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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Halo: Reach factoids have been popping up all over the place like decloaking Elites, thanks chiefly to the chaps at Edge and Game Informer but also, somewhat less officially, to EB Games, who let slip a few gameplay screenshots on Wednesday morning. You know what this means, readers? It means Whining Season has officially commenced.

We’ve had a good old gander at the material, and we’re ready to throw down a gauntlet or two. Brace yourselves for some serious subheadings.

What’s hot…

Six Spartans is a bit ridiculous now, isn't it. The Covenant really should have called in sick.

The return of the Elites

We got on well with the Brutes in Halo 3. Which is to say, we enjoyed blowing their shields away with our battle rifles and grenade-tagging the suckers to screaming submission. But for all their secondhand camo cloaks and jet packs the Brutes never quite lost the status of thuggish Covenant middle-management – glorified bully boys, giddy with excitement at their newfound prominence within the caste structure. For a game as solemn, as elegaic as Reach, we need an enemy we can respect. And with the Elites, it’s all about respect.

Crysis-style power-ups

Bungie is good with gizmos: slightly ludicrous though they appeared in concept and execution, the Bubble Shield and Grav Lift proved to be fantastic, highly tactical additions to Halo 3’s campaign and multiplayer. Reach tips its hat to Crysis in the form of recharging, one-at-a-time “armor abilities”, transforming your Spartan into a speed freak or a tank at the touch of a button. We like it. We also like what it implies for the game’s environments, which will probably need to be both larger and more abundant in secondary routes and landmarks to accommodate the greater range of run-gun possibilities.

Reach can handle up to 40 on-screen light sources, in contrast to Halo 3's two or three.

Bigger but not too big

Numbers are a much-abused weapon in the fanboy arsenal. Right now, for instance, there’s a lot of ballyhoo among the PS3 faithful about how the 256-player MAG is da biggermost online FPS everer, and so forth. While Halo has always gone heavy on modes and auxillary content, Bungie has never been in the business of feature overkill, and nothing’s changed with Reach. Online matches are still limited to 16 players – cosy affairs in which a man can be reasonably sure of walking two feet from a spawn point without taking a bullet through each of his major organs.

Which is not to say the game won’t offer more: Reach can handle double the AIs per area that Halo 3 can, we’re told. But the onus, as in past Spartan sequels, seems to be on providing more stuff to do within existing parameters, rather than piling on the bullet points.

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Battlefield Bad Company 2 saw a burst of somewhat unexpected sunny publicity last year thanks to Infinity Ward’s decision to scrap dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 on PC. DICE’s Gordon Van Dyke was quick to reassure official forum posters that his game would tick all the boxes on server support, to considerable applause.

Bad Company 2 online has more going for it than a sound network backbone, of course. According to producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson (whom we accosted at a recent preview shindig), the franchise’s approach to team play “has always been deeper” than that of most rivals – and remains deeper today.

Asked if there was anything he felt other multiplayer shooters were doing wrong, Troedsson replied: “Well I wouldn’t say ‘wrong’ – I don’t want to judge people, other games like that. But for us – multiplayer, online play, we’ve been doing that since Battlefield 1942, and to us it’s open environments, it’s sandbox, it’s team play.

“Because team play – what we’ve done in Battlefield for a long time is team play,” he went on. “You play as squads, you play teams, it’s very important. A lot of the other shooters are still actually in team deathmatch mode – they have tons of different game modes, but they all one way or another are just people playing to get the maximum score.

“This game is deeper, and Battlefield has always been deeper, and that’s due a lot to the gameplay. Like for instance you can heal each other, you can give each other ammo, you can revive each other – we’ve got the shock paddles in now.”

We find this claim a little dubious, to be honest. Among other current generation highlights, Killzone 2, Left 4 Dead and Gears of War have all done compelling things with player revival, healing and ammo sharing. 1942 may have been a trend-setter, but Battlefield faces stiffer competition nowadays. What do you think?

The game’s out on 2nd March in North America and 5th March in Europe.

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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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The Quickfire Q&A is our schizophrenic antidote to over-worded, boringly constructed articles, giving you all the key info plus a joke or three in snappy question-answer format. Next up, Rebellion’s Alien vs. Predator for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Give us the feature breakdown on Alien vs. Predator.

You’ve got three single player campaigns for three different organisms: spindly, slavering Xenomorph, high-tech head-hunter Predator, and small, squishy, terrified, soon-to-be-limbless Homo Sapiens. On top of that, there’s online multiplayer for up to 18 players.

Three multiplayer modes have been announced. Deathmatch needs no explanation. Predator Hunt casts one player as the Predator while the rest don the soft, pink bodysuits of human Marines. Kill the Predator and you become him. Infestation pits just one Alien against Earth’s finest, but any human players killed respawn as Aliens.

What were you playing, where were you playing it and for how long?

A no-frills, 5-10 minute round of deathmatch on a PS3 build of the game at the Eurogamer Expo in central London.

No, it doesn't look quite this good.

First impressions?

It’s no feast for the eyes at this point. Textures are low-res, the geometry is blocky, the lighting lacks tone and depth and the framerate bounces in and out of the teens, especially when you’re using the Predator’s visors. Character models are quite large and detailed, though, and everything gets pleasantly graphic when you melee or stealth-kill somebody’s ass. Providing you’re playing a Predator or an Alien, that is. Marines? Not so hot in a brawl.

Which side were you on?

I was a Predator.

And did you stomp Marine scalp and kick Alien buttock?

The first part certainly. Predators can “focus-jump” to choice lurking/sniping spots as indicated by a little red reticule, then pick off dawdling ape descendants beneath with their shoulder cannons – these take a few seconds to lock on and must be recharged at energy depots between uses, but splat everything and anything in one hit. Or you might shrug into your invisibility cloak, sneak into the middle of a platoon and gut somebody with your wrist blades while his mates aren’t looking. Decisions, decisions.

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Sometimes you just can’t be arsed reading through a “proper” preview. If we’re honest, sometimes we can’t be arsed writing the bloody things. The solution in both cases? Cram any and all distracted notebook scribblings into an easy-to-produce, easy-to-read question-and-answer piece. Allow me to introduce FPS Gamer’s wilfully oddball Quickfire Q&A feature.

First up for the Quickfire treatment is Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. Not long ago we spent an enjoyable hour with the single and multiplayer modes. Hit the jump for details of scopes, sex aids and Special Ops.

OMG, it’s Modern Warfare 2!

Get ahold of yourself, man.

But it’s MODERN WARFARE 2!

Calm down, you muppet. It’s only the sequel to one of the most popular and influential first-person shooters ever created. It’s only got new co-op functionality, new guns, upgradeable perks, customizable killstreak rewards and a sex doll in a bathtub. What’s the big fuss?

You’re just jaded because they boosted the price by a measly tenner – wait, did you say “sex doll in a bathtub”?

That’s right. Blonde and about 5”10, if memory serves. I didn’t get a look at the label.

Where and why is there a sex doll in Modern Warfare 2?

I’m guessing it’s one of them “joke” things. She was tucked away in the second floor bathroom of a forest lodge in one of the Special Ops maps, along with an awful lot of automatic weapons and explosives. Special Ops is the standalone co-op mode, you know. You can play it online or in offline split-screen with one other player.

Is the sex doll classed as “equipment”? Can you dump her out in the open to outrage/distract devout Muslim troops and heathen Russian mercenaries? What about bedding her to regain health?

What a wonderful imagination you have. Nope, I don’t think she’s good for much besides comedy value.

Well done for blowing 200-odd words on her, then.

Interesting choice of verb. But yes, let’s move on. I mention the doll because you’ll find lots of these jolly little touches in Modern Warfare 2. At the beginning of the Favela level, for instance, there’s this fiesta dancer figurine on the taxi dashboard. Gives the game real personality.

Fascinating. Any other hyper-relevant tit-bits, or can I go back to sleep now?

You want hyper-relevancy? Fine. Also in the Favela level, you’ll notice that NPC sniper scopes give off a winking reflection effect to make them easier to spot.

You mean they’ve actually gone and nurfed the sniper rifle?

No, don’t worry – this effect is exclusive to single player. Online sharpshooters will be just as murderously inconspicuous as ever.

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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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You think a white boy invented those moves?

Timegate Studio’s sci-fi FPS Section 8 is out today for PC and Xbox 360, care of up-and-coming Brit publisher Southpeak Games. If you’re new to the game, think of it as the beefier younger brother of Dynamix’s lamentably defunct Tribes series: clad in enormous, upgradeable robotic supersuits, players catapult onto the battlefield from orbiting starships, steering themselves toward their landing zones whilst dodging shots from those on the ground.

Tanks, mechs, bazookas, sniper rifles and all our favourite old mechanics and vehicles get a showing, and there’s a hearty helping of real-time tactics in the form of portable supply depots, turrets and sensor arrays. It doesn’t look too shabby either, though the art design is sunk to its cybernetic kneecaps in generic space marine land.

We’re a little worried about how the orbital deployment trick will factor into multiplayer. If it’s too easy to shoot new players out of the sky, whichever team gets a foothold first will cream the other side. Conversely, we could be looking at the greatest and most frenetic reinvention of the spawn point since developers started rotating those suckers.

But why linger in the interplanetary void of uncertainty? There’s a demo on Xbox Live. Go headbutt some clouds.

Section 8 Launch Trailer

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