The game is more of a short, direct tale with very little gameplay in there – but it is worth taking a few minutes to play.

It’s quite an Irish game, with Irish names like “Mammy”, “Daddy” (who tells you to fuck off while watching porn) and the protagonist called “Eimear”. It plays on the typical old-school religious type of family that’s been portraid for many decades, but it takes it to the extreme level with language and content.

It’s not for the light hearted, and does render a certain sense that perhaps the author of the game (hosted on newgrounds) has had some bad experiences in his/her youth. This is the kind of game that will probably never get remade, released properly or even have the chance to get mainstream attention.

But it is a prime example of “games as art”.

Original fans of the game will not remember a hugely buggy game, actually. But despite not having nearly the number of features and fun items as the final version (1.0) that is released today, it held a certain charm.

Minecraft isn’t a game that you can review easily. Not because a negative review would garnish hordes of angry gamers seeking to slice up your first born, but because Minecraft gives as much as it gets. You can’t say you love or hate this game without putting time into it first. There’s very little in the way of tutorship here either. The amount of time I spent playing it is probably surpassed by the amount of time spent on YouTube watching “how to” videos.

You see, Minecraft isn’t a game. Rather it’s a set of rules. Rules dictated by lead developer Marcus “Notch” Persson. You can “mine” for resources, “craft” them into useful items (e.g. wood from trees into weapons or tools) and build cool things around those rules for crafting. Everything from a simple hole in the ground with a torch illuminating it to castle greyskull can be created. The only inhibiting factors in the game are time and effort. Your imagination can conjour up anything and have it crafted in the game.

This child-like splendour that Minecraft brings to the table is born of years of training, especially for young boys. As a kid my favourite toys were lego. Anyone who loved lego, from the simplicity of getting a box of random coloured blocks to the complexity of the more technical creations available, probably understands the idea behind Minecraft.

With that in mind, it does also have gaming elements within. During daylight hours you go create. Mine, craft and build to your hearts’ content! At night, the creepers come… and it’s your job to hide in whatever you built during the day.

The gaming aspect is even more pronounced in the final version of the game today. Everything you do gains you experience points, much like other games these days. What this XP gets you is the ability to use enchantment spells and the like. The team at Mojang also added an end boss in another dimension, called The End. This final boss battle is epic in scale and the reward, other than having defeated the final boss in a game that doesn’t really end, is a poem.

Again, it’s hard to review this game. It’s not a game as much as it’s a sandbox full of toys. It’s also got game elements to keep those who want an ending happy. But more than that, it still remains the internets’ darling lovechild. A testament to what simplicity can bring and how many hours of joy can be brought by mushing blocks together.

As hard as it is to review, it’s even harder to come up with a review score. The ideal thing to do here is just give it 10/10 and say no more of it, because in my opinion there are no faults with the game right now other than the ‘story’ mode idea in the game takes away from the core idea of why I bought the game in the first place. But it’s an optional route to take with the game – surely earning it the rightful kudos it should have. Instead of giving a numerical value to rate a game like this, how about we call it quits? Just this once.

Instead, as I said earlier, you get out of this what you put in… so the review score is entirely up to you. So, I’ll score it as liberally and as vaguely as I can… [x]

It goes without saying that Battlefield is a huge franchise. It lept beyond the PC-only era into consoles with Bad Company. Bad Company 2 was DICE’s attempt to “PC-ify” the console generation with a more advanced level of difficulty applied to online gaming. With that in mind, console gamers have been taught how Battlefield works when it’s done properly.

BF3 is the spiritual successor to Battlefield 2, which was the last hurrah for DICE’s PC exclusivity. However it feels like a grown up version of Bad Company 2. The HUD, audio and visuals are similar to BC2 – but the difficulty is notched up. This game was quite clearly built for PC gamers and ported back to consoles. This is no more evident than when trying to play a balanced game with controllers versus keyboard & mouse. Of course, this is all subjective, but it matters. It’s more immersive on the PC where it looks better firstly, plays better secondly and is easier to get to grips with.

Server browser is HTML5 powered

Console gamers can jump in fairly handily. However, PC gamers are subjected to “Origin”, which is EA’s answer to Steam. The application itself is fine but in order to play a game you need to launch from Origin, which goes to a browser address which acts as a server browser, etc. This is an entire extra step just to play a game that feels needless.

The browser is well built and works well. In fact it’s so well thought out it’s a joy to use. It also means updates come server-side rather than client-side. However the extra step of having to load Origin first feels clunky and pointless, especially when Origin could have easily built a web browser into itself.

Multiplayer feels phenomenal. There are server crashes here and there but this is, generally, out of EA or DICE’s control. There is also a lot of lag, which is something DICE really needs to address better. Even when it crashes, much like BF2, you still have the urge to jump back into a game.

There still is nothing that compares to 32 people fleeting across a small bit of ocean from an aircraft carrier towards 32 people protecting their land. People loading into boats, people shooting each other to get planes and choppers and the people who spawn late who are forced to swim for it (or be snipers). Launching a huge assault is great fun, regardless of how good or bad your score is.

DICE decided to consolidate some of the class based system which was perfected and popularised by BF2. Assault now also includes the medic functions (my speciality) and as you play through you unlock items like the defibrillator, etc. The classes perfectly compliment each other, much like they did before. It makes no sense not to have a medic and an engineer in a squad, especially when you’re using vehicles.

Airstrip? Nah. Land in a driveway.

A new thing I’ve noticed when playing, that never happened in any previous games, is squads and teams organising properly in spawn points to arrange their assault. This is no more evident in the brilliant Seine map, which features two crossing points over the river via two bridges. It plays out much like 2Fort in Team Fortress, but with the obvious extra crossing to avoid deadlock. Flanking is the name of the game, and the map is tight enough to allow a lot of points of contention.

This map is by far my favourite, but for a slightly bigger map with more options in a bigger 64-man game, Operation Mètro plays very well.

I’m not sure why both of these maps are so well honed compared to the rest, or why they’re set in Paris, but they feel much like it did when playing Karkland in BF2, with infantry-only settings.

Speaking of Karkland, the expansion due in December should appease BF2 fans like myself who are missing the grand scale of Karkland or Wake Island, which feel like they’re somewhat omitted from the new maps. In fact, the new maps feel more like better adaptations of Bad Company maps, rather than maps designed to remind PC gamers of how good BF2 was.

Karkland is coming in a month!

The thing that makes Battlefield what it is, is the sense of chaos that permeates the game. On the PC it’s exactly that. Demonstrating the game to other people I explained every single thing going on is someone making their own decision. Driving jeeps over hills to try and land near a flag in a position they won’t get shot in, planes falling from the sky, tanks reversing to avoid the man in front of them with the rpg launcher, random knife battles, and now with the added bit of chaos created when a building explodes into pieces in order to reveal a sniper.

On the consoles, with its limited number of players and lack of immersive control mechanics, it just doesn’t feel the same. There’s not as much chaos. There’s not as much fun… and in the more organised games players don’t quite know how to not play like they’re rambo. I will concede this experience is based on limited playing and observing others, but it’s immediately obvious that the PC experience is better than the console one.

Overall this is a remarkably well done return to the series and a great spiritual successor to BF2, even if it shares more in common with Bad Company 2. With the flaws of Origin and the crashes that occasionally occur it’s still the best of the “big” online shooters. 64 men battling it out with planes, tanks, choppers and infantry is still the most impressive online experience you can have. [9]

A Lancer Turret-The wrong end to be looking at

Gears of War 3 opens in a familiar setting, and without giving too much away this is in my opinion is a vital and clever story telling device that very much shows Epics commitment to constructing a proper narrative. This holds true throughout the game via scenes and in game set pieces that in my view are above and beyond what has come before series. One may notice that the tone this time round is very much a desperate one.

This is humanities last push against the Locust/Lambent horde, as a result you have a very somber setting. One important thing I feel I need to point out is that the there is very little forced tear jerking in this one, which is where I believe the second one fell down on.  Doms story line in the second offering-while tragic, I felt was very much out of synch or shoehorned in.  Towards the end of the game there is a standout piece which in my view was brilliant and nearly had me standing up and applauding.

As you tag along with Delta squad you will see human and locust alike scrounging for ammo, and weapons. You will see an existence that has been pushed to it’s bare minimum with little hope of coming back. All this weighs in and contributes to a more dramatic and believable scenario.

Carmine-Not the best practitioner of amateur dentistry

Looks wise Gears has a few new tricks up its sleeve. On first look the Unreal engine under the hood of the game looks sharper or crisper, (or as one friend of mine put it “it has brighter browns and greys”). The Draw distance has been increased and the game is no longer happy to dwell in a darker night setting as most of the action takes place in daylight where the engine is happy to show off it’s new bells and whistles. Smoke effects seem to have been upscaled along with more bloom and lens flare. Some boss encounters are now on par with any of the massive encounters in God of War. There are still very minor frame rate issues when the ‘splosions and giblets start flying but this is forgiven as it is not noticeable and not game breaking. The sound as usual is fantastic. Bullets whizz explosions go boom in Hollywood style proportions. This is best enjoyed with you volume high…or with a pair of good headphones if you have a better half in bed (talking from experience here).

Game play is very much in the realms of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” territory, and as I have already said, this is entirely understandable. Snapping to cover now feels more fluent, the rodeo run is still a bit dicey and hard to turn but this is more for balancing reasons than anything else. In a nod to the alien movies, there is the welcome addition of mechanical loaders or “Silverbacks”. These are awesome to play around with as you feel like you are wearing a small tank. I would gladly play a mini game based on the Silverbacks- Epic take note.

Anya now gets her ass outta the office and into the field.

The Multiplayer this time round is a lot better. In my view (and I know this is a touchy issue among the hardcore fans of the multiplayer), the previous iterations of this were farcical. Between balancing issues and host rage quits, it was a cock tail of failure that was only really fixed through numerous patches. Thankfully, this time round this is not the case. I am confident in saying there is a solid structure here where all the past failings have been taken on board and dealt with. There are also very few balance issues.(people on the receiving end of the Sawed off shot gun may say different though). A lot of the previous modes make a welcome return like King of The Hill (formerly known as Annex), Warzone, Capture the Leader, Wingman and execution. Horde also makes a welcome return, this time however we also have the Locust equivalent “Beast mode”. The idea being that you take on wave upon wave of the enemy, all the while building fortifications and looking out for your team mates. Personally these are tremendous fun and can result in a lot of “Bugger I have work in the morning”, play sessions.

You will notice that I have very little negatives about the latest instalment of what has been an extremely successful franchise. In truth it is hard to fault it. I could mark it down for being ”more of the same”, but if one looks deeper, One can see why the developers stuck to their guns. They wanted  Gears swansong to be one of instant adrenaline and visceral carnage. None of this could be achieved if their fan base had to learn new mechanics. Epics passion for the game is no where more apparent than in its closing chapters, and I for one am glad that I was along for the ride.

Presentation- 8

. The cinema style cut scenes and adrenaline fused set pieces hold the player by the throat.

Graphics-9

The Unreal engine does its bet and is what you would expect. Big hulking soldier types are detailed to the nth degree. Visual effects both particle and otherwise add to what is a stunning looking game.

Sound-9

Marcus is still very much a “gravely voiced, take no crap/I have a past” character. Bullet and ambient sound headlines here. The sweeping score by Steve Jablonski (done the transformers soundtrack) is uplifting and suitably epic.

Gameplay-9

I felt like I needed to survive. I felt pushed to pick up that last ammo stash. That in itself is an accomplishment. The majority of the game will feel familiar however but with more tweakage.

Lasting appeal 9

There are various difficulty setting you can ramp it up to like insane if you are that way incline. The Multiplayer should keep you going for yonks.

Overall 9- Amazing

You are an Ark survivor.  One of few who have been cryogenically frozen only to awake to our planet after a giant meteor has hit it, almost wiping out all life.  Those that were exposed to the blast have been transformed into mindless mutants and the rest of civilisation tries to muster a living in fear of the Wasteland Bandits and the governing Authority.  From the outset you have a major bounty on your head,  and your skills as an Ark survivor are essential to your survival.

Rage doesn’t have the strongest storyline in history but it does enough to keep you interested and wanting to progress.  First thing that needs to be said is that it looks absolutely stunning. You will travel from town to town traversing the Wasteland on various buggys, quads and cars, all the while admiring the barren landscape.  Character models look great as well as do the mission areas.  I would hasten to call Rage an rpg but it definitely has a lot of those elements to it.  Upgrading is the key to staying alive and everything you own you can upgrade, (vehicles, weapons, armour and health.)

The visits to each town are nothing more than fleeting encounters with the game’s characters pointing you to the next mission area.  Once you reach each mission area it tends to get very linear but I’m not saying this is a negative thing.  In fact,  it’s those interior quests that Id are masters at, and they have never done it better than here.  The vehicle gameplay is very enjoyable and is integrated very well into the mostly first person style of Rage.  You will eventually upgrade with rockets and mini guns etc to your car which you can use to destroy the endless amount of Bandit vehicles in the Wasteland.

One area which Id have laid importance on in Rage is ammo types.  Every weapon has numerous options in terms of firepower.  It’s essential to the game as every enemy is susceptible and protected from different types of ammo.  It makes for very varied gunplay, and you will have to think quick to overcome your enemies.  Items can also be crafted from the loot you pick up from bodies or just lying around.  Crafting lock grinders will get you in to secret doors while healing items and rc bomb cars will help you win the fight.  It’s a neat little feature with huge implications throughout the game.  It all gives you the sense of the futuristic and twisted Wild West which the Earth has become.

The game is big and there’s plenty to explore.  If you’re not wandering around the world looking for plants to pick or sewers to find you can always partake in an abundance of side quests.  Oftentimes this means revisiting some areas you have previously been, but there will always be more loot to find and new enemies to kill.  There are a lot of races to complete as well, some combat based while others are like time trials.  It’s always a good idea to play as many of them as you can as it generates ammo, crafting parts and currency – a very scarce thing in Rage.  When you add the whole package and take time to do as much as you can, the game really gels into to something very worthwhile and enjoyable.

Rage is a mash-up of everything that is great about the best made video games out there.  And in doing so, it has broken its own new ground.  It has a vast amount of content and is polished to near perfection.  Everything about the game screams quality and professionalism.  Added to it,  is its multiplayer consisting of a number of two player co-op missions that tie in to the the main campaign.  There are also vehicle combat modes.  Nice additions to an already big game.  Id have done it again.  Its storyline may not be as epic as some of the games out this year but it makes up for it with seemless gripping gameplay that crossovers from open wilderness to intense corridor gunplay.   Do not be put off by its generic plot.  You will be rewarded for playing Rage.  It has great replay value and is more value for money than most games are.  A wonderful romp.  [9]

Good: Fantastic acting | Simplicity | Great story
Bad: Lack of control | Not easy to pick up and play

Prepare to get wrapped up in the world of a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective set in 1947. In this third person crime solving game you are Cole Phelps, a balls-busting cop trying to clear the streets of L.A. I really enjoyed the variety contained in this game. Whether you are interrogating a suspect at the police station or hunting someone down in a high speed car chase, you will thoroughly enjoy yourself. The whole of Los Angeles is at your feet and there is plenty to keep you busy.

Each character in L.A. Noire clearly and precisely shows their emotion. They act their part rather than in most games where it is just a simple animation. The acting here is based on the movements of a real life human as they display courage, fear and deception. This is all done through Depth Analysis’s newly developed technology, called MotionScan, where actors are recorded by 32 surrounding cameras to capture facial expressions from every angle. The cast is full of famous actors from Greg Grunberg to John Noble.

The game boasts a free roaming open world by allowing you to find your own evidence or investigating different people but it also wants you to follow the plot strictly. This can be quite annoying especially when you want to explore different areas of the investigation but you can’t do anything other than follow the plot. For example, you may think that a suspect is not the killer in a homicide case but your character may convict him anyway. While playing, I never felt totally in control of the character’s choices in the game.

Important conversations between characters can all too easily be skipped. While talking to someone you can walk into another room which sometimes will stop the conversation abruptly. Problems like this can really detract from submerging yourself into this cinematic tale. However they do tend to repeat information during a case so sometimes you will want the option to skip these conversations.

It is not a great game for stress relief; it requires a lot of concentration and focus. I found it was very hard to pick up playing where I left off halfway through an investigation. I found that the sparse information found in my character’s notebook about the case was usually not enough to rekindle my memory. It is pretty much like watching the first half of a movie then leaving it for a few days and watching the second half. Most of the time you don’t what is going on.

Any back seat players out there will enjoy this game. It is good fun playing with a few friends; from doing an interview and arguing on whether he is telling the truth to giving out about not finding all the evidence. The problem is that L.A. Noire makes me realise that I am a terrible judge of character when it comes to some emotions. I think I might need to sit down and watch a few more episodes of ‘Lie to Me’.

I am not a huge fan of collectables and additional features in a game but the addition of street crimes and hidden vehicles really helps you enjoy the game. They add much needed breaks to help you mull over some of the evidence in an ongoing case. You can also play L.A. Noire in black and white if you want to give it that authentic Film Noir look. Overall it is a classy game that deserves your patience.

Overall: 8/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Replayability: 8/10

FIFA12 is described by EA as a revolutionary step in the franchise. No one could possibly believe that in a single calendar year a studio turned around a game as huge in scale as FIFA and revolutionised it. And they didn’t. Rather, it’s just a bigger evolution than the last 5 “evolutions” have been.

The biggest change from EA was to get rid of the system that dictated how players look on the pitch; the animation system. Previously, FIFA would sub-in an animation for every action. Turn fast, there’s an animation. Shoot, there’s another animation. Someone slide tackles someone else, there’s two animations! The problem with this system is that there are, theoretically, an infinite amount of animations to hand-craft for every situation. This is impossible for even the biggest studios, and the issue arises when a situation comes up that the game has no animation for… so the programmers have to come up with something similar to it to replace the fact that there’s nothing in the game to handle this event.

For example, we’ve all had players score goals and go running in after the ball to pick it up out of the net and run off celebrating. The animation in this instance works well. However, if the ball (previously the only thing handled by physics in-game) bounced back out, there was no animation defined for what the celebratory player should do. Instead they would just run aimlessly for a few seconds into the net (without actually moving forward) and then launch into a simple celebration, clipping their arms and head through the net itself.

To replace these kinds of simple bugs, EA have decided to apply physics to everything. All 23 characters on the pitch are subjected to physics. This is two teams and the referee. This, alongside the ball which has improved physics once again.

This means that there are defined physical attributes for each player. e.g. How far an arm can bend backwards, how fast a leg can snap forward when kicking, etc. etc. So, when a player kicks the ball it’s not an animation of that kicking motion, it’s a physics event defined by how hard you’re kicking the ball and where the character is in relation to the ball.

At the same time, the event of two players colliding, the ball smacking your face, bad tackles and so on are all handled by this same engine. As such, far more events are handled easily by the game and more realistic occurrences can be rendered.

This generally leads to a better playing experience. Two players bumping into each other makes it a far more realistic event as opposed to FIFA11′s “ignore my shoulder literally going through your chest” animation flaws. It also leads to some funny moments when the engine fails after something dramatic happens. This has happened less since the demo (which was early code, to be fair) but you still see the odd flailing moment in even off-the-ball events.

The feeling of the game, as a result of the physics work going on, is a bit more realistic. You can’t run down the pitch, dribble around 30 men and score a goal from 30 yards out with the same ease as you could before, not unless you’re Messi or Ribery. Instead things feel a bit sluggish at times which takes a bit of getting used to. This feeling was there last year too, when EA controlled the game a bit more by slowing down movement between FIFA10 and 11. At first it feels slow and a bit boring, but once you get used to it it’s fine.

Even when standing in the retail outlet getting a copy of the game, the guy behind the counter (in celebratory Manchester United jersey) commented that the defending is “really hard”. You can go back to the old style of defending, which ultimately came to selecting a defender and holding down a button until you got the ball.

Defending in FIFA12 isn’t hard, it’s just not as easy as it was. Now EA want you to use all those buttons you could last year by forcing you out of the habit of easily retrieving balls destined for the 6 yard box. You now have to spend more time tracking players, calling in extra defenders and slyly trying to remove possession from the opposing forces. No more toe-poking the ball away into the feet of one of your midfielders. No more sliding in from any angle and getting the ball to the keeper for a clearance. This makes single player more interesting, but more importantly removes the frustrations of online play.

In-game things are a bit smoother though. Graphics haven’t received too much of an overhaul, but players are more recognisable and EA managed to animate every player coming off for a substitution, not just one, in the instance where you sub more than one person off. The crowd sound lively and energetic thanks to the soundtrack, but when you catch a glimpse of them they’re fairly lifeless in the same way sprites in the MegaDrive iterations of Street Fighter just kind of stood there while bopping up and down.

Things have a better flow when playing matches. Players quickly grab the ball to take a throw and free kicks don’t take 60 seconds to “setup”. Animations for players before getting subbed don’t take an age to finish either. Overall, proceedings are very smooth when playing a match.

The menu system is only slightly tweaked compared to last year, and the year before. They’re not quite as sluggish but they’re still needlessly noisy. Menu systems could be clean and remove any loading, but EA insist on having 500 things splashed across the screen while it takes an age to number crunch.

It’s still laborious to go through career modes during the transfer window. This is because the game has to come up with all the transfers for every team it has in the database. This is a ludicrously long and arduous task – even when you’re not trading players!

Career mode is now more realistic, with manager mode given an extra sheen of believability. Players will now moan at you for not getting a shot on the pitch. They’ll even moan in public through news clippings you see on your dashboard that they’re unhappy. Perhaps EA are alluding to a Carlos Tevez simulation?

All-in-all FIFA12 is a good update to last years game. It’s evolutionary to a greater extent than usual, but it is by no means a revolution. FIFA fans will lap it up like they always do, and if you prefer PES then this version of EA’s behemoth isn’t going to do anything for you. [8.5]

One reason that era was so good is because the PS2 dominated the market, so most people could happily survive with one console. Most games were released for this console, and when Sony copped onto first party licensing they really killed the market.

Team ICO released a very Japanese game with incredibly artistic styling. The game was heralded as a work of art as much as it was a video game. To this day it’s a stunning piece of gaming history with a fantastic story arc and wonderful use of technology. In ICO, the developers used the PS2′s power to introduce bloom lighting effects, something we take for granted with todays games.

ICO’s story follows a young boy who is dragged through a castle complex where he is placed in a ceremonial casket made of stone. An earthquake hits and he manages to escape… where his journey begins. The story follows him as he tries to rescue a young girl from the complex, fighting off shadowy enemies as they try to drag the lilly-white princess type of protagonist underground.

The game should play out as a simple run-of-the-mill plat former. The dynamic between Ico and his friend, Yorda, is that you have to drag her along for the ride. Quite literally, too – as you have to interact with her on a regular basis to force her to come along with you. No fancy Valve-style A.I. here… Team Ico decided upon the game dynamic being your choice as to where you put her as you try to help her along.

The remake is a spec bump for the game. It runs much smoother than I remember it running, and in HD too – meaning the lush graphics look a lot less aliased. Although for such an old game, it should look rubbish – but it doesn’t. You would gladly pay full price for this alone again even if it looked grainy and aliased.

Shadow of the Colossus took everything Team Ico had in their arsenal of talent and spawned one of the greatest platforming games ever made. To this day it hasn’t really been topped, with one or two exceptions occasionally.

Ico’s world was grim at best. The artsy stylings of the world and the depressing story leaned towards a dark, grim tale that acts almost like an anti-Mario. You’re the boy saving the princess, but the shadow figures trying to steal her from this world to take her to the shadow world are omni-present and deeply scary in certain sections of the game.

Colossus took that grimness and multiplied it numerous times. You’re a man on his trusty horse carrying your dead partner. The goal is to get her to a castle complex (the polar opposite of ICO) where you beg the gods for her to be restored to life.

Colossus used much better technologies to allow Team Ico to develop a refined platformer that built upon ICO and put that into an open world adventure to explore. Instead of dark and deeply terrifying shadow figures trying to catch your (very much alive) female companion, you’re fighting any manner of huge beast. Colossus took the notion of God of War-esque button mashing to kill giant beasts and refined it. It made the slaughter of flying god-like animals and turned it into a beautiful set piece where button mashing turns into a refined dance against your huge foe.

Colossus is not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not supposed to be. I died a lot, even in the remake, because you’re meant to be playing a man who’s desperate to get to his location to revive his partner. You’re not meant to be a God of War… you’re just a man with simple means to fight off behemoth enemies.

These two games are beautiful. Their scope is not lost in the current balls-to-the-wall bump mapping and texture shading world. They still resonate as some of the finest pieces of gaming history, and serve as a good reminder that Team Ico are working on something special for next year (hopefully).

The games are released today, and it’s a shame they clash with the more media-friendly FIFA12 when launching. I cannot recommend either of these along more, but together it’s a no-brainer. You’ll love them – and I can promise you that. With extra polish and HD sheen added to the surface, these phenomenal stories are even more phenomenal. They didn’t age at all because their artistic merit was so great when they originally arrived in our PS2′s. They’re unique in every way, and paved the way for the likes of Nathan Drake and modern Lara Croft. Do pick this collection up. [10]

Richard Lemarchand from Naughty Dog gave a confident speech, gushing over his latest creation. He also let us know that he’s worked on all three of the Uncharted games as a designer. It was clear that his ambition was to create a genuine story of intrigue and adventure in the true Lara Croft sense… but better.

Other than discussing the history of Nathan Drake we were given an exclusive demo of the game where Richard pointed out some key technological advances in the game. Notable from the original game was water, where the effect of Drake getting wet was ultra realistic, and after a few minutes in the sun the water would evaporate. In the second game the team at Naughty Dog got bored of the old watery fad and focused their attention on snow and ice, giving a new challenge to their technical wizards who were able to put snow tracks down and generate blizzards.

In Drakes Deception the team are focusing on sand, of an arabian nature! As such the team have blizzards and realistic sand dunes and tracks that are about as realistic as you can possibly get. A new volumetric lighting system means there’s a “real” light source shining through cracked wood, tin roofs and rocks. Even better, the system refracts light better around Drake himself. It sounds silly, but all of these technological advances make it a far more believable world.

In the play through of a key part of the game, Drake found himself stranded in the desert where he finds an abandoned village in the middle of the desert. In there we got to see Drake (controlled by Lemarchand) wandering around in search of water and exploring the area a bit. It wasn’t long until we saw some action which, much like Uncharted 2, looks refined and fun. Anyone who remembers the first game knows the leaps and bounds (puns intended!) Naughty Dog made to make the combat better for Uncharted 2. U2 was quite literally one of my favorite games of the decade, and I always felt the combat could do with more refining. Here that combat is far more fun, more refined and can be quite funny too (drake throwing his gun at an enemy combatant before punching him, grabbing the gun back & shooting him was a particular highlight). It’s not quite as refined as the experience in Gears of War, but this isn’t a pure combat game.

Stealth is improved too, with a lot more moves involved in taking down enemies while silent. More than that, Naughty Dog’s technology allows for Drake to interact with physics objects better which adds to the immersion while in ‘stealth mode’. These “contextual stealth moves” are now a huge part of how the game works, and Drake has a slew of new animations to make these work realistically.

Drake also has a lot of new animations to better allow him to react to the world around him in a realistic manner. Cheeky comments when running around were always part of the character, in a very Johnny Knoxville style, but now his movement and even idle animations are better ironed out. Apparently there’s even a 20 minute long idle animation for Drake to run through… presumably while you’re off peeing.

We were treated to a teaser trailer that showed part of the story that demonstrated the emotion is still in this game. The storytelling has always been a top part of Naughty Dog’s ability to make Uncharted such a success, and this is no different in U3. In the trailer we saw some more of the stealth moves and physics interactions, including an action sequence where Drake is driven along in a chase with an aircraft. He shouts directions at the A.I. driver, which we’re told is not scripted, but timed to react to how the player moves the character in the sequence.

One big part of the story will be a fresh focus on Drake’s relationship with his friend Sully. Together they travel to a mysterious “lost city” in the desert to find treasure. “I like the unimaginable wealth part”, says Sully in one cut scene.

After the demonstration and presentation we got the opportunity to play in a 4v4 game. The chance to play MP in a game like this is huge and playing it was a lot of fun. The map was a bit big which resulted in a lot of us chasing team-members around in the hopes of finding someone to target. Again, combat is very refined and the action of shooting feels good as does the crouching-behind-walls motion alongside popping over the wall to pop off targets in the distance. Firefights, when we had them, were a lot of fun.

In the middle of the game the map decided to throw up a blizzard, making it difficult to see what’s around you. Little quirky tricks like this make games like Uncharted a lot of fun because they add an air of unpredictability – which is the whole point of online gaming.

Anyone jumping into this game fresh will love it. It’s a beautiful game with a really impressive story and characters so believable that surely Hollywood is worried. Anyone who played the previous iterations of the series knows this is a must-own game. In scope, power and curious fun there’s nothing that comes close to touching the series, and Uncharted 3 is just another step up from Uncharted 2.

Uncharted 3 is released exclusively on the Playstation 3 on Wednesday 2nd November.

As such, it seems odd that Edge has a huge 26 page set of scribes about the up-and-coming development scene in Dublin. Having said that, as proud as I am of Dublin the BioWare piece is mis-placed, because BioWare are based in Galway.

Edge #233

The set of features, at the back of the magazine in a section aptly titled “Create” covers the home-grown companies like Havok and Jolt, and the difference between game development and the Dublin-specialty in middleware. It also takes a look at PopCap, which houses a proper studio in the capital. There’s a nice wrap up about the future, focusing on the Trinity College MSc program to help churn out future big thinkers in the games industry (a course I was genuinely looking at yesterday morning, before I had the magazine in my hands!).

Edge issue 233 is out now and retails at about €7.