10 February 2010

Dante’s Inferno

But you can’t ignore the fact this is a God of War clone at its core, and many of the ideas here feel tired, familiar and dated. Nor can you ignore the fact that God of War III is nearly here. If it’s a toss-up between that game and this one, as it probably will [...]

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9 February 2010

Bioshock 2

BioShock 2 arguably does escape the shadow of that moment in Andrew Ryan’s office two and a half years ago. Your passage through Rapture may not be a matter of free will – a challenge someone surely ought to take up with this series – but BioShock 2 argues even within the strictures of fate [...]

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29 January 2010

Mass Effect 2

In a generation of great RPGs, those accomplishments are magnificent individually but superlative in concert. Even so, perhaps BioWare’s greatest success in Mass Effect 2 has been taking a complex RPG and making it effortless to understand, play and enjoy on a constant basis, because it has done this in a manner that should prove [...]

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5 January 2010

Darksiders

Still, while on the surface of it Darksiders feels like a game with a lot of good ideas but only a few of its own, where even a brief flying section on an angelic mount owes rather a lot to Panzer Dragoon, overall the silly old story and wonderful art style give terrific heft to [...]

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14 December 2009

Bayonetta

The result is a game that exemplifies so much of what commentators claim has died in the Japanese game industry. A blast of creative brilliance, both technically accomplished, strategically deep and infused with rare imagination, Bayonetta represents the pinnacle of its chosen niche.
(Eurogamer, 9/10)

Bayonetta flies so astonishingly close to perfection. While in essence it’s cast [...]

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17 November 2009

Assassin’s Creed II

Ubisoft Montreal has never been afraid to try new things, but after a few missteps with games like last year’s Prince of Persia, perhaps the bravest thing it could have done with Assassin’s Creed II was simply to make a classic open-world adventure, filled to the brim with things you want to do and the [...]

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27 October 2009

Forza Motorsport 3

Forza Motorsport 3 is only you, the car, the rubber and the road, in a blissful, never-bettered harmony – until the race ends, you pull back, and you get the bigger picture. Then you realise that that experience was just the centre of a huge, welcoming, flexible and shockingly complete package, a racing game that [...]

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20 October 2009

Borderlands

Borderlands is unusual, playable, and an artfully violent step in an interesting direction for Gearbox. The story aspect of the game could have been better – I’d love to have seen the role-playing influence extend beyond stats, levels and loot – and the ending is a disappointment. Even so, this should be a favourite game [...]

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2 June 2009

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Taken as a whole, the net result is a generous game that remains fun despite its frustrations, yet never quite achieves its full potential. Think of it as the game that Mercenaries 2 should have been. The presentation is polished, the visuals solid, the core gameplay gimmick amusing enough to keep you playing even as [...]

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2 December 2008

Prince of Persia

With all these things in combination, the result is a game where you pick an area to save from the corruption, go there, run to the top, do a fight, gather some orbs and then repeat. The platforming fluency is seductive, but it’s a language of indifferent thumbing yawned through timing windows as wide as [...]

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