To call Bioshock Infinite a missed opportunity would be harsh, it’s a game that has improved on its predecessor(s) in just about every way, and in many areas has few peers. However, there’s things wrong with Bioshock Infinite, things both serious and numerous enough to make this quite an easy review to write, in fact it throws up so many talking points that the review could easily end up twice as long.

Lets start with the background though, you play as Booker Dewitt, a former Pinkerton detective, hired to recover a young girl from the floating city of Columbia (“bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”). You get to Columbia to find that it’s less wholesome than you imagined, rife with segregation and discrepancy with the threat of an uprising beginning to rear its head. And that’s where I’ll leave the story for now, as I don’t want to spoil anything.

Other than to say (sorry) you do eventually rescue Elizabeth, the girl locked in the tower, but getting off Columbia isn’t going to be easy, especially as the entire city is after your blood (which we’ll get to in a bit). Elizabeth is far from helpless though, while the plot has you rescuing her in gameplay terms you don’t need to worry about her. She won’t get directly involved in combat, but will throw you ammo, health, money and salts for your vigors (plasmids). She can also bring items in to aid you in combat, these range from turrets to ammo and health stocks, freight hooks to grapple on to, even cover to hide behind.

Unusually for a Bioshock game the combat is arguably the star of the show. When it comes though, and it takes a while to, it’s relentless for the next few hours. It’s odd going from pure narrative exploration to relentless shooting, but it also seems slightly at odds with the tone of the franchise, either way it seems to correct itself, I’m not sure whether I adjusted or the game did, but there seems to be more downtime as you progress.

The combat itself starts very basic, you’re armed with a pistol to shoot people and a vigor to control turrets for a limited amount of time. Once Elizabeth joins you though things begin to open up; as mentioned she can bring things in to the fight to help you, meaning you can make the environment suit your style or your needs. At points the sky-rails you occasionally use to traverse the city make their way in to combat, making you mobile, hard to hit, using them to avoid danger then leap and attack from on high. These moments are few and far between though, especially considering how prevalent they are in the trailers and demo footage.

My main problem with Bioshock Infinite is one that it shares with the original game, the design of the levels. You walk from A to B then back to A again, you do that in every area, and every time you take a backwards step new enemies have somehow appeared. Remember the bit in Bioshock where you have to go and see a scientist, to get to her office you have to go through her empty quarters, populated by dormant turrets, remember how you knew exactly what was going to happen? That’s what Infinite suffers from too often, there’s a section that literally leads you in a big circle, and the ‘Hall of Heroes’ really could have been lifted from the first game. There’s doors arbitrarily closed to you until you do that thing that takes all of 20 seconds, then all of a sudden they’re welcoming you in, the worst offender for this is probably if you go and explore in Fink’s district.

As mentioned, considering you’re on a floating city, and the promise of an abundance of sky-rail combat, it’s surprising how closed Columbia feels. Most of your time is spent indoors, which to be fair allows them to play with some design themes, but even when you’re outside it feels narrow, closed, almost like you’re inside with a sky coloured roof. There’s other small annoyances too, like enemies and turrets attacking you from beyond the depth of field blur, but they’re largely trivial when compared to what the game does right.

For me Columbia doesn’t reach the heights (shut up) of Rapture, and while I’m loathed to compare, the game does so I kind of have to. It’s probably personal taste but I prefer the dark, unsettling, decayed structures of the underground city to the bright, almost ethereal floating city of Columbia. This is true of the story too, I just didn’t get hooked the way I did with the first Bioshock, I think this is because the core story for Infinite is presented as being about racism, there’s no great mystery to it until later on. On that note I will just add that I found the motivations for some of the characters lacking, there’s a point where things shift, I didn’t really buy that I’d be an enemy to that group, especially given how I was greeted by one of them.

When Bioshock Infinite puts the Elizabeth narrative front and centre in the back half of the game it’s much more interesting. Unlike the first game, Infinite boasts a number of characters that are likable, I like Booker, I like Elizabeth, and I like the Lutece twins. The story is wrapped up well, making you feel a little blindsided, sympathetically matching one of the characters. And it’s for that reason you should play Bioshock Infinite, it’s not perfect, in pure gameplay terms it’s got issues, more than I can fit in to this review, but equally I’ve not done the good things it does justice, and frankly, how often does a game like this come around?

I have an awful lot of time for Sleeping Dogs, it was brilliant, on the face of things it was a straight-faced GTA clone, but it had a streak of the absurd running through it. It’s no surprise that Year of the Snake fits the same description. The problem is that while the main game kept you busy for hours, the dlc has, so far, been unfulfilling.

Year of the Snake has more in common with Nightmare in North Point than Wheels of Fury or Zodiac Tournament. It’s a story based dlc set aside from and after the events of the main game. It’s Chinese new year time and just as the rest of the city is starting their celebrations Wei is demoted for all the trouble he’s caused. Now back on the beat, Wei’s new mundane work life of handing out parking tickets starts to get a lot more exciting as he uncovers a suspicious cult, determined to make the new years celebrations go with a bang (I’m really sorry).

Unlike Zodiac Tournament, Year of the Snake has a decent mix of gameplay types. A lot of the early game will be spent getting in to fights and driving imminently exploding cars into the sea. This part of the game feels uncharacteristically restrictive, your moves and cars have been stripped away, but what they’ve been replaced with isn’t as interesting. For instance your grapples tend to either end in handcuffing or tasering the criminal (or random passer-by). It does open up later though, the nightstick moveset is particularly satisfying.

This is true of the mission types too, you start to get different types of car missions, including some vehicular combat, chase missions, and even a bit of gunplay. There’s a good sense of progress through Year of the Snake, things get more interesting and more explosive as you progress.

There are a few issues with Year of the Snake, it’s quite buggy, some fairly minor, some not. Wei moves his mouth while other people are talking at the start of missions, it’s a minor problem, certainly nothing game breaking. However, I had one mission that disappeared as an option because I failed it at the point where it started (rather than arresting the perp Wei snapped his neck). On another mission Wei was supposed to get in the passenger seat of a police car and begin a chase, instead I watched him fly across the district and teleport into the passenger seat of another car parked probably 400 metres away, there he was trapped inside the car and so the mission couldn’t begin. Both missions sorted themselves out after I exited to the main menu, but it’s still problematic.

To end on a positive note though, if you’re going to do all the missions, not all the collectable stuff, just the stuff that has an icon on the map, you’re looking at a decent sized bit of content. I can’t be exact but it took me over 2 hours, probably not as long as 4 though. There’s one or two moments where you’ve got a long drive across the map to start a mission, but those moments of game lengthening are few and far between, in fact quite often you’ll finish a mission right next to a couple of new bonus ones.

Year of the Snake is perhaps not as funny as Zodiac Tournament, nor as tonally interesting as Nightmare in North Point, but it is probably Sleeping Dog’s best piece of downloadable content. It’s even priced below £5, which seals it as being well worth picking up.

It takes a brave soul to “reboot” a franchise, particularly one thats as legendary within its field as Tomb Raider is, but Crystal Dynamics and Square-Enix have decided to give it a go and if all of the marketing material we've been subjected to during its development is to be believed, they're going about it in a rather controversial manner that could make Lara Croft a key player within the videogames industry again. However, said marketing material has left a rather confusing message, as though Square-Enix aren't particularly sure who the game should be aimed at. We've been subjected to a bunch of rather violent, if not “torture porn”-esque, trailers that no doubt appeal to the man children out there, but theres also the side of the marketing that tells us this is Lara's most character driven and, more importantly, emotionally mature tale to date.


The confused nature seems to have spread to the game itself. Initially, it feels as though the developers want the experience to be one of survival, that would fit in with the story surrounding Lara in this new origins tale afterall, but the manner in which you're encouraged to play the game and the pace at which everything moves along suggests that this is more of an all out action game. One of your first tasks has you hunting a deer, which Lara sobs over and apologises to as she feasts upon its carcass at this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that the new direction of survival is really going to work out, but this is the first and the last time that you have to actually hunt for food, it never appears again. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, the game instead chooses to rely upon a regenerating health system like we get with every other action game on the market now and thus Crystal Dynamics have ejected the chance to develop what could have been a key part of the games own character by encouraging you to hunt for food and use the plentiful campsites to cook it and then ultimately use like the old franchise's health packs. Likewise, ammunition, for your bow and your guns, is scattered everywhere. You're never left wanting regardless of how you approach the games action sequences. Which is a shame, as again, there's an element of the developer wanting you to hunt and scavange for ammunition. One skill upgrade allows you to retrieve your arrows from fallen enemies and animals, but within the confines of what the developer has actually provided the player with it becomes redundant.

The plot elements are rather unfulfilled too. Early on in the game, Lara is a quivering mess. Shortly after killing a person for the first time she's genuinely shocked, but again thats short lived and rather shallow as she soon states to Roth (one of the key characters) that it was easier than she expected it to be. Rather than any further question being raised, this is dismissed with Roth simply stating that “she's a Croft” which is somehow used as the reason for her being able to kill hordes of people, regardless of the cirumstances (and in the circumstances given by the game, it would be completely understandable for her to have to kill others but this is never really addressed). These early moments feel like a falsified attempt to create sympathy for Lara's cause. Before long Lara is literally screaming for the blood of inhabitants of the island her and her colleagues and friends find themselves on. It all feels a bit weird in this post Spec Ops: The Line and The Walking Dead world. Both of those games allowed the characterisation to progress and Spec Ops in particular felt like it questioned the motives of the protagonist, the antagonist and the player themselves. Now, I personally don't expect every game to raise questions of morality or give us deep, interesting characters, but as mentioned previously, that is essentially what we were promised. An interesting origins story that would make Lara a more believable character in a more believable (and brutal) world than what was offered in previous games. Unfortunately it feels like the player has been sold short on this front.

The exploration, unfortunately, also suffers. There's plenty to see and do, but it all feels unimportant, it doesn't really have any meaningful use within the context of the game other than to fluff it all out a bit. The games titular tombs are all single room, optional affairs, they have no use other than to help fill a bullet point on a statistics screen and unlock achievements or trophies depending upon the platform you're playing on. They're all hidden, which is fine, but the challenge of discovering them is taken away from the player by the amount of sign posting and handholding the game throws at the player. As soon as you're close to one, a chiming type noise plays and a pop-up notification flashes up on the screen stating that an “Option Tomb is nearby”. It's not the only bit of handhold the game features either. Spend more than ten seconds trying to solve anything and you'll be given a hint, usually its telling you to hit L2 to bring up survival mode, but the game also likes to remind you of the various skills that you've been given at every little opportunity. This handholding has also taken the risk of the franchises key draw, the exploration of the environments. Gone are the leaps of faith, if it can't be made, Lara won't do it, the player is fenced in and in a move to take away the skill of keeping character momentum as an attribute of the player, you no longer have to make Lara swing or hop when its needed, she'll automatically launch herself of anything thats been designed with this purpose in mind. All too often control is ripped from the player, either because the plot calls for that obligatory moment that all third person games now have where the character is slowed to a walking pace whilst he/she chats to someone over a radio, other times the camera twists in a different direction so that the developer forces the player to look upon the piece of scenery that they have created, its never done in a way that tries to bring attention to something that the player can do, only for something for them to see. These are both criticisms that could be levelled at many other games, but they both seem to be more prevalent here. The player doesn't even have the option to crouch themselves and using ducking behind cover or being in a “ready” position with weapon drawn is automatically taken by the character.

Thankfully the auto-cover is never much of a problem and actually leads me on to the games strong points. The combat is genuinely good. The bow is particularly satisfying to use in such situations and has the versatility of being able to fire “fire arrows”. It can also be used to traverse the environment by firing ropes across pre-defined area's and can set alight to specific obstacles in order to solve puzzles. Despite my earlier criticsms of hand-holding when tackling certain obstacles or when popping in and out of cover, movement is genuinely enjoyable. Lara moves in a believably fluid way, her animations aren't stilted or advertised with no specific queues making her feel less like an on-screen caricature than she has ever felt. The inclusion of subtle, but incredibly believable, movements like putting a hand against a tree as you move past or gradually, slowly and silently crouching as you approach some bushes give her an uncannily lifelike appearance that makes the game a joy to watch.

There's one particular moment, and its not even a key point of the game, where all of these positive points really stand out. You're in a wooded area at night and there are a number of guards doing patrols all of whom are carrying torches. By slowly, quietly making your way from tree to tree and using some of the raised area's you can take each one out silently in a manner which feels so much more natural than many of the more dedicated stealth titles currently on the market, and this is where Tomb Raider excels. Forget all the marketing stuff, forget whats gone before and this reboot is a genuinely exciting adventure title. Okay, so there are elements that could really do with being filled out considerably and hopefully if a sequel is green-lighted then Crystal Dynamics will do just that, but what they have actually given us here is a highly enjoyable game, that whilst it shares many similarities with other titles on the market, it does so in a much more believable and enjoyably effortless way. Hopefully this is Crystal Dynamics testing the waters of what the fanbase want, afterall, rebooting a franchise as beloved Tomb Raider must be incredibly difficult, and whilst fans of previous instalments may be dissapointed with many aspects of this release, they should also take heart that there are some incredibly interesting foundations for some rather sensible game mechanics here. Develop that survival element more and give us proper tombs to explore, remove some of the Uncharted style elements and Tomb Raider could become as important as it was all those years ago again.

In an era of gaming where online multiplayer seems to be the focus of the industry’s attention it shouldn’t be unusual to even see Platinum games, usually creators of single-player action, get in on the multiplayer bandwagon to see what they can come up with. Past projects such as Bayonetta and Vanquish are finely tuned and surgical examples of the genre so can Platinum Games bring that design philosophy from their past games to the unsympathetic waters of online multiplayer with this game, Anarchy Reigns?

While they waters they sail are uncharted to them, as it is one of the few games of its kind, they do so in a ship that is familiar. Anyone who has played MadWorld will be familiar with how the game’s fighting system works, and the fact it shares many characters with that game makes it feel like something of a spiritual sequel. The big difference between Anarchy Reigns and MadWorld is the addition – and focus - of multiplayer.

In Anarchy Reigns, you’ll find yourself wandering around post-apocalyptic environments which seem like they could be lifted from Borderlands or any number of other games that have a similar setting, and you swing your fists through swarms of enemies that don’t put up much of a fight. This isn’t like previous games from the studio where each enemy is a satisfying opponent, but instead we have sacks of meat that bust under the force of a quick one-two. Sometimes you come across larger mutants that offer up a challenge but the game’s “Super Saiyan” style ability where you can become powered up and invincible for a short time make these kind of engagements quite unsatisfying after a while. Once you get into the flow of fighting to survive long enough to fill your metre then unleashing it then you find you don’t need to do anything else, and there also isn’t much else.

As for the single-paler campaign you work your way through a number of identical fights that are interrupted by out of place cutscenes that tell a story that seems to have been cobbled together as an afterthought. The story mainly follows two characters and you choose which story you will follow at the start of the game: one is about Jack, the star of MadWorld, and the other tale follows Leo, a new character.

Essentially, a story of revenge and redemption in the most basic form, and one that doesn’t do anything interesting; not only that the very aesthetic of the game is somewhat lacking. The fact that it stars so many characters from MadWord - a game known for its bold art direction if known for anything at all – it just highlights how visually muted Anarchy Reigns is. Seeing characters born from the black and white art design coloured in and placed in a brown world that doesn’t add anything to the formula is sad to see. Even Bayonetta who is in the game as a bonus for anyone who purchased the game day one, even looks bland in the company of Anarchy Reigns’ characters and environments. The life is sucked out of Bayonetta.

But Anarchy Reigns is primarily a multiplayer game so if Platinum gets this right then much can be forgiven. Unfortunately, that also isn’t the case.

The multiplayer is just anarchy, but not in a good way. Up to 16 players can take part but all it consists of is someone sneaking up on two others who are battling out and performing damaging back attacks, and the camera is placed close to your right shoulder so these attacks cannot be seen or realistically avoided; that is all that happens in any given match-up. It’s not too hard to master the simple combat system, but you don’t even have to as exploiting the mechanics is how you succeed. Even in one on one match ups fights aren’t like a good fighting game where you can use mechanics to be unpredictable and creative, you merely exploit the systems. Learn them, and then exploit them.

Not a great deal of joy comes from these fights which is strange considering the pedigree. Anarchy Reigns is an experiment, and an experiment which doesn’t seem to have a great deal of passion behind it. There is a place for a game like this but someone is going to have to really want to make it and not just be an obligation, which what Anarchy Reigns mostly comes across as.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be saying this if we didn’t know the development history of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, but it does have the feel of a game that has been saved. Areas are fairly small, levels mostly short, and there’s not a lot of enemies. It’s not unusual to beat 4 enemies, some more spawn in out of no where, move on a bit, watch a cut scene, beat another 4, cut scene, boss fight. Gameplay elements are re-used, the building running is less than great and is repeated in slightly altered forms a couple of times.

It’s apparent in the cut scenes too, not that they’re of poor quality, far from it, the cut scenes are great. There’s also a lot of them, which is pretty much par for the course for a Metal Gear game, although they aren’t quite as gameplay obstructing as they could be in Metal Gear Solid 4. Instead there are scenes, crazy scenes admittedly, that I’m convinced you’d play in another Platinum Games product. I know it’s a common complaint of CG cut scenes, that they’re showing you all this cool stuff you can’t do, but knowing that you would have done it in Bayonetta and Vanquish does make it more apparent.

Revengeance’s problems aren’t all about the feeling of what could have been, there are a few issues with the gameplay. The camera isn’t great, in fact if you do find yourself backed up against some scenery it feels oddly archaic, it’s been a while since I’ve played a modern game with camera issues like this. For the most part it’s fine as for the most part you’re fighting in fairly open environments, but there will be plenty of times during the game where you’ll helplessly be smacked around by enemies all because you can’t see the attack coming. It’s a problem exacerbated by Rising not doing a good enough job of explaining its systems to you. For example there’s a lock on feature which is a big help in boss fights, that was something I had to discover for myself.

The parrying mechanic too illustrates the lack of guidance. Rising does show you how to do it, kind of, but it doesn’t go in to the timing. What that means is that you’ll master blocking fairly quickly, reliably and almost accidentally avoiding damage, but it’s only later on you’ll realise that you can take a bit more time that you think for a counter. There’s a dodge move that can be purchased, it’s located in the combo list, again another feature oddly hidden. I never really felt the need to consult the move list apart from to learn that dodge move, not that I’d describe the combat as mashy, but there is a certain spongey, instinctiveness to it. You naturally begin to make your own combos, knowing roughly what you need to do to get the desired effect.

While it probably reads like there’s a lot wrong with Revengeance, it’s still a very good game. The combat isn’t as deep as Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, but it’s still way better than it has any right to be. The Zan Datsu adds precision and a conclusion to combat, ensuring that you don’t just mash away. Instead you need to precisely slice limbs from enemies, and hit the right area to refill your health. They’ve even included stealth moves, they add something different, tying Rising to its Metal Gear routes.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is superb, it’s stupid, daft, but also surprisingly politically charged. It manages to feel like a Metal Gear game whilst also feeling like a Platinum game, a quality brawler with some unique dynamics. It’s got a few too many issues for it to be a true classic, exacerbated because the core game is so much fun. but I dare say it’ll be as well regarded as both Vanquish and Bayonetta.

Conceptually I really like Paper Mario Sticker Star, it looks superb, and the flat levels really benefit from the depth the 3d adds. You interact with the world using stickers, replacing missing items, blocking up holes, and of course using them as moves in combat. I went in to Paper Mario Sticker star expecting to like it, genuinely, since E3 it’s been my most anticipated 3DS game, unfortunately it doesn’t live up to its promise.

It looks like a traditional Mario game in terms of level layout, you complete a stage and it opens the path to the next on the world map. There's 4 'worlds' to choose from the first town, however only one path is really viable. Unlike previous games in the series Paper Mario ticker Star isn’t an rpg, it’s an adventure game, more like the Wii game than previous handheld ones. The various areas are themed, like you’d expect from a Mario game, with the area south of the town hub being the most traditional. It’s there you should start, and it’s that area that is the most linear, progressing through levels in order, only rarely having to revisit.

But that’s not the story for the rest of the game, the game becomes very stop start. Finish a level and move on to a different one and you'll find your path is blocked, you need to go somewhere else to find the item you need. The game doesn't do a good enough job at communicating where you're supposed to go and why, for example, after getting stuck I hit the hint button and was told I was going the wrong way, I needed to get to someone's house, but the only level it mentions is the one I was currently in, and that is “the wrong way“. Like wise there's a level I completed that had 2 exits in it, I'm not sure which one is technically the secret one, but the one I missed was certainly difficult enough to find. When I did get through I then found my progress blocked, to the games credit it did then tell me to go to a specific place, which I did, found the item I needed, and then had to head back.

I really like some elements of the combat, I like that you have to engage with it to do well. You select your sticker, let's say 'Iron Jump', then you have to press the jump button at the right time to continue the combo, dealing more damage and earning coins. What I don't like is that things start to become very samey, you get in to a fight, a couple of extra enemies appear, you use the fruit machine option to earn yourself an extra attack or two, then you select the same stickers to deal with the same enemies. It doesn't help that there's no reason for you to get in to fights, in fact they cost you stickers, so you're better avoiding fights as much as possible, especially as you don't really need the money.

You start to resent enemies too. Because you don't level up (because this is an adventure game rather than an rpg) you encounter enemies that you know you can beat easily, you've fought them 100 times, but you still need to go through it, you still need to waste a decent sticker on them, or 2 stickers, or 3. If this was an rpg you'd be at that point where one round of attacks would wipe them out, you'd get your 10 gold and 7xp and move on. Here you have to concentrate otherwise you'll be using more stickers than you already have to. You can land a preliminary attack to trigger a battle, either using a hammer or jumping on an enemy, and this does seem to gain in strength at certain points in the game.

It’s a shame, the first few hours of Paper Mario Sticker Star are great, it looks superb, really benefiting from the depth of the 3DS screen. The combat starts fun, and the levels interesting to explore, but once you hit a boss fight where you don’t have the right sticker the flaws become all too apparent. The amount of times you feel obligated to check a guide, given this is a portable game, is shaming, Sticker Star is one of the rare occasions where restrictive linearity would have been a benefit.

Usually when a horror franchise has reached its third instalment it's begun to try something new, in cinema the Halloween titles went a bit odd what with all the masks and such, Nightmare on Elm Street became more of a cheap comedy, Scream 3 tried to ignore everything that had gone before and then in videogames, Resident Evil gave us the Nemesis and a whole different feel (that being the main point of the game was to run away) whilst Silent Hill was a bit slow off the plate and didn't really get genuinely weird (well, for Silent Hill) until the launch of Silent Hill: The Room which was the series' fourth instalment. Dead Space then is at part 3, so is it more of the same? Or is it suddenly about a space man who hallucinates about fluffy bunnies trying to each his toes or something?



It actually comes as a huge dissapointment that, for the most part at least, Dead Space 3 has stuck to the formula of the previous two titles, elbeit it has more in common with the second games' more action focused gameplay. Necromorphs come out of the walls thick and fast and even if you stick to the dismemberment method of attack thats been a staple of the series they can still be rather spongey in their ability to soak up ammunition. This is most notable if you stick to the previous tried and trusted Plasma Cutter, which is probably an effort on the part of Visceral Games to encourage the player to try out the new weapon creation tools.

There's a good reason for this, the system on offer is really rather good, enabling you to create bolted together weapons from scratch or merely customise other weapons in your inventory. The level of inventiveness is incredibly pleasing too, combining an attachment that allows you to fire a sticky electrical projectile with the RB button to stun the enemies (whilst they've also been slowed down by a blast of stasis) before hacking limbs off is achievable fairly early on incredibly pleasuring to boot. But somehow it feels like it goes against what Dead Space originally felt like it was going to be about, this isn't helped by the perceived increased speed of the Necromorphs and sheer volume of numbers in which they attack from all angles (and boy does Dead Space 3 like to attack you from every perceivable direction, usually all at once), and its due to this that Dead Space 3 feels like its gone a little too far along, and whilst its still a long way off the fabled “Jumping the Shark”, its begun to lose that element of Dead Space-ness.

Thats not to say its all bad though, some of the franchises strong points are still apparent. Most notably its ability to make the player feel rather claustraphobic. Early moments of the game have you exploring a derelict fleet of ships and its here where Dead Space fans will feel most at home, especially as the series' strength in using audio is still at a rather high point. Audio cues are often used to distract and disorientate the player, throwing you off guard for the inevitable onslaught of re-animated and mutated corpses that are headed your way. The dulling of sound when in a vacuum still brings a smile to face because of the sheer level of detail and juicy bass that it offers whilst Isaac's footsteps, in his rather heavy looking suit, are suitably noisey and feel as though they echoe through the various ships you get to explore.

And it's not until the third act of the game that the game takes a turn for the worse, the switch to the icey environment was initially an intriguing one, but its handled much much better in the games prologue where the character has no experience of what lies before him and has much more limited resources available to deal with the situation at hand. At this point its genuinely creepy making your way through a blizzard, seeing the needle like limbs of one of the more recognisable necromorphs launching towards you, your movement speed slowed by the depth of the snow gathering at your feet. The latter stages of the game do try to keep this going, but as its already been experienced so early on in the game (and with the rest of the game feeling like its been rather drawn out), it feels like its blown its load far far too early and is now out-staying its welcome by trying to cook you breakfast after a drunken roll around the night before.

It feels rather bad to be writing such a harsh review of Dead Space 3, theres some good stuff here to like, and the production standards are never anything but rather high, and to be fair to Visceral they've tried to bring some new elements to the table, please the already established fans and poach gamers from other titles by throwing the kitchen sink in there. Co-oparatively there's a lot of fun to be had too, and if you're a fan of the series you'll want to play through it as Carver to get his side of the story as it reveals a little more than that of Isaac and has more in common with the series' origins in terms of goings on, but the developers approach to trying to make it appeal to everyone has ultimately made it feel really rather shallow and the least likeable of the four games (including Extraction)

For whatever reason when people decide to make retro style games, games that play like their old favourites, they always seem to make them look like retro games too. Not so Gunman Clive, while it’s very old-school in how it plays, some of the graphical tricks it pulls off are very impressive

The simplest way to describe Gunman Clive is to say it plays like Megaman. You progress through a level from left to right, shooting enemies and traversing platforms. There’s not a lot of room for error, you’ve got limited health, and it rarely takes more than one shot to kill an enemy. It’s of credit to the game then that Gunman Clive doesn’t feel like simply a reskinned Megaman, it’s got a character of it’s own.

Perhaps that’s down to the way it looks, the game has an old sketch pad look to it, browned by the sun with a scratchy texture. Coupled with the 3D environments it makes everything feel like it’s more animated than it is, it’s a really great look. The character designs are simplistic but nice enough, they look sharp on the 3DS screen and have a nice chunky look to them.

Unfortunately Gunman Clive suffers a little when it comes to gameplay, like Megaman there are times where deaths feel unfair. Enemies don’t activate until they appear on screen, which in and of itself is fine, but it does mean there’ll be times when you’re in mid-air as an enemy takes a shot at you, unable to avoid it. Fortunately you’re very quickly back in to the game, however it does usually mean restarting the stage again. Stages themselves are generally fairly short, and certainly if you do die you’ll be amazed how easy it suddenly seems 2nd time through. A couple of the boss fights can be tricky, especially if you get lumbered with the ‘wrong’ weapon, but they don’t feel especially unfair and are well structured.

Gunman Clive is also out on ios and Android, I haven’t played those versions but I feel safe saying that the 3DS version is the one to get. Firstly with the price being just £1.99 for us in the UK you’re not, for once, paying a hefty premium for buying on a traditional console. There’s also the matter of having buttons, I’ve played a few action platformers on a touch screen now, some work pretty well, but there aren’t many that wouldn’t be improved by having actual controls, certainly not retro style ones like Gunman Clive.

Gunman Clive, while a challenge, isn’t the most taxing game, it’s also not the longest. I feel a little as though had it been a bit harder the short length might have been more fulfilling. Still it’s hard to say you’re being ripped off for the price, and that you could have happily played more is hardly the most damning criticism. Despite the score at the end of this review I’d still suggest you pick up Gunman Clive, it’s a nice slice of retro style gaming on the 3DS, and at a price cheaper than most of the 20 year old games Nintendo puts on there.

This generation seems to have been one that has been dominated by the Hollywood Blockbuster-esque action game, particular genre's which were once absolutely huge, haven't had the amount of attention that they once given by both the media and players. Or thats how it would seem, the truth is, these genres have seen some fairly high profile releases and attention with some high ratings thrown in for good measure and lets not forget that many of the elements that are keeping people hooked to the likes of Call of Duty are taken straight from the likes of RPG's and Fighters, and on the mention of that last point, some titles have become absolutely huge and essentially helped relaunch that genre (Street Fighter IV comes to mind here), and really, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch should do something similar for JRPG's.



A collaboration between Dragon Quest VIII developers Level-5 and animation studio Studio Ghibli was always going to garner attention from the typical JRPG crowd, and that includes yours truly, and the two working together has created such a sublime and charming piece of work.

You, the player, are placed in the shoes of Oliver, a young boy from Motor Town, who after an accident, loses his Mother. Struck with grief, his tears bring his favourite toy, Mr Drippy, to life and it just so happens that Mr Drippy is a fairy from a different dimensional world. Once awakened, Mr Drippy invites Oliver to his world, wherein Oliver can save a Great Sage that shares his Mothers soul and thus revive her.

It's fair to say, as far as JRPG tales go, its fairly cliche, but the way in which it is loving and charmingly written stops all of that from mattering. The game and its characters emit a kind of warmth that I've not particularly experienced since I first played through Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue, and the similarities don't end there. At a particular point, fairly early on in the game, you gain the ability to recruit "Familiars", what this entails is that the creatures that you battle out in the wild (discluding bosses and guardians) can be tamed an added to your party for you to use in battle. As expected they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, both in an elemental sense and a physical, and the latter can be addressed by feeding them treats to raise particular stats (in a similar manner to another RPG from my youth, namely Phantasy Star Online's MAGs). As they get stronger you're eventually given the option to "Metamorphasise" them, this is pretty much the same as Pokemon's evolutions, creatures change form (not as drastically as in the Nintendo franchise) and, for a short while, take a hit on their stats, which is remidied as they begin to level up again (or are fed more treats).

The battle system feels like it borrows from another highly popular title too, namely Persona 3, you control one character (but you can chop and change throughout the battle) and give the rest of the human characters particular tactics to follow. I for example have relied heavily on using Mitey (through Oliver) to attack with Esther as our support providing healing spells where needed. It's the flexibility of the system that makes it feel so rewarding and the challenging nature of the game that keeps you on your toes. Whilst we're on the subject of the game being "challenging", it would be unfair for it to be deemed difficult, it would also be unfair for it to be deemed easy or unfair on the player. It is none of these things and nor does it require a noticable amount of grinding, the difficulty comes in how you play it. This isn't a lazy players JRPG, you can't sit back and hit X constantly to attack, you need to pay attention to what your opponents are doing, attack or defend at the right time or move your character around to dodge dashing attacks or to take advantage of weak points. It's the closest the genre has come to developing an action element within its battle systems and it really does feel incredibly rewarding.

So, there's the base on this delightful cake, its something that Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would be proud of, and the beautiful artwork, cutscenes and brilliantly performed voice acting (a huge shout out to the vocal talents of Gavin and Stacey actor Steffan Rhodri who voices Mr Drippy) add an incredible layer of icing to the perfect dessert.

What became apparent while playing through Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt, the latest dlc for Borderlands 2, is what an impossible task Gearbox and their support teams have getting the balance right for the smorgasbord of play styles. You’ve got players of differing levels, with different builds, playing as different characters, using different weapons, playing in single player, or playing with a friend, or two, or three.

With all that in mind you can see how it’s difficult for them to cater for everyone, and for a reviewer to reflect your experience. That being said let’s start with some things that aren’t under question; Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt offers the most new content of the 3 Borderlands 2 dlc we’ve had so far. The dlc is a set in a loose African safari environment, and features ‘caricature’ enemies like witch-doctors and tribesmen.

Missions are themed around the safari concept, you’ll be asked to hunt a selection of rare animals, spring traps, and collect eggs. There’s a couple of really good boss fights, including one against a seemingly invulnerable bullymong. There’s not many story missions, and if you do nothing but them then you probably wont get your moneys worth from the dlc, but there are a decent amount of side quests for extra content. The landmass is fairly substantial, and given that you can’t be over-levelled due to the level cap, there should always be a bit of a challenge.

And that’s where things get complicated. I found the witch-doctors difficult pretty much all the way through the dlc, I was playing solo as a commando, the witch-doctor’s whirlwind attack was destroying my turret, leaving me to deal with their powered up minions alone whilst they themselves powered up and healed. Similarly the last boss was hugely frustrating, not helped that dying meant having to restart the fight from scratch.

I had a problem with getting stuck on geometry quite a lot, it led to a few deaths, but was also apparent when just navigating the landscape. Some of the battles were a bit too wave based, and I can’t say I got all that much good loot making my way through the dlc, certainly my 2 go to weapons I entered the dlc with were what I was using at the end of it. That said you are rewarded with an interesting weapon for beating the final boss, plus a huge amount of loot as a reward.

I suspect a lot of the problems I had with Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt wouldn’t be an issue in multiplayer, certainly the waves of enemies and witch-doctors would be a lot more fun to deal with. I do take issue with the level cap still not being raised, perhaps that’s not something for this review, but if someone who has just been playing through the dlc as it’s come out can hit the cap then the more dedicated players will have been there for a while.

For my money though Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt is the best of the Borderlands 2 dlc so far, while it doesn’t have the most amount, or the most interesting story, it’s a big play area with quite a lot to do. There’s new monsters, new enemies, a decent loot reward, and nothing you’ll actively dislike. If the 4th dlc can better this then Boderlands 2 season 1 will finish with a bang.