RPG Epic

Enter The Dragon

Jase

Anyone who is even half interested in RPGs has been salivating at the prospect of a new Elder Scrolls game and coming hot on the heels of the fantastic Fallout 3/New Vegas the bar has been set at a level where disappointment seemed to be the only possible result.  Skyrim however handily exceeds expectations at every turn.

Many developers think that a modern RPG should be all about loot. Which is fine but often the dispensing mechanism for the loot is grinding. As this is what most developers see players doing in the boring world of MMOs. Skyrim rejects that grinding is a necessary evil and instead offers a varied, massive world and says ‘here, level-up and explore. See something brand new each time you play and if you go into a new area, there will be a story to find there’ and then you get some loot. I had put in almost fifty hours of exploring the world before I even thought about doing the second story quest. I spent my time mapping the overworld and diving into ruins.  Pretty crazy when you consider most most games will have four to eight hours of single player content at best.

What would Michael Moriarty do?

The main story of Skyrim involves the return of the dragons, which surprisingly is bad news, and is altogether well-told throughout. Personally though, I preferred the micro stories for each of the guilds and Daedra lords (further detail is offered in the myriad in-game books that can be found in various homes, shops, temples and lairs). These are where the game gets weird, which is great, one story in particular of a necromancer who brings back the dead and then has a relationship with one of the thralls was a bizarro twist ending moment that I really enjoyed. They also allow you to continue once the main story is over so there’s no reason to avoid it like you would have to do in New Vegas or Fallout 3.

I would recommend jumping into the main story and pulling off a few story missions before exploring as it doles out a few ‘shouts’ early on which are useful. Shouts are a form of magic which allow you to do awesome stuff like force-push people off of cliffs or freeze them in a block of ice. They are great as they aren’t associated with the games main magic system so even pure warriors builds can experience spell effects without much effort. Shouts can be found on special walls at the end of (mostly) optional dungeons. Once you’ve learned the word from the wall, you then need to absorb a dragon’s soul to unlock the power. Finding dragons to kill is never a massive problem as they randomly turn up when you’re in the overworld and can lead to some cool emergent moments like the time I was trying to sneak into a fort I was wracking my brains as I didn’t want to get into a fight. Then a dragon turned up and started attacking all the forts defenders and me and my trusty companion Lydia snuck in the back door.  Okay, we were spotted almost as soon as we entered -pro tip: don’t have a follower if your trying to go stealthy – but it was a cool moment nonetheless.

After the trampfest of Fallout, Skyrim

Skyrim handles leveling up with a clever system that improves the skills you use, rather than the usual system of awarding EXP for killing and completing quests. It is a system that rewards trying out different skills, as ranking up in a skill progresses you to the next level. So instead of sticking to, say, one-handed combat for the whole game you would actually hit a wall where ranking up in one-handed takes such a long time that dabbling in two handed or archery combat becomes a valid option if only for leveling up.  Upon leveling you don’t dump points in to strength, vitality etc either but rather you choose from health, mana and stamina (which increases your carry weight) and are given a perk point. These perks have a wide range of effects and all fit into trees centered around each skill. The perks either augment or improve aspects of the skill they are associated with (such as improving your damage with certain attack types or allowing you to work with more advanced equipment in fields such as blacksmithing, alchemy or lockpicking).  Unfortunately, with perks there is no way to respec once you’ve spent them which means that while you can still dabble in many skills, you’ll never get the full experience of all of them in one playthrough.

Gareth Secondary Review As regular readers might know I love me an RPG. Oblivion is an RPG, but I didn’t love it. I really enjoyed it and some of the quests were amazing but I didn’t get drawn into the world, whether it was because of the cut and paste nature of the environments or the shitty Oblivion gates I’m not sure. I think I do love Skyrim. I certainly can’t stop thinking about it. It’s not perfect by any means, I’ve had a couple of crashes and people sinking into the floor or flying into the sky and just general weirdness, but nothing game breaking and nothing which spoiled my enjoyment. There are still a lack of voice actors but you can’t realistically give every character a different voice and the levelling system can still be ‘gamed’ somewhat, but again, it did not hinder my desire to play one bit. The controls are much better this time around, the overall performance of the engine is incredible considering the improvement in visuals and the whole experience has been polished far more than usual for a Bethesda game. The menus are streamlined, the perks style system for levelling allows for a much more focused character and the combat feels much more involved. Although I’ve not done every quest (obviously) there have been a few corkers so far, most of which I stumbled into accidentally whilst trying to do something else, which is always a welcome surprise. Not everything that’s been changed is for the better but the majority of it is. If you’re looking for a million stats you’ll be disappointed, but try and look past that and you’ll find hundreds of hours worth of joy out of Skyrim. Now if you’ll excuse me, my rogue is helping me in my quest to steal EVERYTHING. If RPGs have taught me anything, I must have it all. Secondary Score: 9/10

Crafting is often something RPGs dabble with and is either paper thin or so complex and specific that you need to read a FAQ to have even limited success with it.  Skyrim gets over this by giving the player clear feedback on what improving or enchanting a item will do and is generally quite rewarding. It actually becomes almost a game unto itself, with quite a few hours of my pla though dedicated to scouting new locations for ore.The same cannot be said for alchemy which ends up being a bit of a mess due to the number of different ingredients involved and the varying degree of potion usefulness. Alchemy is by no means ruinous but it does exacerbate one of the fundamental issues I had with the game. Item management, while much better than previous games in the series thanks to the mostly-improved user-interface, is still a issue.  Sure you can dump stuff at a house you own but that involves multiple load screens (and these can be uncomfortably long at times).

With this being a Bethesda RPG you’ll be wanting to hear about the bugs and personally I was pleasantly surprised with the complete lack of nightmarish glitches. I’ve had the game lock up my console once in 100 hours which to be honest I’m ok with, another time I had a issue where the floor didn’t load but leaving the zone and coming back fixed it. I had a subquest glitch on me which was a bit more terrible and reading the what other players have said it seems to be common that if the game tells you to get a generic item like a mushroom and you already have one in your inventory it can bone up quests pretty bad. Not ideal but but hardly ruinous and hopefully patchable. You may have heard of the texture glitch when you install the game to a HDD on 360 but its honestly worth the reduction in load times and didn’t effect my enjoyment of the game at all and has been patched now.

Skyrim will probably be a game that will sit beside Mass Effect 2 when it comes to the top RPGs of this generation and the only improvements I would like to see would be fairly minor tweaks as opposed to anything meaningful. On a personal note, it has been great to have a game that I could really get lost in because so much of 2011 has left me cold. If you’ve been on the fence about Skyrim but suspect it might be a game you would enjoy, you should jump on it with no caveats.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars10/10

Sandbox / Action

Come out to play.

Rich

If there’s one criticism of sandbox games that I hear over and over again, mainly from the voices in my head, it’s that there is always too much time spent doing mundane tasks. From Far Cry 2 making you drive half-way across the dullest stretch of Africa for malaria jabs and San Andreas making you exercise and eat burgers, to numerous games making you make taxi runs for non-playable characters or otherwise performing repetitive fetch quests, games designers always mistake the popularity of these games as an indication that we want to perform menial tasks over and over. Well we don’t. All we really want to do is unlock the story by killing a lot of things or driving really fast.

Business as usual for the 3rd Street Saints.

THQ’s Saints Row 2 showed signs of understanding that. A riotous rampage through a brightly coloured fictional city that gave you all the toys you could ever want to create digital chaos with. The plot, a slightly hackneyed tale of a gangster crew trying to earn respect and influence by wiping out their competition and the shady Ultor Corporation was pretty much an aside but did have moments of decent humour. It was a far cry from GTA 4‘s grey interpretation of city life and all the better for it.

It wasn’t perfect though, with a bit too much chore thrown in with the action and a multiplayer component that was full of antisocial dicks ruining it for everyone. A heaping of ranked badges made the achievements something of a grind too. A few other techinical issues and glitches didn’t help either but overall Saints Row 2 was a fantastic example of the genre.

Set three years after the previous game, Saints Row 3 sees you taking on the role of gangleader of the 3rd Street Saints again. Three years is a long time in the gangster world as the Saints are no longer just a brutal and effective criminal operation but now a fully-fledged media empire with their time split equally between doing dirt (I’m getting my terminology from the Wu Tang Clan here) and setting up legitimate businesses and a popular line of merchandising.

I kick arse for the Lord.

Starting out with a bank heist, it looks like the Saints are in familiar territory from the off. Things soon take a change for the unusual when it is revealed that they have an actor in tow researching them for a role and the gang are wearing characature masks of themselves. The heist goes wrong and soon turns into an all-too-real bloodbath. This opening sequence is breathtaking as far as cold openings go and the action soon ramps up to sublime levels.

At this point, if you’ve got any sense of fun in you, you should be well-hooked and expecting things to settle down a little. The game follows up with a second, unbelievable playable set piece which sends a strong message. This game is going to be more ridiculous, hilarious and dynamic than anything you’ve played before. Mission after mission of amazing set pieces and full-on laugh-out-loud humour will reward you for your purchase. You’re just along for the ride.

Inbetween missions, the Saints concentrate on building a new empire in the fictional city of Steelport – a typical mix of business, industrial and residential areas. It it a city full of shops to visit and take over, side-missions to conquer and all the vehicle and weapons you can eat. The opportunities for chaos are everywhere and the game’s strong but exaggerated engine just enhances everything.

Lurk Secondary Review One word I will be using a lot in this review is fun, that’s simply because this game is great fun. Too many sandbox games can be overly serious or just have large areas devoid of anything. What Saints Row: The Third does is give you a relatively compact playing area and all the tools to go out, explore the area and have fun blasting the shit out of rival gangs, the police or just civilians. The cars handle in a very arcade way, which is a good thing because there’s no quick travel system in this game, but you don’t mind because going from one point to another never really seems like a chore. Then the other vehicles in the game like helicopters, planes and boats also handle very well. Flying is a particular joy, because the controls are so easy to get a hold of you’ll be flying about blasting enemies with ease. Playing through the story mode keeps you hooked because you want to see what the developers come up with next, due to the game having some really cool set pieces. In particular the first couple of in game missions really help to cement you into the over the top world you’re thrown into. The side missions in this game are fun whether it’s escorting a tiger round the city in your car or the insane Dr Genki’s Hyper Ethical Fun Time show, which plays like a version of The Club. The game does have its flaws like the fact once I completed the main story of the game I never got the achievements pop for completing it. Also during car theft missions it has popped up with a message saying the target vehicle has been destroyed, which it obviously hadn’t because I was driving it quite safely at the time. These nit-picks aside I’ve really enjoyed playing the game and hopefully the DLC that comes out doesn’t turn a game I enjoyed into a hateful piece of dogshit like Borderlands, because I want more missions. Secondary Score: 9/10

Many of the side-missions will be familiar to veterans of the series but newcomers such as Dr Genki’s and an odd twist on the taxi driving missions (a very odd twist!) up the ante suitably well. Of course these endeavours, and the main missions, can all be performed in co-op although it’s still just a two-player affair.

Graphically everything is what you’d describe as pretty but functional. Steelport is a big place to play in (not so big that it’s a chore to navigate though) and so the level of action catered for does mean the graphics aren’t going to be up there with the likes of Skyrim or anything. It looks good though. Where the presentation really excels is in the sound. Everything sounds great from the gun battles to the snippets of incidental speech that you get when wandering around. The voice acting takes it up a notch though with some truly memorable performances that I won’t spoil for you. The best thing is the music selection though. A great selection of dance, hip hop, indie and metal are on offer from the in-game radio stations, the best of which is The Mix which plays everything from Adam Ant to the theme from the Karate Kid! Oh and Return of the Mac!

Just as Skyrim (review coming, we aren’t rushing it like other lesser sites) simplified and polished the gameplay set down by Oblivion so does Saints Row 3 when compared to the original. Levelling up, collecting money and organising your weaponary, missions and contacts list are all a lot easier now with most options all being accessed through your phone. They’ve taken out a lot of the collectables too so it’s all just a lot more immediate than Saints Row 2 was.  The achievements reflect this with a much more streamlined and manageable list compared to previous games.

When it comes down to it though, Saints Row 3 is all about impact. It starts at 100mph with big set-pieces and funny cutscenes and even when it settles down to street-level, there is always a great story mission, a new weapon or a great character around the corner keeeping the momentum up. The game concentrates on fun. Distilled, bottled, swigged and vomited all over you. Instead of being mired in a concrete world of realism, Saints Row 3 is set in a sugar-frenzied world of imagination and possibility, knowingly ridiculous and proud of it.

You can look at minor niggles in the game, some of which are design choices, others that will no doubt be patched out and consider whether or not points should be dropped from the score but if you do that, you’d better start from twelve because no other game strives to give you this much to do and this much fun doing it.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars 10/10

Shooter

Wibble.

Danny

Battlefield 3 is a funny old game, well it is on the Xbox 360 anyway. I am aware that the PC version is the lead platform, and is the superior version, but the 360 on the first day of launch outsold both the PS3 and PC combined (the PC version only sold just shy of 500,000 copies while the Xbox 360 version sold 2.5 million).  Plus, PEOWW  is primarily a console review site and that is the reason why we have chosen to review the Xbox 360 version.

First of all let’s get the whole single player experience out of the way first. It’s a fairly uninspired, linear corridor-fest of a shooter which occasionally allows you to sit as a gunner of a jet (which is just an fancy on-rails section) or drive a tank. The game ended up frustrating me more than anything as the characters are very bland compared to the Bad Company gang from the previous two games and then there are the actual problems concerning gameplay which are unique to the single player experience.

War is hell. Getting real in-game screenshots from EA is worse.

For a start what’s with all those bloody quick time events? The last time I checked this was not the year 2000 and I am not playing Sega’s seminal Shenmue. What makes things worse is that they are not even challenging and you can not help but feel they have been added to make the player feel like they are involved in something which is heavily scripted and ultimately pretty mundane. Another issue is with the ropey AI. Your team mates who like to run in front of you while you are firing and the enemies who will happily walk single file to their doom and not adapt to your tactics at all. What the enemy will do however is shoot you from across the map with an implausible shot with an AK74. It’s just as well that the game is only four to six hours long otherwise it might outstay it’s welcome, it’s certainly not as fun or well realised as Bad Company 2‘s campaign that’s for sure.

You can tell EA were just phoning it in on the single player, heck they even put it on disc two while the co-op missions (which a pretty fun and range from co-op piloting a chopper to all out on foot firefights) and the multiplayer is on disc one. Now this is where I have to bring in the differences between Battlefield 3 and the previous version of Battlefield to hit the consoles, Bad Company 2 (as opposed to comparing the console and PC versions of the game as well all know already that the PC version of this game blows the console ports out of the water).

First of all I would like to point out that Battlefield 3 is a great sounding game.  The sound design is fantastic, while I don’t really like the new “dubstep remix” of the Battlefield theme I do like the rest of the music and sound, especially the gun fire and the soldiers calling out to each other.

The graphics on the other hand are very hit and miss. You can tell that this game was not optimised properly from the PC as it has some very rough edges when compared to Bad Company 2  which was designed with the consoles in mind. The Xbox 360 version requires a 2gb install for the hi-def texture pack which does improve things but there are still some rough textures to be found even with that install. Also there is a big problem with anti-alisaing in the game especially when you look at things like overhead electrical wires which look horrendously blocky and do detract from the experience somewhat. The lighting is much improved from Bad Company 2 but again as many PC players will point out is nowhere near as good as the PC version, go watch some comparison videos and see what I mean.

M I C. K E Y. M O U S E!

So what about the multiplayer? Well it’s still a fun game to play, no doubt. They have changed the leveling up system so that not only do you level up your solider but also you now level each of the four individual classes and also their weapons too. This means that their will always be something to strive for when playing online as you can only gain class specific perks by playing as that class and you can only gain new gun attachments by using the same gun over and over. The classes on the whole feel pretty well balanced but it seems the Engineer is the most popular at the moment thanks to their ability of being able to repair vehicles and also shoot rockets, which they seem to have plenty of which becomes very troublesome on certain maps.

The map design has become more restrained and compact with less environmental damage than in Bad Company 2. There are two levels in Battlefield 3 that literally take place within tunnels of some variety, yep I want you to think about that for a second. Battlefield, the series renowned for it’s sweeping, open battlegrounds even on it’s console variants has now become a game where engineers shoot rockets at each other from half way across the map which just so happen to be confined, cramped tunnels. Don’t get me wrong, not every level is like this, in fact there are some pretty awesome maps in Battlefield 3 (some even have jets!) and the fact that soon the game will be getting four of the best maps from Battlefield 2 is great news. Overall though I can’t help but feel that the overall map selection in Bad Company 2 was not only more destructible but better as well, the less said about the Paris street level where the enemy can repeatedly spawn kill you the better.

With that said Battlefield 3 is, at times, a great game, especially if you play the game with a bunch of friends who all have headsets and co-operating together as a cohesive unit. There is nothing like two guys jumping in to a helicopter and blowing everything away with good team work and determination. If however you don’t know anyone who owns this you might have a different experience because it might be you on the business end of a good squad who are working together and being stuck with people who not only don’t talk but refuse to help or do anything constructive can really sap the enthusiasm for playing this game.

So is Battlefield 3 worth your money? Yes and no. Don’t get me wrong. If you are a fan of the series and are looking for some fresh maps to sink your teeth into, you have probably already brought this game. But I can’t shake the feeling that this game has been done better and by it’s predecessor Bad Company 2 which I consider to be the second-best modern military shooter (after Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 that is – heh!) that money can buy for the Xbox 360 at the moment.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars 7/10

Vertical-scrolling Shooter

Bernard, I ate all your bees.

Rich

Aw man, I hate reviewing shoot ‘em ups, especially the Japanese “manic shooter” type. Not because they are difficult (although they are, staggeringly so) but rather that you really need to know your stuff if you want to review them and not get the various shoot ‘em up communities up in arms because you didn’t mention that revision A’s bullet patterns are from v1.08′s second loop fifth-stage mid-boss but can be countered with the mega-hyper-laser-plasma-gun if you’ve got a 95% shot-down rate and haven’t used a continue or something. For a genre that, for the most part, is about a little ship at the bottom shooting lots of ships coming in from the top, these games are complex. Like, hardcore.

Lots of bullets fucking up your day.

Well, I’m not an expert and you’re not an expert. You just want to know what this game is about and whether or not it’s worth buying. Anyone wanting to know about every nuance of the game should probably check out a specialist site but if you’re like me, a half-decent gamer who plays too much shit to specialise in one game, or even genre, for too long, you’re in the right place.

Dodonpachi Resurrection Deluxe Edition is, as previously mentioned, a vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up. Although the Donpachi series dates back to 1995 (with this, the fifth game in the series, hitting the arcades in 2008) even then things had progressed remarkably from the early days when such sedate titles as 1942 and Xevious ruled the genre. Those games, while suitably challenging in their day, are like the early levels on Trials HD. Playable and tough enough for normal gamers, but experts always want more of a challenge and Japanese games dev Cave specialised in giving them just that.

That little bit of blatant Wiki research aside, Cave games as a rule tend to feature screens full of enemies and ridiculous bullet patterns that at first glance would look completely impenetrable. However, the best games in the genre tend to get you into the zone where your skills, aided by strategic system slowdown, see you escaping apparent certain-death by pixels. This is further aided by your ship usually having a tiny hitbox. In this game’s case it is a mere five pixels squared. However, even with those advantages, the sheer destructive force aimed at you can be utterly demoralising and personal success will come from just trying to get a bit further each time you play it. Get to the end and the quest for perfection then focuses on your scoring.

Lots more bullets fucking up your day even more.

DoDonPachi Resurrection’s story, some bollocks about weaponised fembots and angry bees from what I can tell, isn’t going to interest you if you are just picking this up for some arcade thrills but the vivid, detailed graphics, smooth movement and ridiculous pyrotechnics will. You’ll be better off getting acquainted with the game’s manual as the initial simplicity of the game is soon replaced with a level of complexity that is quite surprising (and daunting). From the combo chaining system to the various weapon modes available to you, mastering this game will take some major homework and that’s before you get a radioactive spider to bite you in order to quicken your reflexes enough to survive level four.

As with Cave’s other console ports, DoDonPachi Resurrection has a few extra modes included (although two more are available as DLC which is a disappointment for what is supposedly a ‘deluxe’ edition) and these all offer a different twist on the core gameplay. Arrange A seems to be the basic arcade mode (listed in the menus as 1.5 L mode whatever that means), Arrange B is a very nice mode where you replay stages over and over, increasing the rank of the enemies in it and therefore your scoring possibilities and the Xbox 360 mode is a twist on Arrange A (or vice versa, whatever) but with the option to pick different ships and customisations.

Each mode feels sufficiently different to make them valid inclusions but nothing stands out as much as Guwange‘s wonderful Xbox mode (which adopts a twin-stick control scheme that is massively improved, in my limited opinion, to the basic arcade control method). A Novice Mode is included as well although when you’re on the game’s fifth and final stage, it feels anything but novice. Xbox and Arrange A both have conditions that when met allow you onto the game’s second loop. These conditions are way beyond my skills though, given that they involve 1CCing the game. Not in this lifetime, Cave.

Despite the literally horrific level of difficulty, I really like Cave shooters. I hope to improve at them but for now I’m happy to slowly plug away at them while regularly crashing and burning and the great graphics and precise gameplay are enough for me to keep going. Besides, this is a niche genre and we are incredibly lucky to be getting these games over here in Europe. If you’re a very casual gamer then DoDonPachi Resurrection may just be a bit too tough for your tastes but Cave are the masters of what they do and if you’re open to new experiences (well old ones really) and don’t mind being humbled, then this is well worth the budget asking price.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

(note:  this score reflects the value and experience a regular gamer can expect from the game.  Shoot ‘em up experts mileage will probably vary somewhat)

Action/Adventure

BANG! THUD! PEOWW!

Gareth

The sequel to my personal game of 2009, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and my most anticipated game of 2011 has finally arrived. Batman: Arkham City takes place about a year after the original and is of a much larger scope than its predecessor. Have Rocksteady struck gold twice or have they bitten off more than they can chew this time?

The story goes that a section of Gotham has been cordoned off and turned into a prison to house all criminals. Naturally this seems like a awful idea, especially if you put Hugo Strange in charge and Batman heads in to bust some heads. If you focus solely on the main story I can imagine the game, even with its twists and turns, won’t last you very long, but take in the side missions and the full range of characters from the fiction and you’ll enjoy yourself much more whilst also making the game last a lot longer. The atmosphere is the star though, helped by the massive cast of fleshed out characters. Apart from the films and the cartoon I know little of Batman’s world, but both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City make me want to learn more.

Even Batman hates juggalos.

You have a whole city to explore as Batman now, as well as indoor sections. The outdoor section is home to side quests and collectibles mostly, with the main story sections taking place in buildings similar to Arkham Asylum, but it’s an impressive feat. Asylum was a looker when it was released in 2009 and City is no different now but on a much larger scale (even the groups of enemies you face are greater in size) with load times only kicking in when you enter buildings or on occasion if you travel across the world map too fast. When out in the city you’ll also hit pockets of resistance which you can fight or ignore as you choose, although once the enemies get guns this can be annoying as you may accidentally run into a group and be forced to fight or be shot out of the sky.

Again, the hand to hand combat in Arkham City is a joy, just like in Asylum. On the lower difficulties you can button mash your way through it, sure, but in the more difficult battles, and if you want the greatest rewards (or points in challenge mode) then variety is the key. Keeping a combo flowing without stopping or getting hit whilst using as many of Batman’s moves as possible is an amazing feeling, and Rocksteady have done well to incentivise the mastery of their battle system. There are far more moves at your disposal too this time around, all accessible from button combos and quick taps. It is initially a little confusing with so many options across so few buttons but once you get your head around it you’ll get your own rhythm going and you’ll be destroying large groups of thugs no matter what they bring to the fight.

Due to the open nature of the game now there seems to be less stealth, but it is still there and clearing a room of enemies without anyone seeing you is almost as good as mastering the combat. The enemies also have more gadgets to make things difficult, such as thermal goggles, but anything they can do Batman can counter if you have enough XP to upgrade. You gain XP through completing objectives, side quests, finding collectibles and defeating enemies and each time you level up you can unlock or upgrade an ability. You start off with a lot of the gadgets and abilities from the end of Arkham Asylum but there are plenty more to unlock, many of them incredibly useful in both battles and when puzzle solving. For those unaware, the Rocksteady Batman games are Metroidvania in style, meaning you’ll come across areas you can’t access at first, but will be able to return to later with a new ability that will allow you to proceed.

Wait! I was watching that!

Arkham City is not completely perfect however. During combat the camera can have trouble keeping all the enemies on screen at once and it’s incredibly annoying to have your combo broken by someone attacking you from off screen. The traversal also has trouble doing what you want at times thanks to the context sensitive nature of the controls, which doesn’t cause too many problems but when in a tight spot (like in a challenge room for example) Batman grappling onto the wrong thing or climbing over a ledge instead of hanging over it can be the difference between life and death. Also, similarly to Asylum, the boss battles in City are generally quite weak and a bit too ‘gamey’ with you having to dodge projectiles and leap over shock waves. There are exceptions, but the majority aren’t as interesting as the regular multi-man brawls you get into. It could also be said that there are far too many collectibles, even though they tend to be slightly more interesting to find than in your average game.

Other than the main campaign you also get a New Game Plus upon completing it which keeps all your abilities but ups the difficulty and also Riddler’s Revenge. Basically the challenge rooms from Arkham Asylum. In the Ranked variants you either need to fight in a combat challenge and get as high a score as possible or sneak around in a predator room making sure you complete certain objectives (takedown someone through a weak wall or don’t get shot, for example). On top of that there are Campaign challenge rooms which are exactly the same as the Ranked ones but you have to do three in a row with only three retries and variables/perks to activate at your choosing (but all must be used). It’s nice to have a lot of content but this is a little too much like the same content spread incredibly thin across multiple modes. All the DLC character content is also based around these same rooms, which I have to admit struggled to hold my interest, even for just Batman.

Speaking of DLC, the game comes with a one time only code to unlock Catwoman who actually has her own story sections woven through Batman’s. There are four in all and it’s a nice addition but the only problem is that she isn’t as good as Batman. Whereas Batman can glide and grapple across the city Catwoman can only run and has to climb up buildings in multiple bounds. Her special vision also isn’t as good as Batman’s for spotting danger and she lacks a lot of the gadgets too (she does have some of her own). It doesn’t feel tacked on, but forcing it into the story was probably unnecessary and a separate option on the menu would have been more appropriate.

So all in all Batman: Arkham City is more of the same, but that’s no bad thing. The city can be a little daunting at first but once you start to progress and unlock the side missions you will find plenty to do and you’ll realise the city isn’t as large as it first seems. The characters, atmosphere and combat is all top notch but there are a few areas which aren’t quite up to that level like the boss fights and the over reliance on collectibles and reusing the same challenge rooms multiple times. There is plenty of content even if you ignore those minor grievances however and Rocksteady have basically done the unthinkable twice, created a licensed, comic book, superhero game which is excellent.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars 8/10

Flying/Combat

I wanna be sedated.

Rich

Chocks away eh what?  Bandits at six o’clock and all that.  Yep, it’s time for another one of these combat flight games.  This genre has already made a few appearances on the Xbox 360 with the enjoyable Blazing Angels games, the overly stuffy Il-2 Sturmovich, the emo-as-fuck Ace Combat 6 (not to mention its soon-to-arrive, shitty-looking sequel) and a couple of no-mark efforts as well.  The newest arrive is Air Conflicts: Secret Wars which is a World War 2-flavoured take on the genre that follows the story of DeeDee, a female French pilot adopted by an English WW1 veteran and friend of her dead father, as she takes part in secret battles while also finding out what happened to her old man.

What this game would look like with a proper graphics engine.

The story is utterly forgetable and told via lengthy spoken dialogues that are rubbishly acted and more annoying than informative.  There are also story panels inbetween missions that feature some poor cartoon art and deliver the story via text.  However, it all comes down to the same thing:  seven chapters featuring eight or so missions each that see you either destroying something or someone or smuggling something somewhere.  The smuggling missions have a degree of stealth to them with the presumably owl-headed German pilots having a circle of vision around them that you have to avoid using the handy mini-radar on your screen.

If you do have to get into a battle, the lessons that could be learned from, say, Blazing Angels 2 (this game’s closest comparison) are completely ignored.  The battles are slow, awkward and utterly bland.  There’s no sense of drama or excitement in the gameplay and the game’s visual presentation is so very bland that it feels like you’re playing the whole thing after swigging a bottle of Night Nurse.  With the shitty vintage planes lacking in speed and also manouvrability (including the game’s incredibly low glass ceiling), battles are just a case of trying to get behind the other plane and pepper them machinegun fire or try to get lucky with the unguided missiles.

None of the game’s many missions offer any real challenge or variation and there’s not a whole lot to see either beyond the hills of France, the sand dunes of Egypt or the occasional European town.  After flying over populated football grounds and taking on highly experimental enemies in Blazing Angels 2, this seems incredibly pedestrian.  After the ten or so mindnumbing hours spent in campaign there’s also the online mode to play with.  Well, there would be but this game is utterly dead online already.  The achievements for winning 50 games or finishing top in a six player battle are incredibly ambitious as there’s no kind of community on this game beyond a few boosters trying to get things together via the various achievement whoring websites.

Dropping bombs on tiny nazis isn

If you do get a game together, you’ll find that the incredibly weak machine gun fire means that sky battles can take ages to settle.  A little like Gears of War, this is the sort of game where you can be chipping away at an enemy’s health for the best part of five minutes before he actually fucks off and dies.

So all in all, there’s very little to recommend when it comes to Air Conflicts.  The only plus points are some of the visual flourishs, such as the occasional stunningly beautiful sunset or decent cloud/fog/smoke effects.  However these are totally at odds with the primative graphics seen in the rest of the game.  Slow, featureless and overly expensive even at a budget price.  This is the Easyjet of air combat games.

 Rating: 3 out of 10 stars3/10

Football

1-0 (Helguson, pen 10.  Sent off:  Bosingwa, Drogba).

Mike

Konami wade back into the deep end with their yearly outing of the long-running footy sim and, for the first time in years, it’s a genuinely smart, punishing experience.

Last year’s engine is back in place and has now been tuned up to include some clever AI that’s willing to run around you. It’s a very welcome sight to see movement on the pitch which seemed absent (at first) from last year’s effort. That said, the opposition AI will work just as hard to close you down and space is at a premium. That, in theory, is where the new teammate controls come in. Click the right stick in and you can control a teammate and move him off the ball to create space. Sadly, in open play that’s yet another thing to think about and it’ll not always pick up the player you’re thinking of. It seems much more effective from set pieces as you create dummy runs and try to free up space for a target.

Basically not in-game at all.

There’s also new defensive controls which somewhat mimic what EA did with FIFA 12. You’re encouraged to jockey and contain threats, rather than steaming up with challenges. You’ll quickly realize this as you get countless fouls against you. Now, I never got on with FIFA’s defending and it’s still something of a learning experience here. It’s rewarding to land a sliding challenge on attackers and keeping a clean sheet against a top side.

Game modes remain largely the same with Master League returning with a few new tweaks. You take on club management on a daily basis and now have some communication between your players, as well as objectives being landed at your feet by club directors that range from giving prospects game time to qualifying for tournaments. It adds just a little bit more to a consistently engrossing mode. The online equivalent is equally time-consuming and runs fairly smooth. The option to watch highlights of online tournaments is neat.

Like why bother? Seriously.

Negatively speaking, goalkeepers do seem eccentric. Meanwhile, lofted through balls seem to be completely taken out of the equation and fatigue is now completely off the scale, leading to a lot of squad rotation.

However, your biggest hurdle in this game will be how it plays. The AI is brutal and will punish you. On top of this, every team seems to carry a different threat so settling on a way of playing is close to impossible. Plus, with the AI being so sharp across the pitch, the hard swings between success and failure are very evident. I’m hearing many say it’s broken but, defeat never feels unfair to me. I’m not cheated out of wins, just outplayed.

It’s easy to see why this game has been so well-received. It’s an intelligent effort with the smartest AI since the PlayStation 2 glory days but it also mounts a serious challenge for those willing to pit themselves against the AI. Those wary might want to wait for a price drop.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars 7/10

Football Sim

JLOLn Terry etc etc.

Rich

I’m an avid fan/despiser of football.  I love my team, even when they lose (which is more often than not) but I hate all football fans and all other teams.  I hate Sky Sports, men who wear football shirts and people who hold their arms out and go ‘wahhhh’ when someone misses.  I particularly hate Chelsea so much that I might actually die from it one day.  But what I do like is the game.  The passing, the skills, the moments of brilliance.  Unfortunately I was cursed with two left feet.  Actually, more like the left feet from that fucking Daniel Day Lewis film.  If football seperates the men from the boys, I barely qualify as a foetus.  I shoot rather less well than Dick Cheney, I run like Dawn French approaching a lettuce and invariably any attempt to bring down and control a football sees me on the floor trying to catch my breath which by then is covered in piss.

Typically bullshit FIFA promo shot. What's the fucking point?

That’s why these football simulation-o-trons appeal to me.  I get to use my knowledge of football and tactics without having to exert any effort and, as far as this genre goes, it doesn’t usually get much better than EA’s FIFA series which in recent years has adopted the approach of shoving as much extraneous shit in there as possible and letting you deal with it.

Fans of the series will have already bought this and will be on GameFAQs trolling the PES threads but us normal folks just need to know if this is worth picking up.  After all, FIFA 11 was barely distinguishable from FIFA 09, with EA having settled into a series of small evolutions now that they are on the top spot with Konami’s PES series languishing in a puddle of its own tears.  The short version is that FIFA 12 just about does enough to warrant a purchase but with the understanding that when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the game engine, this hasn’t really changed that much.  Sure, the box blurb and excitable cocksuckers at other, less good review sources will harp on about ‘improved AI’, ‘more realistic collisions’ and other completely unquantifiable bullshit but when it comes down to it, I play the same way I played every game in the series more or less.  The game doesn’t change.  It’s all about the modes these days.

Typically, FIFA 12 throws in your usual exhibition matches, leagues and cups as well as a fat career mode that can be played as a player, a manager or both.  You can also choose to play matches as a team or just by controlling your individual ‘virtual pro’ so there’s plenty of variation in there.  As with previous efforts, this iteration of FIFA gives you plenty of room to express yourself with all manner of tricks to pull off.  Most of the time these just involve wiggling your right analog stick and hoping you turn into Zidane but the sheer amount of variation is impressive and the more stuff you do with your virtual pro, the better he gets until you’ve got the next Messi on your hands.  Albeit one that doesn’t look like a chubby girl with Down’s.  Pretty much everything you can do on the pitch gives your player a stat boost until you’ve either created a goalscoring genius, a skillful playmaker or a silky defender and nabbing these ‘accomplishments’ is pretty addictive, to the point where you can easily spend half an hour in the arena trying to score freekicks or dribble past the keeper.

The main on-the-pitch change is to the defending.  There is now a choice of defensive techniques available to you from the usual standing and sliding tackles to blocking and jockeying.  A lot has been made of this on the various idiot forums out there and it’s not as big a change as people are claiming but it does feel like a nice refinement, even if playing FIFA these days seems to require having octopuses for hands.

As expected, the matches are represented in beautifully detailed and animated graphics and the players are well-represented as well with Wayne Rooney looking suitably ugly and Joey Barton looking like he wants to fight you.  The commentary is better than ever with Alan Smith drafted in to help Martin Tyler and the crowds are as chanty and ever. 

For those of you looking for a bit more depth, the Career Mode should cater for all your needs as the management aspects are pretty beefy for this kind of game with all the usual transfer options as well as the ability to update your backroom staff and even talk to the press.  Most of that stuff can be ignored as a player-manager though (although you can also choose to be just a player or a manager) as you’ll be influencing things more on the pitch but there’s a good chunk of game here for armchair managers and, of course, a world of licensed players to buy in the transfer market.  That said, as with every football game since Sensible Soccer, the most important stat is still speed it seems. 

And another bullshit promo shot. Fucks sake, EA.

Once you’ve nabbed all those Career Mode achievements, it’s off to the Ultimate Team Mode.  This mode served its apprenticeship as DLC for the last three seasons and as such was completely ignorable but now it’s on the disc and is tied into a quarter of the game’s achievements.  This mode has you playing tournaments (on or offline) for points that can be spent on Panini-style packs of players, backroom staff or other random things such as contracts or player boosts.  These are random though, you don’t know what you are going to get until you buy a pack, yep just like the old sticker albums although you can buy bronze, silver or gold packs so you may want to save up for a gold one if you want a shot at landing Wayne Rooney.  As ever, soulless cocksuckers can bypass the winning tournaments thing and just buy these packs with real money. 

As a newcomer to Ultimate Team, I have to say it’s given my football gaming the shot in the arm it needed.  I’ve been so bored of this genre thanks to Konami and EA making such microsteps each year with their respective franchises but combined with the best FIFA engine so far and some decent in-game netcode (although connecting to the EA servers can be problematic and slows down the already cumbersome menus to a crawl sometimes), FIFA 12 gives me everything I need from a football game.  As an additional bonus the Head to Head online mode also doesn’t allow communication with your opponent which means that every game I’ve played online has been much better than in previous years and this mode is seperate from the Online Friendlies mode which is where you play your chums in nicely organised one vs one leagues.

So all in all this a very solid addition to the franchise with nearly all my usual criticisms ironed out (the soundtrack still sucks cock though and the game is dripping in Wayne Rooney).  For the first time in a long time, I’m pining to get back to it which is a good sign that EA are doing something right.  

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars 9/10

Third-person shooter

Emergence Day comes early.

Gareth

Gears of War 2 was a disappointment. I’m not a multiplayer type of guy so I can’t really comment on that side of things but as someone who played through the original Gears in co-op on numerous occasions the campaign in Gears 2 was tedious with a really weak ending. Horde mode was a good introduction but the disc quickly got put away to never be played again. Gears of War 3 has been making all the right noises though and the temptation of co-op lured me back for a third time. Was it worth it?

Castle Greyskull is an enemy in the game?

There can’t be many people reading this who don’t know what Gears of War is. Arguably the most influential game this generation, many games since have copied its cover system, limited colour pallet, Horde mode and co-op functionality. There aren’t many that have done it better though and Gears 3 has fine tuned every aspect of its gameplay for what is supposed to be the final game, at least of this story arc. Played from a third person perspective the basic gameplay revolves around moving forward pumping bullets into every enemy who appears before you. Every piece of furniture or rubble is waist high for perfect cover and every encounter will take place in an arena style area which won’t open up until you’ve killed everything and heard the ‘everything is dead’ chime.

A new range of enemies have been introduced this time in the Lambent (they did exist previously but are far more prevalent now) which require different tactics to the old Locust enemies as they explode on death and are generally much more aggressive. Luckily there has been another major change to the campaign to help, you can now play four player co-op. It doesn’t change the gameplay any and the AI is actually not too bad. There will be times when they are dancing around your downed body still fighting rather than picking you up but they are happy to kill things and they do a decent job of reviving you most of the time, but if you’ve got three friends who all want to play Gears of War with you now you can and it’s a welcome addition.

Blatantly made-up promo shot alert.

Graphically the game has also had a upgrade. Both previous Gears games haven’t been slouches in the looks department but Gears 3 blows them out of the water. Character models, lighting, and scale have all been improved and although it does still occur rarely, the texture pop in of other Unreal Engine games has been almost completely wiped out. No longer is the game devoid of colour either, it can be subtle but coloured light streaming down from above, green foliage, even the characters themselves are a little more colourful than before. It all feels solid and glitch free too, which makes Gears 3 feel like a very polished title. The same can be said for the sound as well, particularly the voice acting. It wasn’t bad before, but the dialogue is a lot less macho at times and it works. It could have easily felt forced or uncomfortable but even the more emotional scenes feel in character.

So story-wise things are going to get a little more emotional and this really is the end of this story ark. I can’t say every loose end was tied up (maybe I’d have to read the books for that) but there is no cliffhanger ending, all the main plot points end. The writing is a lot better here or at least it tackles things of more weight than the previous two games an does it well. Another plus point then.

Mark Secondary Review When I first played the original Gears of War, I must say it touched me in all the places a young man likes to be touched. Whilst the story didn’t wow me completely, the cover based gun orgy with a climax of exploding bodies was enough for me to get my jollies off. Now five years on, the conclusion of the trilogy Gears of War 3 arrives with more steroid abusing men (and women) than ever before. The fundamentals have stayed the same with characters still able to explode enemy’s heads with their hands like rotten coconuts but it does look considerably prettier doing so. The protagonists have been updated slightly according to the story progression although what happened to ‘Cole Train’ to make him look at least 65% retarded will remain a mystery. The number of weapons in all game modes has increased and whilst it feels like the new weapons are a welcome addition, the ‘Digger’ in particular feels a little unbalanced. There’s been nothing more infuriating than being killed instantly in cover by a homing weapon which travels underground through every obstacle. Digging weapons aside, the game feels quite balanced in campaign and multiplayer. Apart from a few moments of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the campaign is far from impossible even on the top difficulty as long as you keep a sensible head on. Multiplayer soon follows suit once you’ve played it a few times, learnt some of the levels and found out how to counter someone spamming certain weapons. There is certainly enough variety to keep any player around for a while. With the addition of four player co-op (at last!) and Beast mode I can see myself losing what very little social life I have for quite some time to come. Secondary Score: 9/10

If the campaign isn’t the main draw for you then the multiplayer has everything from before and more. Horde mode (where you work as a team to defeat wave after wave of enemies) returns but with the addition that you can buy turret defence style upgrades using the points you accrue, such as barbed wire fences to slow down the enemy, decoys and turrets. Buying and repairing these units upgrades them so you can buy better versions of them as you complete waves. Since every time I played Horde mode with my friends in Gears 2 we’d end up holed up somewhere this seems like a natural step and is an improvement to an already addictive mode.

In the vein of Horde mode is Beast mode. Here the tables are turned as you play as the Locust and have to try to take out all the humans who have set up defences. There are only twelve waves in this mode, the goal is to end with as high a money total as possible in the quickest time. To enter the game you need to spend money on a unit. You start off with weak, rather plain units but as you play on you unlock further tiers which make it easier to destroy everyone but cost more money. So do you pay less to attack with a regular gun totting Locust or spend all your hard earned cash on a Berserker and wreck shop? It is a lot of fun seeing the battlefield from a new perspective but whether it’ll keep people’s interest as long as something like Left 4 Dead remains to be seen.

There are your adversarial multiplayer modes as well of course. Team Deathmatch (5v5 deathmatch), Warzone (5v5 deathmatch, no respawns), Execution (5v5 deathmatch, no respawns, must execute downed opponents), Capture the Leader (capture the flag), King of the Hill (hold points on a map) and Wingman (2v2v2v2 deathmatch). If there aren’t enough people then bots fill in the gaps which is a nice touch. People still roll around with shotguns and a few of the new weapons seem very powerful (the Digger seems unstoppable at close range for an explosive weapon) but the switch to dedicated servers is a positive one and every game I’ve played online has been super smooth.

So Gears of War 3 barely makes any mistakes. Obviously if the idea of running forward shooting things sounds awful to you then you may not like it but for everyone else this is an incredibly polished experience which improves on every aspect of the previous two games whist adding more on top. There’s a meaty campaign which can be played with three others on multiple difficulties, other co-op and online adversarial modes to keep you playing, with unlocks spread out to keep you interested and I’m sure there will be DLC to add more (not counting gun skins, obviously). It’s an excellent package all round and it is hard to think of any obvious negatives off the top of my head, which is a rarity and an achievement which should be rewarded.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars 9/10

Survival horror

Fetch quests on Zombie Island?  Why doesn’t this suck?

Rich

In recent years zombies in gaming have become so commonplace that even hating them has become a cliche. Games at every level, from full retail releases to Xbox Live Indie and iOS titles, are riddled with the brain-addicted fuckers to such a degree that they’ve become an actual zombie epidemic. So when Dead Island finally started to emerge – long after being originally announced back at E3 2006 – there were plenty of us who were happy to let it pass us by. But we’re still clambering out of this summer drought and there was something about Dead Island‘s mixed reception that made us want to try it out. After all, we love our lemons here and Dead Island looked especially citrusy. Mmmm lemons.

Backstage with Gwar.

From the opening sequence, a first-person drunken affair that echoes The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ video, to your first look at the luxury resort island of Banoi, the game makes a great first impression that evokes memories of Dead Rising. There’s something a little cinematic and epic about it. A confident start. After picking one of the four fairly interchangeable protagonists, and looting all the suitcases you can on your way out of your hotel, it is time for you to start making friends with the other survivors and getting a little less friendly with the deader inhabitants of the island.

The game plays out in a similar way to Borderlands. That is to say that there is a main line of quests that takes you through the chapters of the game but you can also recieve and complete numerous side quests for extra money and experience points. The side quests themselves are the usual mixture of combat and fetch missions that give you a chance to explore the island and massacre the inhabitants.

Suddenly the luxury holiday in Kenya seemed like a really fucking bad idea.

Exploration is made easy thanks to decent driving mechanics and a handful of quick travel points but the island of Banoi is, at least at first, a very nice place to discover. The blue skies and idyllic beaches give the game a bright and breezy feel that is literally a world apart from the the usual greys and browns that make up the survival horror genre palette and the story is well told and interesting enough to keep you playing.

Of course, the main thing about Banoi is the small issue of the dead rising from their graves to feast on the living but thankfully you have the skills and equipment to wade your way through them. There are plenty of weapons out there for you to discover from blunt instruments, blades and firearms. Combat is especially enjoyable with the analog combat option turned on. This allows you to use the right analog stick to swing your weapon, allowing you to target limbs and necks and it makes you feel a little bit closer to the action than the default digital combat option. Either way, slicing off heads and breaking arms looks and feels great with the undead falling apart in a realistic manner while being a tough enemy to deal with. One of Dead Island‘s greatest triumphs is taking a mass enemy but making each one a challenge. Even the game’s most basic zombies will give you a tough time if you’re not careful.

Colin Secondary Review Dead Island is a game that is totally up front with what it has to offer. Primarily a melee combat game where you face off against different types of zombie in a plush tropical setting, weapons disintegrate (or just become incredibly weak over time) and can be upgraded/repaired with money and simply modified with nails, fire etc. You’ll crack zombie bones, sever zombie limbs and stomp zombie skulls with incredible satisfaction and so long as you choose the analogue controls combat wont get too repetitive; missions however, may. To keep things interesting you keep an ever watchful eye out for new weapons, mods, the materials require to mod and money but the missions are basic in their tasks, escort, rescue, fetch are the order of the game but it’s the exploring you do during these that keeps you going. Complaints have been made over graphical quality but honestly I don’t see the problem, not that you’ll have much time to admire the scenery seeing as you’re gonna be more interested in admiring the real-time flesh wounds you’re making on the already rotting masses. The audio from the game is pretty spot-on, nothing really stands out but it just feels like how it should feel, and serves to create just the right amount of tension. Multiplayer offers great drop in/out play but as far as I’ve see, prevents you entering a game where the story is further ahead than you’ve progressed, understandable why. The whole of the world is divided into several very large sections and although there is loading time between these large sections it is very impressive to see the insta-loading  whilst fast travelling inside these sections. Don’t expect the most varied or the deepest game possible, do expect great ambiance and what I hope to never imagine, an accurate zombie apocalypse experience that will keep you coming back for more. Don’t forget – aim for the head. Secondary Score: 8/10

After several hours of maiming zombies and exploring beaches and chalets, Dead Island starts to overstay its welcome but thankfully the game’s second act sees you traveling into town which offers a change of scenery and pace as the loses its Just Cause 2 look and feel and basically turns into Resident Evil 5. At first it’s a bit of a shame with the weather taking a turn for the grey and the luxury setting being traded for an already poverty-stricken urban environment. With that in mind though, too much of the resort would kill this game and so the change of setting is probably a good one. Different settings that I shan’t spoil for you are introduced later on as well, some of which that take the game into more predictable survival horror territory, but the overall effect of having all these diverse locations is similar to what I experienced with Dead Rising. That is to say that the game feels incredibly substantial and complete. There’s a huge chunk of game here, even if you chose to not get bogged down in side quests.

With its lush graphics, decent (enough) voice acting and quality storytelling, Dead Island is definitely a game that is already easily recommended but one of its main features is online four-player co-op. Although I’d recommend experiencing the story by yourself (more scares and a bigger challenge that way), it’s also quite nice to wander around with your buddies (or the small portion of random online players that aren’t cunts) and the netcode on offer seems solid throughout. If you do get a bit stuck in your campaign, the flexible drop-in/drop-out co-op allows you to bring in help if you need it. Also, once you’ve beaten the story, co-op play does offer a different experience for your later playthroughs.

Personally, I never ‘got’ Left 4 Dead. It seemed like a shit Half-Life mod and seemed to make all my XBL friends angry but Dead Island echoes the invention and polish that Dead Rising had. A slower-paced affair that’s packed with scares and a challenge but also a game world that is fun to be in. Sure, it is overly long and maybe a little samey in parts but it’s an epic title with lots to see and do and that’s all I ever really want from my games.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars9/10