By WorkEthic

SSX

What is it? A series reboot of the popular snowboarding title for next-gen consoles. After far too long an absence, SSX re-appears with online functionality and acres of treacherous mountain areas to explore.

What’s in the demo? Containing classic SSX character Zoe Payne, the demo features Trick It and Race It events in the Rockies and New Zealand. You can upload your best times and battle against ghosts in Explore mode, and even unlock another old school SSX character by sending the demo to a friend.

How is it shaping up? Very well actually. Both Trick It and Race It are incredibly enjoyable, with friend’s scores and times providing all the motivation needed to continue playing. Tricks are pulled off by pressing combinations of the face buttons, which are mapped to different parts of the board. The trigger buttons add modifiers, while the sticks take care of flips and twists. It’s a pretty straightforward scheme, but when you factor in the TRICKY bar – which fills up as you perform combos – you have access to tens of awesome looking trick combinations.

In terms of the game modes, Trick It is pretty self explanatory, challenging players to trick their way to the highest score – and after a few miserable early runs, you’ll be surprised by how high the scores can get. Like Burnout on snow, Race It sees players go head to head with rival boarders, attempting to gradually work their way up to a gold medal.

With tricks equalling boost, striking the balance between pulling shapes and finding the most direct course proves highly challenging. Stay airborne for too long and you’ll see rivals pass you by, ignore your trick bar and you’ll stutter down the course like a first time boarder who’s lost their teacher. Each course is littered with alternate routes and short-cuts, adding a trial and error factor to races.

The fact that the demo represents only a small portion of the final release leaves us feeling rather excited. The two courses in the demo are incredibly addictive, especially when friend’s scores are there to beat. We’re yet to sample any survival courses, which see boarders attempt to outpace avalanches,  ride in dark caves and even learn to fly. SSX is definitely shaping up to be one of the better games of the year.

When can I buy it? SSX will be available to purchase on March 2.

Prepare for swords, sorcery, and fantasy jargon.

You’re on your way to completing quest objective number four thousand eight hundred and fifty seven.  It involves talking to someone, fetching an item, or killing something; you don’t know and, to be honest, you couldn’t care less.

Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning has a number of things going for it, but it’s safe to say that your involvement in the tale it spins out isn’t one of them.  I really want to get back in there and slaughter some more of those cheeky spell-casters, though.

Let’s do the professional thing and talk about the story for just a moment.  It’s bad; laughably so.

This sounds like a harsh judgement to pronounce for a game that’ll absorb the hours and make you feel good inside, however the core of Kingdoms’s strengths resolutely sit at the head of the gameplay table, refusing to cast even a cursory eye at the backdrop lore of this prettily made little world.

So, I’ll keep this brief and to-the-point.

The Fae races have maintained a balance between the Summer Court and the Winter Court, but a brutal usurper known as Gadflow has murdered the king of the latter, and now marches with an army of corrupted immortal Fae to enslave or annihilate the lesser races.  The essence of the problem is that the Fae are incapable of dying permanently, whereas everyone else has to make do with what lives they have.  That is, until an entrepreneurial alchemist/scientist comes up with a haphazard device that’s made to channel the souls of the dead into new living vessels.

Your character is the only successful result.

Being the only wandering hero or heroine who’s technically supposed to be dead brings unexpected benefits to the gameplay of Kingdoms.

Not being tied to “the great tapestry of Fate”, as one character glibly puts it, means that your character is no longer bound to a single role.  You can choose anything, learn any skills, and become whatever is best suited to your endeavours.

From the outset you are given just about everything in its most basic form, plus a few additional talents depending on the race you selected to play as.

Levelling-up in Kingdoms is a pleasing goal to strive for as you plod your way through quests, of which there’s a vast multitude of secondary and faction-related to choose from, and the progress your character makes in the respective schools of magic, swordsmanship, and stealth – while somewhat unimaginative – is much more versatile than in other swords and sorcery themed titles.

Again, this is technically thanks to the plot point that your hero is without a ‘fate’.  Skill points are spent on the abilities of your choice and, once various conditions are met, you are free to set the class you play as from the start menu.

Yet more flexibility comes with the option to spend some in-game gold to have a Fate Weaver reset your skill points, so you’re not in any way tied to a multiple number of specific character save files.

There’s an element of genius to this system, as it leaves you more or less unrestricted in terms of how you want to play, but later on you’ll appreciate how the mechanic acts as a double-edged sword.  It renders any replay value virtually obsolete.

It’s Fable with more emphasis on combat skills and if Kingdoms didn’t have good combat gameplay it would have been well and truly stuffed.

As it is, the plucky game offers up a combat system that most definitely leaves what most of us would consider superior titles, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fable III, looking more unrefined and ugly than a sack full of pig iron.

It’s almost the formula HALO developer Bungie placed as the supporting pillar of their FPS franchise; five seconds of fun that are reiterated with small variances.  While there are certainly points at which the combat in Kingdoms is repetitive, it rarely ceases to engage anything other than your full attention.

It is pure grace of execution packed into a shell of simplicity.  There’s a lot of fun to be had in running around the open areas of the world engaging whatever targets cross your path.  The fact that you can equip any two weapons you like at a time – with one being keyed into X and another into Y – gives you diversity without complication.  Dodging, blocking, pressing the attack, spell casting, and parrying; it’s all mapped to the confines of a controller with remarkable precision.

It won’t be any great surprise to you that, earlier on in the development stages, Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning was intended to be a MMORPG to rival the likes of World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

The in-game areas, connected as they are by singular pathways, are testament to this – and the same goes for the less-than-impressive character models and textures.

You will struggle to appreciate any semblance of emotion in a character’s dialogue because their facial movements are more reminiscent of someone quietly reading the Sunday newspaper to themselves in the local pub.  The sad thing about this is that the dialogue isn’t even that bad, despite the generic fantasy plot.

On the other hand the musical score, composed by Grant Kirkhope, is excellent stuff and fits well with the fairytale settings your hero runs about in.  The landscapes climb around you in the interconnecting pathways, open up before you to reveal places of seemingly quiescent beauty, and the world itself has the feel of being a gigantic playground that other major titles didn’t quite manage to capture.

Before the game starts, you’re given a friendly hint to install it to your Xbox360 hard drive.  There are a few reasons for this which will quickly become apparent.

There are five big areas, each containing several smaller areas, and these chunks are loaded as you run from one to the other without the game quickly pausing to do so.  The same cannot be said for in-game cutscenes.  Sound effects and visual cues are mutually exclusive, with a couple of seconds’ catch-up time required in order for cohesion to be met.

Sometimes enemies, environment, and characters pop into existence without warning.  Momentary lapses of textures are also an occasional thorn in the side of fluidity.

It’s just as well that the art style of Todd McFarlane is captivating enough for most players to forgive these minor glitches, though some of us who are more experienced in the ways of the fantasy role-playing game (and fantasy in general) will quickly tire of the Fae’s nature-entwined-with-architecture environments.

Is it wrong that you might hear these high and mighty immortals with spiky hair lament their impending doom and think, “Good.”?

There are some things that have just been done far too often in the realm of fantasy to be considered anything other than tediously generic, and Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning will have ticked most of those off its list by the time you reach the end of the game.

BioWare got away with it in the Dragon Age games because they had a very strong team of writers backing up their fantasy world with artery-slicing wit and humour.  For all the talent it brought to bear in its development processes, Kingdoms has neither the strength of script nor the novelty of design to break down your misgivings about predictable fantasy, and it’s extremely difficult for it to pass between those two points unscathed.

You’ll still enjoy Kingdoms for what it is, which is essentially a combat-heavy scavenger hunt through increasingly-difficult levels.  While not exactly hard or challenging, it provides even the most RPG-infused brains with enough dopamine to keep going until the next big fix, which will inevitably throw Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning into the shadows of bargain price obscurity.

Successes:

-         Intuitive combat system

-         Easy-to-adapt character evolution

-         Compulsive levelling

-         Well presented environments

-         Optional quests galore

Failures:

-         Story barely registers

-         Character models aren’t impressive

-         Cutscene glitches

-         Little to no replay value

-         We’ve seen all this stuff before

- Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich

———-

Developer:  38 Studios, Big Huge Games

Publisher:  Electronic Arts

Players:  1

Release Date:  9^th February 2012

Online Pass:  Yes

With great power comes great responsibility…

 

Meet Rhino, the first classic Marvel Super Villain to be unveiled exclusively for the upcoming video game from Beenox; The Amazing Spider-Man.  This new, re-imagined version of Rhino was created specifically for The Amazing Spider-Man video game and will not be seen in the theatrical film.

 

The game picks up where the film ends. Parker is thrown into a new exciting storyline fighting a variety of baddies to try and save New York from devastation. This trailer shows Spider-Man putting his new web slinging skills to use moving seamlessly from buildings, New York landmarks such as the Brookyln Bridge before coming face to face with Rhino himself.

Want more information on Rhino?  Have a read of the developer Q&A:

RHINO

The Amazing Spider-Man Video Game Bio

At first glance, Rhino seems like nothing more than an angry, mindless cross of rhinoceros and human DNA, bent on mowing over anything or anyone stupid enough to stand in his way. His mere appearance is known to scare many into believing that Rhino and all cross-species are abominations that must be destroyed. Yet, the few who have looked into his eyes (and survived) have reported their surprise in sensing a degree of humanity there. Almost a sadness.

Unlike all of the other cross-species, which were created after Curt Connors terrorized the city as the Lizard, Rhino was the result of a pet project belonging to a corrupt Oscorp executive with access to Connors’ research. Abusing this access, he applied this top-secret knowledge to black-market dealings.

Without the knowledge or consent of his superiors at Oscorp, the executive forcefully enlisted the help of Dr. Michael Morbius, threatening to end the reclusive biochemist’s career if he refused to help. Morbius reluctantly complied, applying the rhinoceros DNA with which the executive supplied him to a cross-species serum similar in nature to Connors’ own for the Lizard.

The next step was to test the serum, and the executive’s underworld clients were all too happy to provide his oblivious human test subject: a low-level thug named Aleksei Sytsevich. If it worked, the mafia would have a new weapon on its hands; if not…no great loss.

After an excruciatingly painful transformation, Sytsevich was now a hybrid of man and rhinoceros, ready to tear apart anything in his path – the executive’s clients would be pleased. That is, if they are ever to receive their investment…

Background – Developer Q&A with Stephane Gravel, Producer, Beenox and Chris Baker, Interactive Manager, Marvel

How is Rhino different in the video game than the comic books?

Stephane: We really wanted to maintain the spirit of the film in all of the characters we worked on with Marvel for the video game.   We also wanted to make sure to incorporate the core traits of his comic book character as well, which resulted in Rhino’s intriguing and complex origin.  This has also allowed us to create the most animalistic and ferocious version of Rhino ever!

Chris: I think the team has done a great job of creating a “movie Rhino” without completely alienating his comic book roots. While he may not be a guy in a big rhinoceros suit like he is in the comics, we do still retain elements such as the character Aleksei Sytsevich and his ties to the Russian mafia. He’s also not entirely bright.

Why did you decide to go with a different version of the character?

Stephane: In the spirit of the film, the game is taking a new look at Spidey’s origins, including his nemeses.  Building upon our main storyline, his creation is based on a genetic experiment, which also ties to the overall story arc of the game.

Chris: It’s very important to root things in the film universe, where the rules are a little bit different, but extra care has been taken to honor the comic book source material as well. I’m not sure how in depth I can get without giving away things about the movie itself, but rest assured that in addition to including the science behind how the Lizard came to be, you pretty much have to involve Oscorp in the mix – and heavily!

What more can you tell us about Rhino?

Stephane: He is a hybrid; part rhinoceros, part human. He used to be a human being, but he can’t be considered human anymore. He is driven by animalistic impulses and feelings of fear and sadness – in his current state, he’s extremely unpredictable.

Chris: It’s also notable that Rhino is the only cross-species experiment outside of the Lizard himself who was first a human being. Our fiction in the game states that even though Oscorp has continued Connors’ cross-species research, the company isn’t so corrupt as to continue experimenting on human beings – so any other cross-species enemies Spidey might come across were an animal first, crossed with human DNA. In fact, only those directly involved in the experiment on Sytsevich know that Rhino was human first – for the sake of his own reputation, Michael Morbius, who was forced to create Rhino against his will, has told everyone at Oscorp that the beast was a rhinoceros crossed with human DNA.

What are Rhino’s motivations?

Stephane: Rhino isn’t on a mission here. He wasn’t hired or out for Spider-Man’s blood.  He’s escaped from Oscorp and is only looking to survive.  He has been rampaging the streets of New York ever since.

Chris: And I would add that Rhino’s rampaging is also rooted deeply in sheer frustration. You have to realize, his brain was turned to such mush through the experiment that anything resembling intelligent thought simply escapes him – but at the same time, he possesses some semblance of the concept of intelligent thought because he did indeed live it as Sytsevich. He knows it’s a cool thing to have.

This is the best analogy I can make for Rhino’s current thought process, and why it leads to such frustration: You know those times in everyday life when you open your closet door to get some random trinket, but you forget what you wanted out of there in the first place? It’s pretty frustrating until you remember what you’re after a second or two later. Now, imagine that feeling, but it never ends. That’s what Rhino’s experiencing. And the “random trinket” he’s looking for is his identity and what it’s like to think like a human being. Wouldn’t that make you want to go on a rampage?

What is new and exciting about this Rhino?

Stephane: Rhino is one of the most recognizable villains of Spidey’s infamous rogues gallery.  We’ve taken a fresh approach to Rhino, inspired by the tone of the movie.  His origin is more grounded, more realistic.  He’s a grittier, more animalistic and more visceral version of Rhino, his thoughts complicated by a vague sense of who he used to be and overwhelming feelings of fear and sorrow.

Chris: I’m definitely excited about how this new approach manages to honor both the new movie’s universe and the character’s comic book roots. But honestly, the most exciting thing is his appearance, and Beenox has simply created the most fearsome-looking interpretation of Rhino I’ve ever seen. When it comes to character design, these guys really excel.

Comic Book Stats

• Universe: Marvel Universe
• Real name: Aleksei Mikhailovich Sytsevich
• Identity: known to legal authorities by fake U.S. identity
• Citizenship: Russia
• Place of birth: unrevealed
• First appearance: Amazing Spider-Man #41 (1966)
• Occupation: professional criminal

Warp Review

By David ‘Transient Nova’ Timms

Chestbursters were so thirty years ago.

Pity the poor alien in modern videogames. With the odd little exception that arises now and again, they are always portrayed as evil, generally unpleasant invaders with a thirst for blood and possibly a desire to probe people in places where they shouldn’t really be probed. They mainly serve one purpose: to act as the recipient of whatever lead-based object players happen to send their way as a means to provide a quick, visceral thrill. No wonder our would-be space neighbors don’t seem particularly keen to make first contact with us just yet.

Warp, the fledgling effort from upstart developer Trapdoor, opts to switch things up in that it puts you in the position of a small, squat little alien called Zero. He’s a cute little guy who, for some reason or another, gets captured by a group of human science and military types who see fit to do demeaning experiments on him. Taken to an underwater facility which has more than a few passing resemblances to Aperture Science, he has to use his considerable wit and resourcefulness to find a way out and reach freedom. Or your considerable wit and resourcefulness as the case may be.

As you’ve probably gathered from that intro, Warp is a puzzle game at its heart with plenty of stealth game elements to go alongside that. True to its title, the game’s main gimmick is your little alien friend’s ability to teleport himself over short distances. He can move over small gaps, pass through walls into adjacent rooms, jump inside barrels and other bric-a-brac to hide from his captors or, failing the stealthy approach, possess said captors and make them explode. From the inside. It’s an entertaining way to give facility’s janitors a few headaches.

You’ll gain some additional powers to keep things varied throughout the course of the game, such as the ability to project a copy of yourself to distract enemies and another that lets you launch possessed objects over short distances. Like Portal before it, Warp does give the impression that it takes its relatively simple ideas as far as they will allow, with some particularly satisfying brain-teasers and generally clever teleportation based hijinks. You can upgrade most of these abilities with (presumably) delicious grubs dotted about the game, but they honestly just don’t feel necessary in the context of the game, or even needed for that matter. On a similar collectable-related note, you can also seek out and destroy film reels in the game for unlockable concept art if you want to.

The game certainly looks the part, with some nice animation work and an environment that exudes a suitably oppressive, dingy atmosphere. The sound work on the other hand is much less inspired with a non-nondescript soundtrack and somewhat flat ambiance sitting alongside some amateurish voice acting (although some of offhand soundbites and remarks uttered by the scientists can raise a chuckle).

While initial impressions were promising, I did find myself getting annoyed by increasingly more noticeable faults as the game went on. There are some design issues in there, ranging from the irritating minor such as the odd unfair checkpoint, to the infuriating major such as moments where the game can unjustly ‘trap’ you with no means of escape and your only recourse is a reboot of an earlier save. More notably, Warp’s inconsistent controls and imprecise movement leads to many frustrating deaths, especially as your alien cypher can’t take any form of punishment. Winding your way through those laser mazes in the latter part of the game does not amount to a good time.

Despite these unfortunate oversights, the puzzle solving remains strong enough to push players to see the game to the end, with the game managing to exude enough charm throughout most of it’s running time with a good sense of pacing to back it all up, save for some awkwardly jarring boss fights and set pieces. Be aware that it won’t take you particularly long to get to that end through; not following any distractions, it took me just under five hours to finish Warp, but those of you who decide to chase after the game’s collectibles can probably add another hour or two to that.

To add a little more salt to the wound, there isn’t really much incentive to come back to the game once you’ve finished it either. There are a handful of challenge maps you can unlock over the course of the game that you can tackle in the pursuit of a fast time and a prominent place on their respective leaderboards, but they’re not particularly interesting as they don’t feel as if they have a place next the more ponderous and careful puzzling required in the main game, with that aforementioned control system not being particularly well suited to speedy navigation and more action oriented fare. The fact there isn’t a lot of them doesn’t help either.

Yet despite the many rough edges it has, Warp somehow remains an engaging and largely enjoyable endeavor for the entirety of it’s duration. You obviously get a sense that this was the developer’s first effort, but even so this is still a well intentioned puzzler with a bit a character to call its own and at price that’s arguably just right for what it is. Just be prepared to forgive a number of prominent hiccups in there.

—

Developer: Trapdoor

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Players: 1

Release: 15^th February, 2012

Initial Price: 800 Microsoft points

Meet Richard “”Mack”" Machowicz, a former Navy SEAL Sniper/Scout and let him teach you why you should start believing in ghosts.

In this new video series, Mack will be coming back on real life military operations and the way they inspired the development of Ghost Recon : Future Soldier.

By WorkEthic

Mass Effect 3

What is it? The third and final Mass Effect game to feature Commander Shepard…but we’re guessing you already knew that.

What’s in the demo? BioWare has been rather generous with the Mass Effect 3 demo, offering both single-player and multiplayer sections for players to sample. The single-player portion opens with the Reaper invasion of Earth, culminating in a battle for survival as Shepard waits for the Normandy to whisk his (or her) team to safety. This is followed by a more action-packed level later on in the game, which sees Shepard and a few familiar faces attempt a rescue mission in the home of the Salarians. It’s all going swimmingly until Cerberus shows up.

We’re subsequently treated to two stages from the Galaxy At War multiplayer mode. The four-player co-op mode is essentially Horde from Gears Of War, but with Mass Effect gameplay and some additional objectives thrown in.

How is it shaping up? The single-player segment is as you would expect. The opening is very dramatic, with Shepard caught in the middle of a Reaper invasion of Earth. After a short section introducing you to the controls, which remain largely untouched, it’s time to take the battle to the baddies with a combination of gunplay and melee combat. It feels very similar to the last game, although the melee moves have been tweaked a little, feeling slightly smoother and appearing to do a little more damage.

We’re then ushered to the midway point of the game, with players given a set number of points to spend on levelling up abilities. With the Mass Effect experience largely based on a strong narrative, the lack of continuity in the demo makes it difficult to judge this aspect of the game, but it looks like it’ll follow a similar pattern to previous instalments, tasking players with individual character loyalty missions. It was great to see some of the old team back together, and we literally can’t wait to see how the final part of the trilogy pans out.

As for the multiplayer element, ever since it was announced, it’s seemed a little out of place in a Mass Effect game. While I’m yet to be convinced otherwise, I can at least confirm that Galaxy At War offers a somewhat enjoyable take on the survival modes found in rival shooters. One of the things that I really like about Galaxy At War is that you can experiment with different character types and classes, something that you don’t really have a chance to do in the lengthy single-player campaign (unless you play through multiple times).

It’s also one of the more rewarding online shooters we’ve played, making you work hard for every single upgrade and weapon enhancement. Credits are earned by surviving as many waves as possible, and are used to buy new weapons and items – extremely important if you’re to stand any chance of survival. Playing with an inexperienced team makes things very difficult, especially when the mechs join the party. Learning to stick together and watch out for fallen team-mates is imperative, as is quad-teaming tricky enemy types. Although not blown away by the slightly drab levels, we did feel the urge to play through numerous times, which makes me think that it’ll be an enjoyable extra in what should be an excellent game.

When can I buy it? Mass Effect 3 is available to buy on March 9.

Binary Domain

What is it? Binary Domain is a brand new squad-based shooter from Sega set in a future version of Tokyo.

What’s in the demo? The Binary Domain demo contains two stages from the game’s single-player campaign.

How is it shaping up? Although slightly buggy, the demo reveals a game with a lot of promise. The first stage is a straightforward run and gun level on the streets of Tokyo, which culminates with a boss battle against a giant robot. It features a cover system similar to Gears Of War, as well as intense combat situations and satisfying gunplay – we especially like the way shrapnel flies off the robotic enemies.

The squad-based shooter also contains an interesting team-mate trust feature. Ogle the body of your female squad member, for example, and she’ll be less likely to follow orders. Likewise, accidentally shoot one of them or act recklessly in battle, and cover fire won’t be forthcoming. Boss battles also piqued our interest, proving more than just regular gunfights. Some enemies are impossible to take out with standard issue weaponry, forcing players to look for novel ways to use the environment.

We doubt we’ll be seeing much of Binary Domain come award season, but it looks like it might be a fun game for the weekend.

When can I buy it? Binary Domain will be available to purchase on February 24.

The sun has just set and lots of people are about to die.

“In the beginning there wasn’t shit,” stammers our opening narrator, “Literally nothing but void and darkness – and that’s how the Darkness liked it!”

Given the ecstatic brutality with which Jackie Estacado’s inner demon rips apart their mutual enemies, it’s a little difficult to believe this unworldly entity’s favourite pastime was watching God’s loading screen.

Fans of the source material for this gore-caked, film noire themed sequel to one of the Xbox360’s earlier hit-and-miss FPS games were full of glee and doubt about Digital Extreme’s announcement of a sequel.  While The Darkness had a lot going for it in the gameplay and visual departments, it simultaneously failed to make that big action impact an FPS needs to assert its authority over the player and implement an intuitive control method.

The Darkness II is just about recognisable from the HUD, but everything else – much like one of the many NPCs you’ll run across – has been ripped apart, dissected, and reshaped.  The results are…spectacular.

Jackie Estacado has reached the top of the Francetti Mob, having disposed of his paranoid uncle after his long-time girlfriend Jenny was murdered by his henchmen.  It’s been two years and he’s managed to keep the Darkness locked inside himself, but after an attempt is made on Jackie’s life he’s forced to let it out.  Now that it’s loose the Darkness will stop at nothing to turn him into its slave, unless he can stop it first.

An encouraging opening sequence, plus a more in-depth and entirely optional introduction to the story, sets the tone and pace for the rest of the game.  Nobody likes to be able to do the kind of damage Estacado can do and not have any targets, so the enemies come at you in waves both thick and thin.

Once the initial hand-holding stage is over you’re left with a set of efficient killing tools, all of which can be upgraded into godlike weapons of mass destruction as you rack up stylish kills, take out power-sapping lights, and devour the hearts of your enemies.

Part of the beauty of the Darkness II’s difficulty curve is that when things begin you can pretty much choose whatever fate you like for your victims without consequence.  Once things get tougher, with foes clued-in to Jackie’s propensity for turning human beings into hamburger, your options are restricted to using what works and sidelining what doesn’t.

One of the weaknesses from the previous Darkness game was the length of time some gameplay animations took.  The Darkness II has reached a compromise; your demon-snake thingies won’t take more than a second to snatch a victim’s heart from their corpse, but you now have access to some tactical ‘execution’ powers.  Your eyeballs will be ensnared by the gut-dripping gloriousness of this special NPC treatment, with the added benefit of replenishing health, ammo, or gaining a tactical edge, depending on the execution.

The structure for this little jaunt down a dark alley is based on sequential missions.  Finish one, move to the next.

In the first two thirds of the game, you’ll have Jackie’s embellished town mansion as a ‘hub’ point.  Chat to the local help, consult resident occult scholar and manic depressive Johnny Powell on some of the weird relics you’ve collected, and learn how to shoot things with the pleasantly psychotic Adolfo.

The Darkness attempted to capture the feel of the comic books with realistic gritty tones and we can thankfully say goodbye to that with this sequel.

Digital Extremes have chosen a cell-shaded approach to their subject matter and this is far more in touch with the source material.  Anyone who’s read the comic book series will agree, while those who haven’t will struggle to find anything wrong visually.  Every face has been carefully etched with lines and shadow, evoking the comic art style without compromising the in-game animation, though you might think you see some of the same faces just a little too often…

The environments you get to visit are similarly splashed with colour against horrid dark brickwork and plaster, and this plays as crucial a role in the gameplay as it did with its predecessor.  Jackie’s powers only work when it’s dark.  To step into the light won’t kill you, but it’ll impair your vision, distort sound, and generally make life difficult as your health won’t regenerate and whatever guns you’ve got to hand are your only weapons.

Estacado’s world is a dark place in general, but the missions you have to play through are a stronger line-up of dark places rather than the same dingy city areas that littered most of the first game.  To say too much would be to spoil, but one location which sticks out in mind is the brothel, which succeeds in displaying some truly shocking character behaviour the likes of which cell shading has never depicted before.

As far as Darkness powers go, it’s a simple endeavour to manipulate your inner demonic presence.  Objects that can be picked up are highlighted in purple and this includes quite a lot of random stuff, from car doors to poles, pool cues, ventilation grills, chairs, and – unsurprisingly – corpses.  Problems have a tendency to arise when you want to pick up a handy object with the darkness, but instead you snatch up a replacement gun you really don’t want or need.

This only demonstrates the difficulty of incorporating two separate weapon systems into one cohesive unit.  While the control scheme is much more fluid and oriented to getting the best results from the environment, there are points at which the lines cross and the gameplay becomes blurry on what you want it to do.

Many of the story segments are played out during missions through a first-person perspective, though before a mission you have a third-person narrative from the man himself, Jackie Estacado.  Sat in or stood by a posh leather armchair wreathed in smoke, fondling his guns and remarking on the aspects of his psyche or life that led him to this point, there are lines that leave a deeper impression on the gamer than others.

There’s a metric ton of stereotypical mafia one-liners spouting from the mouths of every thug and lieutenant in Estacado’s organisation, but they never really grate on your nerves thanks to the supernatural subject matter that forms the basis for most conversations.  You never heard gangsters talk about this stuff in Godfather, The Sopranos, or Goodfellas.  The voice and dialogue of Johnny Powell runs through your ears like Woody Allen on crack, as intoxicating as it is relevant to the story.

Jackie’s attempt to rid himself of the curse that’s plagued him since his twenty-first birthday is at the centre of the drama, knotted with concepts of good and evil, humanity, redemption and damnation.  It might not be on the same compelling levels as the action-packed romp of a typical Call of Duty game, but it makes for a great story that you’d be more than happy to revisit once the credits have finished rolling.

Another refreshing touch is the multiplayer.

Rather than repeating the first Darkness game’s mistake of trying to do competitive game modes, Digital Extremes has taken everything great about the single-player experience – namely dual-wielding action, dismemberment, and power upgrades – and plonked those elements into a two to four player co-op campaign that runs alongside Estacado’s story.

These are the ‘Vendettas’ – a series of missions in which your objective is usually to wipe out whatever’s between you and the goal.

Things are a lot simpler here.  There’s no lengthy story sequences, just mission briefings before things kick off with either Johnny Powell or one of Jackie’s lieutenants telling you and your buddies the how, the what, and the why.

The more interesting factors of the Vendettas co-op campaign come in the form of the characters you get to play as.  You’re not Jackie Estacado, so you don’t have access to the unconstrained reserves of Darkness powers that he does, but each of these four unique members of society is armed with Darkness weapons.  This means that each character has a different play style.

Choose the Samurai blade-wielding Inugami and you can enjoy all the benefits that first-person melee fighting has to offer, while the Israeli agent Shoshanna gets her kicks from blowing opponents’ heads off at a hundred paces.  Voodoo practitioner, J. P. Dumond, brings some interesting party tricks to bear with his magic staff, and last of all we have a bloated axe-throwing drunken Scottish thug by the name of Jimmy.

If the character roster sounds like it’s over the top, that’s because it is.  You’ll love it to bits, though, and the dialogue between these four guns-for-hire can be hilarious.  The Darkness powers under your control, while reminiscent of Jackie Estacado, manage to be different enough to give you a thirst for upgrading all of them.

While it’s encouraging to see a developer hasn’t succumbed to the competitive multiplayer bug that’s the bane of all things innovative, Vendettas are far from being perfect.

For one thing, there’s not enough variety in missions.  You don’t have anything to do except blast foes to pieces with your Darkness-powered equipment of choice, which is no doubt fun – but on a long enough time scale it’s not compulsive enough without adding features like a scoreboard or further character development.

Many of the ‘Hit List’ missions are just fragmented portions of the Vendetta campaign and once you’ve completed the latter your inclination to go over old ground with the former may well fall into decline.

There’s a high probability that there are some additional content packs on their way which may expand upon the experiences you can have with three other players; we hope these have more to them than satiating our bloodlust.

The Darkness II is still to be commended for achieving what the first game did not.  It captures the blackness of the comic books, the macabre humour, and makes the violence in most other games look positively tame by comparison, all while maintaining the art of telling a good story.

Longevity might become an issue, but as long as you’re looking for new experiences in the FPS genre there’s nothing more satisfying than stepping into a possessed man’s shoes and embarking on a bloody tale of revenge, reclamation, and redemption.

Hopefully we won’t have to wait as long for The Darkness III.

Successes:

-         Exudes the feel of the comic book.

-         Improved controls over The Darkness.

-         Visually captivating.

-         Makes the FPS seem fresher.

-         Humour is suitably grim.

Failures:

-         Picking up objects can be tricky.

-         Controls aren’t perfect.

-         Online Co-op needs more missions.

-         Longevity is negligible.

-         A couple of stereotypes too many?

 Alaric discusses why the numbers racket has got to go, and reveals the changes coming to Genuine Gamers.com.

I’ve always hated numbers; that’s the sentiment you tend to build when one of your parents is a mathematics teacher.

They’re a valuable asset, don’t get me wrong.  You can do some very interesting things with numbers, like prove that when you throw a ball up in the air it’ll definitely come down again.  Or demonstrate how super-massive black holes really could exist at the centre of our galactic core.  Numbers will get us into space for good, eventually, and with a little luck they’ll also give us the means to crack the light speed problem and travel to distant worlds.  That would be awesome, wouldn’t it?

No, I’m not saying numbers are a bad thing.  Given the right context numbers are brilliant, but that doesn’t stop me from hating them.

This is especially true when you start applying numbers to the entirely wrong things.  If you ever want to get a serious thinker like myself good and properly pissed-off, just use numbers to describe complex situations.  Politicians and civil service workers are good at doing this, as well as our friends in the Media.  It’s a great way to say something without applying substance.

Examples include page-filling nonsense such as:

“We’ve had a thirteen per-cent drop in crime in the area over the last two years”, and, “The number of sexually-active teenagers has doubled,” and, “Eight out of twelve women think their men should do more housework”.

In contexts such as this, numbers turn into devious little bastards.  They imply that the information you’re being given is accurate, though in reality all they’re doing is summarising a set of poorly-collected data – and not very well.

Numbers are good for one thing and one thing only: quantifying an object or series of objects in the most definite, unambiguous terms, producing a result for which the outcome is theoretically inevitable.

Why, then, are we still using them when we write about next-generation games?  The only number we should see near a game is written on the price tag.

Some games have evolved past the point where the experiences to be found therein for their singular audiences can be expressed numerically.

As writers, our job is to analyse and critique the subjects of which we hold a certain level of passion.  For some time now I’ve just assumed that all roads lead to Rome, in the sense that all critique leads to simplification for our readership.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for games, as long as they are themselves simple.  Most, if not all, of the Indy Games on Xbox Live could do with some number-attaching reviews to kick their arses into the ‘noticed’ category.  Even a few next-generation titles could be summarised with a number if their play style and narrative was simple enough.  Recent examples could potentially include Marvel VS. Capcom 3, Soul Calibur V, and Rayman Origins.

But, for me, many next-gen games have become so much more than an indulgent pastime of random silliness, special effects, and gigantic bosoms.

Just look at games like the Mass Effect series!  When the first one rolled into view, we were a little unsure of what to think.  It had a brilliant storytelling method, but aspects of the gameplay were veering dangerously close to awful.  The result?  Numbers all over the place.  Nines, tens, eights, a few sevens, some rare scores dipped below even this.  But when you read the reviews for it, the general consensus was the same: Mass Effect was a game worth playing for its cinematic qualities and downright magnificent script.

Numbers did not, nor could they ever, reflect this sentiment.  No more than they can reflect the in-depth critique we are now expected to apply to a lot of new releases.

This is mostly because what you may tend to think of as a ‘10’ out of ‘10’ game could just as easily represent someone else’s idea of an ‘8’ out of ‘10’ game.  Under the pressures of individual interpretation, numbers can become flimsy and virtually worthless.  I don’t care how precise a number mechanism might be, whether it’s percentages, decimals, whatever; one number is just as weak a copout as another.

How are we, as game reviewers, going to be able to look our readers in the metaphorical eye and slap anything vaguely number-shaped at the end of our reviews for Mass Effect 3, or indeed any major narrative-imbued sequel, without it causing controversy?

The simple answer is that we can’t and furthermore we should no longer feel compelled to do so.

What this comes down to is our fixation on simplifying complexity.  With games now ascending to the same culturally significant heights as literature and film, the continuing use of numbers as a way to break down and – in some cases – outright destroy difficult opinions has got to go.  It’s a process that demeans all of us as gamers and those of us who write about games.

It’s like a silent admission of guilt that this entire industry is still just a bit of fun, nothing to take too seriously, and that it couldn’t even compare with other pop culture.  For many games this might be true, but for just as many others it simply isn’t true at all.

The Darkness II is a bloody film noir tale about love, regret, the damnable nature of the human being, and the eternal struggle between good and bad within us all.  CATHERINE is a giant puzzling metaphor for sex, relationships, moral obligations, and how we define ourselves when we’re with other people.  Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a fanciful analysis of history and depicts the last notable deeds of a man who’s started to question how his life has impacted those around him.  The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim contains a series of narratives so flexible you have the power to shape your own and become the hero/heroine you want to be.

Tell me, number-lovers, how do your precious numerals enunciate clearly the experiences we’ll have when we play these four very different games?  I expect full articles in response if you feel up to the challenge of explaining how such a redundant system could do just those four titles justice.

If there was ever a time when there was enough evidence for us to demand that video game culture should be acknowledged to be just as relevant as films, theatre, books, and TV series, and has just as much to say that’s worth hearing, then it is now.

We, who pride ourselves as being junkies for proper use of the written word as a means to tie down and promote complex opinions, had better be ready to step up and defend game culture – with more than just numbers.

This is why Genuine Gamers is changing its reviews system.  No longer will you see a number slapped onto the end of a review!  Instead, we intend to leave you with one of four conclusions.

AVOID – Reserved for those gaming experiences you’d probably be better off without.

TRY FIRST – Not every game is bad.  Not every game is good.  Some games you have to try before you buy where possible…

BUY – We will happily let you know when a game is worth picking up, be it now or a month or two from now when the price has dropped.

WRITER’S CHOICE – This is the big one.  A concluding stamp which says that, in our humble opinion, this game is absolutely worth going out and treating yourself to.

Our thanks go out to Steve on this one, who went out of his way to get the new ratings designed and polished for your viewing pleasure.

- Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich

UFC Undisputed 3 – Review

By WorkEthic

Most video game enthusiasts that I’ve met are peaceful souls, enjoying nothing more than the simple pleasures that only a well crafted computer game can provide.  So why is virtual brutality so appealing?  Whether shooting baddies in the latest first-person shooter, unleashing flame-infused specials in the new Street Fighter, or curtailing would be adventurers with an arrow to the knee in role-playing games, video game violence can be a lot of fun.

While we’re not here to examine our love affair with violence in video games, we are keen to bring it up, because we almost feel guilty about the amount of pleasure we gleaned from knocking the stuffing out of all comers in Yuke’s UFC Undisputed 3.

A history lesson

For those with little knowledge of the sport, UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championships, a mixed martial arts promotion which welcomes brawlers from every discipline known to man. Whether a straight up boxer, wrestler or Muay Thai specialist, UFC will welcome you with open arms – your opponent, however, will more likely greet you with a clenched fist and a kick to the head. Battles are won and lost inside the iconic octagon, a mesh cage structure with eight sides (duh).

Although not strictly speaking a no-holds barred sport, there aren’t too many restrictions, with the overall aim to knock your opponent out or make them submit. As the name suggests, this is Yuke’s third UFC effort, in a series that has so far impressed critics and consumers alike.

So what’s new then?

Perhaps the most celebrated new feature comes in the form of PRIDE mode, the Japanese-based mixed martial arts promotion which is now owned by the UFC. It’s hard to believe, but PRIDE is even more violent than UFC, allowing moves such as soccer kicks to the head, face stomps and knees to the faces of downed opponents! The action, meanwhile, takes place in traditional four-sided rings, while first rounds are twice the length.

If we’re being completely honest, PRIDE mode doesn’t add a great deal to the game, but it does provide a welcome break from the traditional UFC rules. Authentic commentary, arenas and ring introductions are impressive, and show that Yuke’s has gone to a great deal of effort to please hardcore fans of the sport. For most players, however, the change in rules will be hard to spot, until you knock somebody out with a soccer kick that is, and revel in the sickening satisfaction.

And it’s not just soccer kicks that appeal to our lust for blood and brutality, UFC Undisputed 3 features some of the most impressive and gratifying knockouts we’ve ever performed, easily rivalling the likes of Fight Night in the Flair Stakes.

Part of this can be attributed to UFC Undisputed 3′s gorgeous visuals. The in-ring action is confidently brought to life with well realised character models and excellent animation. The game’s 150-odd fighters certainly look the part, and move around the ring incredibly smoothly, while minor visual flourishes such as rolling eyeballs and pained expressions make each knockout or submission that little bit sweeter.

The lack of in-game HUD and onscreen clutter, meanwhile, really pulls players into the action, while a heavily blood-stained canvas is a sure-fire sign of a great fight. This is definitely one of the more immersive fighting simulations we’ve played – the excellent commentary providing the icing on the cake.

It’s a bit of a shame, therefore, that everything outside of the ring is a little bit drab, with ring entrances and post-match celebrations falling flat, despite the laser shows and loud music. There are also far too many pre-match TV screens to sift through – complete with advertising  - which can’t be skipped until the announcers have finished plugging their products.

The deep end and the equally-as-enjoyable shallow end

Fortunately, as we’ve already suggested, the in-ring action more than makes up for any flaws in the presentation.  UFC Undisputed 3 remarkably manages to offer players a deep and rewarding gameplay experience or cheap, shallow thrills, depending on your skill level and desire to progress.

Start a fight for the very first time, and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll rely on punches and kicks, all the while looking for a quick knockout.  Bother to invest the time in the lengthy but extremely helpful tutorials, and you’ll soon be looking to incorporate clinches, takedowns, submissions, counters and reversals into your game.  Ramp up the difficulty or play against an experienced opponent, and these extra moves become an integral part of the experience.  Meanwhile, re-visit the Novice League or fight an inexperienced friend, and you’ll have a blast hammering those strike buttons once again.

Tutorials aside, the game also includes two control schemes: Amateur and Pro.  There are hundreds of moves and combinations to master, with clinches a big part of this. Clinches can be used to hold opponents and perform submissions, strikes or takedowns.  Transitioning into dominant clinch positions or wriggling out of submissive positions is essential for success, but isn’t easy.  Amateur and Pro controls dictate how much input you have in switching positions, with Amateur controls requiring little more than a quick flick of the right analogue stick, while Pro controls see players performing circles and semi-circles.  Again, it’s all about finding the style that suits your ability.

Submissions are also much fairer and slightly more skill-based this time around, plus they’re easy to perform. By clicking the right stick at an opportune time – including when your opponent is battering you on the ground – a submission hold is applied and a mini-game of sorts begins.  Up pops an octagon shaped wheel with two energy bars, which represent you and your opponent.  Players rotate the analogue stick to move around the wheel, attempting to trap or avoid the other depending on who initialised the submission.  It’s a cat and mouse game, with players trying to trap their opponent’s gradually diminishing energy bar for as long as possible to force a submission.  Quickly switching directions is the key to escaping, although becoming ensnared for too long makes this increasingly difficult.

The submission mini-game typifies the UFC Undisputed 3 experience.  You can be on the mat and in trouble, before locking in an arm bar and making your opponent tap.  Likewise, a well timed strike can knock your rival out, or at least to the canvas long enough to pounce and unleash a flurry of blows.  It’s a genuinely exciting and unpredictable game, with fights that can change in an instant.

A good fight engine will only take you so far

The jewel in the game’s crown is the Career mode, adding a much more interactive element than past instalments.  After creating a character from the typically competent THQ toolset (see WWE 12), players start out in the Las Vegas-based World Fighting Alliance with minimal stats and low-paid fights.  Everything begins with the booking of a fight, with players awarded a set number of action points to spend on training regimes and game plans.

Pick a fight worth one action point, for example, and you can either up your attributes by participating in a mini-game, learn or level-up moves at training camps, or come up with a game plan which will boost your stats for one fight.  Pick a fight worth two action points and you can mix it up a bit, choosing to learn a new move, as well as levelling up your speed attributes.

Training mini games aren’t the most entertaining experiences in the title, but do genuinely improve your skills. Opt to participate in takedown defence drill, for instance, and you’ll attempt to stop balls from rolling past your fighter by performing the takedown defence action.  Not only do you come out of it with a better understanding of the controls,  but hey presto, you’ve just upped your footwork and speed stats.  If you can’t be bothered with this, you can skip the training and accept a slightly lower points boost.

Spending action points wisely and maintaining a balanced fighter is no easy task.  Going for a short-term stat boost with a game plan is all well and good for the next fight, but what about the fight after that?  Successfully implementing the game plan allows players to keep the boost, but game plan challenges, such as landing more punches, avoiding takedowns and winning in the first round, can be quite tricky against increasingly stronger opposition.  It’s a skilfully implemented and well regulated career mode, and one that proves incredibly addictive.

Our other mode of choice is Ultimate Fights, a mode that revisits classic rivalries from UFC and PRIDE. Introduced with a collection of interesting and entertaining archive videos, Ultimate Fights sees player re-enact some of the most historic fights of all time, with the promise of more to unlock and download.

Each fight also contains a series of challenges, such as taking down an opponent a set number of times, or hitting a flurry of unanswered punches. This leads to even more unlockables, something which UFC Undisputed 3 contains by the bucketload.  It’s a great mode for anybody wishing to learn more about the sport or mixed-martial arts fans who want to re-live or rewrite history.

My team is better than your team

This of course, brings us to online. While not quite on the same level as sports games such as FIFA, UFC Undisputed 3 is able to offer enjoyable exhibition and tournament competitions, as well as lots of community sharing options. This includes created fighters, dream UFC cards and highlight reels, which can be generated post-fight, but don’t always capture the best moments (plus they take ages to put together).

Far more appealing are the Online Fight Camps, which enable players to form teams, spar with other members, and fight in unranked and ranked matches with team mates and the wider community.  It’s all about bragging rights, obviously, with THQ promising lots of post-release tournaments to participate in.  While it’s a little early to say exactly how much lasting appeal this will hold, you can see the potential, especially with players able to create custom banners and logos to really make their team stand out.

A knockout blow

UFC Undisputed 3 is the best game in the series to date.  The deep fighting system, the gloriously gruesome knockouts, the fluid in-game action and the addictive career mode, all click into place like a fallen fighter’s nose in the post-match medical room.

And while its online offering may seem a little lightweight when compared to games under, for example, the EA Sports banner, UFC Undisputed 3′s web-based Fight Camps have the potential to provide hours of additional entertainment, assuming both THQ and the online community get behind it.

In closing, give UFC Undisputed 3 a chance and you’ll be floored by its solid and satisfying in-game fighting action.

Here there be Dragons, Magic, Vampires, Werewolves, and everything else.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of those sequels which had an exorbitant amount of pressure on it since it began its development cycle a few years ago after the success of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  Pressure’s a funny thing, though.  If you start with the right stuff and have just enough pressure in the right places, and give it some time, you could end up with a diamond.  Or a fossilised piece of crap.

Bethesda took away a lot of lessons from their time watching Oblivion turn into the cult hit that it did.  First and foremost of those lessons was that gamers loved building their own stories and characters.  Another important lesson was that we hate wasting armour on horses, the selfish whinnying bastards.

Skyrim is the culminating point of some of the very best elements Bethesda has developed for their particular brand of open-world RPG, from Oblivion onwards…Along with some of the worst.  Welcome to Skyrim, gamer.  You’re not leaving for some considerable time.

For a game that contains entire cultures, races, history, and its own brand of academic and fictional literature, Skyrim’s plot is blissfully simple.

Dragons are coming back to Tamriel and they’re very angry, having been ousted from power aeons ago.  The province of Skyrim is engaged in a brutal civil war between separatist and imperialist factions, so nobody’s really treating these giant lizards as a serious threat.  You, however, are about to discover your latent powers as the ‘Dragonborn’, meaning that the defence of the realm is entirely down to you.

That’s it.

As far as forging your own story within this colossal open-world RPG goes, the rest is laid out in a series of action/consequence decisions, from the moment you complete the intro and step out into the wilderness of Skyrim.

Exactly how much you choose to do vis-à-vis the main quest line at any given moment is left in your capable hands.

Beginners will probably take comfort in the guidance of their compass waypoints, making their way to the nearest village and from there to the first confrontation with a dragon, but you’re more than welcome to explore off the beaten track.  There’s certainly a lot of exploration to be done in Skyrim.

How your character is equipped to deal with the threats you’ll encounter is something you’ll want to ponder as soon as possible.

If you want to take the obvious approach and don a suit of barbaric fur and armour with a great sword as your weapon of choice, be our guest.  Show-offs will no doubt revel in accumulating magic skills to do everything for them, from conjuring weapons out of thin air to lighting up dungeons and transmuting iron into silver and gold.  The more nefarious of our gamer brethren may appreciate a bow and some stealth training, not least because it helps you steal other people’s belongings.

That’s just a rough outline of your options; it’s your character and your skill set, so you can pick whatever you want.

The skills you employ will level-up as you use them on a continuing basis.

For every skill you use, be it lock-picking, destruction magic, heavy armour, blacksmithing, or whatever else, there is an attached skill tree with several or more perks.  These perks grant you special abilities or unlock new options within that particular skill, but the clever part is that you can’t simply learn any perk you like straight away.

Much like the system we saw in Bethesda’s Fallout games, you’ll have to fatten your skills up to the requisite levels in order to select certain perks.

It’s much, much better than the ambiguous skill increases we had in Oblivion, and it doesn’t imbibe the complications of having to worry about how you’ll increase overall stats like ‘strength’, ‘agility’, or ‘intelligence’.  Those have been swept away entirely from Skyrim and it seems like the game is all the better and more accessible for it, though the RPG purists might disagree.

While having all of these skills to develop gives us the feeling that we’re being spoiled, Skyrim does present us with some problems in the actual gameplay department – specifically combat.

Fighting opponents with melee weapons in the first-person perspective is not easy.  In fact, there are points when it can seem downright unplayable, which is strange considering how simple it was when we were traipsing around Cyrodil.

In an effort to make character movements and handling more realistic, Bethesda have turned melee fighting into berserker flailing.  You will depress that right trigger in the vain hope that your blade can find your opponent somewhere, somehow, and more often than not you will miss.

Parrying and blocking attacks, so easy to achieve a few years ago, have been rendered close to unintelligible.  Magic attacks are another issue; your single-shot spells will go off at all angles until you practice enough times to get it right.  If this is a case of Skyrim’s combat being hard to master, surely it should have been much easier than this to learn the basics.

Once you progress a couple of hours into the main quest line your character will gain the ability to ‘shout’.

This is actually a specialised set of spells designed for any eventuality, which have a potentially broad spectrum of effects – the catch is, you’ll need to find them first.

“Words of Power” can be located in ancient ruins and other areas throughout Skyrim, and usually they’ll be under heavy guard by sorcerers, undead, and dragons.  Most, if not all, of these ‘shouts’ have three tiers of effectiveness that are unlocked by finding and learning subsequent Words of Power, and the effects range from forceful telekinetic shockwaves to making your character ethereal or disarming your opponents.

Unlike other spells, which rely on your magic energy levels, ‘shouts’ are limited by a recharge time.  They provide a decent fall-back plan if you happen to get overwhelmed by enemies or if you start a fight with a dragon you can’t finish.

It’s a tool which, like so many other skills you’ll have, encourages players to explore Skyrim’s ample landscapes.

While exploration of a vast and open world might seem like a great concept, Skyrim does tend to overstretch it to the point where it looks like the pleasant creases of age in Bethesda’s gameplay have had an unneeded facelift.  Having a few of the bigger quest lines where your destination’s miles away is perfectly acceptable, but you’d think criminals who are plaguing a town enough to get a bounty on their heads would set up shop just a little bit closer than on the other side of a goddamn mountain.

Run-and-fetch side quests come in their droves to fill up your “Miscellaneous” quest list, as do the go-here-kill-this side quests, and all of them seem to be sending you hundreds of leagues out of your way.  Some of the investigative quests are just as bad, but there are a few set closer to the point of origin, so it’s not all that frustrating.

The problem with Skyrim is ironically its greatest strength: the exploration.

Going from one objective to the other, it’s not unusual for you to get distracted by several caves, abandoned forts, ruins, or minor villages (where yet more bloody quests await your involvement – hurrah).  You loot, kill, sell, and purchase for a couple of hours, level-up perhaps once or twice, and you then realise that you’re still trying to finish the same quest you started ages ago.

Consequently the game leaves you feeling somewhat unfulfilled.  You’re playing it, but there’s a distinct lack of progression – and that will start to grate after several hours.

Another wounding point is the fact that your fast-travel options are limited entirely to places you discover first.

Unlike in Oblivion, where every major city was unlocked from the start, Skyrim prefers that you run to and fro between open wilderness, forests, mountain paths, and bubbling geyser wastelands.  Again, this is something to encourage exploration, but sometimes you’ll just look at the objective map marker and sigh inwardly before moving onto something more immediate.

It doesn’t help that hostile creatures and people are no longer keyed into the player’s level.  Pick the wrong road and you could very well end up on an ice troll’s dinner table.  What lesson will you learn from this?  Save your game – a lot.  Or turn down the difficulty; whatever works for you.

At the time of writing, Skyrim has become notorious for having a good crop of bugs and glitches in its gameplay, but how and when these will affect you – or even if they will – is impossible to say.  You might see dragons flying backwards.  A dead mammoth might fall from the sky.  Your character could potentially freeze.  So, again, you should save often and in different file slots.

Suffice to say, Bethesda are aware of the issues and are working on solving them, and their track record on supporting their products post-release is very good indeed.

Taken into context with the complexity of Skyrim, its landscape, population, and the ridiculously high number of potential quests, you may find you possess an inclination to forgive a lot of mistakes.

Cyrodil was, and still is by today’s standards, a beautiful place to lose your self.  Skyrim is just as spectacular, replicating that sense of old wilderness you could only get by visiting some of the deeper rural areas of our own world.  Coming out of a forested pathway and gazing across a broad expanse of grasslands, mountainous terrain, or an open vista from Skyrim’s higher altitudes, is a deeply pleasing experience.

You look at the world Bethesda has created and you buy into it wholeheartedly.

You believe the culture of the Nords could exist, the nine regions ruled by nine ‘Jarls’, the history of Tamriel, and, perhaps most importantly, you believe the creatures.  The packs of wild wolves, mammoth herds and their giant shepherds roaming the lowlands, the vicious ice trolls in the mountains, the savage wild bears in the forests, and not least of all the ferociously cunning dragons.  Every one of these beasts has been brought to life in close to immaculate detail, from their bodily movements to the physical impact they have on the environment.

Magical creatures, such as summoned ‘atronachs’ and undead, have their own unique presence.  It’s unnerving to walk into a catacomb and see corpses bashing their way out of their graves or – more worrying still – simply standing up from their resting places.

Skyrim contains a world that sounds almost as good as it looks.

Spells and their effects are pulled off in a manner that’s simultaneously tangible and satisfying.  Melee sound effects are hit-and-miss, given the sheer range of enemies you’ll test your steel against.  You don’t expect hitting a skeleton to sound the same as hitting an armoured dragon – but it does.

Also, whoever decided it would be a good idea for clearly American/Canadian voice actors to attempt to do Scotch accents deserves to be shot – anywhere but the middle joint of the legs, if you catch our drift.

Lines of repetitive dialogue have become a running joke with fans in the past, and now it’s hard for us to tell whether Bethesda put them in there deliberately or not.  We’re guessing they did.  And it’s annoying.

There’s plenty you will have to say about what’s wrong with Skyrim when you’ve ‘finished’ all the big quest lines you want to.  It’s by no means a perfect game – if such a thing could even exist – but there’s a good argument for it to be described as a work of art.

No other developer can lay claim to having woven such a vivid sense of detail through a series, and Bethesda deserves credit for that.  Most sequels look more than a little rough around the edges by the time they reach number five, but Skyrim suffers only from the scale of its ambition.

There’s a lot to do, a lot to see, and it will absorb hours of your time.  On occasion it will be dull.

However, when you single-mindedly pursue a quest line and ignore all other distractions it’s then that the game comes to life.  You’re able to appreciate the scale of choice you have in everything your character does, the world that’s open to you, and the minute details of the very ground you walk upon.  There’s no pressure to explore a newly-discovered ruin, cave, or fort; it’s enough to know that you can do it when the mood takes you.

This is a game every gamer needs to play through at least once.  It might not be their most favourite game of all time, but it will certainly be one of the most significant, as it broadens the potential for what is expected to be possible on any console generation.

Skyrim is a diamond, after all.  Thank the Divines!

Successes:

-         Hours of new adventures.

-         Inspiring landscapes.

-         Customise everything.

-         Addictive levelling system.

-         Dragon slaying.

Failures:

-         Lack of ‘progress’ can be dull.

-         Bugs and glitches aplenty.

-         Combat feels clumsy.

-         Too many run-and-fetch quests.

-         Occasionally dumb voice-acting.

Score:  9/10

- Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich