Call of Pripyat is the third in the trilogy (acting as Sequel to the original game, Shadow of Chernobyl) placing the gamer into the shoes of a STALKER, a bounty hunter, in the Ukrainian town that was affected mostly by the fallout, Pripyat.

It’s a fabulous world that feels as real as can be, sensitively depicting the desolate nature of your surroundings together with the shaman-like activities of other soldiers and stalkers around you as they fight in their own little battles in real time as they try to gain advantages in their own faction wars.

Graphically, it excels in dousing the world in this grey and green overtone that seems to have lost its colour, whilst at the same time illustrating some of the unnatural delights of a world affected by a man made catastrophe.

Although no role playing element is involved, there is character progression. Money is hard to come by in the world so you have to carefully purchase and manage both weapons and ammunition, of which there is a multitude of options. It’s armoury is typically diverse and ranges from cheap, sawn off shotguns that are found two a penny, right up to government special edition sniper rifles that can clean blow the head off an armoured man from 1km away.

The landscape is VAST and some of the locations are utterly terrifying. For the first time in my 30 years of game playing, I screamed at the screen, taking my headphones off and looking at my wife in an utterly embarrassed pose. It really did terrify me.

Being their third installment, it’s a lot less buggy than their previous iterations and gains from the obvious budget inflation and allocation to proper UAT testing. It’s not 100% perfect, but the gaming experience is.

10/10

I hope that has some affinity with you, for me it’s a name that stirs a sense of adventure, excitement, honour, chivalry, romance, discovery and exploration. In EPIC proportions.

It’s not often I get to play a game, unable to put down my controller, only to get to the end about 2 weeks later, only to start it again – right from the very beginning. As soon as the credits roll! But Mass Effect 2 is a master class in games making and demonstrates a magnificent achievement in interactive, cinematic gaming.

Explaining anything about this game is a risk to spoilers, so I won’t do so. Anyone familiar with Shepard’s shenanigans from the first game will have no problems getting stuck right in. Even up to the import of your previous character, ME2 dumps all the bad things about ME1 and amplifies all the things that made the original so god damn awesome.

With an incredible depth of dialogue and character interaction, you can shape the nature of your character through varied conversation choices, all ultimately affecting the way your character develops and that of the story itself.

The graphics are as good as anything you’d expect from a modern games studio, but the most captivating facet of ME2 is the sheer scale of the game. There is a sense of perspective presented to the player that immerses you so deep and so realistically that the feeling of ineptitude is washed over you as you explore one planet to the other, from one side of the solar system, to the other.

Combining this with a story line that wouldn’t look out of place in a hollywood epic, together with cinematics that shake to your very soul, I’m not hesitating to tell any 360 owners to get off their fat arses and BUY THIS GAME. This is a true 10/10 game guys and gals and they don’t come that often.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 

It’s shit. It has the worst character textures I’ve seen in the past 5 years, lacks the character development and intimacy of the PC version and has an inherent mundanity about it that made me take it back to Game, 1 hour after buying it and trading it in for an instant £30 loss. That’s how much it sucked.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 

PC version:

I had to check the title of this game as I just can’t believe it’s the same thing? A much bigger emphasis on the RPG element, it’s so much closer to the bloodline of Bioware games of yore, such as Balders Gate and Neverwinter Nights – both genre defining, benchmark games.
In 1600 x 1050 resolution, it also pisses on the 360 version and together with the top down, team based control method with the quickbar along the bottom, it’s been redefined.

It’s also a huge game as I’m discovering. Fingers aching already!

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 

Forza 3 is a spectacular driving game in the vein that SHOULD cause Gran Turismo some distress – and rightly so, that game is the biggest turd of the year with it’s awesomely unsimulator type handling, lack of crash damage modelling and, a bug bear for me, a complete lack of any skidmarks or wheelspin marks on the road.

It doesn’t boast the largest collection of cars on the market, but it does have all the coolest. On a HD plasma, it looks delicious, suffers no visible framerate loss and has a quality of audio that really makes excellent use of full surround.

Multiplayer is where this game lives and despite a slightly lacking matchmaking facility, once you’re in a full lobby, you are guaranteed a fabulously exciting arena for bumper to bumper racing that rewards the careful and punishes the wreckless.

This is the greatest car game ever made. Oh and with my special edition awesomes box, I have a funky keyring and USB stick too.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 

I’m pissed off with it for a few reasons.

1) Plot.
It really is the most random storyline I’ve ever seen. It hops, skips and jumps from one direction to the next and it appears to have arbitrary plots just so they can justify various token FPS levels. Airports, streets, shanty towns, houses – everything’s there but it’s a scrapheap challenge of game levels. I don’t mind so much the ‘Russia invading USA’ thing (World in Conflict spun that tale brilliantly). It’s just that there was no real fluidity and most of it made no fucking sense.

2) Single player campaign
I’m mainly pissed off with the relative shortness of the game. It was over way too quickly. On top of that, it’s got a pretty good skirmish kind of mode but some of them can only be played multiplayer and, well, we all know how we feel about that.

3) Super AI
I hate this on FPS game so fucking much. I will be prone on the ground with full camo army ranger gear – practically invisible to the naked eye, I’ll crawl along the ground slower than a snail, pop my scope from behind a barrel and BAM I get shot at from 2 miles away by a one eyed militant with an uzi. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. Don’t do it. JUST DON’T.

[SPOILERS]

Having said that, there WAS some freaking typically awesome MW moments.
1) Jumping over that ridge in the snow-mobile was pretty rad
2) Jumping onto the helicopter ladder just as it’s flying away, in time to the crescendo of the spectacular soundtrack – this actually had me yelping out loud.
3) Dual Desert Eagles – I mean, we’re all blokes, right?
4) Mobile Sentry Guns are fucking brilliant. More games need this.

Overall, an excellent game in its own right, but I still think MW1 has it licked.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★½☆ 

Batman: AA is actually a book tie in, one I’ve had for many many years – it’s actually one of my favourite books. I was quite pleased to see the game adopt some of the more adult qualities from the book. The graphic novel still remains one of the most violent comic depictions of Batman and the game similarly takes its cues from the more dark characteristics of batman, rather than the camp.

There are two great aspects to this game. Apart from the fantastic use of some key, Batman technology, the combat scenes and the hunter/hunted scenes are some of the most absorbing to date. Swooping down on an inmate, dragging him and tieing him to a gargoyle before any of his friends notice is hugely satisfying. When you’ve got 8 guards to dispatch, you can sometimes spend up to a good 30 minutes patiently dispensing of them, one by one, each method becoming even more elaborate than the last. In contrast, if you want a plain old punch up (not recommended for armed assailants) then the combo system is brilliant, each successful attack adding to a multiplier than increases your effectiveness and strikes each time.

Replay value as yet unknown – I’ve completed it and will no doubt revisit it for its challenge mode, but otherwise a pretty good PS3 basher for short term love.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 

In my book, you’re not a true gamer unless you know, off by heart, the button combinations to Ryu’s fireball and dragon punch.

Game looks fantastic, great evolution of the anime beat-em-up. Sound effects are equally spot on, with the arcadey synth music doing its bit to keep up a frantic pace.

My fingers are swollen, though, after an hour at it, and the genius XBOX Live instant matches have pitted me against cyberathletes who demonstrate their satanic passion to punish combo amateurs like myself, or show that truly the genre has not aged as I have…

Perhaps claiming to be a product of the Playstation generation isn’t a kudos earning statement anymore, considering it’s a 10 year old platform, that’s hardly surprising I guess.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 

Battlefield, as a series, is a successful franchise that has garnered popular internet support for it’s fast past unique internet gameplay mechanics.
Bad Company, the latest in the line, didn’t receive rave reviews but I dusted this copy and had to comment on something about the game that really blew me away and has had me come back time after time, even after completing the single player campaign.

It’s got a well paced squad based mechanic, where you are a member of a 3 man squad in the pursuit of gold. The humorous dialogue lends itself humanised characteristics which go a long way to turn this into what appears to be a very believable contemporary FPS war game. It’s got excellent environmental damage unlike any I’ve seen before and some of the more destructive weapons (how about a radio which gives grid reference locations to remote artillery guns?) provide hours of smash-em-up gameplay. You literally leave entire towns and villages in smouldering ruins and suffocating smoke.

However, it’s the sound effects of this game that amazes me. Taking an AK47 into an unfurnished building, crouching under the window and taking blind shots outside provides the kind of ridiculously realistic echos and reverbs in your room that causes your kids to run crying to their mothers and my neighbours to jump into air-raid shelters. The sheer scale of various weapons mean there are definite benefits from one rifle to the other and dropping your M60 for an RPG adds a great strategic consideration to the game.

I’ve not even started talking about tanks yet – blowing the top of a building off with your tanks can be hugely satisfying.

Rating: ★★★★★★★½☆☆ 

Left 4 Dead continues this trend by wrapping a fast pace zombie apocalypse shooter within a game world that is terrifyingly real, if not believable, whilst including the single most important thing for long term playback value – co-op play.

I’ve been playing this game now since its launch day almost obsessively. Over Christmas I clocked up enough hours to embarrass me into not disclosing publicly the figure. As a fan of the Half Life series, the fast paced action sits perfectly between your FPS brain dead game such as Quakeworld or other death match titles and the more strategic titles such as Counter Strike Source. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this offers far more strategic compensation that results in the apparently infinite replay value.

Versus mode is naturally the piece de resistance. By placing you and your team in the control of the enemy zombies, taking down an opposing team of survivors is a perversely satisfying experience. The first time my boomer vomited on an unsuspecting survivor, attracting my zombie hordes, I grinned so violently I think I scared myself.

With the community already in a frenzy with mods and upgrades, the game is guaranteed a prosperous life. I’ve already committed ridiculous hours to it and every new play brings new strategic considerations that continue to add replay value.

Best game I’ve played since the original Halo. I wish Valve all the success in continuing to provide us gamers with such awesome, quality titles.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★