Castlevania Lords of Shadow got a bit of a mixed reception, and not just from Castlavania fans. Personally I enjoyed it, it’s far from perfect, gameplay aside I’m not sure they quite got the tone right in the first half of the game, but it’s a pretty good take on a 3D Castlevania. Mirror of Fate takes its lead from this, and like its home console brother, has been met with some scepticism, not helped by poor showings at press events.

I was going to say that they really don’t need the 'Lords of Shadow' suffix, but playing it, it's very much a Lords of Shadow Castlevania. Little things like some skeletons not dying, their bones rattling about on the floor until you land a ground attack, that‘s from Lords of Shadow. There's enemies that you don't just kill, instead you have to beat them to the point where you can trigger a small QTE, and if you mess that up on the larger enemies it's instant death. The platforming includes grappling, and swinging using your whip, again something that was a feature in Lords of Shadow

When you die, which you probably will, you are put back to a checkpoint, so far these seem very generous, there was one at the midpoint of a boss battle for example. There's health fountains dotted around, although with the demo being fairly early I'm not sure if these have replaced the need to attack using light magic to recover health as in the first Lords of Shadow game.

The combat is very Lords of Shadow, or certainly a lot more involved than a traditional handheld Castlevania. You've got your direct attack and combos thereof, an area attack, which is less effective on a 2D plain than it was in the 3D games, and there's also projectile attacks via your secondary weapon. Very little is required beyond that in the demo, dodging asife, but if you explore the system then you'll find a ground pound, an air attack that fires out a short beam of light (which seems to be useless in this format), air dodges, rising uppercuts etc. There is magic, both light and dark, however they aren't open to you in the demo.

Some of the more familiar Castlevania stuff, the map on the bottom screen looks like a traditional Metroidvania style map, there's secret items, progress blocked until you find the right skill, y'know, Castlevania. The biggest relief is that the frame rate issues that plagued the game’s preview showings don’t appear to be a problem any more. It may not have a perfect framerate, but I can’t say it caused me any problems, in fact I’ve been a bit surprised by the amount of people mentioning it.

It’s been a long time coming but Diablo III is now only a few weeks away from release. This past weekend Blizzard have ran an open beta for the game, really a stress test for the demands placed on the servers, but we’ll come to that later.

We’ve become so reliant on the term ‘Diablo clone’ that I don’t really know how to describe it for those that haven’t played the series before. Torchlight clone maybe? Diablo is a loot driven rpg, very old-school in its approach, you mouse click where you want to move to, then repeatedly hammer the mouse button to pound on any enemies. You’ll eventually learn some skills to make use of via hot keys too.

In my time with the game I played as the barbarian, so while I had no showy elaborate special moves to call on, I could wade in without too much concern for my personal safety. The mix of higher defence yet having to take damage is always a risky one, yet what struck me about Diablo III is how easy the game is. The boss fight at the end of the beta was the first and only time I had to use my health items, although there were a couple of moments where I shifted my fighting position to pick up a health drop.

There is of course plenty of loot to pick up, and plenty of areas to equip it. You don’t level up as often as you might expect, but then you’re liable to pick up an item that increases your defence or attack at any point so progress doesn’t feel slow. Eventually you’ll get a buddy to help you out, seemingly no matter what you equip them with they’ll never be a powerhouse, however their support spells (like healing or drawing aggro) can certainly be of use.

On to the net requirement then; if you tried playing Diablo III this weekend then you likely had issues trying to connect. I suspect, bar possibly launch day, this isn’t something we’ll experience too often. In principle I have an issue with it, and I’m sure it’s a consequence of the real world money transactions of the auction house. From a personal point of view, moving house in the summer means the game will be unplayable for a couple of weeks (as is my understanding, we’ll see when the game is released).

To be honest the bigger issue is with the ‘lag’ you encounter. Caused by the game checking back with the server, you’ll find yourself being flashed back a few steps because you’ve become un-synched. You might also encounter a kind of input lag, a delay between clicking on an enemy and the attack launching. Again hopefully this is something we don’t encounter with the full game, but lag in a single player game, caused by a feature most will never used, is ridiculous.

To finish on a positive, Diablo III is fun and compulsive, it’s maybe not quite as good as the hype requires, but it’s looking like a definite purchase. I just hope that the technical requirements don’t spoil what’s set to be a very very good game

Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure, if I was being lazy, would be described as the 3DS’ own Ouendan. The power of dance is going to be unleashed again, although rather than to fix the worlds problems, you’re going to be using it to steal things. Honestly though, who is playing these types of games for the story?

Each of the 3 levels I played had a different gameplay mechanic, the easiest being following top screen indicators to swipe a specified direction on the bottom. It’s pretty standard stuff, but it works well. Things get mixed up though and soon you’ll be countering oncoming attackers by pressing either the A button or the d-pad in time with a decreasing circle.

This is where a few problems started to show. Watching the animations on the top screen, whist trying to focus on the timing indicator raised from the top screen thanks to the 3D effect made things more difficult. It was manageable, arguably made things more interesting, but as soon as the beat mixed up it does really become a struggle to see everything, or maybe I either need to move the screen further away or turn the 3d off.

The problems continued into the last level I tried, which was a great concept for a level. You’re sneaking around a museum, hiding from guards by mimicking the shape of conveniently placed statues. Again this involves scanning the top screen for animation cues, focusing on the music beat, trying to corner of your eye the bottom screen for the right command to hit. Perhaps it’s a problem Sega have covered though, as in this level there’s plenty of cues to help you out. The statue poses are all noticeably different, and most importantly they’re all lit colour coded to match the bottom screen.

While I’ve been a bit critical of Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure whenever I did have to retry a level I beat it comfortably. It’s almost as though you need to learn what to look for, redouble your concentration, and have another go. It was fun too, enough that I’ll play the full game, if only for the Samba de Amigo level.

As with many on the internet, my initial impression from the new SSX's announcement trailer wasn't the best. Since then my skepticsm has wained a hell of alot and has turned to intrigue. For what its worth I'm not one of those that felt turned off by the series when the following titles weren't clones of the excellent Tricky and whilst I missed out on SSX3 I absolutely adored On Tour (missed Blur as I didn't own a Wii at that particular time).



It's probably wise then that EA have released a demo of the new SSX, which simply carries that title, no numbers, no prefix's but isn't to be confused with the original carrier of that name. This isn't a remake, nor is it a rebrand or a revisit or any form of "re". As this is only a first impressions, based upon the demo, I don't want to go too far but actually what we have here looks promising. The game revels in the over the top nature of the tricks it allows you to do, it encourages you to compete against friends in exactly the same manner that was so enjoyable in Criterions Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and much like that title, its exciting yet somehow relaxing.

It's incredibly difficult not to sing about how perfectly balanced the controls feel, and the visual reward for even the most simple of tricks is asbolutely sublime. Small touches such as the remix of Run DMC's "It's Tricky" interupting the games soundtrack, plus the toning down of whatever song your listening to as you gain more and more air really help you get into the kind of zone titles such as this (and Hot Pursuit) demand whilst visually the game tries to guide you along its fastest routes in a similar method to DiCE's Mirrors Edge.

For now, I think we'll leave it at that, hopefully we'll cover the title further in the near future.

I'll be honest Asura's Wrath had completely passed me by up until now, surprising really because uber characters throwing out planet destroying moves is pretty much right up my street

Asura's Wrath, from the demo currently available on PS3 and 360, is bewildering, incredibly so, although the plot seems fairly simple. You play as Asura who is/was a god, and has been accused of treachery. You now have to fight all the other gods to prove your innocence and get to the real culprit. Also there's a girl, I'm not sure why yet.

The game itself is a mix of different play styles. QTE's play a large part, you'll be using them to dodge, parry, move your feet, and of course to deal some damage of your own. This lets the game do some massively over the top stuff, Earth destroying type stuff. Quick time events give you something to do while you're watching this, unfortunately the bits between the giant sword impalings aren't up to much.

There's a bit of Space Harrier/Panzer Dragoon esque shooting, some very simple combat, and some dodging of incoming attacks. There's bound to be more in the game itself, or you'd hope so at least, but the biggest problem is you, or at least I, didn't always feel I knew what was expected of me.

Take the Space Harrier section, there's a bit where the game tells you to start using the square button (on PS3) to rapid fire, but as the incoming rockets get too close you have to use triangle to knock them back, I didn't see that coming and so missed the chance because I was holding square. The section that follows is probably a better example, I went back to using the triangle button (a lock on attack), but the enemy started to hurl rockets again, I didn't really have time to charge up the rapid fire attack again so I resorted to punching the rockets away or just absorbing the damage. Perhaps though that's just the inherent problem of demos rearing its head again, with the games early levels behind you this might all make more sense.

For what it's worth I really like Asura's Wrath, I appreciate some people will want more from it but I quite like the idea of a video game ride. Whether or not it will be worth the price of admittance we'll see

Where to start with this First Play of id software’s RAGE. I could go in to detail about how the game plays, or I could talk about how I’m ‘playing’ on the PC, ending up looking bitter and resentful?

If you bought Rage on the pc, downloaded it or bought the disc, installed it, booted it up, then just played it, then I envy you, truly. You are one of the few, you get to wander in to tech threads and say “I’ve played 20 hours so far and have had no problems at all, maybe you all just need to upgrade?”. I’m happy for you, we all are, sincerely, although I do also hope your computer explodes causing the molten plastic from your monitor to scald your face off.

As you might have guessed my experience of Rage has been somewhat problematic. Initially I was plagued by the ‘stuttering’ bug. Apparently this only affect those with a Radeon HD card and a dual core processor, but it results in maybe 3 frames of play before approx 1-2 seconds stillness. It’s so bad it took me a full 3 minutes to hit the quit option.

The stuttering problem was one that wasn’t addressed in the recent patch, meaning it was left to those far more able than me to come up with a solution. Sure enough within 72 hours of getting the game I had it running as intended, super smooth and looking great. Until I entered the first combat zone that is, then the game resembled Another Worlds solid blocks of colour. This evolved into squares of black and brown replacing all my textures, and also stole my newly acquired lovely frame-rate.

A night spent on google, reams of code, and a couple of false dawns later the game had textures again and a smooth frame-rate. Again this lasted until I hit a load screen, then reverted back to its familiar shambling mess. I’m not sure what changed, equally I’m not sure why repeating the steps again seemed to fix it (I hope), but it’s looking promising. Still, given that by the time I submit this to the site Rage will have been out a week (since the US release), and we still haven’t had a proper fix, that is simply appalling. Hopefully id and Bethesda will find some way to placate pc gamers, but truth be told I bought Rage to get me through the weekend, it’s now slipped down my gaming pecking order.

A shame really because when the game is running at 60fps the combat is incredibly smooth. Enemies are wonderfully animated, there’s some great speech in there (the cockney gang early on are brilliant), and the weapons have a satisfying punch to them. I’ve even jumped a couple of times, an id speciality, but this time because the enemies are so nimble and free to attack from anywhere, rather than hiding in a closet until you get close.

The layout of the game is slightly odd, although admittedly I’m still very early in the game (just got my own buggy, still need weapons for it). You’ll talk to someone at one of the hub areas, they’ll send you off to do something, this usually means heading in to a ‘dungeon’ and killing your way back out. These enclosed areas are pretty linear, and while enemies will appear at pretty much the same spots time and again, they way they bounce around and peek out of cover makes for interesting combat.

I really want to like Rage, including crafting and a simple inventory management system is enough to make it stand out a little, while the gun play is certainly promising enough so far to make me pine for a proper fix-all patch.

I've been waiting a while for just a taste of this, and now the starter has appeared at my bonnet (hood to you US types) shaped table, it has all of the appeal of garlic bread.



You see, Garlic Bread is probably the ideal starter, its neither too heavy nor is it too light, a slice or two keeps you going for just long enough for your main course to arrive. However, its not without its downsides, namely the greaseyness of the butter and cheese not to mention garlic breath. The Forza Motorsport 4 demo is much the same, I'll go into detail as to why soon.

Turn10 have offered a surprising amount of content, in your 1.26GB download you get a total of two race modes, five cars, 2 events and a handful of variants from the Alps circuits. The two race modes are Single Race, wherein you pick a car from a selection of 3 (Mercury Cougar, Subaru Impreza and Ferrari 458 Italia) and race around the Alps for two laps against 11 other CPU cars, its fun, but limited. The meat comes in the form of the Rivals Mode, here you pick from 3 cars (one of which is repeated, so the Pagani Zonda C, some form of BMW saloon and the Ferrari 458 Italia again), each has its own circuit round the Alps for you to speed around, the goal being to beat your friends fastest times. It's essentially taking the standard Hot-Lapping idea and mixing it with EA's Autolog style system to create an incredibly compelling TT environment wherein you race against your friends Ghost car. However two of these events have the annoyance of including "Traffic" which pretty much hog the racing line at pedestrian speeds and take away some of the feeling of genuine competition between your fastest time and that of your friends, thus I've found myself sticking to the Zonda event as thats the most pure thanks to the traffic being missing.

There's also a whole host of customisation options available to alter the way the game plays dependent upon how confident you are in your ability to guide the cars around the circuit. Seeing as I can be a bit cocky when it comes to racing games I removed all of the driving aids (aside from the braking line suggestion), used Manual gears (although not with the clutch as I feel it doesn't really work that well on a pad) and used the "Simulation" handling model and had an absolute blast in all five of the cars. Each of them felt different and there were moments in each where I was at the very limit of control, in fact a change in the camber of the BMW Rivals circuit resulted in my spinning the sport saloon whilst I've often outbraked myself in the Italia and come close to losing all control of the Zonda after launching it too aggressively through a couple of twisty corners. The thing is, the handling does feel very light here, regardless of which car you use. Even the 4WD Subaru feels less grippy than it maybe should be, but this is a demo build and I do recall having similar feelings regarding the demo's of both Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3, so here's hoping that this fourth instalment follows suit and delivers, everything else appears to be there, the cars just need a little weight applied to them and a little more feedback given to the driver/player.

Anyone who attended Manchester’s own comic-con last weekend will have got the chance to play some of Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS games. Joining myself and Mark at MCM were the demos for Mario Kart 3DS and Super Mario 3D Land.

I played more of Mario Kart 3DS so we’ll start there. Mario Kart is very much a known quantity at this point, you don’t really need me to go into detail as to how it plays because you already know. The speed boosts from power slides returns, and the handling feels very similar to the DS version. You build your kart after picking your character, choosing chassis and tyre types. In the demo I could only choose the hang-glider as my third attachment, but it seems there will be other options to choose as you progress.

Talk of the hang-glider brings us to what is different about Mario Kart 3DS, that at various points per stage you’ll either take to the air or plunge underwater. The hang-glider gives you a substantial speed advantage over road bound karts, but hopefully Nintendo will do something to make its use more difficult because its use in the demo just required you to keep flying straight. The underwater sections are a little more tricky if you’re chasing coins, but otherwise just slowed things down, not exactly a highlight.

First play through the 3D didn’t really do much for me, on my 2nd play it popped a lot more. The perspective of the lock camera and the centred kart does lend itself to 3D, especially when you’re around other racers or have scenery edging into shot. I suspect the same might be true for the in-air moments, but there just isn’t enough going on to exaggerate the effect bar some floating coins.

The 3D in Super Mario 3DS is much better, in fact it feels almost key. Rather than following Mario’s view the camera is now locked in position, not dissimilar to Little Big Planet. Like LBP Mario must come in and out of the screen to progress through the level, jumping on wandering enemies and collecting coins. The perspective is raised slightly over LBP, working well with the 3D to exaggerate the popping effect. It also works well when items and routes are hidden behind blocks.

The game itself still feels (and is) a long way from being finished. I found myself walking into the edges of scenery a few times, never quite sure if I’d walked far enough out. The level was also quite sparse, a few enemies dotted around, some moving platforms, nothing to get the pulse racing, nothing that stood out as being part of a special Mario game. That said it was reasonably promising, especially given that the demo is months old already.

In summery then both games make good use of the 3D, with Super Mario 3DS actually giving the best 3D effect I’ve experienced on the machine. Mario Kart 3DS is a much better game so far, for me at least it represented the first time I’ve enjoyed a Mario Kart game in years, certainly one to get excited for come the end of the year.

This is a bit of a strange piece to write, but then I guess that’s why we have the First Play section. It seems odd to be pointing out that a game feels far from finished when you know it’s still 5 months away from release, especially as this build of Sonic Generations is earlier than the one from E3. With that considered it’s impressive how far along the game is, and while the demo has got problems it’s not too shabby.

You play as old school Sonic in a reworking of Green Hill Zone, and that’s it. I expected 1 level from old Sonic, one from modern Sonic, but then this is a release to celebrate Sonic’s 20th anniversary, and not to build up hype for the game’s release.

Probably for the best as the PS3 demo, at least, suffers a number of bugs and glitches. The most noticeable one is the frame rate; it seems to stay around the 30fps mark the vast majority of time, but then for seemingly no reason it’ll hang for a split second. The image quality too isn’t all it could be. It’s bright and colourful, aesthetically it looks great, but background textures are slightly blurry and the foreground just not as crisp as it should be.

I also had problems with the loop-the-loops, running at pace, but not quite at full speed, is not enough to get you all the way round. You also seem to snap onto springs, the first spring of the game at least. I’m not sure this is really a problem of the game more the controller, but controlling the game with the analogue doesn’t feel as instant as it should be. It’s hard to say if this is a lag in the controls or simply exasperated by the pace of the game, especially as the opportunity to jump to an upcoming platform has often passed you by before you realise it.

Sonic Generations is fast, very fast, certainly way faster than the first Sonic game ever was. It’s also got branching routes, but because of the pace of the game, and that you’ll often get locked into routes with no way back, exploration isn’t encouraged. That said the multiple routes are good fun, and there’s still a few I haven’t seen. For the most part they’ve captured the feel of old Sonic, certainly they’ve captured the look.

The problem with this demo for Sonic Generations is the same problem we have when ever any Sonic game gets a demo. It’s become almost traditional now that Sonic games have a second type of game play, and as such one level to play through is never representative of what the rest of the game is going to be like. What’s here though is fun, definitely promising, but I do worry the bugs and glitches might count against it for some people. A shame given how far away the game is still, and because this hints that Sonic Generations will at least be a good game.

The start of Duke Nukem Forever's demo asks of one of its features a question many people have been asking of the entire franchise since the game was picked up by Gearbox and given a definite release.

Opening with a remake of the unexpanded Duke Nukem 3D's final level, Stadium, the relevance of bullet-sponge bosses is cast away by modern FPS mechanics.

After a trip to the bathroom and a run through the changing rooms of a sports arena clearly under seige (as demonstrated by a fully usable white board a military presence has been strategising on), it's here that you see where the first-person shooter has evolved since Duke 3D's original release- the original map left Duke in effectively a box with a limited amount of weapons, ammunition and health to bring down the boss Cycloid.

The new game, with its fancy-pants modern regenerating health and two-weapon limit (plus the fact that, this being the opening level, you've not had three episodes of game to stockpile guns and ammo) pits you against the same enemy, armed with only the Devastator weapon, and an effectively unlimited supply of ammunition for it, dropped from the sky periodically.

This turns the level from being a test of efficiency into a war of attrition- unlike the original version where running out of ammo or health pickups is a legitimate possibility, as long as you can find cover you can remain in the game forever. While it would be unreasonable to expect a rock-hard final boss as the opener to a game, the evloution of first-person shooters over the last few years make this change from the run-and-gun norm valueless- another Gearbox title, Borderlands, by example had such a boss, but fundamentally kept to limited ammo and to a certain extent, health. Regenerative games Gears of War intead finished with a puzzle boss and Halo 3 a driving section.

Speaking of which, that's exactly how the other level in Forever's demo starts. A linear driving section precedes a fairly standard and competent FPS level- itself preceded by a worrisomely long loading screen- which returns more to the puzzles-and-pathfinding of 3D.

The Pig Cops are back, with an eye to preventing Duke from reaching the fuel he needs to fill up the truck from the start of the level. Quipping away as he goes, featuring at least one reference to Half Life (and probably quite a relevant one at the time), a turret battle with an alien dropship (Another bullet sponge!) and the meat of the level's puzzles, using a minecart to jump over gaps in the floor.

The first time this is interesting, but unfortunately the entire last quarter of the level is one minecart ride back to Duke's abandoned truck, and that's where the demo ends.

Ultimately, there's not enough of anything in this demo- the one minecart puzzle, played twice, isn't enough to feel representative of such levels in the full game. The one cutscene between the levels and one scripted comment about Half Life isn't enough to feel representative of the classic Duke humour, the technology isn't up to handling the game, textures and models popping in very late, and the FPSing as a whole, despite what it does do, isn't different enough from Call of Duty to be relevant on its own.

After twelve years, that might not be enough.