So with all that’s going on in the war game genre we come to Battlefield: Bad Company 2. That’s a war game set in a contemporary setting. And it’s a sequel! Despite this and for all the congested library of poor, okay, good and great war games where does Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sit?

To answer that let me make this statement. Currently there are online gaming forums in full assault mode with gamers defending which is the better war game Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2. That in a nutshell should give an indication on the quality of the title. For my part I’m solidly in the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 camp primarily because it’s a much more coherent and ultimately more enjoyable game to play. It also pokes sly fun at MW2 if you listen to the dialogue of the soldiers in the game carefully enough.

okay you go first...

So what’s it all about? Killin’ folks!

Seriously though it’s a quality realistic styled shooter. It follows a pretty clear linear formula of trying to stop the bad guys with a bunch of carefree Special Operations or Covert group soldiers who laugh in the face of impossible odds and death itself. Yes it sounds awfully familiar but the thing that this game does better than others is…well…the intangibles.

For one there is less hype surrounding this game like the other recent title so the expectations are one of mild hope for a good game and they are well met. It’s fun because the team you are in don’t take themselves or the game too seriously.

Let's blow s**** up!!

The weapons available are just as good and well designed as ever but more readily usable. Targetting is never too finicky or too loose as to be annoying in fact it seems the developers have almost purposely designed the game to be kinda middle of the road between hardcore and casual. This works very well with a mixture of challenging levels and missions to easier ones. The vehicle missions tend to fall into the easy side while the fire fight ones go the other way.

Moreover is the reasonably coherent nature of the story, which actually follows on from what has gone before in a logical well thought out plan. Essentially it’s a story about a super weapon and the attempts to stop the bad guys getting it and using it whilst also being a bit unsure about you own command’s motive.

The characters from your squad to the hippy peace loving chopper pilot are just eminently more likable and the baddies are clever enough and deviant enough and they don’t cross that fine line from satisfying evil baddies to annoying cloying villains and all this makes the game a big heap of fun.

Controls wise there are issues around the default button map that causes you to toss a grenade unwittingly when the pressure is on and the D-pad function, used for accessing addition weapon options, feels like it could have been better used. But they are relatively minor things fixed by not having clumsy fingers.

The onscreen map is too small and not that well thought out as unless you have a very big screen the direction arrow of yourself appears a bit blunt so that to confuse the player which way they are facing and the colour indicators on the map appear jumbled. Still minor though. Lastly for the criticism is I’d have really liked a squad command option instead of me having to lead the way many times.

Ultimately this is a fairly admirable and decidedly upmarket take on the war genre. You have to love a game that pokes fun at its gaming rival, listen out for the snow mobile crack its really funny. The production values are high the graphics and the whole theatre of war thing is well done and is best seen in the aftermath of battle as the combat smoke sits and both protects you and at times stops you from venturing too much before it clears. You also go from jungles to deserts to the Arctic regions (my fav) in a varied array of missions that are well designed and well rendered.

Combat is well designed and is never repetitive and for gamers like me who always prefer the sniper option the kill shots are awesome. Melee battles are like most in games, frantic but at least if you hit a guy in the chest he is gonna be hurt and multiple shots to you are needed before you die which is good. Just like recent war titles charging in all guns blazing will get you killed and although you can take cover behind anything be aware everything is destructible…everything; like building fall on you. The destructible environment is a very big plus in the game use it to your advantage.

And then we get to the real star of the game the online warfare. I always find it hard to define how good the online component of a game is especially a squad based online experience because it does depend on whom your squad is and how consistent your internet connection is.

But with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 online you can act alone but it’s better with a group of players. And let me just say that again my vote goes Battlefield: Bad Company 2 over recent rivals mainly cause there are fewer glitches and drop outs and no all powerful God mode glitch that lets you kill everything and of course the fun factor.

Final verdict then is in on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for me and it sits up there as a more enjoyable game than its recently released rival. Its production values are probably in all honesty not as high but it does not take away from the good time romp you will have. Some may be slightly aggrieved at the climatic mission and they have some justification but on the whole, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sits high up on the echelon of war games and should be celebrated as well as recommended.

Or we can just kill things!

The real Dante’s Inferno is part of a poem called The Divine Comedy and written by Dante between 1308 and 1320. It deals with Dante descending into Hell guided by the poet Virgil at first and then a woman called Beatrice who he loved but only from a far. And that is pretty much where any resemblance the game has to the poem ends.

In the game there is Dante, a medieval crusader, who descends into hell meets the poet Virgil who comments every now and then describing the levels you are about to face and plays the odd critical role deeper into the game. Beatrice appears as his wife and lover, she’s quite often semi naked, who’s soul is been taken by Lucifer after she is brutally murdered. The game is centered around the fact that Dante descends into Hell to rescue Beatrice. So with that tenuous grip on the original story the game begins.

Now there is no way around the next statement about Dante’s Inferno so I might as well get it out at the beginning of this. Dante’s Inferno is a God of War clone. There I said and wrote it and I’m not sorry. Let me say that this comparison is not a bad thing for the most part. The combat is similar, read almost the same, a third person view of hack ‘n slash combined with a bit of magic. The leveling up is similar too in structure and style…substance, to be honest I didn’t put the God of War disc in the appropriate console to compare but let me say this Dante’s Inferno reminds me at every turn of God of War.

If the game does suffer in the comparison to God of War at all it’s in the story to be frank and the elements that make up the story, this maybe because Dante’s  story is not as widely known as Greek mythology. Where as the aforementioned other title is a vicious visceral game, Dante’s Inferno is well a bit weirdly macabre and uncomfortable and sometimes bordering on the ridiculous.

Case in point is the Lust level of Hell where you are confronted with a giant moaning, gyrating and bare breasted Cleopatra who sends mutant toddlers out of her nipples, armed with sickles where their forearms should be. And yes I said nipples. And I haven’t even mentioned the nude demon women with phallic styled tentacles growing out of their groins which they wield as a weapon – to defeat this attack you naturally have to grab hold of said tentacle and spin around to hurl it to its demise, I’m not kidding I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Enough of the comparisons though, except to say Dante is a much more appealing anti hero than Kratos from God of War, he has a bit more grace about him and is an eminently more likable albeit a similarly flawed character.  The strength of this game then is in the set pieces chock full of QTEs – quick time events – which are truly epic and occur in multiple series that also include analog stick movement. The death scenes concluding the QTEs are bloody and involve vulgar parting of limbs or splitting of bodies longitudely that’s vertically from head to groin.

The QTEs also come into play with controlling some rather large monstrosities by a well scripted use of the Death’s Scythe, your main weapon, into the skull of the beasts. They are rather large and breathe fire some of them and stomp and punch. Your other main weapon is your range holy cross weapon that fires multiple white crosses at anything you aim at…it’s pretty cool.

This then nicely segues into the ‘punish’ and ‘absolve’ part, which is really the currency of the game. When you dispatch many of the demons and damned souls you can choose to ‘punish’ or ‘absolve’ them, whatever your choice you build up points either holy or unholy which allows you to purchase upgrades and gain experience. The absolve choice takes you to a mini game of collecting souls depending how quick you are in pushing buttons, the punish choice just leads to evisceration.

You will need all the upgrades and powers your combat victories will provide you to battle through the levels or circles of hell. Some enemies need to be dealt with by holy weapons others by the unholy ones. The combat does lose a little momentum as you progress through the game but it is frantic and frenzied at times and brutal did I impress upon everyone previously of it’s brutality? My favourite circles of hell to play through were probably Greed and Limbo, the death scene of the King Minos boss in Limbo is well designed and memorable. While Greed has some excellent platforming aspects to it as Dante battles his father.

The AI, especially the enemy AI, later in the game is quite clever in that it regularly has little fiery imps sneak up from behind whilst being attacked by the clumsy but large creatures in the front. Although the boss levels after an encouraging start fall away in difficulty until closer to the end of the game where they make a comeback.

Environmental puzzles abound and some of the more physical ones that involve multiple switches and moving parts are quite challenging although why there are switches in and complex machines in a medieval version of hell is beyond me. The art of the game goes from the lush and the grand to body waste in the Gluttony circle of hell. And what I mean by that is golden pools or lakes with damned souls drowning in…well…effluent.

So it’s a strangely weird and ghoulish game with some moments of breath taking set scenes and well designed QTEs. It is an odd mixture of the divine and the grotesque and in some respects defies the action adventure genre because it’s so arty and surreal. With combat that goes from excellent to the monotonous from the dynamic to the button mashing in the end it’s a game that will enthrall and appall in pretty much equal parts.

Writing reviews for games like this is easy. The words just flow out of my absolute adoration for what the developers have achieved. I’ll praise the controls that seem to be so natural and so intuitive that the game seems to be an extension of me. I’ll laud the stunning graphics as a new benchmark for the genre, marvelling at how the designers could cram so much detail into the game. The story line will be creative and compelling; the work of a genius that will have me guessing to the very end and the characters will be so real they’ll be closer to me than my family.

Indeed my family will wonder where I have gone and what’s this thing that has made me so addicted for hours at a time, I’ll eschew sleep, and  activities that take me away from my game…my GAME, in essence I will develop disturbing anti-social obsessive behaviour.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls Mass Effect 2 is one of those games.

You have to admire the developers Bioware they have come to the Sci Fi RPG well at least three times and have drawn deep and successfully with Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and now Mass Effect 2. These games are three absolute triumphs in the genre and yet the curious thing is they are not without faults but they all have one important thing in common; accessibility. They are very user friendly for the RPG novice as well as the veteran.

Mass Effect 2 is indeed a big step up from its original. The overly wordiness and the inability to get out of meaningless conversations that were frustrations in Mass Effect have been overcome. The ease of the shooter elements for anybody but a complete novice has now also been overcome. Actually so much so with regard to the shooter elements that an argument could be made it’s more of a shooter with RPG elements than the other way round…and I for one like it like that.

Once again you play Commander Shepard the war hero or survivor of past murderous conflicts. The story begins with a pretty intense intro cut scenes that I don’t think anyone would have guessed at. I’m not going to spoil anything but you will sit back after a few minutes with what you thought would have been a logical following on from the Reapers story in Mass Effect totally turned upside down.

Allow me to say there is still talk of Reapers, those alien machines/entities, charged with killing every biological creature every fifty thousand years. Many of the old combatants and friends return, but there is a whole host of new characters played very well by the likes of Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man (steals every scene he’s in) and Yvonne Strahovski, the female agent from the TV Series Chuck, as Miranda; coming back too is Seth Green as Joker, the pilot on the Normandy.

The mysterious Illusive Man

But I really want to focus on the game play more than anything else and in Mass Effect 2 when you boot it up you will have the option of importing your characters from the original if you so desire. I did and it has an effect on the game play, enough for it to be helpful but don’t feel you miss out too much if you choose to not import the old info, your story starts the same but has slightly different choices initially.

Space is really big, bigger than what you can imagine, bigger than at least the Mass Effect original universe. Yes there are more planets to explore and travel to, more systems to journey to and more Mass relays to speed through. Mass Effect 2’s universe is just bigger, bolder and a lot more interesting. There are more missions to play and then there is the mining or the probing…

To level up many of your weapons or armour or biotics you have to mine for raw materials on the myriad of unexplored planets. You do this by entering into orbit and scanning the planet for raw materials, there are four some rarer than others. Upon registering a find on the scanner you then have to fire a probe onto the planet to gather the material. Scanning did get a bit monotonous after awhile – until the scanner upgrade arrived and then it was super fast and extra probes are easily obtained at any fuel depot.

Fuel depots…are now dotted over the galaxy because a new innovation in traveling in system or out when not using a Mass Relay is that you pilot a teeny tiny Normandy, you need fuel to do that thus the fuel depots and probes are available at the depots so you can rock up to a planet and mine it.

The role playing aspect of Mass Effect 2 I found to be quite subtle in that with many RPG games the choices you make will either make you Santa Claus or Hitler either very good or very evil. But in this game there is some much appreciated fuzziness to your choices so much so that you can be the conflicted hero who struggles with some of your past indiscretions or the Darth Vader type that deep down has some good in you. Moreover some choices available have such an ambiguity about them that it’s hard to distinguish whether it will lead to good or evil.

This grey area allows the characterisation of the protagonist to be a much more complete and ultimately a more fulfilling experience and possibly a bit truer to life. The only thing that irritated me about the RPG side was the mission complete screens summarising the level just done. They just seemed superfluous to the whole design and for the most part served no real purpose except indicating level complete obviously.

If I can get the other minor issues out of the way with a brief mention here they would be some of character movements in conversation can be well a bit odd. What I mean by that is the turning back and forth of a character’s head ad nauseum in some scenes would have been a pain in the neck in real life and that’s an example of the odd glitchy animation that occurred, its not often but enough to be noticed.

The cover system is a tad ponderous when trying to move out of cover or over a wall. In many respects the cover and sprint feature with that 3^rd person ‘doco’ feel is reminiscent of Gears of War although not as frustrating but it’s a result of mapping the cover and sprint function to the same button. It’s something that you get used to along with oddly retro loading screens that can take too long. The loading/resume screen after you have died is also a bit temperamental sometimes resuming at points long passed and sometimes at the begin level point.

But forget that the game is a joy to look at; it is epic in its scope and cinematography. Rightly ambitious in what it tries to do and except for the odd silly side mission it’s a crowning success. I think that something that should be celebrated is the ability that the game has to submerse you into the Mass Effect lore. I lost sleep over Commander Shepard and also Garrus the Turian and Tali the Quarian, yes they are back.

My favourite character was the Salarian, Mordin Solus inventor of the new genophage designed to keep the Krogan population down. He provides fantastic squad support and very funny comic relief in the game. Oddly enough it’s the human squad members; Jacob, Jack and Miranda that I thought were the most alien they seemed very detached and false and I cared about them the least.

Mordon Solus the Salarian

Combat has definitely improved it’s now no longer good enough to just turn up and shoot, combat is much more frenzied. The enemy AI is better marginally and they are also stronger and more varied. The most effective weapons I found were the sniper and assault rifles and heavy weapons; I virtually ignored the shotgun and pistol. The tech abilities are more user ready and friendly and are an essential strategy to combat the bigger harder opponents. The ability to engage your tech abilities outside the real time combat gave a level of control that I appreciated.

As I said earlier the game is much more combat focused and so squad tactics play a big role in progressing especially on the harder levels of game play. The ability to upgrade your character with combat in mind has been improved where the old system of attributing XP points could be onerous the new system is much more simplistic and designed almost solely for the combat.

The old leveling up of social scores has gone to be replaced with a paragon and renegade scoring system based on your game play choices and there is a dynamic interaction system that appears on the screen that gives you the ability to be merciful or merciless by the click of the left or right trigger.

Mass Effect 2 is a big game, too big for any review to fully encapsulate how good and how masterfully it has been designed and how utterly gripping it is to play. With me being more of an action adventure gamer rather than a RPG one I appreciated the slight shift in focus from RPG to shooter yet I was also pleased the game did retain much of its core RPG components clearly it would not be the same if it had not.

In summing up what makes this game a cut above, I very much want to say that the last concluding hour of the game is one of most intense gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Highly charged and thrilling and although it consists of huge chunks of cut scene movies (at their more exciting moments the frame rate lagged appreciatively)  they never made me feel I was not in control. The last hour, there or there abouts was a super payback for completing the game and is truly movie like.

Is it the perfect game? Well for this player and our marking system it is, despite some trifling annoyances. I would struggle to see a more satisfying gaming experience this year given it combines my Sci Fi love and my gaming addiction. Mass Effect 3 will complete the trilogy some time down the road but I hope Bioware take their time because I also need to take some time to savour this triumph.

Borderlands is so good that it’s kept me away from “Game of the Year” Uncharted 2 for over two weeks. And it’s not like Uncharted 2 is a poor game, it’s not, but Borderlands (and let’s keep this between you and me), Borderlands is better.

Borrowing a large chunk from last year’s “Game of the Year” Fallout 3 but making it an easier but no less compelling thrill ride of a game, Borderlands is a gem of a game. The comparisons between Bethesda’s Fallout 3 and Borderlands are inevitable and unavoidable but what sets Borderlands apart from the 2008 masterpiece can be summed up in one simple word: fun. It’s not that Fallout 3 isn’t a fun game, but Borderlands is a tour de force of a good time. Easy to get into and hard to stop, Borderlands is like your best friend who buys all the beer, brings all the pizza and has a hot sister.

Coming from Gearbox Software (the team behind the under-appreciated Brother’s In Arms series), Borderlands is all about attitude. From the very opening cinematic featuring Cage The Elephant’s perfectly placed Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked, Borderlands’ world of Pandora is a dirty, rough and badass place to be.

Borderlands opens with players given the choice to play as one of four different character classes (you’ll choose Roland, everyone does). Players can choose between Lilith (agile), Mordecai (sniper), Brick (melee) or Roland (the guy you’ll pick) and enter into the vast desert world of Pandora.

The game eases you into the combat and the weaponry beautifully. Easily dispatched enemies are encountered around the first corner and the immense satisfaction of annihilating your vicious opponents is immediate despite your severely underwhelming initial firepower. As you explore the desert world more maps, locations and missions open up around you and the enemies become more intelligent, accurate and armed.

As the world becomes more hostile, so does your character become better equipped to deal with it. This is where Borderlands shines as a hybrid RPG-shooter; leveling up is simple and meaningful, gamers can notice a profound and pronounced difference between levels. You deal more damage, get access to more powerful armaments and generally become the most badass mo-fo on the planet.

Gearbox has declared that Borderlands features more weapons than in every game ever made for next-gen consoles to date. And while this claim may seem preposterous (and almost unprovable), you will come across literally thousands of weapon variations with thousands of different possibilities of arming your characters. With a number of different weapon classes (from Sniper through to assault weapons), gamers can approach missions and battles in a number of different ways. You could just as easily snipe from a distance or assault from close range to overcome your opponents, the choice is yours.

And choice is what Borderlands is all about. Across huge, daunting maps and through tight, enclosed bunkers, Borderlands gently pushes the player forward without making it necessary to actually go forward. Want to just complete the main storyline? You can. Want to tank through every mission available? Easy peasy. Want to just go and shoot up a whole bunch of shit? Hell, Borderlands encourages it. By combining the best elements of the role-playing genre with the fast gameplay of a shooter, Borderlands never feels like a chore.

Make no mistake about it, Borderlands is my game of the year so far. And with only a scant few titles remaining to come (Assassin’s Creed II and James Cameron’s Avatar looking the most likely), it may take the crown come December 31^st. This is a game you owe it to yourself to get. In a world where 4-hour long single player games become the fastest selling-title ever made, Borderlands is day’s long gaming utopia.

Originally called Halo 3: Recon, ODST is a free roaming shooter that brings all the beloved elements of the Halo franchise together again but makes the story smaller and much more personal. The player assumes the role of an ODST during the events of the second and third Halo games. The Covenant are in ascendancy and Earth is losing the war.

Many of your comrades are missing and you get to search for them in the burnt out ruins of the city. Probably my biggest issue with the game is that it does flitter about to show differing viewpoints of differing ODSTs and it does so quite arbitrarily and it’s not until much of the game is finished does the coherent nature of the plot finally begins to work itself out. (I’m still unsure about some parts though). This convoluted plotting is a Halo thing, (IMHO) as the original 3 campaigns do tend to take a reasonably long term view of the whole campaign and taken in parts the Halo universe can be a tad confusing.

So there is no Master Chief which is one of a number of critical differences between the Halo series. You play as primarily the rookie but there are three others you do solo missions with in a series of flashbacks. These flashbacks make up a more fulfilling campaign than Halo 3 I think and the action is more defined and more visceral. Some may like the surprise element of the story told in flashback style but not me I tended to shrug my shoulders and take each mission as independent from the others. But it does come together in the end.

Another nice change is the HUD, it has a new feature called the VISR (Visual Intelligence System, Reconnaissance). The display clearly shows friendlies, enemies and items of interest with different shiny coloured outlines, much of the game is played at night so the night vision aspect is great. Along with the VISR another new addition or you may see it as a exclusion but the Master Chief’s advanced armour and reflexes is not available to ODSTs the game rather than allowing you to jump or run Master Chief style brings the ODST’s stamina to the fore. If you are injured and rest you recover and there are also health packs conveniently place around the ruined city etc to use, just listen for the automated medical announcement by the local city authorities to know you are near one.

Another change or exclusion is that you cannot dual wield in ODST. I’m pretty happy with that because it felt like I was coming back to the original and also reminded me much more of other First Person Shooters that I enjoyed because the controls were simple yet engaging and it allowed me to worry more about the game play story rather than the mechanics of the game. Another missing element is the Halo Gregorian chant the music is more…well orchestral and kinda jazzy.

One last new addition and it is an addition and smelly and kind of gross looking is the new alien entity called the Engineer. It plays a major but non violent part in the game. Interestingly the best missions of the game I felt involved the Engineer especially the vehicular mission late in the game.

Halo 3: ODST has Hunters; I hate Hunters they are so hard to effectively fight and are just plain annoying. But they are there and the game is better for it, if they were not boy the outcry would be loud I reckon…it’s the hard that makes it good , to quote a movie line.

Confession time, I’m not a big Halo fan, quite frankly Halo 3 was wearisome and frustrating for me, Halo: Combat Evolved is easily the best in the series I reckon and yet Halo 3: ODST is thoroughly enjoyed. The characters are much more identifiable and the action albeit short is much more entertaining. There are the usual bug bears of setting up your controller to suit you but on the whole they seemed to flow. It was good to see the old combat pistol back similar from the original I must admit.

A couple of smallish things to be aware of: the AI especially in vehicle missions is not as good as it could be but the settings of those missions are again much more engaging and entertaining than previous games. Save and exit the game to properly record your progress do not rely on the checkpoints when you have finished your playing session. Other than that I’d recommend ODST over Halo 3 and definitely Halo Wars. Graphically it’s nothing new but that’s okay it’s the action that’s important and ODST wins in that department big time. I recommend Halo 3 ODST to FPS fans as well as Halo fans.

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If you are a watcher or a fan of Batman: The Animated Series you will be thrilled to know that both Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, who play Batman and the Joker respectively are the voices of the two central characters. What that means is we get the best ever Joker portrayal possible from a living actor. Heath Ledger, you still rule.

The game starts slow but with plenty of humour that only the Joker can deliver and boy does Mark Hamill revel in the role, he was good in the cartoon he’s sick in the game. Freed from the conventions of kiddy TV he brings the same warped and perverse spin on the green haired one that Heath Ledger did in the Dark Knight.

The Batman role is also darker more sinister than many would expect and has an added element of returning the character to his analytical detective roots. The detective mode serves a critical purpose throughout the game helping the dark knight out of many a conundrum but the challenge to gamers is can you succeed by turning it off after learning the intricacies of the game?

All the essential elements to a Batman game are there including gratuitous violence for the sake of a supposed higher moral code or higher cause and maybe because of the very real need for Batman to vent…Combat takes either the in-your-face grisly violence road or the more traditional in the shadows stealth road which is better for dealing with guys with guns. Either way it’s deeply visceral and rewarding

There are also the villains, the delicious villains, villains almost unparalleled in comic book lore. All your old favourites are here and some of them can really mess with your mind and your senses…if you know who I mean.

A view from the outside

I’ve said this before in reviews but for me villains or the baddies make a game, I want mine warped, nasty and clever…funny too. I get my fill in Batman Arkham Assault and then some. I’ve always loved the Riddler and I have to mention him here just to say he steals all the scenes he is in just as the Joker does in most of the game.

Batman Arkham Assault is a violent game, a menacing perverse but accurate take on the Batman universe. It plays well, looks fantastic and has a great reply value. This is a must have game for 2009, you will not be disappointed.

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