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Good: Wonderful art style, animation and cute voice acting, with tons to see and do. Ni No Kuni is a wonderfully epic old-school JRPG that revives the overworld and elements of exploration that franchises like Final Fantasy have cast away. The story is simple, but heartfelt and the characters equally simple yet colourful. A wonderful game for children or anyone who's looking for a cutesy adventure devoid of cynicism and violence. Bad: However, Ni No Kuni is let down by a poorly designed combat system where party and enemy combat animations cancel each other out creating some very unfair battles; and a frustrating pokemon-like taming mechanic which cannot be actively influenced and so requires nothing but mindless grinding. In addition to these flaws, side quest design is underwhelming and requires an awful lot of tedious NPC hunting and party AI during battle is at times atrocious, artificially increasing the difficulty of the game.

An intriguing addition to the Action RPG genre that's wonderfully innovative in some areas but very weak in others. GOOD: Fantastic combat system that's genuinely very exciting with a wonderful sense of physicality reminiscent of Dark Souls; The Pawn System for sharing and hiring party members is a genuinely exciting new method to play games of this genre and has a surprising amount of depth to it; Great amount of freedom where you can pretty much grab onto anything in the game world, whether that be a rock face, a towering cyclops or a poor unfortunate rabbit that you decided to throw off a cliff; Character and monster animations are superb and some of the best seen in this genre; Each class in the vocation system feels genuinely unique and the the class you choose massively effects the way you handle each battle; Some of the bigger enemies you battle are simply awesome, requiring various techniques to take them down; The use of lighting in the game is superb and adds an element of suspense to night time battles; Post-game asynchronous co-op is a really interesting new way to play games of this genre. BAD: Terrible story told through tedious nonsensical cutscenes involving ludicrous characters; Romance system is lazily implemented and just doesn't make any sense; Game world is actually very small and lacks variety; Graphics on most NPCs are horrible; Screen tear and FPS drops can sometimes distract from the beauty and excitement of battles; With no difficulty settings or an increase in difficulty with each subsequent NG+, the game becomes quite unchallenging after around level 40 which completely undermines the excitement of felling larger foes; Hired pawns have a tendency of repeating the exact same piece of dialogue constantly and especially during battle where they will happily tell you hundreds of times that everything is weak to fire; There is actually very little enemy variety when travelling in the wilderness and random battle events do not happen frequent enough; Item combining and weapon smithing is a bit weak and unexciting; Main quest line is extremely short and the way that non-noticeboard side-quests appear is odd and lacks consistency. OVERALL: I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Dragon's Dogma. The battle system is genuinely very exciting and the Pawn System is a great new way to shake up the stale party mechanics of other RPGs. However, there's no denying that Dragon's Dogma has some way to go before it can fully live up to its potential. Dragon's Dogma 2 has already been announced which is great news, as now the foundations of the combat and pawn system have been laid down, Capcom can focus on making everything else shine just as much.

A great dungeon-crawling romp that perfects the genre but adds nothing new to it. GOOD: a reasonably well written and coherent story with decent characters; Lots of loot allowing constant weapon and armour re-speccing; Graphically consistent with a nice water-colour finish to the landscapes; A good selection of classes to choose from, all with unique identifiable skills; Gold money auction house is easy to use and gives players a reason to hang onto redundant, yet rare equipment; Drop-in drop-out co-op is quick and well implemented; Enemy scaling with number of players ensures no challenge is lost in co-op; Ability to re-spec abilities of active character on the fly reduces the need to start characters over again in order to get the ability combinations you desire; Ui is crisp, clear and uncluttered. BAD: Game cannot be played offline, even in single player, which is unnecessary and unfair for the consumer; Intrusive, unreliable always-online DRM causes many disconnection issues; Due to always-online functionality there are significant amounts of lag and framerate issues which diminish the overall quality of the experience; Weapon system is bizarre and poorly implemented with wizard characters casting spells out of a sword that they can't actually use; Other than clothing, characters cannot be customized, which makes the character selection seem a little out-dated; Character animations and graphics are boring and don't match the wonderful water-colour-like environments; Numerous balancing issues between classes that are going to take a while to iron out; Sound effects, voice acting and music are unremarkable; Stat points are automatically assigned upon levelling-up preventing players from creating truly unique character builds; Companion characters available when playing single player are not very useful and are quite boring additions to your adventure. OVERALL: There's nothing inherently wrong with Diablo 3 - it's a left-click marathon **** with plenty of loot and loads of enemies to kill. But it's also one of the most stressful games I have ever experienced due to the totally unnecessary always-online DRM which is seriously detrimental to the industry and rather quite worrying. Add to this the fact that Diablo 3 brings little to nothing new to the genre that it so wonderfully popularised and you've got yourself a rather disappointing game. Is Diablo 3 fun? Yes. Is it the dungeon crawler that we've all been waiting for? Probably not.

A well polished yet unremarkable RPG with the aesthetics of WoW/Fable, the combat of God of War and the game world mechanics of Skyrim. GOOD: Wonderfully detailed environments with an impressively huge world to explore; Massive amounts of customisation for character levelling allowing you to create many different builds; Fairly decent story that could become very interesting if built upon in further sequels; Tons of loot to find and a nice clear weapon system; Superb combat mechanics that are easy to understand. BAD: Camera struggles during battles leading to unnecessary deaths as you become unable to see attacking enemies off-screen; Combat isn't particularly challenging as there is no stamina bar present so you can essentially stun-lock almost any enemy to death; Dialogue with NPCs is odd with a random mixture of list based options like Skyrim and a conversation wheel like Mass Effect; Invisible walls are present everywhere which severely reduces mobility as you must walk an entire stretch of a cliff just to find that one part where the game allows you to jump down; Enemy types are unremarkable and generally unthreatening making many enemy encounters really quite dull. OVERALL: KoA:R is a great, fun RPG with a brilliant combat and levelling system and a colourful world. Yet there's no denying that the overall package is really quite generic with a plethora of borrowed game mechanics which are presented in uninteresting ways. This game so obviously wants to marry itself with Skyrim, but in doing so it completely loses any sense of identity. And with genre re-defining RPGs like Dark Souls, The Witcher 2 and even Dragon's Dogma around, KoA:R struggles to find its place. But if you're after a solid straight forward RPG experience, this game might appeal. Just don't expect to find anything new here.

The Witcher 2 is a superb RPG with a deep and meticulous world and story marred by many interface annoyances and a so-so combat system. GOOD: The story in Witcher 2 is beautifully detailed with a hefty amount of backstory provided for both the world and characters; For the most part, the graphics are superb and create a wonderfully believable world; Crafting mechanics and levelling system are deep and variable allowing for non-linear character progression; Most of the combat mechanics are fun to use and taking out foes is very satisfying; Music is fitting and voice track is nicely done; Morally ambiguous choices in the story flesh out a relatively linear story; Mature themes are mostly handled well and it's refreshing to see a story devoid of the good versus evil cliches; Signs are fun to use and allow for some interesting tactics against certain enemies. BAD: Menu systems are unintuitive and there's some strange sensitivity issues with using the control stick to navigate them (sometimes leading you to choosing a wrong dialogue option or accidentally selling something important); The environments are awash with muddy textures that can diminish the beauty of the game; Sometimes dialogue between characters is insanely quiet leading you to miss important pieces of information (this cannot be remedied by switching off the music strangely); Swordplay can be quite inaccurate at times leading to quick unnecessary deaths where sword blows don't connect; Controls are a little over-fiddly at times leading to some weird finger-crossing on the controller; Enemy hit-boxes are confusing leading to too much trial and error with certain enemies; QTEs for fist fights are boring and completely unchallenging; Mission/quest log doesn't always update correctly and it's confusing having 3 separate entries for the exact same quest leading to an overly cluttered interface. OVERALL: A superb RPG with some of the best story telling I've ever seen, with interesting choices and fleshed out characters let down by some lacklustre gameplay in parts and some **** menu problems. However, the game is far better than Witcher 1 and improves upon on it in so many ways that I have really high hopes that Witcher 3 will truly be outstanding.

Horrible game breaking bugs ruin what is an otherwise fantastic game. I really want to give this game an 8 or a 9 because it truly is wonderful to play (when it works) but my experience of this game has been severely tarnished by a myriad of technical issues. I can deal with the occasional drop in fps or the infrequent crashes, but twice now I have had to restart the game (both times from ng+) because of the game becoming selectively unresponsive in seemingly random places. First time at the beginning of new game plus I could never proceed past the introduction as the prompts to carry on a conversation were completely unresponsive. So I started the game again and completed it to get to ng+. This time I could continue past the introduction and quite a way into ng+. But then on one level after the game had crashed everything became unresponsive again - I cannot move my character and he is completely frozen to the spot. Unfortunately the game autosaved after the crash so my game is, well, broken again! I'm now starting right from the beginning again for the third time and I have to say this is really quite disheartening. I experienced less serious bugs in all the Elder Scrolls games combined! Well, that's probably not really a fair comparison, but I have to say, for a 5 year development period, I expected a lot better from Polytron.

I was so excited when I finally got round to playing this game and I have to say it was a huge disappointment from start to finish. This game may be a year and a half old now, but it fails in so many ways. The biggest issue is that of the camera which is shockingly bad. I felt like I was constantly wrestling with the camera to try and make this game functional! Sometimes the camera constantly conflicts between a fixed cinematic angle and the loose combat angle, which is totally confusing and incredibly frustrating, especially when you're playing on hard difficulty where being able to see all your enemies at all times in combat is so important! It just reeks of thoughtless game design! Next bad thing is the combat itself which is both dull and frustrating. There's very little variety to the combat situations and it quickly becomes boring. Add to this the insane camera angles during combat and you've got yourself a seriously unappealing mess. Next, is the general movement of Monkey. The controls feel so loose at times that getting Monkey to simply hide behind a small wall while a turret blows the crap out of him is a real chore. There are also numerous clipping issues that occur throughout which often cause totally unnecessary deaths in certain times - again, these all occur mostly when the camera is going insane. Although artistically this game is beautiful with some of the most interesting visual designs I've ever seen, the quality of the environments is diminished greatly but muddy textures and noticeable pop-in as textures load. Next, the platforming sections, which are uninspired and clunky and lack the finesse of the Uncharted series. Next, the invisible walls that plague this game are infuriating! It's a sign of bad game design when invisible walls are needed so often in what is a generally very linear game! I don't mind there being invisible walls around the areas of gameplay but when they are interspersed with platforming sections it's just irritating. Lastly, the bugs. As well as clipping issues and delayed input during combat, I fell through the game map 3 times during my play through! Generally this game just feels like it's lacking finish and a significant amount of optimisation. Maybe this game was rushed out for a pre-Christmas release, but it really could have done with a few extra months of streamlining! HOWEVER, despite the horrible gameplay - the story, characters, art design, locations and cut scenes are fantastic! I genuinely felt concerned for Trip and actually enjoyed the parts where you work collaboratively with her to stealth past enemies. They should have just removed the combat and kept it stealth and QTEs for taking down foes. I would have much preferred that and the narrative would have benefitted much from it. It's a shame this game was so massively overlooked as it does have some unique story and artistic design. But it's so difficult to ignore how technically awful this game is. I was tempted to give it a 4 or a 5, but the artistic design completely saves it from the depths of Oblivion....just!

Journey isn't so much a game (of course I shall continue to contradict myself henceforth by referring to it as a game) as it is an experience in the same vein as Dear Esther. But unlike Dear Esther, Journey is genuinely original and manages to offer just enough interactivity and narrative structure to not be categorised as just another boring artsy non-interactive slide-show. Journey is visually stunning, beautifully constructed and wonderfully compelling. The co-op gameplay adds depth and it's genuinely fun singing at people you meet. I don't want to be spoilerific so I won't go into anymore than that. Only drawbacks are a very short playtime (1-2 hours) and a few parts where the game drags a little - offering nothing visually exciting for minutes at a time in such a short game is kind of a pain. But overall definitely worth a look for anyone.

A decent yet highly flawed finale to a great trilogy, that feels really quite dated. GOOD: Fantastic presentation and production values gives the game a fantastically epic feel at times (Palaven level in particular); Fun and varied combat that improves upon both ME1 and 2 by presenting the player with a greater diversity of enemies that require radically different techniques to beat; Generally stunning graphics and crisp, clean textures; Most character interactions are superb with a mostly decent script; Around 90% of the story is brilliantly told and exciting to participate in; Voice acting is top-notch and fleshes out the characters well; Much improved powers progression over ME2 with a slight decrease in overall linearity; Weapon mods are a welcome return as are the armour upgrades from ME2; Seeing the conclusions of many of your choices in previous games play out is generally pretty well done; Multiplayer is very good and offers a wealth of customisation and character progression; Space Hamster, Auto-Fish feeder and Blasto! BAD: Journal is terribly designed and does not update when new items for a quest are found, so quest progression can be confusing; When opening quest log it does not default to top of screen so you have to scroll through all the quests you've completed whenever you open it which is irritating and totally unnecessary; Graphical pop-in during many different parts of the game creates an unfinished look in an other wise highly polished game; Characters vanish during cutscenes and necks twist in weird laughably bad directions to compensate for bad character placement during some cutscenes; Human faces look awful at times compared to other Alien races and detract somewhat from the emotion of many cutscenes; During cutscenes graphical bugs occur wherein pistols are holstered on back or are invisible where Bioware always expected players to apparently be using an assault rifle; Shepard has an awful script which is positively cringe worthy in most instances and again detracts from the quality of cutscenes; Story has many exhaustingly contrived instances, such as the sudden emergence of a weapon that can destroy all the Reapers highlighting some terrible writing in parts; The Ending is horridly put together and highlights Bioware's inability to conclude compelling stories (Space Jesus? Why? Deus Ex Machina anyone?); Many quest bugs which require reloading from previous saves to proceed; The one-button-for-every-action is at it's worse now that Bioware have introduced rolling to the combat - having the same button for running, going into cover, interacting with an item, rolling and reviving team mates reeks of bad game design and causes far too many frustrating moments (See Vanquish for how to do this correctly); In multiplayer there are many gameplay bugs such as falling through floor, enemies becoming invisible/invincible, not being able to forward roll and use heavy attack for minutes at a time and being stuck on the spot forcing you to quit out of the game; The galaxy map is now at its most redundant with sections cut off until you reach "that part of the game" meaning actual exploration in Mass Effect 3 is incredibly linear; Scanning for War assets is dull and requires almost no input from the player; Side-quests are incredibly shallow and mostly require you to scan a planet to find some lost religious texts for a species and then find the numbered NPC on a map of the citadel to complete it (bearing in mind the journal never updates, so you only know if a mission is complete if a new numbered NPC appears on the map); Other side-quest follow a sloppy pattern of coincidently bumping into old team mates from ME2 under increasingly dull and contrived circumstances; Zero customisation of your teammate armour; Weapon mods are uninteresting and are mostly just scopes and bigger clips; Character progression is still immensely shallow, especially for your teammates; All aspects of character progression are combat based and there are no class specific skills to give you an advantage in any moments out of combat so your class has zero identity outside a combat situation; No mini-games for hacking doors now, just stand and watch Shepard wave his omni-tool around for a good 20 seconds (****); Reaper awareness meter on galaxy map is badly implemented and just becomes a nuisance instead of creating a feeling of actual panic; War Assest acquisition is wholly artifical and is quite simply a bar to raise so you get more of a choice of the same badly written and horribly presented ending. Overall Mass Effect 3 is a fun game to play, but it's shallow, buggy, has some terrible scripting blunders and horrid design choices that really tarnish what could have been a superb game and a definite contender for my GOTY.

This game might be over a year old now, but it's a real gem. Third person shooting mechanics similar to Gears of War/Mass Effect, yet much more refined, making for swift easy transition between cover and strafing. Fun, powerful weapons and melee attacks makes each battle an absolute joy to take part in. The story is of course extremely corny and overblown (something about evil Russians capturing a space station shooting a laser beam and killing some Americans, so it's time to fly up there and stop them from doing it again), but I honestly paid no attention to the story as I was too busy exploding robots! Graphically this game is beautiful and has extremely high production values. The sound and high tempo music is very fitting too. The controls are superb and put other 'one-button-for every-action' games like Gears of War and Mass Effect to shame really. My time with Vaniquish was completely bug free too - everything did what it was supposed to and nothing every failed. Vanquish is also quite challenging in a fun way simply because it has checkpoints often and offers you a varied amount of weapons to tackle each situation. THE only real issues I have with the game are the overall length - took me about 8 hours to complete on hard, which is a little underwhelming. Also, the lack of multiplayer was a real shame too. This game definitely would have benefitted from a co-op/horde mode as the gameplay is superb and would led itself well to some multiplayer action. Also, however brilliant the game is at everything it does, it is a little unoriginal and I was never fascinated by the story or the setting. Luckily the gameplay is so good, that I mostly didn't care. If you love fast paced action shooters with superb gameplay - look no further! It's just a shame Vanquish 2 will probably never happen.

I'm so torn with this game. The premise and overall execution of the story, scenario, characters etc is spot on. But the game suffers from so many strange design choices and many irritating control issues which really diminish the experience. The overall look of the game is great with a town ravaged by an earthquake coated in dust (reminiscent of the film The Road). This is not a colourful adventure, and all the better for it! Combat is interesting, relying very much on planning survival over gunplay and melee attacks. Characters and story are well executed with many additional NPCs to flesh out areas of the town. The reducing stamina bar during climbing, running and walking through dust clouds really adds to the tension and offers a different sort of survival experience other than the threat of being shot or stabbed to death. However, there are some very irritating control issues and design choices which lead to much unnecessary frustration. The climbing mechanic, reminiscent of Uncharted and Tomb Raider, is generally fine, but on so many occasions it's inaccuracy creates massive frustration leading to unfair deaths. So many times while on the brink of complete stamina loss and an imminent fall to my death I've suddenly not been able to climb up onto a ledge or I've not been able to climb in a certain direction. When this happens, and you manage to live, the repercussions of this are felt throughout the game as your stamina bar is permanently reduced in size and can only be extended by consuming provisions that are few and far between. It's just very infuriating when the controls let you down making the game far harder than it should be. Secondly, the retry system is dated and completely redundant. Why on earth does it exist? Especially when the actual checkpoints are so far apart at times. Why do I need to worry about retries? If all my retries are used up I have to start a whole section again? Why? Why on earth does that exist? It's not made clear either when it's safe to quit the game knowing that the game has autosaved. I quit once and was put back quite a way because I had no idea when I would reach a save point. A simple indication of when the game has saved would be nice as well as a simple checkpoint system that's clearly indicated. Pointless, dated features like this really hold the game back. I really hope 'I Am Alive' gets a sequel in the form of a complete game - it has a great premise and some fantastic ideas, but it definitely needs a bigger studio with game designers that aren't stuck in the 90s!

Syndicate is a real mixed package. The single player is horribly short-lived (around 6-7 hours on the hardest difficulty), has a bland story that's not particularly well told, boring characters that are never fleshed out, very linear level design based mostly on taking out waves of enemies, and an overall uninspired and unoriginal feel that borrows heavily from other games (Deus Ex:HR and Crysis 2 especially). It's another case of brilliant concept - bad execution. in fairness the gunplay and breach mechanics wherein you hack enemy cybernetic brain chips to make them commit suicide etc are quite fun. But in regards to the breach mechanics, it's a shame that Syndicate never bothers to try and make the use of them in interesting or tactical ways and they quickly become redundant. However, the co-op multiplayer in Syndicate is actually quite brilliant. There's tons of weapon upgrading, breach upgrading and other levelling mechanics that are fun to play around with. Creating your own syndicate and recruiting other people is great fun, with leaderboards to keep up with how well your syndicate is doing in the world market. Also, the breaching mechanics are much better in the multiplayer with added abilities such as group heal to really bring the need for team work together. Unlike the single player which is really quite straight forward and easy, the co-op is actually challenging - even on normal difficulty and requires a good amount of team work to succeed in some of the tougher missions. It's such a shame that the Syndicate single player is so inept when the multiplayer does nothing but shine! They almost feel like they don't belong to the same game with the multiplayer obviously getting more time during development. Overall a very disappointing reboot of the franchise, saved from the greatest depths of the bargain bin by a very good co-op.

Conceptually this game is great. The characters, story and humour are perfectly intertwined to create a unique experience that left a big smile on my face on more than one occasion. The preposterous over the top action reminded me very much of the madness of Bayonetta (albeit with far more swearing) and the fact that it never tries to take itself seriously is quite refreshing. The choice of guns is great and as you progress the weaponry becomes more and more insane. The setting is fantastic and completely surreal which adds so much to its apparent niche appeal. However, Shadows of the Damned is let down by many gameplay issues. Firstly, this game is far too short, clocking in at around 10 hours for a play-through on hard. And there are no new game plus options/multiplayer/challenge maps, so as soon as you're done with the single player there's nothing else. Also, this game is very easy and incredibly unchallenging - even on the hardest difficulty! You can literally roll through any enemy attack so rolling isn't a case of moving out of the way of danger, but more just making sure you are rolling when the attack connects. This cheapens the experience and makes combat quite easy. Also, the camera has a hard time in many places (usually when the game wants you stand in a tiny passageway full of enemies) which can lead to some annoying deaths in a game that is otherwise so easy to play. The gunplay is decent, but suffers from many inconsistencies in regards to aiming, with some shots seemingly passing through enemies at times which is very frustrating. Also, sometimes enemy attacks connect where previously they had not in exact same circumstances leading me to think that the hit-boxes of enemy attacks are also inconsistent. Graphically the game is fine, but does suffer from very noticeable texture pop-in which gives the game an overall rough and unfinished look. The colours are also very washed-out (reminiscent of Dragon Age origins in some respect) in some cases, which don't appear to be by design. Other irritations include not being able to skip cutscenes which is just torturous at times and also some odd achievement implementation. I don't really care about XBL achievements, but I know that many do, so why Grasshopper decided that completing the game on hard should not unlock easy and medium difficulty achievements is just beyond me. Did they really expect people to play through the game three times? Why would anyone want to revert back to easy or medium difficulty when they've already realised how non-challenging the game is on hard? A rather strange design choice there which I imagine infuriated achievement hunters. It's a shame because Shadow of the Damned is loaded with personality and charm that you see very little of these days, but so many small things chip away at the layer of polish that this game really deserved. I did enjoy my brief time with Shadows of the Damned but it ultimately left me unsatisfied. Here's hoping Grasshopper can refine the experience for a more polished sequel.

Bundles of charm, some pretty cartoony graphics and some fun gameplay ideas (bigamy never looked so adorable!). But the combat is hilariously dumbed down to point where it's actually almost impossible to die. You don't have a stamina bar or a magic bar, so you can spam any attack you want as much as you want with no consequences. The combat here is obviously just an accompaniment to the rest of the game, but there are so many combat situations present, that the dumbed down combat just becomes an irritating distraction from the rest of the game. It improves upon some elements of Fable 2, namely the menu systems, but fails in every other way. Fable 2 had a terrible mini-map which was unusable most of the time. Fable 3 instead has no actual map of an area, but simply a representative 3D top-down view of what the area might look like with key areas. This is fine for when purchasing houses etc, and actually makes up-keep of families and property a lot easier, but if you want to get to a particular spot in an area of the world, there is no game map to help you navigate. It's a little bit preposterous and I'm really starting to think that Lionhead Studios have a thing against maps in games. Such a basic requirement of RPGs shouldn't be messed up like this . Also the game is very very short lived and raising funds is far too easy due to the massive amounts of gold you receive after quest completion, which makes much of the game world feel a bit pointless at times. Like Fable 2 the story really struggles to be compelling and seems to lose its way and come to an abrupt end. Overall, Fable 3 does nothing to try and improve upon the issues present in Fable 2 and actually in most cases makes things worse. The only thing saving this game, is the charming jovial atmosphere and some very pretty graphics.

Okay it might just be a flash game (deletes all browsing history on computer = loses all Machinarium save data - Ahhhhh!), but it oozes charm. An absolute delight **** with beautiful hand drawn scenes and wonderful memorable characters (I still feel bloody awful about that cat). As a point-and-click adventure it does of course suffer from moments of random clicking allover the screen as you fail to pick up on a clue, but less so than other games of its type. I think the only thing which I didn't appreciate about the game, was the fact that it was flash based. It would have been nice to have something a little more robust, especially for my money. But I'm nit picking there because this is a truly wonderful little game with some brilliantly designed puzzles and oodles of charm.

Finally! A survival horror game - that is a survival horror game! Well done gaming industry as a whole! Was it really that difficult? Anyway, enough of this obnoxiousness. I thoroughly enjoyed Amnesia despite it's clunky controls. Genuinely terrifying with a very well told story that requires player exploration instead of intense cut-scene overkill. The removal of combat that was present in the Penumbra series (also made by Frictional) really helps keep the pace and prevents frustrating mouse swinging angst. You survive by running and hiding. The shadows are as much your friends as they are your enemies adding an element of risk to all of your actions. To a certain extent it has the same appeal as a well thought out point-and-click adventure with simplistic gameplay that allows you to get absorbed by the terrifically dark atmosphere instead of having you scrolling through inventory lists and entering attack combos. This game won't be for everyone, and many people will simply be bored by the lack of action and direct story telling. But I don't think this game was ever trying to grab a mainstream audience and all its appeal is rather quite niche. But nonetheless, it is a game that most should at least visit, for it truly is a welcome sleeper indie hit for us horror fans. This game is best played in a dark room with a decent headset. In fact I refuse to play this game during the day! It's also a good idea to have your face pressed up to the screen so you **** yourself quicker. True story.

I had low expectations for Dragon Age 2 when I started playing it. As much as I loved Dragon Age: Origins, I did play the 360 version, which was horrid horrid PC port, with terrible washed out graphics and a disappointingly unmanageable UI. So when I saw that Dragon Age 2 was a lot more console friendly, I was pleasantly surprised. The UI is much more pleasurable to use on a console and is overall less frustrating and more intuitive. However, it's really hard to overlook the many many flaws in game design present throughout Dragon Age 2. Firstly the story lacks any of the ambition and scale of the DA:O and instead opts for a more intimate family affair. Which is fine, and does lead to some more memorable moments with your party members which DA:O sometimes really lacked. But, you never feel like you're really part of anything and the links to the first game (you're originally from Lothering) feels a tad contrived. Secondly, the game world is so small and has zero variation. You spend the entire game within the same city, every now and again going to the countryside for a nice stroll. That was a terrible design choice made by Bioware. The world of Dragon Age is so extensive and full of interesting lore, so why not let us explore it?! But, for me, the biggest insult of this game was the way in which they use the exact same maps for different areas of the game. One cave in one area of the countryside, will have the exact same layout as a cave in another part of the countryside. They are the exact same places but certain areas have been walled off, as to bring about the illusion of the caves being different places. In fact, they don't even bother to adjust the mini-map, so even if a door in one occurrence of the one cave design is blocked off, the passage that it is blocking will still appear in the mini-map! That's just disgraceful and for me, has tarnished Bioware's name as a company who produce high-quality games. It's lazy game design at its worst! So, lacklustre story and terrible environment and location design. But, I feel like there are areas of Dragon Age 2 which aren't quite as horrific. The levelling system and talent trees are pretty much exactly the same as Dragon Age Origins, just with a sheen of gloss. The combat, although now less tactical, does look a lot better. In particularly the mage characters now look like more of a part of the action, actually moving their bodies to cast spells instead of just shuddering in the corner while rogues and warriors dance about like in DA:O. But I think they went a bit over kill with the Rogues (why on earth do you have to kick Poison flasks at enemies? That just looks a bit turd really). Overall, I did strangely still enjoy Dragon Age 2, despite the fact it suffers from some terrible terrible design choices, simply because some of the characters are well implemented into the fledgeling story. Anders in particular had a story which simply out-shone the rest of the game and the Mages vs. templar debacle could be quite promising eventually. I actually cared what happened to Anders and I really liked what happened (more dark, unstable, psychopathic characters please!). I think that might have been the only reason I ended up completing the game. I hope that Bioware can learn from there mistakes here and try to put some more effort into a series that is quite obviously loved by many. Just look at the fan rage on here! That's representative of a seriously disappointed fan base.

After not being impressed with the first AC, but then being very much impressed with AC2, I had high hopes for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I loved the setting of Assassin's Creed 2 and I found Ezio to be a fun and genuinely charming character. But Assassin's Creed Brotherhood fails to recapture any of what made the second game so involving. Yes, we're still in Italy. And yes, it's still quite pretty. But, there's nothing new here! This isn't so much a sequel as a fully priced DLC to Assassin's Creed 2. Which would be fine if the novelty of the free-running hadn't already worn off. In fact, I enjoyed the story and setting of Assassin's Creed 2 so much, that I think I may have been blinded to the horrid gameplay mechanics that seem to stand out like a sore thumb in Brotherhood. Free-running is inaccurate and unskillful requiring you to hold down run and a direction and hoping you will jump to a ledge or run across a tight wire. So often do you grab the wrong platform or simply fall to your doom because there's no way of accurately gauging what Ezio is capable of. The combat is horrid and extremely tedious, plus changing between weapons is clumsy so you just end up bashing away with your one sword until a death animation plays out and you can auto-lock onto the next enemy for the same button mashing. Also, why on earth do the Assassin's Creed games, where stealth is so very important (and the point of the game), not allow you to crouch and creep up behind your enemies? In fact all you can do is walk upright behind people and stab them. This looks cool in the street when your blending into the crowd, but looks terrible when scaling a rooftop. I honestly never really felt like a master assassin at all. I've always liked the combination of sci-fi and history in the story, but I've never liked the way the developers have implemented it. Everything feels forced, and very often there's nothing driving the story in the present day setting which is very irritating. Also, missions are extremely repetitive. I know most games of this type have some elements of repetition, but the side missions are all exactly the same in this game. It suffers from a serious case of uninspired quest design. Do I really want to kil the same Borgia leader 10 times in the exact same method? - no, no I do not. That's just not fun for me. Where as the story in Assassin's Creed 2 had me gripped from the outset, the story in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood just had me bored from the get go. I've really tried to like the Assassin's Creed series, but I think it's just a series which doesn't resonate with me, so I instantly recognise and become irritated by its many short comings. Overall, seriously lacking.

A solid game but also a missed opportunity on almost every front. To call this a remake would be, well, incorrect. This is the exact same Halo we all enjoyed back in the days of the first xbox, just with shiny new graphics. In fact this game actually looks better than Halo Reach, with more of an artistic design and heaps more depth in the environments. But, this game is simply the original with a new graphical overlay which is a massive shame as an update to all aspects of the game would have been brilliant. Why not do an overhaul of enemy animations so they are as fluent and up-to-date as Reach? Why not tweak the story a bit so it links in better with all the sequels and the built upon Halo lore? (well actually the new consoles were a nice touch, but hardly substantial). Overall I was just a bit disappointed that 343/Bungie didn't do anything more than take the original game and smother it in a new graphical overlay. Still, it's the original Halo, which is and always will be a solid shooter, so even though there's nothing new here, it's still a joy to play.

Although maybe lacking some of the atmosphere and general wasteland feel that made Fallout 3 so immersive, Fallout New Vegas more than makes up for it in both content and charm. Exploring the practically untouched [by the nuclear war] areas of New Vegas and the surrounding desert is great fun and absolutely packed full of interesting stories and NPCs. Every place you find has a back story and most likely an actual quest tied to it. The world of New Vegas is smaller than that of Fallout 3, but has more locations to explore and more life to it, which seems fitting due to the setting and perfectly complements the barron wastelands of Fallout 3 by offering the player a different slice of a post-apocalyptic world. The introduction of factions is very much welcomed and your alliance with each one has major implications on the world and the story, allowing for multiple play throughs with different endings. Gunplay has been tightened and now has iron sights for easier aiming. However, this does make VATS mode a little bit useless now as aiming is so much more accurate. I experienced zero bugs that affected the game in any major way (once had a flying dog, but that was just hilarious) so I was overall pleased with the quality. The music and sound effects are fitting and really flesh out the world. Companions are much improved over Fallout 3 with the companion wheel, where in you can select many different orders for your companion to carry out on the fly. The game also comes with a Survival/hardcore mode where you have to constantly eat/drink/sleep to function. This is a fantastic addition and implemented brilliantly, adding a real feeling of desperation as you scavenge through old convenience stores for some canned food and bottles of water. The levelling system is solid and has a vast number of perks for you to choose from cannibalism to be able to tame wild animals. I do realise that some people had some horrid bugs with this game (save game corruption etc) but I experienced close to zero bugs after spending a good 200 hours exploring the entire landscape and doing every mission available, so any bugs present will be variable between copies. Anyway, highly recommend for lovers of RPGs and Sandbox titles.

A thoroughly cool sci-fi setting with a decent story and some interesting locations to explore. This game takes the best of FPS, stealth and RPG elements and combines together to create a compelling and actually quite original package. The choices the game gives you are fantastic and really allow you to stay loyal to the play-style you have chosen. Augmentations add a fantastic layer of depth to character building in a way that Crysis 2 does not. Want to be able to leap across roof tops in order to reach your objective instead of using the stairs? Fine, choose to improve your leg augmentations to jump higher. Want to hack your way through security locks instead of crawling through a ventilation system? Fine, choose to improve your hacking skills. It's the elements of choice that makes Deus Ex:HR such a compelling game. However, although for the most part you can stealth your way through the entirety of a section of the game, as soon as you enter a boss fight you have no choice but to shoot. This basically poses a massive disadvantage to players who carry nothing but a stun gun and silenced pistol. Meaning the game forces you to sudden become a gun expert when all you've been doing is improving stealth augmentations. SE really overlooked the boss battles, and the game could have really been without them. The boss battles are not particularly well executed and are if anything a frustrating distraction from the rest of the game. Luckily SE have learnt from their shoddy boss battles and how they conflicted with the games style and the boss battle in the newest DLC chapter could be tackled in many different ways. Another disappointment of this game is the ending. All your choices you made throughout the game which felt so real suddenly don't matter at all. All possible endings are available in one play-through because all the choices you made throughout the game no longer matter. Which is a bit of a kick in the balls after all your hard work to keep certain characters alive in the hope they will impact the **** ending is just a tad lacklustre. In conclusion though, despite the disappointing ending and frustrating boss battles, Deus Ex:HR is a joy to play and, if you love your sci-fi settings dark and actually quite believable it's definitely worth giving this game a go. I do hope that SE do another Deus Ex soon as they took to the fan criticism so well and there's no doubt that a sequel would address many if not all of the issues Deus Ex:HR has.

A masterclass in game design. Stunning graphics and just so satisfyingly ambitious. In a market saturated with COD clones, Skyrim is just a massive breath of fresh air. Okay Skyrim has a lot of bugs, but I think it's impossible to create a game like this without them. In comparison to other games companies Bethesda are very good at addressing post-release issues, so most of the major bugs will eventually be fixed. I personally had very little in the way of bugs - a few texture issues at first, some quests don't leave my quest list upon completion and some quest items are not removed from my inventory when I turn them in, but that's it really. So I have not taken the bugs into account with my review, as personally, I have found it easy to ignore them. There are many design choices in Skyrim which I'm not a fan of and the game does have a few balancing issues, but all those pale out of existence when I consider the scope of the game. This game is huge! At 180 hours of gameplay I have still got at least 150 hours of gameplay to go with all side-missions, guild missions and main quests etc. That's a lot of game and very good value for money. The interface is improved over Oblivion (on the 360 at least) and weapons and magic feel heavier and more satisfying to use.Voice acting has improved, and even though you do hear the same voice actor saying the same thing in different towns, it is much less frequent than Oblivion. The music is beautiful and really fits the dramatic landscape of Skyrim. Dragons are a welcome addition and add a new challenge to the way you fight. The locations you visit vary greatly from snowy mountains, to vast mammoth populated grassy tundras. A lot of criticism at this game will be at the bugs and the many low-res textures, but when one considers the vast amount of coding that must go into a game like this over, say, a more linear shorter title like Uncharted 3, and the fact that the xbox 360 is 6-7 years old now, you realise just how much work has gone into this game and just how lucky we are to be able to experience it. Skyrim is a real achievement and shouldn't be missed.

What a fantastic surprise this game was! Beautiful hand drawn graphics that are utterly charming. The sound design is brilliant and the music is a fitting tribute to the mad erratic nature of the game. The gameplay is solid and doesn't try to over complicate with lives and power-ups etc. A pure platformer experience in every shape and form. Also, this is quite a large game with over 10 words containing several levels with a lot of variety, whether your flying on the back of a mosquito or swimming in the deep ocean. I have to say the underwater sections are immensely fun and rather quite beautiful. This game is best played with at least one other person. 2 player co-op is brilliant, 4 player co-op can become quite hectic and very suddenly turns into a slap-fest (you can slap the crap out of each other). So if you want to progress with good scores the 2 player co-op is best, but for maximum on-screen insanity get three friends round and start slapping! Honestly one of the funnest games of last year. I really do struggle to find anything negative about this game. Maybe there are a few pacing issues on some levels and a large amount of trial and error, but that's kind of what platform-games are all about. Anyway frequent checkpoints remove any frustration of having to re-do a tricky part of a level. So no, nothing bad to say about this game. Pah, you can have a 10!

The main reason I enjoyed this particular Halo installment (and Halo:ODST) over any other Halo game (not including Halo Wars - eugh) is because of the lack of the Master Chief and Cortana. I detested the story of Halo 3 because both Master Chief and Cortana are so hilariously dull as main characters and ever so slightly embarrassing. Whenever Cortana's face would flash up on screen telling me how much she loved biscuits in the first level of Halo 3 I found myself cringing and hoping she'd vanish. My only problem with the Halo series has been the horridly cheesy story, with overly emotional choir music which worked very well with the first Halo game but is simply irritating in Halo 2 and 3. Halo as a series just takes itself far too seriously. Which isn't helped but the fan-base who do exactly the same. Luckily, Halo Reach rights many of the wrongs of Halo 3. The story is good and not steeped in tiresome Halo lore like Halo 3. A simple desperate struggle to evacuate a human colony from alien occupation ending in tragedy - which is so refreshing after previous installments in the series. Graphically this game is pretty good. Not pushing any boundaries, but everything looks smooth. Everything works well in Halo Reach and the inclusion of permanent jetpacks, cloaking devices etc really adds to the overall experience. Multiplayer is decent too and really quite addictive. Unfortunately Halo Reach doesn't really seem to aspire to do anything new. In fact I was glad to hear that 343 are taking the reigns of the series now. Hopefully they will inject something new and interesting into the Halo series.

Beautiful beautiful game with some fairly decent voice acting. However, that's where the positive parts of my review end. The story, such an important part of a Final Fantasy game, is so obscure and indecipherable in XIII that at certain points I was completely and utterly lost. The thing is, the story is actually quite straight forward, it's just the game is so poorly written that I found myself relying on online wikis just to understand it. This isn't helped by some terrible cut scenes that occur at a phenomenal rate. In fact the first 15-20 hours (maybe more) of XIII consist of walking down a corridor from cutscene A to cutscene B. Square Enix could have got away with this if they had created characters that are in any way likeable, but no, again, failure on all fronts. Every character is either depressed and/or completely deluded. They constantly moan about how terrible their lives are which just isn't fun to watch. This is the first final fantasy game where I have detested every single character. As for the battle system, well it's incredibly boring. The paradigm change thing feels very derivative and really limits your character customization. Also, the auto-attack function is just depressing. The game actually tells you what combination of attacks or abilities to use. Of course you can ignore it, but all so very often it's telling you to do what you were already planning, so you just hit auto-attack again, and again, and again, until your health is low and you switch to medic and back again, rinse and repeat. It is extremely boring. Also, you can only control one character in your party of three at any one time while the other two are controlled by the AI, which is disgraceful. Never have I seen a game series become so tremendously dumbed down to the point where the game doesn't need you to proceed. The character progression has also become linear and tremendously unexciting. The weapon crafting is also horrendous and almost completely obsolete. It's also very ugly and boring to use. There are also no towns or NPCs to speak to, no side missions to flesh out the world or add depth to the story, and, contrary to believe, no breaks from the linear formula of the game. Yes you do eventually get to a rather large green area with big monsters that look great. The problem is, there's pretty much nothing to do. Yes you can indulge in some monster hunting like Final Fantasy 12, but it's so charmless and quickly just becomes a list of things to spam auto-attack at to make dead. It has none of the charm of Final Fantasy 12. In this big area there is nothing exciting to explore, no cool items or summons to find or anything else really. Basically this large area that comes into the game after torturous corridor crawling is completely shallow. All style, zero substance. Honestly this game is a travesty. I hear there's a sequel coming out this month? Why Square Enix? Why on earth would you not want to ditch this horrid world and move onto something new?! Apart from some actually very pretty graphics, this is an excruciatingly boring and shallow game.

Good - Fantastic visuals with spectacularly detailed environments. Solid and responsive gunplay with enemies that react accordingly when being shot in the face. Runs smoothly at a constantly high framerate. Bad - Completely unoriginal in every shape and form. Driving sections are extremely boring and literally only act as a filler between the better shooting sections. Missions are very repetitive and you are made to visit the exact same areas constantly only this time in reverse (lucky you!). The game length is extremely short (around 15 hours with all side missions). Characters are dull and story is almost non-existent. Crafting gadgets and upgrading weapons is shallower than it could be. Overall - A beautiful, yet extremely shallow game, with superb shooting mechanics but some terribly dull and pointless driving sections. Add to that some boring mission design and you get a linear game pretending to be open-world. Rage should have been a brilliant game, but terrible design choices distracts from what the game does best - shooting things!

GOOD - Fantastic precise and satisfying combat which requires tactics over button mashing. Superb visual design creating a unique dungeons and dragons/ ninja gaiden hybrid. Lots of RPG elements that allow you to create a vast amount of character builds. A sparse and dark story, that requires much investigation by the player to be fully realised (no long cut-scenes here). Excellent multiplayer design allowing various types of co-op and PvP gameplay that is integrated into your own single player experience. PvP in particular is very interesting, allowing you to effectively invade the games of other players, murder them and claim rewards. BAD - Frame-rate issues everywhere (Blight town and New Londo I'm looking at you!) which can really be crippling at times. Thankfully, although quite abundant, frame-rate drops are very specific to certain parts of a map, so are generally only glimpsed momentarily. Still, they can lead to some frustration. The lock-on system can sometimes be a pain. Although this is much improved from Demon's Souls (predecessor to Dark Souls - PS3 exclusive). The difficulty and relative obscurity of the story doesn't make for a particularly accessible game. In fact I really disliked the use of the high difficulty as a selling point. It really makes the game sound horribly elitist. The difficulty is about the least interesting thing in Dark Souls and is terribly overhyped. There are much harder games in existence. Nevertheless, the difficulty will put some people off. However, it must be noted that the game is very fair (more so than Demon's Souls) and actually offers a lot of assistance in the forms of NPCs who can be asked upon to help you in difficult boss fights (as well as gaining assistance from other players online). Overall - Dark Souls isn't for everyone and won't enjoy the mainstream success of games such as Skyrim due to a steep learning curve that will instantly put off some newcomers to the series. However, give the game some time and once everything clicks and you get an understanding of how the game works it becomes thoroughly enjoyable. Also, the sense of camaraderie that the games online mechanics produces is wonderful. Dark Souls has a massive emphasis on co-op play and you will never be short of people willing to come into your world and help you defeat a tough boss. I fear a lot of people will be put off due that awful 'You will die' tagline used in the advertising of Dark Souls. But if you are even the least bit curious to play this game, please ignore the stupid difficulty hype and just get down to enjoying a very original game.

Good - Absolutely stunning graphical detail, quite frankly one of the most beautiful games to look at. The voice acting is superb making every character completely believable. Wonderful set pieces that are very exciting to behold. Some fun and intense gunplay. Multiplayer is fun, quick and easy to get into. The new customizations in multiplayer are very much welcome too, adding much more depth to the gameplay. The co-op story is great addition too, this time receiving a loose story to connect each level. Bad - Apart from the graphics, this is a step back from Uncharted 2. The gunplay, however fun, is now quite inaccurate and irritatingly slow in comparison to Uncharted 2. This makes the game feel extremely clunky at times. The story is really quite weak with little character development (apart from Nate and Sully, I was quite impressed by their backstory). The result of this is a very anticlimactic ending, where it's difficult to care about antagonists that you know nothing about. The game is also really quite short and the linearity of the series is getting to be absurd. For example, without adding too much of a spoiler, there is a whole chapter of the game where you simply have to hold forward to progress as the rest of the game plays itself for you. I found this chapter torturous and it actually added nothing to the story. This perfectly highlighted the pacing issues this game has. You might spend a whole 3 chapters doing nothing but shooting with the occasional set piece, and then have a chapter where you simply walk around aimlessly. It make for some seriously disjointed gameplay. Uncharted 2 had much better pacing, never making anything feel like a slog. The main issue with this game is removal of the player from the gaming experience. I am aware that Uncharted games are supposed to be deeply cinematic but Uncharted 3 has taken it too far and often crosses the line between movie and video game. Uncharted 2 got this just right, but Uncharted 3 has no happy balance, which makes for some deeply unsatisfying gameplay. Also, because the game has so much cinematics injected into it, there is actually very little to do at times, which makes the game quite boring at times and also very easy (even on crushing difficulty). Overall - I feel bad that I have focused much of my attention on what Uncharted 3 is doing wrong. But I only do so because with all the 10/10 reviews it is receiving I am worried that this series is going to become progressively more and more 'cinematic' and the gameplay less and less interesting. At first I was bedazzled by the beautiful graphics of Uncharted 3, but after that had worn off I was left with realisation that this is quite a hollow game. I did enjoy Uncharted 3, but it feels like such a step back from the brilliance that is Uncharted 2.