If the sales charts are to be believed gamers are a pessimistic bunch. Apparently we like nothing more than winding down after the daily grind by transporting ourselves to post-apocalyptic wastelands fraught with mutants, radiation poisoning and the ultimate collapse of civilisation. 

Developers ceaselessly realise our nightmares through the likes of Fallout, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and id’s forthcoming Rage, and even when the irradiated ideas well runs dry, they turn to literature for inspiration – in this case Russian author Dmitry A. Glukhovsky’s critically acclaimed 2002 novel, Metro 2033. Like their former colleagues at GSC Gameworld however, Ukrainian developers 4A Games hail from a culture distinctly and tragically informed by the horrors of nuclear fallout, imbuing Metro 2033 with a sobering tone even before picking up the controller. 

These screens are taken from the eye-meltingly cutting-edge PC version. Unsurprisingly those are the only screenshots being circulated by the PRs.

Metro 2033 takes place in Russia’s eponymous underground metro system twenty years after an apocalyptic event blackened the skies and ravaged the world, nearly eradicating mankind and mutating what little life that remained into deadly malformed beasts, rendering the world’s surface uninhabitable. You fill the shoes of Artyom, a young man born in the final days before the apocalypse, but raised underground, trapped in a day-to-day struggle for survival in a harsh world populated by mutated monstrosities, warring factions of fellow humans and a mysterious emerging threat.

The underground community is alive with a beleivable hustle and bustle early on in the game.

Rather than following the sandbox template popularised by its aforementioned post-apocalyptic stable mates, Metro 2033 is a tightly-focused and linear story-driven FPS, and given the game’s restrictive locale, the linearity is perhaps inevitable. Owing a debt to the Half-Life school of scripted narrative delivery, the vast majority of story sequences are witnessed from Artyom’s perspective, with 4A Games unwilling to break the connection between player and protagonist, even if they aren’t so hesitant to wrestle control away from the player as with Valve’s masterpiece. 

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There’s something suspect about the phrase with which the Bad Company sub-franchise is often associated, ‘tactical destruction’. It’s the ‘tactical’ bit, basically. ‘Tactical’ lends ‘destruction’ a veneer of complexity we’re not entirely sure it deserves. Being able to explode cars in people’s faces, or shoot fist-sized lumps out of concrete tank barriers, or level houses from the kitchen windows upwards is undoubtedly a thrill, but there’s not a whole lot of nuance to be extracted.

Talking up the first Bad Company, EA DICE explained to a baying public that its patented Frostbite engine would give players ‘total freedom to be daring and innovative, adapting to and tackling challenges in unexpected Battlefield-style ways’. A less sensational way of wording this – and thus of approaching the highly similar sequel – might be that players have ‘total freedom to blow up stuff to kill people or make them easier to shoot’.

Because that’s what the concept boils down to, doesn’t it? It’s the difference between there being something solid ‘twixt you and The Enemy (and you staying put) and there not being something solid ‘twixt you and The Enemy (and you running screaming for the horizon while The Enemy admires the cut of your trousers through an M95 rifle scope). It’s the difference between some bastard crouching in one corner of a bungalow, sub-machine gunning you as you enter, and you calling in a few favors with your good friend the F16 pilot, marking the camper’s hideout through laser beam binoculars and cackling as the entire building implodes in his face.

We sort of feel guilty for not really mentioning how good it all looks, but then, do we really need to?

We’re not saying this sort of free-wheeling topographical butchery is a bad thing, because as the above thumbnail sketches suggest it most certainly is not. Few games are as exhilarating, as surprising as Bad Company 2 online. One instant you’re enjoying a mental cigarette break behind a warehouse, the next somebody’s driven an APC right through the wall. Defending one of the game’s obligatory Important Crate-like Objects from a team with a field gun or two in the holster is as edge-of-the-seat as it gets, beleaguered infantry clinging to jags of door frame while those outside do their best to see through clouds of brickdust (incidentally, EA, some sort of infra-red visor would be a great multiplayer unlock, providing it’s appropriately balanced).

We’re just not convinced the ‘daring and innovative bit’ extends further than ‘now I’m in shelter, now I’m not, better do something about that quic – AARGH I’m dead’. Other games (indeed, other Battlefields (indeed, this Battlefield)) inculcate much the same mentality by laying out maps in such a way that every cluster of cover points has its rear entrance, its secret tunnel, its inconvenient overlook. Flattening the area with artillery shells might induce more in the way of manic giggles, but you’d be pushed to distinguish between methodologies from the outcome alone.

You’d also be pretty pushed to distinguish between Bad Company 2’s single player campaign and that of any other console shooter, fluctuating numbers of holes in the scenery aside. OK, that sounded a little harsh. You’d be pushed to distinguish between the Bad Company 2 campaign and that of any other enjoyable console shooter, then.

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As a rabidly hardcore fan of the original game, I feel almost duty bound to dislike BioShock 2. In about as much need of a sequel as the Mona Lisa, Ken Levine’s original creative work was a stunningly complete vision, telling a perfectly orchestrated tale of the rise and fall of one of gaming’s most memorable locations. The prospect of a purely commercially-driven sequel drew understandably hushed accusations of cashing in and selling out. Yet as hard as I’ve tried, BioShock 2 is simply too good a game to dislike. 

Initial interviews with new creative director Jordan Thomas suggested that the man had a rich appreciation for what made BioShock such a unique vision, but appreciation doesn’t always translate to ability, yet Jordan and his 2K Marin team have done the impossible and created a valuable expansion to the 2007 masterpiece. Set 10 years after Ryan and Fontaine’s war tore the city apart, BioShock 2 puts you in the boots of the original Big Daddy – a more manoeuvrable but conversely less tank-like build of the iconic lumbering goliath. 

Giving you access to the immense power of the Big Daddy of course demands a more threatening set of enemies and spearheading that threat is the scarred and dysfunctional evolution of the Little Sister – the Big Sister. Combining the grace and agility of the ballet dancer with a frightening arsenal of weaponry including an arm-sized syringe, the Big Sister takes a stern approach to sibling protection and strongly objects to your interference with the little sisters of Rapture, appearing regularly to make your life more difficult. 

10 years in Rapture has seen political upheaval, and from the ashes of Andrew Ryan’s extreme objectivist philosophies has risen Sophia Lamb with a fiercely socialist agenda. More than simply a re-skinning of antagonists, Lamb’s collectivist ideals have given birth to an entirely new culture of beliefs and concepts that go against everything Ryan stood for, and in design terms that equals new environments and boss characters. That’s not to say that the drastic shift in values has discarded everything Ryan stood for – his DNA was woven so deeply into Rapture’s architecture that even 10 years on from his demise, the clashing of cultures is consistently evident.

Big Sister is watching you.

As with the original game, Rapture is clearly the star of the show. Obviously a significant amount of the original’s appeal was in discovering and uncovering Rapture’s mysteries – a sensation that sadly can’t be repeated once you are familiarised with its secrets. What BioShock 2 does manage to succeed in doing however is creating a perfect addendum to the first game, expanding on ideas that Ryan’s Laissez-faire capitalist society simply wouldn’t accommodate, such as religion and collective responsibility. The new characters sit comfortably alongside the likes of Sander Cohen and Yi Suchong, furnished with their own objectives, ideas and of course shortcomings.

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Like its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is a sort of hyper-violent personality test masquerading as a cooperative zombie survival shooter. If you want to know which of your mates you should trust with the water bottle after shipwrecking on a desert island, simply invite them over for a bout and let the game’s dynamic challenge factor weasel out hidden traits and flaws, profiling each player in sickly green strokes of undead gore.

Where other shooters are static, unreactive structures, brittle sandcastles awaiting the casually lobbed football of human intervention, the Left 4 Dead games give exactly as good as they get, altering the quantity, quality and positioning of enemies, weapon drops and obstacles in response to player behavior. Lone wolves will be pounced upon by terrifying cat-like Hunters, cowardly hangers-on showered in Horde-attracting vomit by repulsive Boomers, layabouts lassoed and dragged off by elusive Smokers. After half an hour’s play, you should have a lot of stories to tell and a couple fewer names on your Christmas card list.

Among the game's "Uncommon Infected" are clowns, who can summon the mob.

The Jack-Daniels-swigging sequel is a personality test in another sense, however. Its aim: to divide the gaming population up into those who are prepared to pay a full 30-40 quid for incremental advances on a formula, and those who aren’t. Calling it a glorified expansion pack is several steps too far, but if you’re one of those deeply misguided, patently untrustworthy and smelly individuals who somehow wasn’t blown away by the first game you should probably think twice.

Left 4 Dead 2 introduces us to four new Survivors – slack-jawed teen Ellis, hard-bitten gambler Nick, wannabe TV producer Rochelle and big poppa Coach – and five new campaigns, set in the humid fastness of a post-apocalyptic Deep South – a more colourful environment than the temperate Pennsylvanian suburbia of the first game, and no less abundant in memorable landmarks, from crashed passenger aircraft to mall-top concert arenas. Campaign formats are the same: the first four chapters challenge the Survivors to get from Safehouse to Safehouse with all limbs/organs intact, and the fifth culminates in an all-or-nothing battle against the ravening Infected while rescue takes its sweet goddamn time arriving.

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Much has been said about the price tag of Modern Warfare 2 in the build up to its release, and not much of it publishable. But if a videogame’s worth can be measured by how much of it stays with you after you’ve put the pad down, then even the most indignant will have few complaints if this hugely anticipated sequel ends up delivering as much as the original did two years ago.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the original Modern Warfare was the fact that most people didn’t put the pad down, devoting untold hours to mastering its thrilling online component long after they’d come down from its monumentally brilliant, if brief, single player campaign. Having mastered such a winning formula, the last thing you expect are radical changes, and so it proves.

Picking up from where the 2007 classic left off, you’re once again on the trail of a Russian Ultranationalist leader as he plots the destruction of the West. driven by a desire to cause maximum mayhem to the West. Having spun the death of his predecessor as an act of martyrdom, and successfully convinced his followers of the tyranny of the West, Vladamir Makarov proves to be an adversary with an impressively evil CV.

Four by two of reinforced plastic is a soldier's best friend.

Shock tactics quickly become a feature of Modern Warfare 2, so much so that the game specifically checks – twice – if you’d rather not be subjected to scenes of gratuitous violence. Evidently revelling in its new Adult Only status, Infinity Ward waste no time in repeatedly pushing the violenceometer needle into the red, depicting the kind of shocking scenes we’ve long been used to in gritty dramas, but rarely get exposed to in games in such uncompromising fashion. Expect an ugly media frenzy to develop as the wider world wrestles with the ramifications of What This All Means. [We started without you, actually - Ed]

What it means in the context of the series is simple: that terrorism is an ugly business, and Infinity Ward hasn’t tried to mask the reality, or trivialise what it looks like. Whether it crosses The Line is perhaps a topic to wrestle over at length another time, but it’s hard to divorce yourself from how brutal some of the scenes really are, even when, in truth, it’s still some way from reality. The fact that it’s often unclear who the bad guys actually are, and that it’s you that’s pulling the trigger is, of course, the difference.

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Fallout 3 was last year’s towering success. It’s no surprise, then, to see later games mimicking its barren, dystopian, desert styling. Borderlands borrows a huge amount from Bethesda’s epic roleplaying/shooter crossover hit, and reviewing it without mentioning this incredible debt is akin to forgetting that the Life of Brian may have been influenced by the Bible. Borderlands is not the Messiah, it’s a very naughty game!

Super Soakers are the interplanetary mercenary's weapon of choice.

Borderlands makes its intentions clear from the opening cinematic. Life on Pandora is colourful, vibrant, ugly and easily splattered across the front of passing buses. The game stamps its own signature on post-apocalyptic bandit-ridden cliches with a refreshing cell-shaded comic look. Fallout 3 saw the future of the 1950’s gone wrong; Borderlands funnels Mad Max through a Futurama kaleidoscope. It’s a bold move for a game that looked good in development even before this radical change in direction, and gives it an instant charm which more serious games lack.

The graphical overhaul also complements the main philosophy behind the game; make it bigger, badder and more powerful. Borderland’s run & gun combat is surprisingly well-honed, and shooter fans will have no problems at all adjusting to the controls. While your starting weapons are the staple guns of the FPS genre, after a few hours play you’ll come across more interesting specimens.

That shotgun looks awfully puny in his hands.

There are machine guns which set people on fire, and sniper rifles which instantly take down enemy shields. You’ll find rocket launchers which splatter bandits with highly corrosive acid, causing them to run around screaming in a lime-green fountain of toxic waste. For those permanently on the lookout for the next big thing, Borderlands’ randomised loot drops and weapon caches are as big a draw as the stat boosts and skill points gained when you level up. Plenty of enemy variety ensures you’ll swap frequently between guns for maximum impact.

Four character types are available from the outset: the soldier, a generic all rounder; the Hunter, a sniper and long range specialist; Brick, a shotgun-toting berserker; and Lillith, a sneaky lady who can become invisible.

The gang's all here. Also starring some giant purple lobsters.

As each character progresses points are unlocked to spend in their skill trees, resulting in greater specialisation. With the ability to play cooperatively with 4 players, a tuned-up team can make short work of giant mutant bosses. Character progress can be saved at “New U” stations dotted around for all your DNA-restructuring and resurrection needs.

Role-playing elements are cleverly interwoven with the shooting action. As your character gets more statistically proficient with their chosen weapons, shots become visibly more accurate. Numbers showing damage inflicted on enemies spill from their bodies in place of blood.

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Life in the military isn’t for everyone. For us, the fresh air, vigorous exercise and ruthless discipline required were primary turn-offs, not to mention being thrust onto the frontline dodging bullets and explosions from all directions. Thank goodness, then, for games like Operation Flashpoint that allow us to look down the ole’ iron sights in a realistic battlefield situation without the risk of our heads popping like overripe melons.

Cast as 2nd Lt. Mulholland, leader of a four-man squad, stationed on the fictional island of Skira, your job is to weed out the entrenched enemy utilising advanced military tactics lifted straight out of the US Marine Corps handbook. Chinese PLA forces have set up encampments all over the island’s 220 square kilometre expanse in a bid to mine the Russian oil buried beneath its surface. Or something. We weren’t really listening.

See all that lovely grass? You'll probably spend most of your time crawling through it while playing Op Flash 2.

Operation Flashpoint is the anti-Call of Duty, punishing brazen, head-on assaults with a swift bullet to the brain. Previously aimed at the PC audience, the game’s presence on consoles has prompted the developer to resort to console-friendly pop-up radial menus, which might slightly antagonise the aforementioned desktop squaddies.

Issuing orders to your team is both simple and streamlined for console and PC users alike, despite the compromises made to controllers. Establishing and executing your strategies and commands is remarkably effortless once you familiarise yourself with the control scheme. Happily, your team’s AI is reliable too – save for the odd unusual glitch – carrying out your orders with military efficiency.

Who or what are these morons firing at? Answers on a postcard, please.

You’ll quickly learn that there’s a lot of shooting from range in Operation Flashpoint, as engaging the enemy up close is suicidal. You’ll need to be prepared to line up distant collections of pixels in your scope for the majority of Dragon Rising’s campaign as that’s really the crux of the game and (presumably) true to the realities of war.

For the less patient player, there are a number of gameplay assists that ease the steep difficulty curve somewhat: where the full-fat unassisted game removes the HUD, checkpoints and helpful feedback of any kind (such as the animated crosshair that indicates a successful hit on an enemy), the lower difficulty levels provide all of the above. Playing the unassisted experience might prove a bit much for some – dying face-down in the dirt with a cranial puncture wound without a checkpoint to fall back to is a bitter pill to swallow when you’ve worked your arse off to complete an exceptionally gruelling objective.

No military game is complete without green-o-vision. NVGs and laser-sights are invaluable during nocturnal engagements.

For the devoted hardcore, tackling the campaign missions without the luxury of assists or check-pointing will undoubtedly sort the men from the boys. Regardless of the level of challenge you choose however, the AI remains constant, so the enemy put up just as much of a fight on the easier settings as they do on the highest. Occasionally, though, you’ll see an enemy troop attempting to crawl out of trouble as bullets kick up dust around him – an unintentional but not unwelcome bit of comedy on the developer’s part.

No related posts.

The history of the Metroid Prime series is well documented. From a shaky start in an unfamiliar genre, Nintendo’s faith in Retro Studios proved to be well founded as the GameCube original went on to be one of the few system-sellers on the troubled format. Gathering together Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption may seem like a cynical marketing move, but when you multiply the number of folks who missed out the first time around by the huge number of Wii owners in need of substantial gaming experience – well, you can probably guess which way the figures point.

Rather than simply taking the GameCube originals and pressing them onto the Metroid Prime 3 disc, Retro Studios have spent time furnishing the first two Prime games with Corruption’s refinements. The most immediate difference with Prime and Echoes is the addition of Corruption’s sublime motion controls. Say what you will about the number of developers that misuse the Wii’s unique controls, but pick up the remote and nunchuk, switch the controls to “advanced” and your arms become those of Samus Aran, with precise movement, aiming and interaction.

Keyboard and mouse aficionados may scoff, and how well this control scheme would work in a fast-paced multiplayer FPS may still be up in the air, but when it comes to exploring Retro Studios’ finely crafted galaxy, nothing beats the Corruption approach. Prime and Echoes benefit from the new controls enormously, making previously tricky boss battles much fairer and increasing the already incredible sense of immersion no end.

These fellows would do well to observe Samus' silent role. Instead they blather incessantly.

Corruption’s “achievement” system of dealing out credits for fulfilling certain tasks has been retro-fitted into Prime and Echoes, though it never fosters the kind of experimental play that Corruption’s friend tokens encourage, dishing them out instead for defeated bosses and inventory collection.

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The over-indulgent verdict on Dead Space: Extraction is that it’s Dead Space with all the crap drained off. Aggravatingly backward fixed inventories are out, as are tiresome modular upgrades systems. You won’t be carting lots of precious semiconductors, depleted weapons and oxygen cylinders between Stores, as there’s no longer an in-game economy, or back-tracking across cavernous starship interiors, as the action’s now on rails, or, indeed, bothering to do anything other than point and shoot.

The trademark noisy pink mutants look, animate and fall to pieces much as they do in the Xbox 360 and PS3 original, predictable drops in texture quality and geometry aside. Human character animations, facial or otherwise, are just as impressive, but the starship and planetside environments are once again the biggest attractions, equal parts high-tech deathtrap and primeval cave, immaculate holographic displays floating against worn blood-stained metal.

Let's see if he's still grinning when I chop his blooming knees off.

Kicking off some weeks before the events of Dead Space, Extraction’s five to six hour multiple-perspective storyline details the discovery of the mysterious Marker on Aegis VII, ensuing outbreaks of violence among the colonists, Necromorph infestation, chaos, and final flight to the orbiting USG Ishimura, shortly to be abundant in reanimated corpse-flesh.

From left: tough guy, arrogant exec, cutie, sacrificial extra.

It’s hackneyed, superficial but well-executed stuff, players becoming acquainted with characters through the eyes of others before leapfrogging into their shoes during chapter breaks. The game sensibly never lapses out of first-person, keeping your retina glued to the HUD till a chapter ends or the moment of death, and in one instance beyond.

If the prequel is cleaner and, by necessity, more tightly constructed than its high def sibling, it falls a little short on gameplay “oomph”. Disregarding the odd winged squid or giant raging octopus boss, there are no new varieties of Necromorph, and few novel ways of killing them. Legs and arms must be shot off as before, mutant grappling holds broken (with furious shakes of the ‘mote), glowing boss appendages blasted, reloads timed to intersect with lulls in the carnage.

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When Bungie invited us to “finish the fight” back in the winter of 2007, only a madman would have believed that we had seen the last of the Covenant. You simply don’t take the biggest triple A single-format series of the decade outback and shoot the cash-cow in the head. Tasking itself with creating a follow-up to “the biggest entertainment launch of all time” Bungie have sidestepped a full-blown sequel along with the weighty expectations and budgetary requirements that come with it, instead focusing on a leaner, more focused view of Halo’s grand narrative.

As the title implies, this is an expansion of Halo 3, and as such the focus will be on the new. There can be very few Xbox 360 owners who aren’t intimately familiar with Master Chief’s antics, but the titular ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or Helljumpers to give them their punchier nick-name) have been given little screen time in the Halo series so far. What do they bring to the table?

The Rookie inspects his fellow ODST's handy-work.

Much has been made of their inferior abilities when stacked up against the Chief, but in reality they barely alter the battle-tested Halo formula one bit. Yes, they may not be able to jump as far or move as fast, but the game’s design accommodates this. Yes, the recharging shields that Halo turned into a near industry standard have gone, but the stamina gauge works so similarly that players will rarely stress over having to grab one of the many medikits dotted around the environment.

Perhaps the ODST’s greatest addition is the VISR (Visual Intelligence System Reconnaissance) HUD that not only changes the way the game is played, but really defines ODSTs distinct visual presentation. Essentially night vision goggles of the future, one touch of the X button draws beautifully stylised colour-coded outlines around everything onscreen, allowing enemies to be targeted effectively in the dark, drawing attention to important story-driving items, and most strikingly, adding an amazing depth of field to the game’s beautifully war-torn environments. While clearly not as progressive or well executed as Metroid Prime’s array of gameplay driven visors, it gives ODST a stunningly abstract visual quality that clearly separates it from its prequels. The VISR is introduced subtly, with early uses limited to exploring the game’s night time central hub, with each flashback pulling you further and further into the night where its application becomes essential.

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