The trouble with good ideas is that unless they’re backed up by further good ideas, they might as well be bad ideas in the end. NeverDead is built on at least a couple of really good ideas, but before they even get the chance to shine, some bad ideas sneak up behind them, pull down their pants, shout ‘Check this out!’ then run away, leaving the good ideas looking rather stupid and embarrassed to be there.

The first good idea is to make the non-fatal dismemberment of the main character a key feature. It’s a good idea because it should be funny and because it ought to open up some unique gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, NeverDead only occasionally succeeds in the first regard and almost totally fails in the second.

So, while on a purely aesthetic level it’s funny to see NeverDead’s protagonist, Bryce, literally going to pieces, the more you play the game the more apparent it becomes that the dismemberment system is actually little more than a really annoying, tedious, convoluted substitute for a health bar.

While Bryce, an immortal demon hunter, cannot ‘die’ per se, his head can be swallowed by a ‘grandbaby’ demon, which will then attempt in vain to digest it for all eternity. This constitutes a Game Over moment and therefore also constitutes, for all gaming intents and purposes, dying.

Grandbabies are an ever-present menace and the dismemberment of at least something almost always occurs whenever you take damage, so you spend more time trying to put your body back together before grandbabies start eating bits of it than you do going on the offensive. It stops being funny pretty quickly.

The worst idea of the lot is the ‘last chance’ mechanic you get every time you end up inside a grandbaby. Superimposed over a shot of Bryce’s head inside the grandbaby’s belly you get a slider with two markers going back and forth across it. If you can press a button just as the two markers align, then you escape. Miss and it’s back to the last checkpoint. It’s hard to think of a less exciting, less skill-based, more tedious way to make a last stand.

Action in NeverDead is an unpredictable, anarchic business, and when you do end up inside a grandbaby you’re usually well within your rights to blame bad luck, so when you ‘die’ it always feels like it’s because of one mistimed button push. Failing in games needn’t, and arguably shouldn’t, be a bad thing – it should inspire you to have another go. In NeverDead, it does not.

If only NeverDead had something akin to the controlled chaos of a Platinum Games release, or even of an emergent FPS like BioShock or Rage, then it might have worked. But it just throws exaggerated physics and zany game mechanics at you and shouts ‘Wahey!’ in the hope that it can make you have fun through sheer force of will, like an incompetent holiday rep in game form.

But, even on a bad holiday, it’s possible to set aside your frustrations and disappointments and find some fun for yourself, and this is true of NeverDead as well. There’s an upside to its chaotic nature, and the frantic combat can sometimes be quite fun and reasonably satisfying. The central game mechanics consist of very basic shooting and slashing, but with so much environmental destruction and dismemberment going off all around you’d have to be pretty stubborn to completely refuse to enjoy yourself.

Any active attempt NeverDead makes to integrate dismemberment into its gameplay falls pretty flat though. You’ll quite often have to pull your head off in order to pass through a small gap or reach a high platform, but it’s always totally prescriptive and really no different to any other bit in any other game where you have to send a small thing (a tentacle, a drone, et cetera) ahead in order to clear the way for everyone else.

You’re encouraged to use limb dismemberment in combat as well – supposedly some enemies will ‘fetch’ your arms and a dismembered arm can still shoot a weapon – but there are few, if any situations in which this appears to be a good idea. Even if you weren’t risking losing a limb to a grandbaby, and even if it were easier to see what your arm is actually doing once it has parted ways with your shoulder, it would always be much quicker and simpler to just hit things with your sword.

Speaking of simple, the other way to ‘die’ in NeverDead is for your boss and partner, Arcadia, to die. She seems a pretty savvy, strong, independent woman type during cut-scenes, but as soon as any gameplay segment starts she suddenly becomes as thick as two short fleshy stumps. There simply aren’t words politically correct enough to describe how stupid she is without causing some sort of offence, so let’s just say we’re talking about the kind of girl who’ll stand stock-still in the path of a speeding train (you can’t even attempt to tell her not to) and won’t shoot a grandbaby with your one remaining arm in its mouth even if it’s right in front of her and there are no other threats in the vicinity. So you have to get your arm back by hopping after the grandbaby and trying to headbutt it, which is undignified, quite frankly.

NeverDead’s only other saving grace, aside from being fun by accident sometimes, is that its overall presentation is fairly decent. The animation is clunky and below par, but the art direction is quite good, in a lowbrow, pulp comic book kind of a way. The script is trite, and music and voice acting both well below par, but you still couldn’t accuse it of being a technical shambles. Design wise, though, it’s formulaic, tedious and messy.

No related posts.

Yes, many may see it as a fighting game, but the truth is that SoulCalibur has never really been a fighting game. Namco Bandai’s weapon-based brawler has always prioritised the spectacle of combat over the art of fighting – something far better demonstrated in its Tekken franchise – and while few would deny that this approach has led to some of the most explosive and colourful rucks of the last decade or so, such showmanship has tended to come at the expense of gameplay depth. There’s good reason for the lack of any significant SoulCalibur play on the competitive scene; while the series might have provided its fair share of hugely entertaining showdowns, a few game-breaking flaws and an emphasis on style over substance has seen it left in a horrible middle ground between hardcore fighters and anything-can go, mash-friendly action gaming with a competitive twist. But Project Soul has had an epiphany. It has decided to go toe-to-toe with the games its historical series so frequently gets lumped in with and in doing so, a lot has had to change. Some of it for the better, and some of it… yeah, not so much.

The character roster will be central in many a debate but there’s no one reason for this controversy. In jumping the timeline forward by seventeen years, SoulCalibur V’s roster is the most baffling yet. Some characters return almost unaged (Maxi and Ivy among them), others like Mitsurugi show some of those seven signs of aging those rubbish TV adverts squawk about while other popular characters send successors in their place – Natsu replaces Taki, Leixia steps in for Xianghua and Xiba’s podgy face replaces that of stick-wielding troll Kilik, though move sets don’t change all that much in the process. But with the narrative pushing the importance of newcomers Patroklos and Pyrrha to the point where each appears twice on the character select grid, and with three Mokujin-style ‘random weapons’ characters (one of which, bizarrely, is Kilik), you have to wonder if this roster couldn’t have been far better. Tourney favourite Amy is missing in action, interesting characters like Setsuka and Zasalamel are nowhere to be seen and old favourites like Seong Mi-na, Yun-seong and Rock also fail to make the grade. It’s not like the new additions don’t ensure a decent array of variety among fighting styles, though the entire bottom row of unlockable characters is disappointing – it both spits in the face of the fact that modern beat-’em-ups simply shouldn’t have unlockable fighters and offers precious little to suggest that any of the aforementioned absentees wouldn’t have filled those gaps better.

The method of adding these extra fighters to your top-heavy grid is equally dubious, with four of the six joining through the brief yet entertaining story mode and the other two tucked away in unlockable mode Legendary Souls, a super-tough run through a set of familiar faces and costumes which sports what may well be the cheapest fighting game AI we’ve ever seen. Almost every attack is Just Framed, almost every throw escaped and Just Guards are everywhere as you swear and strop your way through this seven-bout slog, with the pair of characters earned for persisting hardly even worth the effort.

And with both story and Legendary Souls modes out of the way, all that’s really left to do in terms of single-player is the Quick Battle mode. It’s a simulated online affair in line with the kind Namco Bandai has thrown into all of its recent handheld brawlers and while it’s celebrated in that environment, it’s slightly less impressive as the last bastion of solo longevity in a full price, triple-A console release. It’s still entertaining enough, a potentially endless string of created fighters and faux online opponents flying the flag of their favourite stock fighter but while it’s easy enough to kill an hour or so smacking up as many different virtual players as possible, it doesn’t have nearly the lasting appeal of something like Virtua Fighter 5’s sprawling Quest mode, where continued play is rewarded with more than just odd titles for your player card and a cluster of experience points here and there. These boost your Player Level, in turn yielding yet more irrelevant titles and the occasional smattering of creation parts, but beyond that, it’s a fairly empty excuse for a lasting single player mode – especially irritating since a meaty Edge Master-style mode is one of the things fans have cried out for the most.

There’s a lot SoulCalibur could learn from VF in its Pinocchio-esque quest to be a real fighting game, actually. The training mode, while full-featured and bursting with oddly labeled options, elects to run you through character specific advice in a text-only form rather than offering hands-on examples of why certain moves are useful and how they can and should be combined. VF4 Evolution got this so right that it’s almost embarrassing for every subsequent fighter to have overlooked so important a feature, and, while the Trial mode in Street Fighter IV and its ilk at least teach basic-to-intermediate attack strings, Evo’s all-encompassing training educated in terms of genre rather than just game. SCV teaches nothing in terms of mix-ups, option selects and pressure, seemingly content in offering generic advice along the lines of ‘A+B is a good move’ and leaving the rest up to experimentation. It’s a hurdle Project Soul will need to overcome if it is to take SoulCalibur back to the top tier and really take the fight to the likes of VF though to be fair, the studio has already done a lot of the much harder work already.

Mechanically speaking, SoulCalibur V arguably sees the series hit a level it has always promised but never really attained. It’s not without its curious design choices – such as having throw escapes do chip damage, rather than just making them less mash-friendly in their execution – but on the whole, the new engine makes for some absolutely stunning fights oth for players and spectators. Clashes are back, so two similar attacks can bounce off one another and reset the playing field once the sparks have dissipated. Double-tap sidesteps improve the 8-Way Run evasive arsenal, even if a lack of definition (read: something like VF’s categorisation of linear, semi-circular and full-circular attacks) sometimes makes it difficult to judge hitboxes in 3D space; even a perfectly timed evade can be stuffed by some of the annoying auto-tracking moves or falsely advertised area attacks, though most linear hits can still be strafed and punished accordingly.

Even the new Soul Gauge system, something so poised to fail horribly, actually works really well. Burning meter for old-school Guard Impacts makes sense when the catch-all parry gives enough time to land whatever you fancy afterwards, plus the Critical Edge and Brave Edge attacks offer combo potential that fighting purists will relish. The new (if tricky) Just Guard system also offers similar defensive potential to Impacts in previous games but with the added tech and flair of Street Fighter III’s Parry or a far stricter take on Battle Fantasia’s Gachi button – timing is harsh but it’s perfect for stealing the advantage at the end of a predictable block string or just showboating through multi-hit attacks for a healthy Soul Gauge boost and the respect of all onlookers.

It’s clear from the plentiful changes and refined mechanics that this is a sequel that has ideas on a genre that it has been mistaken for being a part of for some time. And it’d be straight-up rude to overlook such improvements due to a few teething troubles or the fact that solo players will have little to hit once the main modes have been conquered. Still, on a straight fighting level, SoulCalibur has never been better and although it might be a little anorexic for lone warriors, the multiplayer side offers more than any Soul title since the original Calibur made the Dreamcast a must-have. Which, in and of itself, provides irrefutable proof that Namco Bandai has given SoulCalibur a clearly defined genre once more. Welcome back, Stage Of History.

Related posts:

1. Mortal Kombat review
2. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon review
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review
4. Rayman Origins review
5. Final Fantasy XIII-2 review

Time travel. It is at once a writer’s best friend as a catch-all way to explain away pretty much any bizarre event and his worst enemy, an omnipotent tool that should technically render any hardship an absolute non-issue. ‘Quick, Hermione! Throw me the Time-Turner,’ yelled Harry… that’s how every one of young Mr Potter’s challenges could have been overcome had Rowling not written out the magical time travel device as quickly as it was introduced, while a preposterously young Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter playfully Melvin the rulebook, the mere suggestion of time travel is enough to paradoxically resolve an incident for comic effect with the help of a bin. But there is no rulebook (whoa) and, with no real-world guidelines to follow, depictions of time travel in modern – and indeed not-so-modern – media are riddled with loopholes, contradictions and paradoxes. Indeed, while stories that try to employ time travel in a serious manner often end up confusing audiences with mind-melting off-stage possibilities, those open to have a little fun with it often get away with playing the Time Goblin far better.

But even after finishing it, we’re still not entirely sure which of the two camps Final Fantasy XIII-2 falls into. It plays it straight most of the time – the talkative lead duo ever keen to gibber on about how changing the past alters the future, and vice versa – but occasionally, things descend into the kind of ‘remember a trashcan’ lunacy that raises both eyebrows and the possibility that Noel might actually be his own grandpa. Instead of slotting comfortably into either category, XIII-2 seems to opt instead for secret option number three, the notion that if it can sufficiently baffle the player with fractured timelines and locations that somehow exist in neither time nor space, we’ll all be too confused and embarrassed to ask questions in case it ends up looking like we just didn’t understand something which is, in fact, largely incomprehensible. It generally holds together in its own daft way, and the concept of mending things in the past to improve your odds in the future works well when pushed on you by the narrative, though on the flipside there’s not a lot of scope for the kind of minor Ocarina Of Time-esque tweaking between eras that would have really reinforced the concept. Similarly disappointing is the predilection for journeying into the future, every location set at a time after FFXIII’s ending when we’d have loved to have been able to delve into Cocoon’s past a little as well. Another missed opportunity then, but it’s hard to stay mad at Square Enix for long when XIII-2 shows such clear signs of its creative team taking feedback from XIII’s divided user base on board.

Picking up shortly after the original’s Leona Lewis-stained finale leaves off, XIII-2’s narrative quickly spirals out of control as it emerges that Lightning went missing shortly after the curtain fell. So with the help of future fop Noel, Serah takes off to find her sister on a brain-twisting tour of mostly familiar locations from FFXIII. Seeing these crumble, grow or change under the unfeeling boots of time’s relentless march is a joy, though with such a gap between each visit it’s only really the locations themselves and the effects of previous events that can be witnessed – only very rarely do you get to see a direct change in the people, making it kinda tough to get a real feel for the passage of time. That said, many areas have temporal anomalies tucked away in the deepest recesses, which can reveal people, objects and relics from another time to really confuse matters and make some of the side-quests particularly fiddly.

How so? Well, while most of the time gates pertaining to the main storyline are opened with bespoke artefacts, those that lead to extra-curricular locations – usually familiar places, just further up or down the time stream – can only be opened with Wild Artefacts, troublingly elusive (and barely visible) key items which are among the rarest items in the game. Even when you do luck out and find one, there’s no indication of where a new gate will take you until you spend your precious item. As such, following one particular side-story is more luck than judgment, though attentive players should be able to hunt down enough Wilds to open up a decent number of the additional areas by the time the story wraps up.

XIII’s combat was an action-heavy revelation in a genre obsessed with menu-driven battles, and XIII-2 evolves the ATB system further still, albeit with some pretty severe changes. For one, there’s no longer any need to select party members – Serah and Noel will be two of your three fighters for the entire game, the third slot filled by any of the monsters you manage to tame on your journey. It seems limiting but most JRPGs offer casts bulked out with filler characters, so all Square Enix has really done is saved you the trouble of going online to find out what the best party setup is. The duo soon grow to learn all six of the Paradigm roles present in XIII (and we mean soon, too – you can max out your first role in just a few hours) and although they each slots into particular preferable roles – Serah focusing on magic while Noel boasts a naturally higher Attack stat – there’s plenty of grounds for fiddling around with Paradigm decks all the same, especially with so many monstrous allies to recruit.

The method of taming monsters is oddly unclear, defeated enemies seemingly offering their souls up as a rare drop after battle. Each has one fixed role and falls into one of three growth categories – some develop quickly but peak early, making them great for short-term deployment, though more balanced monsters end up far more powerful, especially those late bloomers that require significant investment before they become usable. Instead of filling their Crystariums with CP earned from battle, monsters need to be fed special items in order to grow and again, several flavours of these allow you to either balance stats or push them in a specific direction, be it towards stronger attacks or a larger health pool depending on how you intend to use them. With only three creatures ever on active duty, you need to be pretty selective with which you pick. Early doors, a Medic monster is essential, as neither Serah nor Noel is capable of healing until a little way into the game, but the wider potential opens up soon enough, especially with the ability to have one monster absorb another to inherit its latent abilities and attacks.

Combat itself is tighter too, and slicker to boot. It’s chaotic, sure, but once you start flinging around AOE spells and unique abilities, the screen erupts in colour as your beautiful party dances all opposition into submission. There’s a lot more strategy in longer encounters too, thanks to a new type of damage. Many enemies are capable of inflicting Wound damage, which reduces your characters’ maximum HP for the rest of the fight and cannot be healed by conventional means. As a result, you’ll need to be really smart with your Paradigms and battle plans in boss battles (and similarly long fights with the game’s toughest enemies) – it’s easy to find yourself cut down to so minimal a health bar that a single powerful attack will end the fight. But at least losing your player character isn’t the end of the world now; as long as one of the two main characters survives, there’s some degree of hope to cling to as control switches to the survivor for a last-ditch attempt to claw success back from the jaws of defeat.

It’s also surprising just how much the cut-scene-heavy standard format of the genre is circumvented, and, while the story is still generally forwarded in the usual watch-along way, there are at least a few occasions where it’s a little more hands-on. QTEs aren’t quite so prevalent as pre-release bumph would have had you believe, though they’re still there, and while watching out for button prompts does pull your attention away from the typically flashy Final Fantasy cinematics, timings are generous and the icons are pretty hard to miss unless you’ve put the pad down and gone off to make a coffee. There are occasional decisions offered through button prompts too – having been conditioned to rush for the buttons on command, however, it’s easy to miss the point of these and just reach for whatever button your eyes are drawn to first.

But if this or any other mishap should occur, fear not – with time on your side, no change is permanent. By finding a key item in a time zone, that particular area of time can be closed off and rewound to how you found it (save for any items you’ve already claimed, which remain collected), and this is perhaps the game’s most baffling and worst-explained feature. In essence, it allows you to replay situations a little differently – returning to the first area with a powerful party, for instance, it’s possible to ignore the option to weaken the titanic boss and tackle it head on. This odd feature also means that bosses and one-off enemies can have rare drops and/or recruitment chances without making for missable items, the bane of every JRPG player’s life and the reason many can’t play without a Wiki open by their side.

XIII-2’s fragmented design means there’s little in the way of a structured post-game, instead foregrounding an emphasis on going back through areas with your ultimate team (which renders regular battles little more than a nuisance) while looking for things to do differently and mopping up side-quests which are now way too easy. Optional bosses and supercharged rare creatures make exploration ultimately worthwhile but end-game progression is a patient man’s game here – without a goal like the last game’s Long Gui to work towards (this game’s Oretoise is feeble by comparison), it can be hard to stay motivated.

But by this point, you’ve already had some fifty hours’ worth of enjoyment out of Final Fantasy XIII-2. The structure offers so much freedom in terms of exploration and approach as you work through the narrative that it’s hard to criticise its shortcomings once the credits have rolled. It’s a unique and interesting way of handling time travel in games too, and while XIII-2 might fall foul of all the usual time-hopping pitfalls (read: it’s really rather stupid at times) it’s hard to recall a sequel that makes such major changes to a great game and still manages to get things so right. If XIII was making a case for the quickest route from A to B being a straight line, XIII-2 instead argues that a time gate directly to your destination is both more practical and more interesting. We’re inclined to agree.

Related posts:

1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution review
2. Final Fantasy XIII ‘not a mistake’ says XIII-2 developer

Early on in Resident Evil: Revelations you happen upon an ominously locked door, chained shut and secured with a massive padlock. A single laser-aimed bullet shoots the lock off and the door blasts open, Resident Evil 4-style. But what awaits inside is actually much more reminiscent of Capcom’s very first foray into the world of survival-horror. The hulking bio-organic weapon that smashes his way out is gruesome enough, but it’s the tragic monster’s diary that resonates the most. Charting the once-human’s journey from self-imposed isolation, to infection and eventually madness as the zombie virus takes hold and causes a second person to grow out of his shoulder, the diary recalls one of the original Resident Evil’s most chilling documents and ends on a line almost as iconic as the classic ‘itchy, tasty’. Capcom has finally returned to its roots… Sort of.

The combat mechanics may fit right in line with modern Resident Evils but it’s clear right from the off that Capcom is keen to recapture the tone of its series early years with this hybrid offering; from the interior locations designed to evoke Raccoon City’s Spencer Mansion, to the voice acting so hackneyed it must be intentional. Original protagonists Chris and Jill return, alongside a whole new cast of BSAA members so STARS-like you can go through all the pleasure of guessing who’ll die, who’ll betray you and who’ll go on to become the new recurring villain of choice all over again.

Capcom even makes a modest attempt to recreate the structure of its first survival-horror. The self-contained nature of the Queen Zenobia, the ship that Jill and new partner Parker are charged with exploring, makes for a great non-linear playground, with grand halls to revisit, dauntingly familiar corridors to trepidatiously backtrack through, and enticingly locked doors that eventually spill their secrets. And while some areas, like the on-board shopping plaza, offer up the sort of non-linear arena combat typified by Resident Evil 4’s opening village, others are more like the hallway the zombie dogs leap into in Resident Evil, scaring you with the idea of what might happen as much as what does.

Even when you think you know a previous area, the designers change things up to make revisiting them interesting. Sometimes it’s a trick as simple as introducing new enemies, other times the game goes as far as to flood an entire section of the ship, calling upon Jill’s newfound Lara Croft-alike swimming ability and transforming areas into 360-degree rooms where threats can come from any direction. Puzzles, meanwhile, are admittedly lighter than in previous games and now more self-contained – such as the electrical rewiring minigame used to open locked doors. They’d be just as suited to Professor Layton as they are Revelations, but do feel right at home on 3DS’s touch screen.

New to the series, and perfectly in keeping with the blend of old and new design influences is the Genesis device. Not the sort of gizmo you’d use to bring Leonard Nimoy back to life, the Genesis is a handheld scanner used to analyse enemies and search for hidden items. The former use fits in wonderfully with the modern style action. Rewarding you with a green herb if you manage to scan enough enemies, it’s especially powerful against living things, filling up its meter much quicker if you scan a monster before killing it, and therefore creates a nice risk/reward mechanic as each slow scan leaves you vulnerable to attack. The tension it creates is palpable, but this is a device that serves ponderous play equally. Almost every room contains secret items, ammo and even handprints, linked to the in-game Achievement system, that can only be revealed by the scanner. It’s a nice mechanic that encourages more careful exploration of the environment than would otherwise be necessary.

It’s remarkable just how well each new addition allows Capcom to perform its delicate balancing act between old and new Resident Evil styles, which bodes well for the future direction of the series. But that’s not to say that Revelations is a complete success. Far from it. One of the biggest flaws is the episodic nature of the experience. Broken down into chapters of about 15-30 minutes in length, Revelations almost feels as though it was designed for the attention span of the average iOS gamer. Its bite-sized chunks of gameplay are well meaning in their consideration for handheld gaming but simply make for a shallow experience in practice. As for the plot recaps between each episode, they’re patronising at best, tedious at worst and ultimately unnecessary given the dearth of interesting narrative.

More damaging is the way in which the perspective cuts between the three groups of playable characters. It may make sense to offer a variety of play styles and plots, but constantly cutting away from the main quest – Jill and Parker’s exploration of the Zenobia – shatters immersion and breaks the contiguous level design that made the original Resident Evil so compelling to explore. The episodic structure, quite frankly, feels cheap. And it’s a problem only exacerbated by the tiring repetition of the same few enemies used throughout the game, the general lack of strategy or skill needed to take them down and the generally uninspired boss battles that leave you assuming there must be more left to play, just as the credits prove otherwise.

Handheld editions of big console titles often feel like straight to video sequels – looking the part but lacking the polish – and Revelations is no different. It nails the atmosphere in its hybrid design, but those crucial sparks of brilliance that make the series so great, no matter which of its eras you prefer… they’re as rare as a single use rocket launcher.

Related posts:

1. Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate Of Two Worlds review
2. Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition review
3. Mortal Kombat review
4. games™ Issue 115

It was desperation, really. As publishers slowly chipped away at survival-horror over the years to create room for action to infiltrate, it was inevitable that an anguished yearning for what the genre used to be would grow alongside it. The slow creep of tension, the fragile vulnerability of your character, the twisted enemy designs; these are all elements that have been lost in the race for heart-pounding action. Amy had become the unofficial flag-bearer for survival-horror games by promising to bring those lost elements back.

If anything, this desperation simply highlights the crushing disappointment of Amy. As we follow Lana’s attempts to protect and usher Amy through a dilapidated subway, it soon becomes clear that the biggest obstacles aren’t the zombie-like enemies in your way but basic elements of the game’s design – the broken AI, the juddering screen tear, the stiff combat, the inconsistent stealth and the clumsy level design.

There are ideas plucked from Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Haunting Ground and other survival-horror games – such as hiding in cupboards and enemies you can’t beat in combat – but none of the ideas mesh together particularly well. The one original idea that Amy relies on is looking after the titular girl, yet there’s no real bond between the two – you’re not sure what Lana’s role is initially, and ushering Amy through vents to hit buttons is the kind of mechanic that soon becomes a chore. It’s an awkward patchwork of familiar elements, none of which are executed with any confidence or competence. It’s hard to shake the sense that Vector Cell was racing from idea to idea without ever stopping long enough to ensure its previous ideas were functional.

If Amy ever had a chance of keeping its head above water and surviving these problems, the awful checkpoint system ensures it drowns in them. Checkpoints are spaced out at an uneven pace, forcing you to revisit the same areas of each level far, far too often. Elements of game design where you’re forced to second-guess the right place to hide are bad enough; when you’re forced through the same ten minutes of awkward stealth gameplay over and over again just for another incorrect attempt at second-guessing the game design, it’s an assault on your gaming spirit few would be able to withstand. To add insult to injury, Amy only saves after successfully completing each of the five chapters, and will take away all your items after you die.

There was a chance for Amy to bring higher production values to downloadable games while bringing the long-rotting corpse of purist survival-horror back to life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t manage either, and only just achieves the bare minimum of being a playable game. The hunt for real survival-horror goes on, then.

Related posts:

1. Shadows Of The Damned review

The timing could be better. Nintendo has chosen to release a game about building a lucrative property empire – the first localised entry in a Japanese series dating back to the Famicom – at a time when the world is in the throes of economic meltdown. As familiar Mushroom Kingdom and Dragon Quest characters buy stocks, invest in store expansions and watch the value of their portfolio steadily increase, you begin to wonder when the Occupy movement will emerge to spoil the Mario party.

Boom Street shares some DNA with the plumber’s board game sideline, but has more in common with Monopoly: dice are rolled, properties purchased, investments made and chance cards collected. Minigames are infrequent and hinge on luck rather than skill, from betting on Slime races to matching cubes for cash boosts.

Two variations are included. Easy Rules strips back complexities for a more accessible game of financial one-upmanship, while the standard regulations see the board split into districts, introducing stock options that allow you to rake in money for areas you might not own. At times your objective will be to thrive – reaching a predetermined net worth comprising ready cash, stocks and property value – or simply survive, as you shift stock and auction shops to avoid bankruptcy.

Square Enix does its best to keep lone players entertained, attempting to give each rival a personality by enabling them to comment on events during their turn. The snippets of dialogue repeat less often than you’d imagine and are wittily scripted; Slimes have a range of goo-related puns, while Platypunk’s ‘voice’ is that of a Brooklyn mafioso, making constant references to The Family. Even given the quality of the localisation, most players will be pleased to be given the choice of speeding up the text or turning it off entirely, thus accelerating the flow of play.

In truth, the characters and themed settings, which are little more than sparsely animated backdrops over which the boards hover, are the least interesting aspect of the game – helpful for sales, perhaps, but a distraction from the strategic systems at Boom Street’s core. As with all board games, there’s a significant element of luck involved, and a fortuitous early run of rolls can make a huge difference to the length of a single game. Such unpredictability can feel like cheating when it benefits AI opponents, which is why it’s best enjoyed with at least one other human player.

A handful of minor niggles, like the inability to pause outside the start of your own turn, and the rather cautious approach of CPU competitors, detract little from an uncommonly smart and genuinely tactical game. It might have fared even better without its primary-coloured fripperies but Boom Street remains good enough to turn a blind eye to its rather untimely celebration of capitalism.

Related posts:

1. Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition review

The blue shell will get you. That’s pretty much the first rule of Mario Kart these days – whoever you pick, whatever kart you choose and wherever you end up racing, some vengeful little bastard towards the back of the pack is always going to unleash Mario Kart’s version of a nuke on the guy in first whether it helps them or simply trolls the leader. And while there are a few situational ways of avoiding your cerulean punishment for having the audacity to race well enough to steal pole position and hold onto it, there will always come a time when the Klaxon Of Crushing Inevitability rings in your embarrassing descent from first to seventh. And you will swear. Loudly. But hey, it wouldn’t be Mario Kart if you didn’t.

Sidelining all the gimmicks and silliness that have crept into the series as it scrambled for a hook to keep it relevant, Mario Kart 7 is as close to the purity and simplicity of the original racer as Nintendo has ventured in the 20 years since Mario first got behind the wheel. Which is odd, since the new mechanics could quite easily have dragged MK7 off into the murky waters muddied by the clumsy chaos of the Wii version, though they’re handled expertly for the most part. Taking to the skies on collapsible wings offers options galore and while key areas send everyone skyward, occasional launcher ramps and shortcuts present verticality as an option, and is it ever an appealing one. A quick burst of speed can be gained by simply dive-bombing back to the track below while conversely, pulling back grants greater air time and the opportunity to scout for hidden routes or sit above the competitive chaos below, even catching the odd thermal to maintain a glide and really cut corners like a pro.

Underwater sections, on the other hand, won’t be met with quite the same level of delight and, when Lakitu starts a race in a snorkel, you know you’ll be taking the plunge. Submerged racing, as you might expect, is far more sluggish and unresponsive than its brisk land-based counterpart. And while not having to be fished out by the cloud-riding starting line official every time you get wet is a change for the better, you’ll still find yourself doing everything in your power to avoid or delay going for a dip. To make matters worse, underwater sections really emphasise the differences between the various kart builds in terms of performance – the parts you use to build your ride might be perfect for three races of a GP but leave you struggling to keep with the pack when the tide comes in.

In general, however, staying with the pack isn’t something that will be an issue. The series’ trademark rubber-banding is back – after all, a Mario Kart game without a catch-up mechanic is about as likely as a Mario Kart game without Mario – and more erratic than ever, sometimes allowing you to take a ridiculous lead while at other times deciding to catapult Luigi past you on the last stretch at an utterly impossible pace. Still, it’s usually somewhere between the two extremes and a little less noticeable as a result, not least because the selection of power-ups on offer is itself designed to level the playing field and keep things tight. Classic items are joined by a handful of new ones – the Super Leaf grants a tanooki tail and a multi-use melee attack, the Fire Flower lets you chuck numerous globs of flame with a focus on either range or rapid-fire, while the highlight is the Lucky Seven. Like that most feared of shells, this only becomes available when propping up the pack, surrounding your kart with exactly as many power-ups as its name suggests so you can lob shells, Bob-ombs and banana peels like crazy for a while. What really makes this interesting is the fact that rivals can be affected by these as they revolve around you and while this might make for a decent (if patchy) shield, a deft move from an opponent can see them snatch a Power Star or mushroom before you have a chance to use it.

Courses, meanwhile, run the usual gamut of quality but most demonstrate the team’s ability to build raceways around the innate abilities of the karts and those they acquire on the track. There’s a healthy variety in the 16 new courses, expected locations like Mario Circuit and Bowser’s Castle joined by less obvious maps, Wuhu Island chief among these with its two point-to-point events banishing the lap-based races in favour of triple-sectioned jaunts across the Wii Sports Resort island, a format also used by the hypnotic return to Rainbow Road. The track count is doubled by four sets of returning tracks and, despite having been overhauled for the new mechanics by the ever-excellent Retro Studios, it’s still an odd selection – a quarter of them are from the Wii game, leaving less space for retro love while the likes of Luigi Circuit from the N64 game feel incredibly barren next to the feature-packed newcomers.

As familiar as Mario Kart 7 feels, refinements across the board mean it’s pretty much as good a party racer as it has ever been. Snaking is out thanks to tweaked mini-turbo mechanics; kart customisation means there’s no best character or vehicle, rather advisable approaches to different kinds of course; online play is tighter than ever; time trials and ghost downloads offer almost endless replayability as you strive to topple both friends’ best times and those of Nintendo’s finest. It’s frustrating, rewarding, addictive and entertaining in almost equal measure, and as much as you’ll rant and moan when your lead is snatched away on the last corner, you’ll keep going back for more. To call it the best original game on 3DS might be overstretching the meaning of the word ‘original’ but, all the same, this is something that no 3DS owner should be without.

No related posts.

Rayman is an irritant. No, really – the entire concept behind why he and his friends have to battle the invading Darktoon army is because the unlimbed berk is a noisy neighbour, incapable of heeding the call for he and his chums to just shut up. But then, if they had kept schtum, we wouldn’t have been able to play through this engaging and utterly beautiful platformer. So thanks for being a berk then, Rayman.

Origins is a platformer in the classic sense, lacking almost entirely in gimmicks and resorting to well-implemented – if not exactly unique – mechanics. You will begin the game underpowered, without even the ability to attack, but as the game progresses you will unlock new abilities. Punches and kicks, swimming, gliding, shrinking and running up walls are these very powers, unlocked through the first half of the game and introduced in a way that is never overwhelming and always encourages the player to go back to previous levels and see what they can do with their new talents.

And what can be done with these abilities? It’s traditional run-and-jump fare with a few twists and some fine level design to keep things feeling fresh. Admittedly it’s not going to have people jumping for joy at how utterly unique it is like, say, Mario Galaxy – but it is creative with the elements it uses. While initially undemanding and rather simple – Michel Ancel and his team at Ubisoft Montpellier wanted to make a more accessible title than earlier, more difficult Rayman games – it soon develops into a marathon of split-second acrobatic button presses as you try to keep up with everything thrown your way. It’s rare that things feel unfair, and even though there will be times where death comes frequently, it’s always possible to overcome with that bit more care and patience.

It’s in the extras, though, where things get really very challenging. Replay levels and you are shown a par time to beat – do so and be rewarded a trophy. As with the main game these start out simple enough, but halfway into the 60 levels you will have to be near superhuman – or just have a very good memory – to be successful. Similarly the treasure chest chases require dexterity, good reactions and decent memory skills to succeed. And it’s so very addictive.

There are five different settings for levels in Origins, and each world follows a pattern – a few standard levels, a shoot-’em-up that sees Rayman riding on the back of a mosquito, a bonus level and sometimes a boss fight. It can get a bit samey to play through and see the same routine each time, but there are enough rewards and enough temptation to want to see what’s coming next that you will press on regardless.

Obviously it’s not the sort of thing you want to focus too much on – we’re not superficial here, of course – but Rayman Origins is a looker. The UbiArt Framework used to create the game’s visuals is something we want to see used a lot more in future if it’s capable of helping to make things look like this. Origins has the sort of adorably cute good looks that will melt the coldest of hearts and enough character – be it through the wonderful animations or the goofy design ethos behind everything – to bring an equally goofy smile to anyone that plays it. There are good looks, then there are good looks that bring something, that add something to the experience. This is very much in the latter camp, and the fact Origins runs at 1080p and 60 frames per second is just the icing on this particular graphical cake.

One of the main draws of Origins is the four-player drop-in/drop-out co-op mode, where players can take control of four main characters or the dozen or so unlockable ones (this also applies to single-player, actually). Here things get a bit more chaotic than in single-player, for obvious reasons, but the game does a good job of helping everyone keep track of what on earth is going on. It can become confusing, even a little annoying at times, especially when playing with someone who insists on pushing forward as fast as possible, but it’s rarely anything other than a good laugh. While it isn’t a case of having to help each other make big jumps or solve puzzles together – it’s more just the standard game with more people playing – it is fun and a nice little extra to the package. Plus you can slap each other, which is always funny.

Of course, there are things that hold Origins back – it doesn’t bring much at all new to the table and can feel derivative at times, even old. Also, while rarely unfair as such, that doesn’t stop it from being frustrating at times – and the shooter sections, while fun, do feel a bit overplayed. Just look at Globox’s face when he runs, though, and all is forgiven. Almost.

It could be easy for some to write off Rayman Origins as a case of publisher greed – opting to release something intended as a digital-only release for full price in shops around the world. But playing the game you soon realise this absolutely isn’t the case. It isn’t cheeky, or greedy or even slightly cynical: it’s a very, very good game with a lot to do, an addictive nature that will keep you playing, a fun cooperative mode and some of the most beautiful artwork we’ve ever seen in a game. Rayman Origins is a very welcome addition to the world of gaming and it’s great to see Michel Ancel on form once more.

Related posts:

1. Mortal Kombat review
2. From Dust review
3. Dead Island review
4. The Gunstringer review
5. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations review

Ubisoft’s got the Assassin’s Creed formula down pat now, and no mistake. A far cry from the repetitive and vacuous inception of the series, Revelations is another opportunity to see the Assassin formula at the top of its game. Finely paced, varied in its gameplay and brimming over with exciting and dramatic set-pieces, it delivers everything a fan of the series could desire.

Constantinople, the game’s main setting, is a stunningly realised vision of old Istanbul, filled, pound for pound, with a slightly more diverting set of missions than the games before it. Fire in particular seems to have become a great favourite of Ubisoft’s designers, so if Ezio’s not hosing boats down with liquid flame, he’s leaping across their burning hulls to escape the harbour, or inciting 60 people to join an incendiary riot just so they’ll help him break into an Ottoman fortress. Another memorable mission sees Ezio disguising himself as one of Brotherhood’s much-despised Italian minstrels, plucking a lute and ad-libbing songs dissing his old enemies or the non-Italian speaking Ottoman soldiers around him.

Meanwhile, recruiting and training individual Assassins, conquering towers to take back – and renovate – the city, and enclosed, Prince Of Persia-style epic set-pieces are all back, all slightly expanded or enriched in terms of scale or complexity. It would all work brilliantly, if Ubi had just stopped there.

Unfortunately, a number of other small additions have reared their heads to the point of threatening the gameplay balance Brotherhood so elegantly mastered, weighing the experience down with needless frippery, and sometimes turning gameplay from a pleasure to far more of a chore than it ever should be.

One example is the much-vaunted bomb crafting, which Ubisoft clearly intended as a neat way for the player to take full control over choosing the correct tool for any task. Unfortunately, a scant tutorial in the overcomplicated building process, coupled with a general lack of opportunities to really use them, soon sees them forgotten in favour of jumping in with a sword or hidden blade like ever before, the entire game easily conquerable without voluntarily hurling a single explosive. There’s also the thorny issue that only three types of the dozens on offer can be kept in Ezio’s bag at once, meaning an often lengthy on-foot trip to go and make more usually not feeling worth the hassle.

Meanwhile, the tower defence minigame that results from too high a wanted level feels a needless bolt-on, as do the shark-jumping first-person puzzles that serve as a backdrop to Desmond’s inner monologue on ‘Animus Island’. Playing like a bizarre cross between Tetris and Portal, they’re a strange fit, and don’t feel particularly linked – like the series’ earlier puzzle segments – to the game’s traditions of historical intrigue or conspiracy.

The playable Altaïr memories, meanwhile, that replace the Followers of Romulus side-quests from Brotherhood, now contain so many repetitive steps that getting to the goal of actually playing the character is such a grind that it’s often tempting to abandon the whole process halfway through and to go back later. Speak to a certain character, climb to a high vantage point, use Eagle Vision to spot a book, play a labyrinthine set-piece, analyse an artifact, then finally play out a memory; it’s another unnecessary addition of rigmarole that seems to unbalance Brotherhood’s more direct approach for no reason other than ‘added value’ tinkering.

This might all be sounding like an unduly negative eight out of ten by now (yes, we know you’ve checked), but here’s the rub: everything that worked in Brotherhood is still here, and everything you don’t like can be easily ignored, or broken up between the more immediately fun stuff. Carrying out all Revelations’ tasks in measured tones rather than piling straight through the story is just as enjoyable an experience as it ever was.

And if the game’s structure is slightly sullied by needless complexity, Revelations still wins the day in terms of the series’ strongest feature – its atmosphere. Constantinople’s streets, medinas and squares are filled with bustling, colourful people. The time in history – that of an internal struggle in the Ottoman empire while the fallen Byzantines sit brooding on the sidelines – paints an atmosphere of upheaval that tells an infectiously enjoyable story. And the collection of characters on this stage is as charming, human, and cheekily historically accurate – as Ubisoft deftly fills in the gaps Wikipedia leaves – as ever before.

There’s young Prince Suleiman, perpetually concerned 17-year-old heir to the Ottoman throne who’s caught between a power struggle between his uncle and father, a wisdom beyond his years and bumfluff on his top lip the only indicators he’ll one day go on to pick up the title ‘The Magnificent’. Ezio develops a fondness towards the teenager suggesting a longing for a son of his own. Yusuf Tazim, meanwhile, leads the Constantinople Assassins and is effectively Ezio’s Turkish equivalent, jibing the Italian in his attempts to comprehend this foreign place in a way reminiscent of Omar Sharif and Peter O’ Toole’s caustically developing friendship in Lawrence Of Arabia.

Ezio himself has an engaging gravitas befitting his age and wisdom. Plodding inevitably towards the end of his tale, his stoic demeanour betrays signs of tiring of a life filled with questions, eager to discover his real purpose and enjoy some kind of retirement. Backed up by the key – and poignant – stages of Altair’s life told in flashback, there isn’t a dramatic moment out of place.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations, then, is a pick-and-mix of successes and failures. At its core, though, it’s just as accomplished a game as Brotherhood before it. All that’s required is to dig below the surface layer of frivolous pseudo-innovations to discover yet another classic Creed, and a top quality conclusion to an excellent story arc.

Related posts:

1. gamesTM Issue 110
2. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Ubisoft Montreal heads into uncharted territory
3. From Dust review
4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review
5. Rayman Origins review

There is no multiplayer, no co-op. There are few overblown set-pieces, barely a moment where players are left trailing behind some feckless NPC in the recently ubiquitous gaming pursuit of ‘follow the man’. There is no breadcrumb trail, no mini-map, and no contextual tooltip popping up every eight seconds to remind us that hitting a certain button makes rewarding things happen. There are no quick time events and there is, in fact, nothing across the length and breadth of Skyrim to hint at the notion that we’re as dumb as gaming’s incessant mothering often intimates. In Skyrim, we are free.

Which is beguiling. The series’ traditional opener is back – prisoner steps off ship, or in this case prison wagon – and an escape is undertaken thanks to the timely arrival of a Storm Dragon. The player, along with a fellow prisoner, runs for the hills. Out of sight of their imperial captors, Skyrim’s casual attitude towards focus begins in earnest. Sure, players can follow their new Nordic friend back to his village where they will be treated as a hero to both he and his people and offered room and board by a comely fighting wench.

But adventure lies in every direction. Unlike Oblivion, whose side-quests were primarily made up of lengthy chains supplied by the world’s four guilds – Mages, The Dark Brotherhood (assassins), Thieves and Fighters – major quest chains are to be found everywhere. Even when side-tracked, with Skyrim’s stream of things to see and people to do, it takes a very focused player not to become side-tracked from his or her own side-tracking. Arrival in a town with, say, a mind to speak to a specific individual can quickly become lost in the five or six other quest offers stumbled upon in finding your way there.

Time limits are frequent in modern videogames; ‘megalomaniac du jour’ threatens to blow up New York within the next 24 hours unless one man can defeat an army of a thousand trained killers, or whatnot. Games tend to press urgency as their primary motivator. Skyrim is the antithesis. Time is its most abundant commodity, and it’s structured in such a way that no matter how you may choose to spend it, none ever feels wasted.

The Elder Scrolls series’ approach to levelling is back, this time honed to perfection. As before, the repetition of a specific action incurs the natural consequence of improvement. Levels gained in each skill are added to the player’s cumulative total XP, which then levels up periodically. On gaining a level, players are offered two benefits. The first affects basic stats and is a simple choice from three; Magicka, Health or Stamina. The second is a choice of perk, which will accentuate abilities in any one of well over a hundred possible ways.

Perks are split into schools of training, each represented by a star constellation. They account for just about any action performed in the game, from combat abilities such as One-handed weapon, Archery or Destruction, through to more passive skills such as Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing. Throughout our time in Skyrim for this review, we tried out a mere smattering of ways to approach things. Setting our own moral agenda – not stealing and not killing unless attacked – we completed quests using Destruction magic, Conjuration of demons and, later, snuck pretty much everywhere, approaching enemies unheard and using Archery to administer a stylish-looking head piercing.

Within each discipline, perks amplify the natural betterment endued by the standard gaining of levels. The sneak skill, for example, is increased by skulking about and not being heard. The more the player does it, the less likely he or she is to be detected, with each level unlocking perks in the Sneak skill tree, which can then activate when levelling up overall. Perks in Sneak include bonuses for weapon damage while undetected; triple for bows, fifteen times damage for daggers. Like so much of the beautifully thought-out world of Skyrim, these have been layered in such a way as to encourage players to graduate. Begin with ranged, then the knife like some medieval incarnation of Léon. Clever, no?

Smarter still is, to quote the late Douglas Adams’, ‘the fundamental interconnectedness of all things’. There is a cause-effect relationship that is more complex and more evident than that seen elsewhere. An anecdotal example: inside a random house, a child has a human corpse on an altar of sorts. There are a few wild plants around it, a dead dragonfly, a note scrawled in blood. His eyes light up at the sight of his surprise visitor. ‘You’re here. I can’t believe you actually came.’
He’s summoning a member of The Dark Brotherhood. That we arrived in timely fashion leads to a case of mistaken identity in which he pleads with us to kill the mistress of his former orphanage. We have a choice; kill her, refuse, or meet her and then decide. We go with the latter, only to find her as cruel as our ‘client’ has made out. Her death swiftly follows, as does the adulation of the children at the orphanage, who are finally free of their sadistic tormentor. Back at the house, the ‘client’ gifts us a valuable family heirloom, which we later sell, using our ill-gotten profit for a nice, new, shiny set of armour.

It’s several hours later when, strolling the streets and alleyways of Riften, the south-westernmost of Skyrim’s nine capital cities, that a messenger, exhausted and nervous, tells us of the difficulty he’s had in finding us before delivering us a note. On it is the black hand of The Dark Brotherhood, and scrawled in blood beneath, the words ‘We Know’. Chalk up another future problem we’ve created for ourselves. Our later dallyings with The Dark Brotherhood are both triggered and tainted by this event and, onwardly, those dallyings have a tangible effect on how we’re perceived both by the public at large and by any faction we may or may not already be in collusion with. Cause and effect. Permanent, irrevocable change.

The land of Skyrim is not only beguiling in its scale, but also sumptuous in its grandeur. Every detail, from simple brush plants strewn across hillsides in convincingly random fashion, to the gorgeous cloud-hugged peaks, to turquoise pools of hydrogeologic volcanism whose geysers cough water and steam high into the air. Every magnificent vista can be traveled to, every mountain climbed, every valley breached. And beneath Skyrim’s surface beauty lies a termite’s nest of dungeons and underground tunnels, each with its own secrets to be found and dangers to be faced. And Skyrim’s imagination goes far beyond mere dungeons; there are shipwrecks to be plundered, alternate planes of existence to be feared and even places in the clouds where the very gods hold council.

Many of the off-piste dungeons and other dire oubliettes are related to quests. Complete them and you’ll most likely have seen a majority of the game. But let’s throw in some perspective here. As well as copious exploration and minor quest completion, we decide to see one long chain to its end. It has nothing to do with the main story and is filled with fascinating characters, unique creatures and underground catacombs filled with beautiful ancient machines. This quest chain takes around ten hours, is gripping from beginning to end and results in some extremely worthwhile rewards. Yet, this ten hours – the length of many entire games – is, at a guess, no more than a couple of per cent of the whole.

Indeed, in the dozens of hours we spent in Skyrim, we played like a leaf in the wind; being carried along by whatever random gust we happened upon. It’s quite possible to do this almost indefinitely. Where one strand ends, another begins; tiny filaments of story branch off in a dozen different directions, tempting us ever-deeper into layer-upon-layer of Skyrim’s onion-like world.

Dragons, for a change, are everything promised. Whether the specific story encounter variety, or one of those that spawn randomly in the wilderness, each creates its own set of problems. Are you out in the open or is there cover available? Are there any guards in the vicinity that might lend a hand, or do you have a companion at your side who can sway the battle your way? One thing is certain; when their blood-curdling cry echoes through the mountains, it’s time both to hit the save option and to trawl your armoury for the weapons you reserve only for such occasions. The souls your dragonborn hero absorbs from them and the subsequent ‘Shouts’ he unlocks are well worth the fight.

Additionally, Skyrim’s UI is a huge step forward for console RPGs. Gone is the typical assignation of various skills and healing potions seen in pretty much everything else out there, in its place something so simple that it’s a wonder we’ve never seen it before. Spells, weapons, potions and powers are ‘favourited’ by hovering over them in the inventory and hitting Y. When needed, they can be put into action by hitting up on the D-pad, then selecting them from a scroll-down list while the game automatically pauses. This means that, mid-fight, you can switch between entire set-ups at will. Bow to spell, to sword and shield. Drink a potion, apply a poison. It’s never more than two buttons away. No sifting through inventory bric-a-brac, no dragging, dropping or awkward equipping.

Ultimately, what Bethesda has created is a picture-perfect playground designed to engender pure love in those willing to lose themselves within it. Steady improvement, exploration of both place and possibility, and entrenchment in a fantasy world deeply fleshed out by hundreds of readable books, nefarious characters, epic battles, and an incalculable number of quests. If these are your reasons for picking up a videogame, these things have never been executed with greater virtuosity.

Related posts:

1. Dead Island review
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review
3. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations review
4. Final Fantasy XIII-2 review