There’s a sense of familiarity that blows through the haunted subway stations of Metro 2033 and into the derelict subterranean tunnels of Metro: Last Light. Needless to say that Half-Life was a key inspiration for 4A Games when it came to crafting the world of the original Metro 2033, establishing – as Valve so triumphantly did with the alien-infested landscape of Black Mesa – a credible universe, while deftly navigating along the tightrope of narrative and gameplay to tremendous success. It’s no surprise then that the Ukrainian studio’s eye hasn’t wandered too far from Gordon Freeman’s extra-terrestrial exploits when crafting its sequel, and to the developer’s credit it manages to both restore and improve upon that story-action balance without compromising either of the core tenets.

That’s partly due to Last Light’s decision to shuck Dmitry Glukhovsky’s published literary sequel in favour of its own unique canon, continuing from the more catastrophic of the two possible endings at the climax of Metro 2033 that return the player to the perspective of the original’s taciturn protagonist Artyom. Psychologically scarred from the evisceration of the Dark Ones, Artyom’s journey is one of atonement; the pursuit of internal salvation, while igniting a flicker of hope for the remnants of humanity. Is it possible for one of the Dark Ones to have survived the fatal blast? We won’t spoil the reveal, but the question alone is reason enough to drive Artyom back to Moscow’s charred surface and drag players into the dread-filled depths of the metro system. And it’s the world itself that continues to be Metro’s greatest strength. It’s a backdrop that quite simply indulges fervent curiosity at one moment, but isn’t afraid to snap players hastily past its wonders minutes later. A more established studio and a bloated budget might have enabled Last Light’s dour setting to swell, and it’s true testament to the modest developer’s strength that it layers an astounding level of detail across each district of this engaging setting.

Stations filled with refugees demand players to linger and soak up the atmosphere; eavesdropping on idle prattle further peels back layers of local history and illuminates on the wider conflict between the three warring factions at the heart of the story. 4A understands moments where a considered pace is needed as well as it appreciates the need to inject some histrionics into a protracted shootout. There’s much to see here, even if interaction has been downplayed since the original. One of the apposite ingenuities of the original Metro was the number of mechanics that mirrored the challenges faced by the survivors stuck within the savage landscape. In Last Light a number of those features have been noticeably stripped back. The most evident of which is the gas mask – essential for surviving outside in the wilderness and the source of much frustration in the original – here reduced to near redundancy thanks to the surplus supply of air filters littered around the environment. What was once a barrier from enjoyment due to the scarcity of extra filters (and, admittedly, poor checkpointing) has almost lost its purpose; without the constant threat of respiratory collapse it fails to amplify the anxiety that permeates much of this shooter.

Indeed, much of Metro: Last Light lacks the depth of the first entry, ultimately undercutting the challenge that players faced in the original. For instance, the monetary system – based on military grade ammunition – is of little concern for the majority of the game, as ammo and weapons are easy enough to discover. Not once during our playthrough did we have to resort to blowing our cash (quite literally) using currency as a replacement for our spent bullets. Last Light’s approach to survivalist mentality is superficial at best – a collection of interesting tools that looks great but adds little.

Related posts:

1. THQ wants you to have a free copy of Metro 2033

Even though Microsoft’s next generation reveal is only a few days away, there is still plenty to get excited about in the industry. DICE recently unveiled Battlefield 4, showing off its impressive new engine and commitment to delivering an engaging single player campaign. DICE’s shooter takes the cover of games™ 135 – on shelves (physical and digital) today.

This month we also put Peter Molyneux and Ian Livingstone face to face to discuss the past, present and future of the industry, and we caught up with the mastermind behind the Cyberpunk franchise, Mike Pondsmith, to discuss the upcoming videogame with Cd Projekt Red.

This and a whole lot more is waiting for you inside issue 135 of games™. Check the full contents below:

Buy or subscribe our print edition here
Buy or subscribe to our online edition here

FEATURES

-Combat Evolved: DICE has unveiled its bold vision for the future of Battlefield, but can it succeed on both single and multiplayer fronts? We spoke to the developer to find out.
-Grand Theft Auto V: games™ heads back to Los Santos with a massive preview feature.
-Darl Souls II: Prepare to die, again. Yui Tanimura reveals all as we get eyes on with Dark Souls II.
-Molyneux Vs Livingstone: We get the industry giants in a room to discuss modern games, their gaming histories, and the future of videogames.
-Cyrberpunk 2077: We speak with the original creator of Cyberpunk as well as CD Projekt Red about the future of the legendary franchise.
-The Rise Of The ARG: games™ investigates alternate reality games and what the future has in store for the curious experiment.

DISCUSS

-Metal Gear Solid V: We attempt to get to the bottom of Kojima’s mysterious new Metal Gear game.
-Avalanche Studios: We speak with Avalanche Studios to see what the developer has been working on.
-RIP LucasArts: We speak to Ron Gilbert about the sad passing of the legendary studio.
-Oculus Rift Verdict: Is this immersive piece of hardware essential for the next gen or a toy for the hardcore? 

RETRO

-Behind The Scenes Space Quest: We discuss the classic adventure series Space Quest.
-Conversion Catastrophe: This month’s unfortunate classic is Ghostbusters.
-Game Changers: Tetris: In a new monthly feature, we take a look at the games that redefined the medium.
-The Demake Factor: Converting games to run on older consoles; the ‘demaking’ of games is still strong.

MMO WORLDS

-The Elder Scrolls Online: We ventures beyond the level cap to discuss the end game of TESO.
-Eve Online: As Eve Online’s tenth anniversary approaches, CCP examines the past decade.
-Wildstar: games™ explores Carbine Studios’ newest MMO as it nears completion.

PREVIEWS

-Battlefield 4
-The Evil Within
-Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2
-The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot
-Lego Marvel Super Heroes
-FIFA 14
-Company Of Heroes 2
-Tales Of Xilia
-The Legend Of Zelda 3DS
-Flashback
-MotoGP 14
-Yoshi’s Island 3DS
-Showcase Round-Up

REVIEWS

-Metro: Last Light
-Fire Emblem
-Injustice: Gods Among Us
-The Devil’s Cartel: Army Of Two
-The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
-Dead Island: Riptide
-Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14
-Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates To Infinity
-Star Trek: The Video Game
-Deadly Premonition
-BattleBlock Theater
-Persona 4 Arena
-Defiance
-Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins
-Terraria
-Shootmania

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Guacamelee! is, for all intents and purposes, slavishly dedicated to honouring the customs of Day of the Dead. From its outset, the Drinkbox developed platformer is an assault on the senses; bursting with colour, humour and an irrelevant tone throughout that only serves to immerse the player in a visually arresting take on Mexican Folklore.

Taking control of Juan Aguacate, a down-on-his luck wrestler with grandiose dreams, the player sets out on a quest to rescue El Presidente’s daughter from the clutches of Carlos Calaca, an evil skeleton hell bent on retribution. Thankfully Juan acquires a mask that turns him into the world’s greatest luchador, and so he sets out on the adventure of a lifetime between the lands of the living and dead.

Guacamelee! is never afraid to subvert expectations, planting tongue firmly in cheek as Juan sets out to rescue his love in the face of insurmountable danger. Draped in calavera themed Metroid design, Guacamelee! is a loving ode to 2D platformers of the past, as players are challenged with a variety of environmental and combat puzzles.

Thankfully Drinkbox hasn’t let combat fall by the wayside, realising that style can’t come at the expense of substance. It’s here where Guacamelee! marks its major departure from the Metroidvania design conceits, as it also doubles up as a fairly robust melee brawler.

The mechanics are quick and easy to pick up, but difficult to master, as Juan takes advantage of his Luchador skills; with takedowns and a myriad of other wrestling themed moves at his disposal. It’s fun for the most part, but in the latter portions of the game the systems don’t hold together as well as you’d expect. The sheer amount of combat eventually turns into a button mashing frenzy, challenging dexterity (and patience) as the limited upgrade and combo systems suffocate under the games lofty requirements.

Guacamelee! has its problems, but most can be overlooked as you drown in the deliriously entertaining world of memes, Mexican culture and engaging gameplay. It’s not the best 2D adventure to be found on PlayStation systems, but it’s a wonderful example of Sony’s dedication to bringing new and independent experiences to the hands of its gamers.

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Deep Silver’s Dead Island: Riptide tops the UK chart for the third consecutive week, despite sales dropping 55% over the week.

While PQube’s Persona 4 Arena misses out on a top ten debut, coming in at 11, Telltale’s The Walking Dead debuts at ninth following a retail release.

Riptide is the second game of 2013 to hold the top spot for three successive weeks, following Bioshock Infinite’s strong showing earlier in the year. This Friday sees the release of Metro: Last Light and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates To Infinity – will Riptide’s reign come to an end?

Until next week, here’s the UK All Formats Top 10 for the week ending May 11th:
1. Dead Island Riptide (Deep Silver)
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Activision)
3. Tomb Raider (Square Enix)
4. Injustice: Gods Among Us (Warner Bros)
5. FIFA 13 (EA)
6. BioShock Infinite (2K Games)
7. Assassin’s Creed III (Ubisoft)
8. LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins (Nintendo)
9. The Walking Dead (GSP/Avanquest)
10. Luigi’s Mansion 2 (Nintendo)

Related posts:

1. Dead Island: Riptide first trailer
2. Deep Silver apologises for bad-taste Dead Island Riptide: Zombie Bait edition
3. Dead Island Riptide enters UK charts at number one

Making videogames is hard. Whether you’re aware of that inconvenient truth or not, it goes some way to explain why Star Command’s belated arrival lacks the scope of its pitched purview. It’s tempting to deplore the pixel-cute space opera for everything that it isn’t – namely, a handful of feature omissions proposed in the original Kickstarter outline – but that would be cruelly missing the point of an otherwise engaging and spirited space opera.

The pillars of Star Command’s gameplay are fundamentally divided into two halves. First you must outfit your modest star vessel with essential facilities and crew, assigning each of the ship’s willing underlings with a specific role aboard the craft. Each crew member is easily distinguishable: engineers wear yellow shirts, red shirts man the guns and blue shirts act as medics. Managerial requirements are minimal: making sure science, artillery and mechanical are fully operational, and redistributing resources when a destructive threat dictates it.

Star Command doesn’t offer a huge amount of time to comprehend the various systems, as it propels players through deepest space on a linear set of missions, almost all of which conclude in some sort of battle with extra-terrestrial species. The ill-considered escalation in difficulty results in a turbulent first hour involving dying ensigns, hull breaches and juggling crew members between multiple sectors in a panicked-induced bout of galactic musical chairs. The key is effectively shirt-swapping your way through a major conflict, responding to marauders beaming aboard your ship by repositioning crew effectively in different departments without leaving a plasma cannon unmanned or a dodge generator without an engineer ready to evade enemy fire.

This is rarely anything other than a taut experience, and the introduction of an effective crop of simplistic time-based minigames (used to launch attacks on enemy ships) commingled into the main action amplifies the tension tremendously.

Persevere beyond the obfuscation and awkwardness of the opening act and everything begins to click into place: your finely-tuned vessel becomes a labour of pride, and deliberating how best to distribute tokens rewarded post-conflicts – the in-game currency used to build, staff and upgrade facilities – becomes genuinely involving. The simulation side of Star Command barely stretches beyond those principles, ultimately lacking the depth to truly compel once its meagre campaign concludes – more advanced ships become available after the game is complete – but despite this, its limitations feel of little consequence. Star Command essentially amounts to a pastiche of sci-fi television tropes (with all the superficiality that invokes) rather than a full immersion into the role of an actual captain. It might not match up to the developer’s original intentions, but it’s more than a worthy voyage into a new world.

No related posts.

We’ve had a little dip into the patch already Greg, it was pretty cool to see dinosaurs out in the wilds.

Yeah, dinosaurs were a big deal for us. When we were trying to figure out, ‘What can we do with the Zandalarian’s that makes them not the typical trolls?’ What we came up with was, let’s mix Roman, and Aztec and dinosaurs.

It’s funny you should mention the trolls, they always seem to make their way back into the world. Are they fan favourites in the office?

I think so, they are just really iconic in the World Of Warcraft universe. As players are leveling up, you find Trolls stuffed in the weirdest corners and zones and things like that. They’re a little wretched; you always get the sense that the troll days of glory are behind them. So we really wanted to bring the Zandalarians and like okay, this is what trolls can be and this is the most epic a troll can turn into.

It’s been about six months since Mists Of Pandaria launched, how do you feel players have responded to the world now they’ve had some time to spend in it?

We feel like the reaction has been great overall. Pandaria has a really strong sense of place that I think was lacking a little bit in Cataclysm. Cataclysm was really spread out along loads of different zones. Pandaria has a feel and a spirit and a look that’s really strong that seems to resonate with players.

We always notice a surge in interest and excitement when a new patch or expansion is imminent, is it a struggle tailoring content to new, returning and existing players?

We do. You’re totally right about the level of excitement. It’s hard for us to recreate that outside of a really big patch like this. My own raiding guild, we had so many people come back ‘oh I want to raid again, I want to see the new content’. It is hard for a patch like patch 5.2 to offer a lot to new or returning players. If they haven’t seen Mists Of Pandaria yet there’s so much there for them to do already. But when we hit the big expansions overall that’s a great time to appeal to new or returning players, and we always do get a load of returning players every time we do an expansion and they just want to check out what’s new and what direction the series has gone.

In Cataclysm players would hit the end game, World Of Warcraft has always been a game about leveling up and more and more it was shifting to a game that focused on max level. People would hit 85 in Cataclysm and say ‘now what do I do? I don’t have a raiding guild and I’m not good enough to PvP’, and they felt like there really wasn’t content for them. So we made a huge effort in Mists Of Pandaria to provide lots of content for end-game players for all skill players and interests.

Are the Thunderforge weapons you are introducing in Patch 5.2 a response to the decline in 25-man raiding?

Originally the idea was one of the features of the Throne of Thunder raid is that it’s fairly linear and very big. There’s a lot of space in-between bosses, and we wanted it to feel exciting to players even say three months from now when they have the first two bosses on farm and they can’t get the last bosses. Traditionally nobody wants the loot on the first couple of bosses, everything gets sharded. So we thought what if there’s a small chance of having an even better version of the item pop out, so people would still be excited in seeing the loot that came out from Jinrokh – the first boss – even months from now.

That was the original idea behind Thunderforge. And then they said, ‘Hey, what if we also have it drop more frequently in 25’s just so those 25 players feel like we haven’t forgotten about them. That they’re still important and that we still try and give them a little bit of extra reward for all the logistical hurdles they have to face.

Do you feel that 25 player raids have become redundant in recent years?

Yeah I think it’s a logistical issue. It’s very easy for a 25 player guild to collapse, and just take 10 players and keep going. You almost never see the opposite where a 10 player guild says ‘hey, lets try to get more people and go 25’. So over time its just… entropy. The 25 shifts down to 10 and then no-ones back filling the 25’s they just start to go away. But we really like 25 player raiding, we think it ultimately offers a experience. It feels more epic, there are more opportunities for players just starting out or don’t mind – there’s a crowd they can blend into a little better.

We also think the 25 man guilds are a little more resilient, they can loose a few people and get a few more people and keep going. But a 10 player guild that loses a key officer could totally collapse and those players just stop raiding – or even stop playing World of Warcraft!

While we’ve seen the introduction of Thunderforge weapons in 5.2, we’ve also seen the removal of Item Upgradeability. Does Blizzard view the feature as a failed experiment or as something you are likely to tweak and put back into the game?

I think there’s a good chance we will still bring it back, it makes more sense in the odd numbered patches where players have run out of gear. To use the valor example, they’ve run out of new gear to buy with valor – they’re still progressing through the zones and accumulating this valor, and having more ways to upgrade this gear increases this chance to defeat the bosses that they are stuck on currently. Otherwise you’ll keep banging your head against this boss and until your item level goes up you’ll never have a chance to defeat it.

I think the things we learned, the mistakes we made before were, it was very expensive to upgrade an item. We wanted it to be a big deal and kind of precious, but because it cost 1500 valor to fully upgrade an item, there was a lot of concern from players, and understandably so, about making mistakes. They didn’t want to upgrade an item and then get a better item the next week and then be like ‘oh I just wasted 1500 valor and now I’ll never get it back.’ So the idea we are talking about now is to make it a lot cheaper, so you realistically can upgrade everything. And then when you get a new item you’re still excited to have the new item rather than sad that you have to spend more valor.

How do you feel the legendary quests are developing this time around considering any player can now get involved?

This is a very different design of legendaries than we’ve done before. Real expectation here is everyone can do it. Previously we tried to keep it fairly rare and very prestigious, but now we assume most players are going to be able to get those rewards. I think the tuning has been OK. In 5.0 there was some frustration where the sigil of power would drop, but the sigil of wisdom wouldn’t. So you’d have players running around with too much of one and lacking the other one, which was a little frustrating. And then in the 5.1 extension of the legendary quest, the 6000 Valor was just a little too much, it was kinda intimidating. I think in retrospect it probably would have felt better at 2000 or 300 valor.

Hopefully the part of the legendary quest in patch 5.2 and 5.3 will be a little easier to accomplish while still feeling really epic. There’s this great moment in the current patch, that of course nobody has seen yet, when you complete the first step of the legendary and you and Raytheon go into the Thunderforge and have to complete a solo event which is just you and Raytheon against a whole bunch of enemies. It’s pretty epic, we worked really hard on it and nobody has seen it yet, so it’s going to be fun!

Warlocks have recently had the solo quest introduced to get green fire, can we expect to see similar quests to be put in place for other classes?

We will do it where it makes sense. We haven’t done anything like this for a long time because we were concerned of the reaction from like Paladin players, ‘where’s my daily quest – when is it my turn?’ and we can’t develop to a quota that way. So we thought let’s just do it sometimes and players will get excited to see and hopefully those players who don’t get to participate won’t feel too neglected. We’ll do more of them over time, but I don’t want to make a long time commitment to eventually doing something for everybody.

Can we expect more Challenge modes to come in the future? How do you think they have been received by the wider community?

We love them. It’s something that many of us participate in, it’s a very different way to experience the game. We love the challenge and we love the pressure, it feels really cool. We looked the other day at the participation rates and they are actually higher than we would have predicted, I was concerned early on that a lot of players had so much to do in WoW that they didn’t have time to challenge modes, but they clearly have the time. We’d like to do more of them, it will take away bandwidth from our encounter designers for working on something else so I don’t want to commit to it, but there’s a ton of interest in the team of going back and hitting some old player favorites and turning those into challenge modes.

Looking back over the history of World Of Warcraft, what is the biggest lesson you have learnt? How much of the past influences the way you treat new patches and content?

Oh gosh, this is a thing we talk about all the time. There are so many lessons we’ve learned. We were talking before a little bit about the difference between new players, returning players and current players, and every change we make to the game has advantages to one or not the other. For example; when we add new class abilities that’s very exciting for current players because they get some new mechanic in their class that they have to learn, but it’s very overwhelming for returning players. They’ll say, ‘oh wait, I came back and now my fire mage has totally different buttons and some of the spells that I had before are gone and I have to relearn everything.’ And that is a big barrier.

If you think, there are a lot of examples like that in the game. We have to do something to keep it fresh for existing players but all of that just creates a bigger and bigger barrier for new and returning players. At the same time we can’t neglect our current players, it’s a huge challenge.

What do you see in the future for World Of Warcraft?

From a business model standpoint, we just want to get content out faster. That’s just something we have talked about for a long time and I feel like we are really starting to deliver on it now and we know players get bored when we go too long without a game update, so that’s a big commitment for us to try and get stuff out really as fast as possible. We also need to keep the complexity down, we can’t keep adding new mechanics that just stack on top of each other. We need more mechanics that maybe fit within one expansion but we don’t have to continue on forever.

Just as one example, imagine that archeology had been a Cataclysm only feature and that once you’ve finished cataclysm you kind of put archeology behind you. The farm in Mists of Pandaria is a good example because we don’t think players will have the expectation that once they move on from Pandaria to a new continent that they’ll have to keep going back and managing their farm all the time. That way we don’t just expand the amount of content that we expect players to do but we can keep offering new and exciting different things. It’s something we kind of stumbled into after making a few mistakes along the way. ‘Oh we just created a system like Guild Leveling which we will now have to support for every expansion ever’ [laughs].

In 5.2, Blizzard has introduced the Mogu treasure room for players to explore as a single-player scenario. Can players expect to see more of these scenario’s moving forward?

Yeah that was a great… I would say that was very serendipitous, that we were tying to figure out ways to have these epic experiences that sometimes… look World of Warcraft is a multiplayer game, but sometimes we can offer a really scripted tight experience alone. We realised, wow, scenario technology will work perfectly for this. So for example the Warlock scenario, the Thunderforge battle with Raytheon that I mentioned and the treasure room that you mentioned are all examples of… really behind the scenes of the scenario was a one player scenario, you’re not grouped up and in some of those cases you only do it once (it’s not repeatable content) but it feels very special and very unique because you’re in there all alone.

We think the treasure room wouldn’t had the same vibe if you saw other players running around, and you had to worry about ‘oh well he’s going to get that chest so I shouldn’t even run over there.’ The treasure room is supposed to be about planning and quick reaction and trying to make calls of, ‘I see a chest there but it’s out in the open… I bet its trapped, maybe I should go and find another one instead’.

Speaking of the scenarios, which Blizzard have done so well with since Cataclysm, the Goblin starting area in particular was fantastic. In fact it’s something we’ve seen a little of from Bungie with Destiny – do you think there is more space for MMO model to move over to consoles with next-gen on our doorstep?

I would personally be very excited to see that, it would be a huge challenge to take something like World Of Warcraft with its massive hard drive footprint and its reliance on mouse and keyboard, I think if we were going to make a MMO for consoles then we might take it in a different direction. Then again, if you take a look at what the Diablo team did with their console version, they just had to change some of the very fundamentals of the game to make it work differently. It can be done, it would just be a big challenge for a game like WoW.

So it’s something you’re interested in exploring? I know, as a player myself, it would be fun to be able to jump online with my friends over Xbox Live or PSN and easily share content between generations, and perhaps even platforms.

Yeah, it excites me. It would be something fun to work on just because of the design challenges would be kind of interesting to try to solve. Gosh, the next few years are going to be so interesting in this industry. We get to see where do the next generation of consoles go and where do tablets and portable devices go, and what are players most interested in? I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know where it’s going, but I know its going to be a fun ride.

What do you hope players take away from Patch 5.2?

I really want players to get the message that this is a commitment of Blizzard and the World Of Warcraft team and this is the type of content players can expect year after year. Sometimes, there’s the risk that players say ‘gosh, this games been going on for nine years, certainly its winding down or its something Blizzard is putting out to pasture and isn’t really going to support much anymore.

But this huge patch is our example of no, World Of Warcraft is alive and well and as long as we keep having so many players, we will keep making the best content we can possibly make.

To read more about World Of Warcraft, buy or subscribe to games™ online or in print. Issue 135 is available from 16 May and features a guide to Blizzard’s behemoth MMO.

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The DC Comics-themed massive online battle arena Infinite Crisis has been turning heads with its accessible take on the MOBA genre, and on May 8 gamers will finally be able to give it a try for themselves as it moves into closed beta.

Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced the beta today, advising that any players interested in signing up for the beta can sign up for a spot on the offical Infinite Crisis website. The MOBA is in development with Turbine, the studio responsible for The Lord Of The Rings Online, and will launch as a free-to-play title later this year.

The game is set to tie-in loosely with the Infinite Crisis limited-series written by Geoff Johns, published in 2005, where many alternate versions of DC’s iconic characters come together across the multiverse. Turbine has only released details on a few of the playable characters, but Nightmare Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Doomsday were certainly good reveals to get us excited.

Infinite Crisis is scheduled to launch this fall for Windows PC, more information on the beta can be found here.

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Could 2012 be the year of the indie? Not only have the likes of Fez, Lone Survivor, Home and Dear Esther shaken up the gaming establishment and shown just how much promise and power there is outside of the traditional publishing industry, but indie games now have their own movie too. And even among that tide of quality and imagination, the pick of the bunch  has to be Mike Bithell’s marvellous warm, witty and utterly English platform puzzler, Thomas Was Alone.

Looking at the screenshots won’t really do it justice. It is, after all, a heartwarming tale of friendships and cooperation between AI rectangles who are slowly becoming sentient. Over 100 levels of physical and spatial platforming, you get to know and love Thomas, Chris, John and a host of other similarly named quadrilaterals, thanks in no small part to some fantastic writing and a brilliant narration by TV (and Assassin’s Creed’s) own Danny Wallace.

Bithell has managed to inject more character and personality into a troop of geometric shapes than most games manage with multi-million polygonned action heroes. The voice-over is a large part of that, but also the physical traits of each block are intrinsically linked to their character. Thomas is an everyman, capable of moderately high jumps, while Chris is short, squat and grumpy. John is a tall and can leap higher than the rest, making him supremely confident. That is, until he meets Sarah…

The influences are clear – it has Portal’s whimsical science, Head Over Heels’ cooperative teamwork and even a touch of Everyday Shooter’s stark but inviting visuals, but Thomas Was Alone is very much its own beast. Throughout the century of levels, where the player must guide all the blocks to the white-outlined portal exits, so many gameplay ideas are explored and executed it’s astonishing. Just when you think you’ve seen everything the game has to offer, it completely turns its entire rule book on its head.

Thomas Was Alone is a smart, savvy puzzler, but one that’s also more than the sum of its angular parts. The way the narration, bare visuals and soaring music combine is a glorious three way marriage made in geometric heaven. David Housden’s spectacular score adds weight and gravitas to every action, no matter how fiddly. It’s astonishing stuff.

While a few technical hiccups do occasionally spoil the party – there’s a touch of latency in the jumping controls and the odd little bug that makes matters a touch confusing – there’s so little to fault in Bithell’s striking debut. This is a game to admire, to enjoy and evangelise; a thoroughly English slice of indie magic that is every bit as accomplished as anything with a budget and a team. If this truly is the year of the indie, then long may it continue.

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Three new trailers are now online for Grand Theft Auto V, each showcasing a various character from the upcoming Rockstar game. GTAV is due September 17 2013, and while Rockstar has kept fairly tight-lipped, the three trailers give us a window into each characters story, as well as the world around them. Violence, laughter, alcoholism and dynamic car chases – pretty much everything you’d expect from GTA. We can’t wait.

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Related posts:

1. Grand Theft Auto V trailer
2. Grand Theft Auto V release date announced

Captain America and the Avengers

Year: 1991
Format: Arcade, Mega Drive, SNES

One of the most enticing cabinets vying for attention in Nineties arcades, Captain American and the Avengers, if anything, certainly looked the part. Iron Man was one of the Avengers assembled for this dross side-scrolling beat-’em-up (alongside Captain America, Vision and Hawkeye), but the appeal ends there. Iron Man struts around delivering haymakers rather than doing anything Iron Man-ish – he doesn’t fly or shoot lasers – and collision detection appears to be the true nemesis of this rote brawler. You’d be better off spending your time staring at the marvellous box art.

Iron Man 1 & 2

Year: 2008/2010
Format: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

We’ve bundled Sega’s two attempts at bringing ol’ Shellhead to gamers into one entry, given the consistency of their utterly eye-bleeding awfulness. The original featured notoriously cumbersome mechanics, sub-par visuals and tiresome action beats. The sequel only elected to change one aspect of the formula: getting rid of Robert Downey Jnr. A videogame tie-in that ditches the movie’s star? Historically, not awesome.

Avengers in Galactic Storm

Year: 1995
Format: Arcade

Now for the most obscure entry on the list. Avengers in Galactic Storm was an uninspired 2D fighter from Data East that hit arcades in the mid-Nineties, which included such features as nausea-inducing kaleidoscope visuals and clunky fighting mechanics. However, it was the first modern fighting game to introduce assist fighters, so it does earn some kudos.

Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal

Year: 1996
Format: PSone, Sega Saturn

While it contained some of the Marvel’s more obscure villains (Arnim Zola!), this curious comic book crossover is a lamentable misfire. Its antiquated design was a valid criticism during the heady days of 32-bit consoles, but beneath its muddy visuals remains a dull, derivative side-scroller.

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

Year: 2005
Format: PS2, GameCube, Xbox

The relatively fresh-faced Nihilistic Software cut its teeth in the fighting genre with Marvel nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Unfortunately, the studio that would go on to produce Call of Duty: Black Ops – Declassified couldn’t quite assemble the legendary super-team to any meaningful results.  Balancing issues, crippling bugs, terrible level design and a woeful single-player scenario turned an otherwise promising beat-‘em-up into a lame duck.  No wonder Tony Stark turned to the bottle.

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