, though, each level really stands on its own two feet, and the set pieces are great, but the game just lacks a really cohesive feel.

I enjoyed the whole eight hours it took me to complete the campaign, and I really can’t fault the game. It’s solid, engaging and very well made. I just wish that, apart from the brilliant weapons, the game had a bit more to offer that was new and different.

Fortunately, the story fairy quickly reveals this mechanic to you, as during a chase which ends up in a huge crash, Tanner is seriously injured and falls into a coma. The San Francisco game world, then, merely exists inside Tanner’s head, as he fights for his life. The great thing about this bizarre, Life on Mars like story line is this: at any point in the game that you start thinking “This is ridiculous!” then there is an excuse for it. And Reflections have taken that and run with it. Why make things make sense, when they can make things fun?

Aside from the primary storyline of Tanner hunting down the master criminal, Jericho, who put him in the coma in the first place, there are hundreds of side missions and challenges littered across the city. They range from the traditional, like checkpoint races and time trials, to the wonderfully, deliriously insane. A mission where you have to escape the cops in a big rig and then hunt down and destroy a fellow big rig owner was particularly bat shit crazy, but a lot of fun.

A divisive point amongst people who played the demo was the handling of the cars, and at first, I agreed. You jump into the game, floor it down a road, get to the end, and there it is, the enemy of the American muscle car – the corner. You try to turn, overcook it and spin, or undercook it and spank straight into the wall. However, it didn’t take me long to learn to be a bit more careful with the throttle, and suddenly the handling made a lot of sense. The cars have a good feeling of weight to them (except the lighter ones, obviously!) and the different types of cars all feel quite unique. You’ll know the difference between a four wheel drive Audi and a muscle car with hundreds of horsepower ripping through the back wheels. It adds a real challenge to the game, particularly as you will frequently be jumping into other random cars around the city.

The city itself is a real charm. The representation of San Francisco here is the San Francisco of the movies, with huge hills for jumping, alleyways conveniently stacked with cardboard boxes and loads of traffic to dodge (or Shift into, of course). The graphics are very nice, and the game moves very smoothly indeed, which is no small feat considering the vast amount of traffic on most of the roads. The only time I saw any noticeable frame rate slowdown was playing the split-screen co-operative mode, when both players were being swamped by angry police. Split-screen co-op is a nice touch, with so many games forgoing it in favour of online play these days.

Online play is a lot of fun, and here Shift makes even more sense. You know that frustration you get in an online game where the tag car you are chasing is so far away you can never catch up? Not in Driver San Francisco. Simply hit RB (or R1) and jump into a civilian car right next to the target. It means you are never out of the action, and the player you are after can never stop to think. It makes the online multiplayer a real blast. A particular favourite of mine is the Getaway mode, where each player takes it in turns to collect checkpoints while all the other players try to stop him as cops. With all the shifting going on, it frequently becomes like the amazing highway chase scene from one of the two crap Matrix sequels. And that’s good. Not realistic, but good.

The negatives? Well, some won’t like the handling. The main story is really quite short, but that is relatively unimportant as there are still many other fun missions, challenges and dares to keep you going for some time once it is complete. You can only take a party of four into a public online game, so bigger groups can not collect XP and level up to unlock further cars, etc. Some of the optional challenges frustrated me so much I found myself inventing new swear words, but if you like a challenge they’ll be right up your street.

And it doesn’t take many levels before the developers are throwing a lot of ideas at you. There are pods to suck into your ship, which give you one more deflector to place. There are bombs which need to be shifted out of the way, or used to hit blocks to clear a path. Then there are laser guns, whose shots are all too easy to accidentally hoover up with your tractor beam, destroying the mothership. There are things that turn your blue (suck) tractor beam into an orange (blow) tractor beam, forcefields and pre-built deflectors. A core part of the game, also, is the concept of slingshotting. This is where you use the beam to get something (a Spaceling, bomb etc.) moving, then cancel your deflector, leaving the item moving continuously in the same direction until it hits something. Unfortunately, sometimes your Spaceling will not hit anything, and drift off into space, to die in what I can only imagine is the most horribly lonely way possible.

To complete a level, you only have to rescue one Spaceling, no matter how many of them there are. This means that some levels can be completed easily, but if your personal motto is “We’ve never lost a Spaceling in space, we’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch!” then you’ll find a far greater challenge here. Not that you’ll find yourself short of a challenge, with over 100 levels already in the game and more coming as updates.

As someone who has a lot of iOS games, I can tell you that Spacelings ticks all the right boxes. It is simple to play for a short period of time, has Game Center support, supports multitasking, lets you play in both portrait and landscape, allows you to play your music over the top of the game, etc. Its simple beginnings lead in to some serious head scratching levels later on. The only negative I can think of is that most of the levels are significantly bigger than the size of the screen, so you have to scroll around a lot, which can be fiddly as you don’t want to accidentally divert your beam. The developers have added (after getting feedback on the app store) the ability to switch between scrolling with one or two fingers, which does alleviate the problem slightly, but it can still be a bit of a pain if you’re playing on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Don’t mix gameplay styles in one checkpoint.

Don’t make me gun down twenty enemies in a tricky section, and then expect me to make a tricky jump. Splat, and you’re right back at the start of the gunfight again. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow made this mistake, and it was one of the very few things I disliked about what was otherwise an amazing game. Platform, platform, platform, and then straight into a fight with enemies that could actually kill you with one hit. Very frustrating.

If that rope snaps, you better hope there was a checkpoint not too long ago.

Never ever put a checkpoint immediately before a cutscene.

Writing this has made me realise how checkpoints are so frequently cause for concern among gamers. We’ve all had this problem. You watch a cutscene, start into the game, and then die. You reload, and there you are watching the cutscene again. It’s bad enough if the cutscene is skippable, but when it’s not, it’s enough to make you want to  defenestrate your controller. Developers, we know you put a lot of effort into telling stories in your games, and cutscenes are a key part of that, but seriously, once is enough. Deus Ex Human Revolution did this to me today; an unskippable cutscene immediately before a boss fight.

Don’t make the checkpoints too far apart.

Obviously.

Don’t force me to do side-missions.

I like side-missions, they’re a fun way to expand out a game, but they should always be optional. Maybe I just want to play the storyline, and not be distracted. Saints Row 2 is bad for this. It won’t allow you to continue playing the main storyline until you earn extra respect in side-missions.

Don’t ever make me spam my friends.

Most of the annoyances above have been around for years, but this one is relatively new. Social games such as Farmville flourish by forcing players to interact and spam each other with messages offering a new plant pot or tractor, but this is just irritating to everyone. It’s not even just a social gaming thing these days either, recently I was spammed by a couple of people with some rubbish about buying a new golf game, because doing so unlocked something in the game. And many games have linked Achievements to do with “sharing” something with your friends, that they almost certainly don’t want.

Even a sword that huge and sharp won't help you against the final boss in this game...

Don’t make the boss totally unbeatable.

I’ve written about this one before, but it’s as true now as it was then. Look, we appreciate that you want to make the final boss a bit more tricky so you have to fight to win the game, but seriously, a bullet-tough boss at the end of a game with reasonable difficulty is just ridiculous. There’s nothing more frustrating than making it right to the end of an enjoyable game, and not being able to see the ending of it because of a ludicrously tough final boss. I’m looking at you, Heavenly Sword.

As I said at the beginning, when I am King, these rules WILL be followed. Until then, I’ll just have to hope some game developers stumble across this article, and take my words to heart.

What Laughing Jackal have done with that thirty year old core gameplay is basically what Hollywood have done to lots of old films. Take the basic core, add a banging soundtrack, awesome HD visuals and… add in 3D. Unlike most of Hollywood’s recent output, though, the addition of 3D to Cubixx genuinely adds something. You see, instead of trying to take over a percentage of a boring old square, you’re now trying to take over the majority of all six sides of a revolvable cube.

Admittedly, on the first few levels, it doesn’t make a lot of difference, but once you get to the later levels it gets very hectic. Pumping bass heavy soundtrack and impressive visuals aside, this is classic old school gaming, where points and leaderboards are king. And like almost all older games, it gets difficult fast. Once you are dealing with multiple creatures inside each face of the cube, plus creatures following you around the edges, and a burning style fuse following you as you make a cut… you need eyes in the back of your head. Throw in keeping an eye out for the (both positive and negative) power ups found within the cube, and the fact you only hit a checkpoint every five cubes, and you can see why it keeps you on your toes.

An unexpected bonus, not usually found in this type of game, is multiplayer—you can play split-screen in various co-operative or deathmatch modes. Deathmatch mode plays out with both you and the other player hacking away at the cube, aiming to take a section of it out that contains the other player in order to make a “kill”. It works surprisingly well. Co-op plays in much the same way as the single player arcade mode, but with both players sharing a pool of lives. I’m sorry, did I say “both” players? I meant to say “all seven of them”, as crazily, Cubixx HD supports up to seven players in both co-op and deathmatch split-screen modes. I’d love to say I tried it out with seven players, but the truth is I don’t have either enough Dualshock controllers or friends to have made it happen.

So, the other day when I found out that HD remakes of the original Splinter Cell trilogy were available on the Playstation Store, I leapt. I didn’t just buy the first game, hell no, I leapt hard and bought all three titles, coming in at 8gb in size and about £20 in beer tokens. What with the hefty download size, and the rest of my busy life, I didn’t get a chance to play until the next evening after work.

These ceiling joists really show off the improved HD textures.

Excited, I fired up part one of the trilogy, watched the opening cinematic, and started the training mission. As soon as it started, I realised that the “invert Y” setting was wrong for me so I popped open the pause menu and perused the options. There was no sign of the invert Y option. Puzzled, I returned to the game, only to realise that Lambert was telling me to look left at a light on the wall. Salvation; I was being impatient, and the up/down left/right calibration was about to begin. I looked left. I looked right. The next light was on the ceiling. I pushed down on the stick to look up at the light, and found myself staring at Sam Fisher’s feet. I released the stick, thinking the game needed me to let go to calibrate. I pushed down again. I was still staring at the floor. The only way I could get the game to continue was to push Up to look at the light, and then I could play. With my invert the wrong way around.

The top of Sam Fisher's head, in 60 FPS 1080p.

I’ll cut out the next bit to save time, but needless to say the next few minutes involved a lot of searching of options menu, repeated restarts, game reloads, starting new games and one hell of a lot of swearing. Beaten, I turned to Google to find a small army of fellow Y inverters with the same problem as me. The game does not contain an invert Y option. And neither do either of the other two.

I literally cannot play the game when every time an enemy comes around a corner I find myself staring at either my feet or the light fittings. It would be less Splinter Cell and more Mr Magoo in neoprene. It is possible that salvation is at hand, as Akshay Paul, Ubisoft’s International Product Manager made this comment on the EU Playstation blog:

Hopefully by next week I should be able to let you know if a patch would be made available to address this issue. I request that you be patient as even if there is a patch then the formalities, implementation, tests and arrangements for this in all 3 games will take a minimum of 6-8 weeks.

The part of that that worried me was not the delay, although that would put any patch right in the middle of AAA release date territory, but more the word “if”. If it is patched. Maybe. We shall see.

Either way, that was it, my nostalgic gaming trip down memory lane ruined by the fact that all I could see of memory lane was the actual bloody pavement.

Footnote: Out of interest, I’ve started a poll on our forum to find out how many people invert their Y axis. Vote here: The-Invert-Y-Question