As a longtime BioShock fan, I was reticent in bidding farewell to Andrew Ryan's Rapture. Zachary Comstock managed to create a worthy replacement in Columbia, however. With Infinite, Ken Levine establishes himself as one of the powerhouses in storytelling in video game; as divisive as it is, the resultant discussion has to be seen as a plus.
Gears of War: Judgment isn't actually a bad game by any means - it performs admirably and takes a few risks with the series' conventions to provide a unique (Gears) experience for players. The problem here is that the experience just isn't memorable enough - this is essentially a Gears of War game done by the numbers with all tactical involvement completely removed or made superfluous.
If Omerta had a persistent world in single player, rather than neighbourhoods which you played then left never to have an impact on you again, or more in depth strategy system when it came to earning money and resources, action cut scenes rather than stills, ok, so it still wouldn't be the greatest game ever, but it would have been worth spending time with.
The presentation is smooth, the enemies are fun and varied to take on (and the dismemberment feature adds some dynamicity to the battles) and the boss battles are absolutely superb. This is a ridiculously fun ride, even if it does delve into the ridiculous at times. But it wouldn't be a Japanese action game without that.
Dead Space 3 isn't necessarily a full blown improvement over Dead Space 2 but it comes pretty damn close. The team have done a great job at keeping the key aspects of the universe mysterious and yet expanding on them considerably to tell a very engaging story of an alien race.
This is not to say it's a bad game, it's just not different enough from previous Call of Duty titles. The story isn't memorable, the maps and weapons aren't any different to what we've previously experienced, the gameplay is near identical to previous games, and when it's not identical it falls flat and fails to impress.
Far Cry 3 is a marked improvement from its predecessors though I feel as though it's effectively lost its identity and instead attempts to mirror everything about other franchises to make itself successful.
There's fun to be had, but there's still quite a long way to go for the Medal of Honor series to bridge that gap between Battlefield and Call of Duty, and hit the high notes it once did.
