You’ll never learn the boy’s name — he’ll never utter a single word during the course of yours and his adventure together. Nobody will, actually. No-one seems to be especially chatty in Limbo. Of all the characters you come across in the game — all six or so of them — not a single one appears as anything more than a dark silhouette with eyes, or demonstrate any semblance of personality. A certain giant, 8-legged stalker will probably be among the more notable of characters that you’ll come across, but even his intimidating presence won’t be felt for long, sadly. To the game’s advantage, though, to attempt to explain the involvement of these characters would take away from their appeal as creepy, mysterious antagonists.

Don’t expect anything in the way of cutscenes, dialogue, or anything that might be construed as forward narrative being found in Limbo. Playdead are — I presume — very much relying on you to fill in the blanks. You’re essentially handed a half-finished jigsaw where only half the pieces are filled in. Your journey through the game will likely translate into something completely different to you, then it does for your chums. Everyone will encounter the exact same 24-chapters, that much is true, but the underlying story will be interpreted differently from player to player. The “blink and you’ll miss it” ending serves as a huge twist for some, but meaningless to others.

The mystery surrounding your character’s current predicament is never truly explained. How did you end up in Limbo? Who are these faceless, hostile tribe-like figures that repeatedly try to kill you? What’s with the tree house and the broken ladder at the main menu? You’ll never know for sure, but you’ll have certainly developed a few theories by the time that you’ve ploughed through the game’s 3-4 hours worth of playtime. Nothing is ever wrapped up neatly and fully explained. And I like that.

As alluded to earlier: Limbo is part platformer, part puzzler, but all side-scroller. The platforming parts will have you hopping dangerous chasms, beds of spikes, circular saws, pools of water, and other nasties. The poor lad can’t swim, so setting foot in anything deeper than a poodle spells certain doom. The puzzles usually come in a physicals-based flavour and have you using bits and pieces that conveniently litter the environment to use as makeshift bridges, stepping stones, catapults, and all sorts. There’s some pretty clever puzzles scattered around the later half of the game, and there might even be one or two that have you scratching your head for a while before the answer slaps you in the face with a wet kipper. You’ll be gradually eased into more and more taxing scenarios — some of which will have your hurtling your mouse across the room in sheer frustration — as you make your way from the spooky forest to a factory-like area.

As the difficulty ramps up, so to does the sense of reward when you’ve managed to trump a particularly troublesome hurdle. More often than not, you’ll be allowed all the time in the world to complete a task, but there’ll be occasions where you’re up against the clock, with danger breathing down your neck, taunting you in a way that only fiddly little platformer games can. The segments involving brain-humping parasite-based escapades perhaps being among the more tedious of moments the game has to offer, where you all but lose control of your character while this enormous maggot-like creatures suckles on your bonce and steers you in any direction it pleases. Failure is normally met with a morbidly rewarding death animation, and you’ll have seen your fair share before everything is said and done. Fortunately, checkpoints are frequently recorded — usually before and after a particularly tense moment — which helps minimize the temptation to rage quit after a mistimed jump.

Unfortunately, the game is far from perfect. And it’s these quibbles that bring the game down. For starters: V-sync is forced-on by default. The “Settings” tab provides no options whatsoever to tinker with the visuals. The absence of any in-game options to remap the default control scheme is also especially disheartening; you’ll be forced to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to manoeuvre your shadowy avatar about the place. What the developers have against the tried and trusted “WASD” configuration, I’ll never know. Saying that, it doesn’t take an eternity to get used to the retro-style button layout, which basically consists of movement keys and a single, solitary “action” key. Perhaps the most unappealing problem with Limbo is that of its replay value, or lack thereof. Upon completing the relatively short story mode — which is the one and only mode — you will have unlocked nothing but a chapter select option. That’s it. There will be no extra difficulty modes to conquer.

You might perhaps decide to attempt a speedrun, or attempt to tackle any one of the game’s twelve Steam achievements — which are the exact same ones as its Xbox Live Arcade counterpart — such as the extremely challenging “No Point in Dying” achievement that would have you attempting to complete the game in one sitting with five or fewer deaths incurred. To put this into context: I managed to complete Limbo in a long afternoon, sure, but I probably died anywhere from 50-70 times. I’m by no means an expert at platformers, and my fingers get twitchy as anything when I’m presented with a great-big, gaping hole to vault over, but I’d recommend only the sadistic attempt this one. There are always the glowing eggs to collect, if you really must, but that in itself yields no reward other than the satisfaction of knowing you’ve just collected a bunch of glowing eggs. Pointless, really.

Don’t get me wrong, Limbo is a nice breath of fresh air and I enjoyed my brief time with it. But upon completion, there’s a good chance you’ll be done with it. Unless you’re happy to cruise through the exact same puzzles and leaping over the same holes in the ground, time after time again, that is. You might find that a certain event will suddenly reveal itself to mean something more during a repeat playthrough, but that’s being optimistic. Limbo is available to purchase via the Steam Store right now.

Much like the original game, Portal 2 puts you back in the shoes of Chell, the prisoner cum guinea whom is trapped inside Aperture Science’ vast testing-laboratories, with seemingly no way to escape. You are simply tasked with finding solutions to bizarre and abstract puzzles that revolve around the manipulation of portals, goo, prisms, and a slew of other wacky contraptions — in the hopes of somehow breaking out of the facility. You will begin the game with only being required to solve relatively simple portal-based problems using your portal gun — a device built with the sole purpose of launching, well, portals onto certain surfaces so that you might be able to access new areas.

It won’t be long, however, before the difficulty of the puzzles begins to gradually escalate and you’ll be tinkering with new, dynamic gadgets and toys which will put an entirely new spin on how you play the game. The key to progressing through the story of Portal 2 is learning how to make use of your portal gun and the objects you are given per test chamber — only then will you be able to progress and access new locations with even more complex puzzles. The diversity in puzzles means that you won’t be able to become too complacent and simply zapping an entry portal on one wall and an exit portal on another, or flicking a switch and ‘portaling’ to the exit as soon as possible. You’ll certainly be kept on your toes, and you’ll need to think outside the box, so to speak, on many, many occasions.

This hand-holding approach to having you slowly exposed to more and more challenging puzzles with each new room you enter is handled superbly, and you will never be thrown head-first into a room without any prior training as to how to accomplish a task. I found the majority of puzzles were able to strike just the right balance without too simple or aggravating. That’s not to say the balance is absolutely perfect — there were chambers interspersed throughout the game that, I felt, were mind-numbingly easy when compared to the previous chamber. Of course, the level of difficulty to which you might find the puzzles will be entirely subjective, but there was only one instance where I became genuinely stuck and felt clueless as to how to find a solution which was, funnily enough, during the very final test chamber. The puzzles are certainly much more novel and unique when compared to the original Portal, but perhaps not quite as mentally taxing.

Gone are the original game’s ‘twitch’ events which would force you to launch portals in quick succession and perform well-timed leaps of faith. A thankful exclusion as these ‘puzzles’ were aimed more towards being lively with your mouse rather than your wits. However, one of the more tedious additions for the sequel is that of the overly-frequent occasions where you must scour the landscape and hunt down strategically-placed, hidden surfaces to place your portals onto in order to continue; it’s a poor excuse for artificially lengthening the playtime and is used far too often.

A developer’s commentary option is also available, allowing you to activate nodes scattered throughout the campaign and listen in to various Valve team members talk about: obstacles they might have faced during the early planning stages of the game; ideas that were binned; ensuring the learning curve wasn’t too steep; fleshing out the story; and much more.

Considering you’ll only really encounter a small handful of speaking main characters, the few that you do come across are certainly brimming with enough personality to not have you growing tired of their company during the game’s nine chapters. Newcomers Stephen Merchant and J.K. Simmons beam their way into the sequel to lend their vocal talents. Merchant provides the voice of the dim-witted, bumbling AI Wheatley, and Simmons portrays Cave Johnson, the wonderfully eccentric Aperture Science founder. Fan-favourite Ellen McLain returns to reprise her role as the sociopathic facility administrator AI, GLaDOS, once more and is allowed much more freedom in the sequel for her character AI to be developed even further. The three make for an exceptional triple-act and are genuinely very amusing, each in their own right. Chell, sadly, still lacks any personality of any kind, and doesn’t appear to utter a word even once throughout the course of the game.

The graphics, while not quite as staggering as most other modern, triple-A titles, are still very much a visual treat. It’s really quite a sight to behold when you trot into a new test chamber and see robots hurriedly trying to finish off constructing the room before your very eyes. If you have the hardware to crank all graphical settings up the ’11′, then you’ll never want to leave the Aperture Science facility; test chambers look equally beautiful whether they be overgrown with foliage, or adorned in a more traditional, minimalist look.

Once you are done with the terrific 6-8 hour single-player campaign, there’s also the co-operative multiplayer mode available, which will allow you and a buddy to team up over Steam in order to take on an entirely separate campaign from the single-player one. Chell is nowhere to be seen here, you and your chum will take on the guise of Atlas and P-body — two comical droids whom communicate through a series of synthesized beeps and clicks. Two minds are better than one, as they say, and it’ll take the both of you pulling together to make your way through the wholly enjoyable co-op experience. Together, you’ll be able to summon up a combined total of four portals — and it adds an exciting new spin on gameplay when you the two of you must plan and execute potential solutions with every new chamber.

While it is highly recommended that you invest in a good headset and microphone before diving into the multiplayer mode, Valve has included the ability to highlight key objects and dictate certain actions through gestures. Although, while the system is perfectly functional and does help ensure that both you and your team mate are able to understand each other for the most part, it doesn’t even compare to being able to communicate in person. A headset really is recommended for co-op.

Before your robotic-journey has come to a close, you and your mate will have almost certainly shared plenty of laughs, screamed at each other, and cheered after solving a particularly troublesome puzzle. The co-op campaign certainly won’t last an eternity, but, depending on how well the two of your work together, you might be able to squeeze about 4-6 hours worth of playtime out of it on your first run through. It could very well be the best 4-6 hours of team-based gameplay you’ll have this year, though. There is one nagging gripe with the co-op mode, however, and that is the overly frequent loading screens which spring up after virtually every single test chamber. There are times where you’ll breeze through a certain area in under a minute only to have to be forced to sit through yet another loading screen. Whether it be an engine limitation or a result of the game being developed to be compatible with consoles, too, the loading screens do occur a little too often for this reviewer.

Another minor quibble with the multiplayer which, to be fair, most other team-based games suffer from, is that of lasting appeal. Portal 2 suffers more so in this regard than other games because the puzzles will never differ and, ultimately, unless you’re incredibly forgetful, the answers to the puzzles will stay with you for a long time. And if you happen to be returning to the co-op campaign for your second, third or whichever time with someone who has has never played it before, you will effectively end up dictating the solutions for puzzles to your partner. The fun of trial and error will be lost on both of you.

One feature that has also been implemented into the game that Team Fortress 2 players will feel right at home with is that of the new ‘Robot Enrichment’ item store, which will allow you to use real money to purchase virtual apparel for your co-op avatar. The store houses some, frankly, obscenely overpriced items that you’ll never actually clap eyes on yourself, bar for during very brief gestures-cutscenes and when returning to the store. Then again, if you really must pimp out your co-op droid, you can pick up some new bot skins, hats, flags and other junk. For little more than the price of some of these items, you could buy some excellent indie games from Steam at a much better value.

Whereas the original Portal laid the groundwork, the sequel succeeds in taking the franchise to a whole new level. There’s much more of a ‘Hollywood’ vibe to the game, with more cutscenes spread across the single-player mode to help drive more story and narrative, and this also serves as a much needed break from having your brain on the go almost constantly, such was the way with the first Portal. Unless you’re content with going over the exact same puzzles with each playthrough and listening to the same gags, then you’ll find little satisfaction in returning to the single-player campaign over and over again. There is a horde of achievements to unlock — many of which based on completing specific test chambers in a certain way — and, supposedly, numerous Easter eggs to hunt down, but there is little else to have you racing back and restarting from the beginning.

While the story might raise more questions than it answers, Portal 2 is still an excellent– a brilliant game with some genuinely hilarious moments, and a superb co-operative mode. You might manage to wrangle about 15 hours or so out of both the single-player and multiplayer mode combined if you’re lucky, but it’s unlikely that any repeat playthroughs will invoke the same level of charm as your initial one. Hopefully the modding community will be quick to churn out some quality maps and test chambers for us to enjoy. If you’re a gamer on a tight budget, and you want to make sure your £30/$50 will buy you a sufficient number of hours of gameplay — then you might want to brush Portal 2 aside for the time being, until the price drops or until the inevitable Steam sale pops up. Otherise, if money is no object: Go for it — Portal 2 is about the most refreshing game to come out in the past year.

The opening sequence serves as both an interactive tutorial and Nanosuit demonstration video, and will also explain just how it is that your character, an entirely-silent marine called Alcatraz, comes to inherit the Nanosuit. However, you’ll want to take what you see in the cutscene with a grain of salt as it will have you believe that you will be capable of much more than the suit will realistically allow. Despite any attempts at getting your hopes up, the Nanosuit is capable of allowing you to perform super human feats. You’ll be stronger and faster than any man alive, but you’re far from immortal. Taking on too much damage or falling from great heights will almost certainly be the death of you, but the suit will allow for plenty of opportunities to show off your new brute strength and jump to and reach areas that would otherwise be inaccessible to mere men. The Nanosuit also features three equally valuable modes of use: Maximum Strength, Maximum Armour and Maximum… “Cloak Engaged.” The strength mode comes in to use automatically when you attempt to sprint, jump and interact with certain objects; the armour variation, when manually enabled, means that you’ll be able to withstand a heck of a lot more damage before you’re pushing up daisies; and the stealth, or “cloak”, ability will enable you to roam the environments virtually undetected and sneak up on unsuspecting foes to pull off an insta-kill manoeuvre. You will need to use your abilities sparingly, though, as your suit’s energy tends to drain incredibly — and absurdly — quickly when in constant use. Rushing to a safe spot and allowing for a moment to recharge your batteries, so to speak, will mean you’re able to hop back into the fight once again and you might even find that trying a different approach the second time round might be more advantageous. There are certainly times where tackling a situation with a more stealth-orientated method will pay off than going in all guns blazing with your armour-shields up. Making use of the suit’s Nanovision module can also make life much easier in certain situations, too, like during the rare occasions where the lights go out and you’re fighting in total darkness, or you’re just having difficulty placing where the enemy is hiding.

For the most part, you will be able to explore and do battle in some really quite expansive and open areas. Fans of the original Crysis and Crysis Warheard might be disappointed to learn that this sequel doesn’t quite offer up the same level of openness that the previous titles allowed for, but you’re still given plenty of room to play with when it comes to flanking and fighting strategically during the majority of missions that are based outdoors. While many of the indoors-orientated missions are much more linear and streamlined in nature, that doesn’t mean they are any less enjoyable. Picking up Nano Catalysts — a form of currency — from downed alien foes will allow you to bring up a shop-like interface at any time and invest in upgrades to your suit which will allow for improvements to the stealth and armour aspects. You can only equip four upgrades at one time from a fairly generous list of options, and while some will be better than others — and cost an awful lot more — you’ll soon begin to favour certain upgrades over the others; fortunately, you can toggle between any previously purchased upgrades at any time. Oddly enough, one of the more expensive stealth-based upgrades only seems to be of any use during the absolute final battle of the game. Deciding to cough up the Nana Catalyst points any earlier would just serve as a waste as points could be better spent elsewhere; and even then, the upgrade is not entirely necessary.

You are able to carry two primary weapons at any time, along with grenades, C4 and a rocket launcher. Whenever you fancy a break or grow tired of a certain firearm, you can always trade it and equip a brand new one that might have been dropped on the ground by a fallen enemy. There’s a handy cover system in place that works surprisingly well, and is implemented in such a way that no additional buttons are required to quickly get yourself to safety — simply ADS whilst next to something that might resemble cover will allow for Alcatraz to carefully nestle himself into a much more secure position. Make sure to choose where you seek refuge wisely, as certain areas of cover can be destroyed and leave you exposed. The suit’s on-board AI module will usually provide you mission briefings, tactical suggestions when in combat, and can even exhibit quite the snappy personality when the situation calls for it. Seeing as how you will be wandering the vacant streets of New York for the large majority of your time playing through the campaign, you’ll sometimes be granted access to commandeer specific, abandoned vehicles and use them to quickly bypass and escape from danger. With certain vehicles such as humvees and APCs usually allowing for you to make use of a turret or cannon for extra firepower when clearing out a blockade, too. Taking advantage of vehicles is almost entirely optional, aside from a few brief segments of the campaign which call for it, so it’s really up to you as to whether or not you wish to utilize them.

Enemy AI seems to vary drastically from one entity to the other — even with the same enemy types. You can have two completely identical soldiers bearing down on you, and only one will have the common sense to dive behind cover, fire at you in bursts and throw grenades before returning to safety, while the other one either stands there, runs at you, or just plain refuses to face the right direction. There’s also the rare times where enemies will get “clip” into parts of the environment and will be unable to defend themselves whatsoever — it would almost feel cruel if you weren’t sparing the poor thing from an eternity of being stuck in a road sign. Ceph AI, in particular, really seems to struggle when you’re in their face and spamming the melee key — even on the hardest of difficulties.

Plunging into the multiplayer mode will mean that you will be able to devour even more playtime from the game, as, like similar competing games of the genre, Crysis 2 offers up plenty of unlockables for you to chase after. You’ll begin your online journey as a level one grunt, but getting stuck into matches, racking up kills and completing objectives will mean that you’ll soar up the earlier ranks of the game. There’s a grand total of fifty levels to work your way up, so expect to invest plenty of time into the various competitive multiplayer modes if you expect to rise all the way to the top of unlock everything there is to unlock. The option to create custom classes based on your preferred playstyle becomes available immediately after reaching level five, and you’ll be able to personalize your loadout and Nanosuit powers accordingly. A generous serving of New York-inspired maps means that there will be enough variety to keep you entertained until, presumably, the first map pack lands. There’s your typical assortment of deathmatch and objective-based modes to sink your teeth into, and you’ll be able to use almost each and every one of the abilities you’ve come to depend on whilst playing through the campaign mode. However, some abilities will require more time than others to acquire, and this means that lower level users will immediately be at a disadvantage as veteran Nanosuit-clad gamers are granted access to a wider arsenal of weapons and suit modules.

One particular area of online gameplay that Crytek has remedied quite nicely is that of reducing the advantages of “campers”, and has introduced a system that requires gamers to be mobile if they wish to collect a fallen enemy’s dog tag and earn points towards and taking advantage of killstreak rewards. It might not alleviate campers entirely, but the extra incentive of extra combat options will at least serve as a bonus to those that remain on the move. If there was to be one niggle with the online component, it would be the organization and layout of the multiplayer interface not being quite as intuitive as that of competing titles. Although, it certainly gets the job done. The “Downloadable Content” tab on the forefront of the mutiplayer menu all but confirms that we can expect something in the way of DLC hitting Crysis 2 at some point in the not-so-distant future. Perhaps a map pack or two, as previously mentioned.

Visually, the game is really quite stunning when running at the highest possible settings. However, and what is quite the unusual twist, considering the staggering plethora of graphical customization options available in the first Crysis — this sequel sports extremely little in the graphics-tweaking department. From the Graphics menu, you are limited to only being able to configuring the resolution and very little else. Gone are the multitude of options that were previously at your service in the original. Despite the lack of any real customizable graphical settings, Crytek’s art department has obviously poured a considerable amount of time and effort into ensuring that the virtual city of New York looks and feels like the real deal. Locations are rich and varied, and you’ll be treated to some beautiful landscapes and vistas residing in the background. Rarely, if ever, do similar-looking areas crop up. There are so many little intricate details that have been implemented that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And there’s a certain fluidity to your character’s movements that seem wholly natural — if you can overlook the super human capabilities brought on by the suit, that is. The audio department deserve no less credit, as guns and explosions roar make for a fierce cacophony of death when the action kicks off. German composer and music producer Hans Zimmer lends his creative talents to providing the cinematic scores and helps ensure that the soundtrack is perhaps one of the finer highlights of the game — effortlessly putting across all the right tense and sombre moods when the story calls for them.

We used the following hardware

While Crysis 2, in general, brings a tremendous amount of extremely positive and thoroughly enjoyable highlights to the table, there’s also an overwhelming number of glitches and various oddities that range from being minor inconveniences to unforgivable, game-breaking problems. Having to have to claim the Limited Edition content from an external source, outside of the game itself, proved to be only a small hurdle, but when you’re presented with frequent occasions where: the melee attack just does not work; Nano Catalysts are routinely fiddly to collect; the game requesting that you enter your CD Key every time you navigate to the multiplayer menu; Nano Catalyst counter resets to zero or refuses to increase; and the Multiplayer server browser filter refuses to save your preferences. It’s only when you fall through the map, become stuck in the environment, or when the game completely crashes and forces you to restart from the last checkpoint that the frustration truly begins to surface. I recorded no less than two lock-ups during my time with the campaign (which could only be remedied through the medicine of Ctrl+Alt+Del), and one during the very first online game, during the alleged 16-hours that I’ve committed to this game (according to my Steam stats page). Gamers whom are running with a dual-GPU CrossFireX or SLi configuration have also been met with severe screen-flickering bugs, with the only temporary solution currently available being to disable the second graphics card.

The story also fails to impress, with some outrageously nonsensical moments and almost comical plot twists. Forgettable characters that only serve to either treat you like an errand boy or hinder your progress, depending on their allegiance, quickly become a nuisance. Crynet — not to be confused with developer Crytek — director Jacob Hargreave provides a certain charm as the “is-he or isn’t-he an ally” centenarian business man with a strange fascination with the Ceph race, but Doctor Nathan Gould proves to be nothing more than an issuer of banal, mundane tasks. An abrupt ending that strongly implies the notion of a Crysis 3 potentially being on the cards means we can hopefully expect another excuse to adorn the Nanosuit in the future and partake in one more Ceph-slaying adventure. All in all, I managed to grab just under 7-hours worth of playtime from the campaign mode on the second hardest difficulty setting before the final curtain went down.

I was left satisfied with Crysis 2 — it’s a very good game. It doesn’t quite reaching the calibre of excellence that it was so clearly pining for, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in both the single and multiplayer modes. The inclusion of individual stat-tracking sections which document your progress both the single player and multiplayer components of the game is a nice touch. Numerous collectibles lay scattered across the city of New York for you to find and unlock bonus content in the guise of musical scores, “Prophet’s Flashbacks”, and videos from the campaign, mean that completionists will need to explore every last inch of the city before they manage to “100%” this game. It’s just a terrible shame that such an extensive list of problems also managed to creep their way into the final release. I’ve no doubt that these problems will be patched and corrected in future updates, but, as it stands right now, the game will be almost unplayable for some.

Stadium

I’ll be frank: There is a stadium on this map, but the emphasis is put more towards the exterior area and adjacent buildings than the actual stadium itself. Just an FYI: It’s a hockey stadium. Sadly, you won’t be able to set foot on the rink, but it is visible from the entrance to the stadium. Numerous buildings surround the central outdoor zone which displays an enormous globe statue and fountain. You’ll be able to use the locker rooms and lounge-areas as short cuts and ways of traversing the outer portions of the map. Many of the buildings offer a second floor with which to accommodate campers and allow for visibility of the central area of the map. Probably my favourite of the map pack because, well, it’s pretty.

Kowloon

Not an especially big fan of Kowloon, I’m afraid. I just wasn’t able to get into the whole vibe of this one. I can appreciate that the map offers what seems like an unlimited number of short cuts scattered throughout, and I’m still finding new ones with every match I take part in, but the drab, almost entirely teal-exclusive colour scheme just completely throws me off ever becoming a fan of this map. The ziplines make for an interesting new addition, and allow for users to quickly, pardon the pun, zip from A to B when the need arises. The notion of being completely exposed and vulnerable helps to keep things nice and balanced ad every attempt to use the zipline is a gamble in itself.

Discovery

Another snowy map — yay. Inspired by the “Project Nova” mission from the campaign, and set in a desolate, frozen German outpost in the Arctic Circle, this map isn’t a bad looker at all. The Aurora Borealis Effect goin’ on in the background means that there’s some nice eye candy to gawk at when not getting your head blown off.

Berlin Wall

Steve approves of Berlin Wall. There’s a certain familiarity to be had for those of you whom might have played on the “Carentan” map featured in Call of Duty 2, but it’s only a slight familiarity at best. That’s not to say that Treyarch’s Berlin Wall map doesn’t bring anything new to the table — the inclusion of a, sort of, “danger zone” in the center of the map means that rushers are welcome to attempt to bypass the mean-spirited turret-gunners whom keep a restless eye on the area, but it’ll be a gamble each and every time you attempt it. Nice map.

Ascension

The only “Zombie Mode” map of the pack. Ascension whisks you off to an abandoned Soviet cosmodrome, which is really quite expansive and allows for the occasional opportunity to branch off and take a different route, allowing for teams to find their own unique favourite. Two brand new weapon is introduced: the Gersch Device, which will allow gamers to use a portal to teleport to a different location, and pull in enemies for an instant kill; and the “Matryoshka Doll” — a cluster grenade. There’s also a brand new enemy type introduced: the Space Monkey — these things attack in groups every other round and attempt to remove any perks assigned to your character by destroying the Perk-a-Cola machines. Successfully wiping out all monkeys on a map without allowing ‘em to smash up a perk machine will mean that you’ll be rewarded with a fancy “Mystery Cola”, which is essentially a free random perk.

Upon loading up the map, you will be greeted with an almost immediate transition to black and white and the map will remain devoid of all the pretty colours until you are able to restore the power after having bypassed however many doors. It’ll take you somewhere in the region of 3,000 credits before you’ll be able to reach this magical, mystical power switch which brings about all the wonderful colours of the rainbow, so expect to play through a few rounds with a dull-grey layer of film covering your retinas. However, I didn’t find it to detract from gameplay and actually found it to be… well, not even noticeable after a short while. It does however mean that many gamers will tend to get into the habit of going through the exact same doors and taking the exact same routes in order to flip the lights back on, so to speak.

Not being especially big on the whole Zombie Mode of Black Ops, I can’t say really say how it stacks up to default maps as I’m not entirely too familiar with them outside of playing the odd game whenever I’ve been invited. Whilst playing the new Ascension map, though, me and three other lovely chaps — whom were all infinitely more talented at despatching the hordes of undead than I — were able to reach round 20 before a disconnection occurred. I presume we would have progressed quite a bit further had the connection not been interrupted.

What else to say other than it’s a fairly pretty map and my brief time playing it was enjoyable enough for me to warrant wanting another game some time soon. The new Soviet cosmodrome setting help keeps things fresh and will likely entice Zombie Mode devotees into revisiting and learning new strategies for the map. There’s also apparently a few secrets and Easter eggs hidden throughout the map which will hopefully intrigue enough of you to either work out how to unlock them, or just cheat and visit YouTube.

The pricing of the DLC might be a sore point for some. If you’re not an especially big fan of Black Ops’ “Zombie Mode”, then you’re basically coughing up for a measly four maps; if you’re not fussy about the game’s competitive multiplayer element, then you’ll certainly feel the sting of the price for the pack only including a single new Zombie map. The new maps are nice enough, but not outstanding, and perhaps not even on par with some of Black Ops’ default offerings. There’s enough gamers playing the new maps to mean that you won’t be playing away on your Jack Jones or struggling to find others to play with. It’d difficult to recommend this DLC to anyone, bar for die-hard Black Ops fans whom are craving for some fresh content; but, even then, the obscenely high price tag makes it difficult to justify that recommendation.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime comes bundled in a minuscule-little 321MB package when purchased through Steam. Upon booting up the game, you’ll be presented with what is perhaps the only real highlight of the game: Ray Parker, Jr.’s rendition of the iconic Ghostbusters theme tune. it still makes me tap my feet even to this day and and even my 18-month old son couldn’t help but have a little jig to the music. From the main menu, you’ll be presented with the option to dive into either a single player or multiplayer game, read about “How To Play”, review your scores on the leaderboard, or change a few options here and there. There’ll be more on the multiplayer and leaderboard(s) later, but for now I’ll focus on the single player portion of the game and the “How To Play” pages. The single player, while not especially complicated to pick up the mechanics as you go along, provides very little in the way of an interactive tutorial mode. If you want to learn how everything works, you’ll need to read the brief, external “How To Play” screens which will fill you in on just how to play the game properly. Fortunately, and unfortunately, Sanctum of Slime is not an especially deep game, neither does it allow for opportunities of varying strategic play, so you might be able to get away with skipping the “How To Play” screens altogether.

You’ll assume the role of either Alan Crendall, Samuel Hazer, Bridget Gibbons, and Gabriel Sitter — the new Ghostbusters “rookie” team whom have been shipped in to replace the ageing and haggard Ghostbusters quartet we have come to love over the years. Not a single one of the new characters will ever utter a single word. Ever. Plot development is established through the use of comic book-styled cutscenes and in-game text pop-ups. The static and bland comic-like panels presents the story through the use of speech bubbles, taking what feels like an eternity to put across what the characters are discussing. And not a single one of the cutscenes was even remotely engaging enough to warrant my attention for longer than one minute. These dull comic strips never take advantage of your screen real estate — with some only occupying a small area in the center of the screen — and usually include enormous black borders surrounding the actual panel.

It turns out that an ancient, evil demon known as Dumazu the Destroyer has been resurrected in New York City, and has started to attract a tremendous amount of hostile ghost activity in the area. It’ll be up to you, playing as one of the four available new characters in the new Ghostbusters roster, to put the ghosts back to rest, and to send the malevolent Dumazu the Destroyer packing back to hell. Fans might be pleased to learn that Ghostbusters 2 antagonist Dr. Janosz Poha also makes an appearance in the game, and he’s still lusting over Ms. Dana Barrett. Ghostbusting oldie and genuis-inventor, Egon Spengler, has at least found the time to build some brand new, prototype weapons for the new gang in order for them to actually stand a chance against this new, demonic threat. You’ll be privy to one weapon which offers three distinct modes of fire during your adventure through the ghost-infested New York. Each mode has certain benefits when used against certain enemies. The red Proton Pack mode, or “upgrade”, is great against red enemies, the yellow mode is ideal for enemies with a yellowish aura, and the blue mode will make short work of, you guessed it, anything blue. With your new arsenal, you’ll be let loose in varying locations situated in New York, including — but not limited to — the Sedgewick Hotel, a psychiatric institution and the ooze-infested sewers. Gameplay takes place from a top-down view — in a similar vein to Alien Swarm or Marvel: Ultimate Alliance — with three generally competent AI-controlled team mates following you at all times. The game essentially only asks that you clear out a room of ghosts before moving onto the next room — which is also full of ghosts — until the mission is complete, before moving onto the next one. There are occasions where you’ll walk down a hallway or corridor, or enter a vacant room, but you’ll find that you have your digit firmly fixed on the zapper key for the majority of the time, though — the waves of ghosts coming at your rarely relent.

If you or a squad-mate should happen to fall in battle, there is a revive system in place to get you or your chums back up on your feet and back into the feet. However, when all four Ghostbusters go down, then it’s game over and you’ll need to reload the last checkpoint. There are no difficulty settings to chose between, and the game bounces from mind-numbingly simple to overwhelming difficult at seemingly random intervals. The “River of Ooze” mission being the biggest culprit of radical swings in difficulty. There are times when the enemy AI will, let’s say, “hiccup” and become stuck on an obstruction between the two of you, and refuse to either go round or attack any fellow-Ghostbusters that are nearer to them.

You gain points (denoted by cash) by locating items, defeating villainous apparitions, destroying the environment, harnessing power-ups, and successfully completing QTEs after boss encounters. Yes, there are “boss” ghosts which provide a little more challenge, but nothing more than zapping them for longer than the regular poltergeists you come across. Your score and time is recorded per mission and added to the Leaderboard. However, the Leaderboard only tracks your individual scores and times, and does not offer a means with which to see how your results measure up globally against other gamers. Oddly enough, you will also have to manually enter your username for your score to be recorded, after each and every time you successfully complete a mission. A welcome feature is that you will be able to revisit any mission you please at any time after completing it for the first time. There are twelve missions in total, with each one averaging around 15-minutes worth of playtime. There are thirty Stay Puft Marshmallow Man plushies scattered and hidden throughout New York which are desperate to be claimed by you. Collecting one will net you a cool $250 to add towards your high-score, and finding them all should help allow you to squeeze a little extra time out of the game.

The multiplayer component is, well, perhaps the single biggest let-down of the game. What feels like an opportunity begging to allow for you and your mates to team up and conquer the story mode backside has been absolutely wasted. There is no online co-op whatsoever. The multiplayer only extends as far as allow four players to engage in a local “couch co-op” session if you should happen to have four gaming controllers handy. There is no way for you to play with any of your Steam buddies — unless, of course, they are sitting right next to you with a spare controller. An extremely disappointing exclusion and, I’m sure, a deal-breaker for many of you.

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Visually, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is not an especially good-looking game, I’m afraid. Perhaps passable, at best. There’s a certain Dreamcast-like charm to the graphics, but you won’t be bowled over by what you see. I certainly would not worry about your graphics card being taxed too hard when playing this. The lighting effects produced by the Proton Packs sure are nice, though, and make all the appropriate whizzing noises that fans of the series have come to expect. Disappointingly, the lack of graphical-tweaking options is also very slim. Almost non-existent. You can change to your preferred resolution… and that’s it. There are no settings with which to enable or configure, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, bloom, HDR, or anything that might otherwise help improve the overall quality on show.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime might be a budget title, but I certainly expected an awful lot more from this one. After having played and enjoyed 2009′s stellar Ghostbusters: The Video Game, I can only wonder as to why Atari favoured going in such a frustratingly-weak new direction. The difference between the two Ghostbusters games is like night and day. Where are the subtle little references to previous Ghostbusters games or movies that were so generously included in the previous game? Even standing on its own two feet, Sanctum of Slime is a game which greatly falls short of what is expected by gaming and Ghostbuster fans alike.

The Kone[+] is Roccat’s cream of the crop mouse aimed at providing users with the competitive edge in their favourite games, and also offering exceptional customization to tailor to everyone’s own unique needs. From a pricing standpoint, the Kone[+] places right smack-dab in the middle of two of its more closer-competing mouse alternatives: the Cyborg R.A.T. 7 and Razer Imperator — both of which are aggressively vying for your attention.

Features

Feature-wise, the Kone[+] certainly doesn’t pull any punches. I’ve included the complete feature list, as detailed on the official product page @ Roccat, below:

• 6000DPI PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR – for maximum precision
• EASYSHIFT[+] BUTTON DUPLICATOR – for 22 directly accessible mouse functions
• 4-LED LIGHT SYSTEM – for individual colors + effects
• TRACKING & DISTANCE CONTROL UNIT – ultimate tracking; minimizes pick-up-flight
• ROCCAT DRIVER + MACRO MANAGER – incl. Macro Presets for games & apps
• ONBOARD MEMORY (576KB) – store 5 Game Profi les with macros
• 4 EASY-TO-CLIP-IN WEIGHTS (4X5G) – for individual weight adjustment
• 8 MOUSE BUTTONS – programmable + solid 4D mouse wheel
• ULTRA QUIET – low friction mouse feet

Next up, I’ll briefly touch upon the differences between the original Kone gaming mouse, and this revised Kone[+] unit.

If you’re a follower of author John Milius’ work, which includes the novels Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn, you might be pleased to learn that he himself has lent his creative talents towards writing the story of Homefront. The opening cutscene does a good job of bringing you up to speed with the fictional goings on of the world up until 2027, and just how it is that the unification of North and South Korea managed to come about. Artwork displayed during loading screens depict families whom have been affected by the war; sometimes the message that the pictures put across is subtle, but it further lends to the feeling of authenticity to the story. And the mysterious “Voice of Freedom” will chime in occasionally to summarize the events going on as you progress through the game.

You play as Robert Jacobs, a former helicopter pilot with the Marines, whom resides in a run-down little apartment situated in Colorado. Jacobs is seemingly quite shy — you won’t so much as hear a peep out of him during your journey through the campaign. He won’t even wince or moan after being shot. Within the first five minutes of the game, you’ll be violently thrown out of your own home, before being greeted to some barbaric and disturbing acts of public execution performed on innocent U.S. civilians by sadistic Korean soldiers. There’s one particular scene featuring a child watching on as his parents are put against a wall and mercilessly killed — right before his eyes — that genuinely managed to shock me. And I do not shock easily. The event goes on for less than 20-seconds, but it easily puts across the message across that America is no longer the land of the free anymore. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Uncle Sam has already lost this war.

Within ten minutes, you will have been rescued and recruited into the resistance — fighting the good fight and purging the U.S. of the tyranny which has invaded it. You’ll become part of a small team that includes a handful of remarkably deep and relatable characters. There’s Connor, the grizzled soldier filled only with hatred for the invading Korean war machine; Rianna, the compassionate freedom fighter; and Hopper, the American-born Korean engineer whom is entirely loyal to his friends and really quite proficient with computers and machinery. You’ll be seeing a lot of these guys as they accompany you through the campaign mode, and they all display a surprising amount of personality.

It’s just a shame that your time spent with them will be tragically brief. My journey from beginning to end took me an estimated 5-hours in total on the normal difficulty according to the tracker in my Steam Library. This amount of time included (numerous) bathroom-breaks, preparing lunch for my son and I, and fetching my wife from the shops. Still, to the game’s benefit, the little time you have with your faithful comrades still allows for their unique personalities to shine. There’ll be enough intervals provided between missions — and some during — to allow for you to better get to know them and their histories, and these breaks also help to keep the combat from growing too stale, too quickly.

Like most AI squad-mates, the ones that accompany you will be, essentially, immortal. They can take an unlimited number of bullets and they’ll still be in the fight. However, and this is something I do quite like, the developer has introduced a system whereby your buddies will be “downed” for a short period time, after sustaining too much damage. This helps reduce the chances of certain gamers hiding behind cover for most fights and just allowing the friendly AI to mop up the enemy AI, and practically forces you to get involved. Don’t go thinking that they’re incapable of holding their own, though, as they each are really quite adequate at handling themselves in combat.

They’ll provide suppressive fire and attempt to flank when the opportunity arising. They’re certainly a bossy bunch, mind, as they’ll each — mostly by Connor, though — bark orders at you and send you out on suicide-runs on your own, while they see to other dramatically less dangerous situations elsewhere. This happens a little too frequently for my tastes. There might be times where you feel like something of a dogs-body being sent head-first into the thick of it. It’s just as well that the enemy AI is, for the most part, not especially bright. They understand the basics of cover and spamming enough grenades at your location, but their real strength is in their numbers.

As Jacobs you are able to carry two weapons at any time, and trade them whenever you please with any and all guns laying around on the ground. Seeing as how Homefront takes place in a futuristic, fictional universe set just over 15-years from now, this has allowed developer Kaos Studios the opportunity to craft some unique weapons for you to use. Just because we’re talking futuristic, though, don’t go expecting laser or plasma rifles to turn up in the game. Oh no. Firearms still launch boring ol’ bullets; grenades still go boom as you’d expect. The developer has kept things relatively tame on this front and has only included a small number of unique shooters of death, though. Military buffs might also be pleased to learn that real-world, modern-day weapons are still very much in use in the future, and you’ll be given the chance to equip weapons that are presently in use in the military. The option to melee an enemy is also there when you’re caught in a sticky situation.

When you’re done with the campaign mode, you’ll likely want to dive into the competitive-multiplayer component. Homefront offers up a varied assortment of modes with which to allow you and your mates — or random internet-goers — to all clump together and blow each other away until the cows come home. There’s Team Deathmatch for those of you whom would much rather just stick with murderizing your enemies more than they murderize you and your team, or there’s Ground Control and Battle Commander which allows for that the more objective-favouring among. To say that Homefront’s multiplayer interface and mechanics are “inspired” by Infinity Ward’s and Treyach’s Call of Duty series would be something of an understatement. The similarities really are quire uncanny.

Although, while it may borrow heavily from a competing franchise, the game is able to boast of a few subtle yet excellent additions. The inclusion of a “Threat Level” per player means that camping will be a less viable strategy as, with the more people you kill, the higher your threat level becomes and how visible you will be on your enemies’ radar. Killing a certain number of people will mean that a huge cone will surround your position on the enemy team’s radar, cluing them into your position. As your killstreak ratches up, your cone becomes smaller and smaller making it even more obvious where it is you are on the map. It really is a — dare I say it — brilliant idea that works extremely well in encouraging gamers to keep on the move.

Earning kills will net you points with which to spend on “Infantry Abilities” in order to call in UAVs, air strikes, mobile attack drones, or even spawn with RPGs. If you’re able to successfully pull-off a number of well-executed — pardon the pun — kills such ranging from headshots to melee kills, completing objectives to attaining lengthy killing sprees, then the points will really start to flood in. When you have accumulated enough points, you will be able to take advantage of vehicle-spawns — a method of returning to the fight in a certain vehicle, such as a humvee, tank, or attack helicopter. Some of the more-open maps seem to favour vehicle-based combat more than others, though.

Visually, the game is really quite pretty when all the settings are maxed-out. There’s a certain console-look to it, in that character models don’t tend to be able to square up to those seen in modern day, PC-exclusive games. It really should be noted, though, that almost each and every area that you come to explore exhibits a startling amount of detail. Homes, shelters, and streets genuinely give off the impression that the war has left them decaying and decrepit. Vertical sync seems to be “locked on” by default, despite even after having disabled it via the in-game settings area and the Nvidia control panel. Where the audio is concerned: The noise kicked up by the guns firing is appropriately loud and convincing enough. However, some of the music that crops up during specific parts of a mission doesn’t necessarily feel

We used the following hardware

There’s a grand total of 45 Steam achievements available from the get-go; a large number of them require you to complete missions on different difficulty settings and doing so in a slightly different way, but there’s also plenty of fun and kooky ones in there that help detract from the really quite unpleasant happenings that are going on around you. Newspaper clippings are also scattered around and will require you to really scour the levels to recover every last one of them; managing to collect them all will will result in an extra achievement being unlocked, and provide some additional insight into what’s going on around the world during this time of crisis.

All in all, the campaign of Homefront is a largely enjoyable, albeit brief, adventure that shouldn’t take much more than a long afternoon to see through to the end. Before all is said and done, expect to have witnessed some truly action-packed moments perhaps the most notable of which occurring towards the final segment of the game, where an epic battle between American and Korean Forces takes place on one of America’s more recognizable landmarks. There will also be occasions where you’re left gobsmacked after seeing what merciless soldiers are capable of during a time of war.

The multiplayer component will likely be what consumes the majority of your time with the game. A number of minor glitches and oddities tend to crop up every once in a blue moon, including: NPCs repeating their lines; you somehow being temporarily stuck in a prone position; the VSync problem previously mentioned; and, one of the more tedious ones when it occurs: getting shot even through cover. But they generally do not tend to crop up nearly enough to sour the overall experience of the game.

Dead Space 2 sees the return of CED systems-engineer Isaac Clarke — the seemingly-mute necormorph-slayer from the original game. Given the somewhat “in-your-face” ending of Dead Space, you’d be forgiven for presuming Isaac to be dead. It turns out, however, that not only is Isaac alive and well, but he’s also discovered his voice and managed to get over his overwhelming shyness since the events that occurred on Aegis VII three years ago. He’ll chatter away, he’ll curse, he’ll feel much less like an android this time around. Voice actor Gunner Wright lends his vocal charms to helping bring Isaac to life, and exceptionally well, too. Lines are delivered with believable tension, and even joy when the mood calls for it. The entire cast, all-round, is top-notch, really, without a single weak performance from any of the crew.

The script, for the most part, is solid and characters come out with the sort of thing you’d expect them to, given the situation at hand. I can’t honestly say I was especially thrilled with the way that, about half-way through, Isaac tends to be less and less phased by the presence of necromophs and comes out with some bizarrely sedated lines when confronted by almost-certain death. I can fully respect that this isn’t the first time he has been caught smack-dab in the middle of a necromorph outbreak, but Isaac’s responsiveness to the situation will, at times, seemingly border on lethargic. The inclusion of the same deranged patient cropping up occasionally to spout overly-cryptic gibberish only made me wonder just why it is none of the other characters took a moment to actually query the poor fellow as to what might have warped his fragile little mind.

However, Isaac, whom will be with you during the entirety of your quest through Titan Station, or “The Sprawl”, is genuinely able to provoke a certain emotional attachment with you, as both you and he will tackle all obstacles together, big and small, even those which will have you guessing whether what you are seeing is real, or perhaps a result of Isaac slowly losing his grip on reality. When you are not battling the hideously foul necromorph creatures, you will be literally fighting Isaac’s own horrifying manifestations. You’ll also be there to hold his hand as he grieves over losing the love of his life, and battles his own inner-demons. This also makes for a much more paranormal-type survival horror experience where the game is no longer confined to the limitations of reality. Of course, necromorphs are far from real, but while the original game wouldn’t have monsters suddenly appearing out of thin-air and right in your face, Isaac’s new-found paranoia and even psychosis means that the developers were given much more room with regards to finding new ways to scare you, the player. It’s just a shame that much of the potential offered by this new mechanic is only used for mostly-harmless hallucinations and “boo” scare tactics. Oddly enough, the later portion of the game seem to favour action over slow, tense, foreboding corridor crawls, as enemies are thrown at you with a devil may care attitude.

“The Sprawl”, the game’s very own “space-city”, is the real star of the show. The Sprawl is a remarkably diverse hub which, if it wasn’t situated in the middle of nowhere in space, might actually pass for a fully-functioning, self-contained place to live. There’s a school, hospital, church, living quarters, all of the necessities you would expect from an ideal place to live. There’s even fictional advertisements and sponsored product posters scattered throughout the more “busier” areas. The staggering level of detail contained within the many unique areas you visit is breath-taking. The Sprawl actually exhibits a believable “lived-in” atmosphere that would have you believe that, had there not been a horde of rampaging monsters ripping the place apart not long before you awoke, it could actually support a colony. Navigating the expansive sectors of The Sprawl isn’t a problem, though, as Isaac brings with him each his trusty set of tools from his original adventure, including his locator device which will optionally project a straight-forward, easy-to-follow path to the next objective, should you require it.

Isaac’s new and improved anti-gravity “rig” functionality also means that navigating through those “floaty” areas is not only easier, but even more flexible and enjoyable. Isaac’s new rig also brings forward the minimal, integrated HUD that was well-received in the first game. Your health-bar, ammo count, and even menu system are all observable and accessible in-game, in real time, via your rig’s various gadgets. “Loading screens” are seemlessly integrated into gameplay as elevator sequences, as not to too harshly interrupt the flow of necromorph-hunting. This non-cluttered approach works surprisingly well at helping further immerse you in the game.

Developer Visceral Games has done a superb job of putting many of weaker-aspects of the game under a microscope and applying some much-needed tweaking; Isaac no longer fumbles around like an arthritic chimpanzee when attempting to melee or stamp on downed enemies, he’s actually quite competent and stunning enemies with his limbs now. In an ironic twist of fate, where ventilation shafts were almost-certain to house a necromorph waiting to pounce on any passers-by in the first game, in Dead Space 2, these vents will become your new best friend as you will need to crawl through at least half a dozen, before the game is over, in order to access new areas.

A new hacking-type mini-game has also been introduced into the game, and these hacking panels will crop up quite regularly — they offer virtually no challenge and only really serve to delay you. There is one instance, however, where you’ll be required to hack a panel quite quickly or suffer the consequences — adding an extra level of tension to the moment, which I found quite welcome. And, much like the original Dead Space, Dead Space 2 is an extraordinarily linear game — which is also one of its greater strengths; having Visceral Games pre-plan and script your adventure almost down to your every foot-step, you’ll be guaranteed of some truly epic moments. Although, setting aside the pros and cons of the linearity, there are a select few rare occasions where you will be able to deviate from and wander off the beaten-path and scavange some hidden weapon schematics, ammo and items.

As you march your way through the troubled districts of The Sprawl, you’ wander by Microstores which will allow you to stock up on health, ammo and upgrades using the credits you’ll have acquired from exploring and scavenging from fallen necromorphs. “Benches” will allow you to put any Power Nodes to good use by upgrading your rig, weapons, and status device. It’ll take more than a single playthrough to legitimately max-out all of your weapons, though. Checkpoints and Save Stations are generously littered around the campaign, perhaps a little too sparingly as the notion of dying becomes less of a frightening prospect when you realise that the gave automatically saved your progress the moment you entered that “big scary room”. This is more of a blessing, though, as unavoidable “cheap shots” from necromorphs can be numerous as they have a tendency to spring out of hidey-holes situated directly behind you or even on top of you in some instances.

Visually, Dead Space 2 is a beautifully macabre game. Character models behave and animate realistically, necromorphs scuttle and crawl with an uncomfortable fluidity, and the many environments are menacingly enchanting as as they are unique. The only real disappointments stem from the lack of any advanced, internal anti-aliasing options and the lower resolution, console-friendly textures. Unless you’d care to crank up your graphics card’s own in-built anti-aliasing settings, you will be forced to endure some pretty frightening “jaggys”.

You see, Breach is a title that is entirely focussed on providing an online-only experience. There is no single player to speak of, and no story surrounding the game whatsoever. Competitive multiplayer is the only item on the agenda. You’ll play as either the “Black Ops” team or the “Op For” team — both of which share the exact same characteristics, with the only difference being default character models, or “skins”. There is an option available to customize your soldier’s “skin”, but you’re limited to picking between three reset outfits per faction. It’s a feature that, unless extended further down the line with DLC, is barely worth even being in the game.

Visually, the game is competent. Character models, weaponry and scenery all appear nice enough and animate fluidly, but do not stand out as being spectacular by today’s standards. Although, some of the more expansive maps offer some appealing vistas and backdrops. The lack of DirectX 11-based features and advanced anti-aliasing options is disappointing, but means you won’t need the latest and greatest hardware to power this title at maximum settings.

We used the following hardware

In order to hop into a game, you can either use the “Find Match” option which will typically present you with a list of games to join, or you can create your own game according to your own preferences. However, there is little in the way of customization, beyond that of deciding how many players are permitted to take part, map choice, objective and number of rounds. With only five maps available at launch, you won’t exactly be spoilt for choice, but they do offer enough diversity as to not grow too tiring, too quickly. When hosting your own match, you are able to invite gamers from your Steam Friends list to join you, but the oversight of a party system means that you and your buddies will not be able to quickly launch yourselves into an already active game.

There are plenty of objective-based modes to sink your teeth into. There’s Infiltration, which will have you and the opposing team fighting for control points scattered throughout the map; Convoy, where Defenders must protect a pair of player-manned humvees and shepard them to a safe destination while the Attackers fight to delay them from reaching their goal; Retrieval, which is essentially Capture the Flag; Team Deathmatch, one team versus the other — the team with the most kills at the end of the round wins; Sole Survivor, like Team Deathmatch, only without respawns — once you die, you sit out the remainder of the round until one team wipes out the other.

There’s also an additional, optional “mode” available called Hardcore. Hardcore mode, when enabled, basically adds an extra layer of realism to the game; your HUD will be minimized to only include the absolutely most necessary icons, neither you nor your enemies will be able to withstand as much gunfire before snuffing it, and Killcams will be disabled. Oddly enough, Breach lacks a free-for-all game-type, which has been a staple for shooters since, well, the beginning of time. Then again, you could always take see this as a means of further enforcing the notion that Breach is a much more team-orientated shooter.

Regardless of whichever game-type you’re taking part in, you will be rewarded XP and XP Credits for racking up enemy kills and completing objectives. Acquiring XP will be required in order for you to rise from the rank of Grunt to Commander. XP Credits can be put towards customizing your loadout by purchasing new weaponry, weapon attachments, and gadgets when you’ve accumulated enough to meet the absurdly high demands of the ‘shop’. Most of the more sophisticated gadgetry won’t be available to you for a long, long time as you will learn that everything you earn in Breach is the result of an enormous amount of patience and resilience. Fortunately, simply playing as one of the five available classes will open up new unlockable avenues, too. When you first begin your online career, you will be granted access to the following classes: Rifleman, Gunner, Sniper and Support. Recon is the final class which can be unlocked further down the road. All classes appear to be reasonably balanced for the most part. Although, the larger, outdoor maps tend to favour the Sniper class, and can result in teams resorting to “snipe-offs”.

One of the key features that developer Atomic Games has included into Breach is that of “destructible environments”; and, yes, it’s true, Breach does feature some pretty extensive, and unique opportunities for destroying certain areas of the map. You’ll be able to wipe houses, certain cover-spots, sniper towers and outposts clean off the map. There’s plenty of fun to be had by blowing up and removing the floor from under a camper’s feet whom might be situated at the top of a building; or destroying a barricade that an enemy platoon is using as cover. You aren’t, however, able to use an RPG, grenade or any other form of explosive to reshape the geometry of a map.

Atomic Games have also implemented a cover system, whereby your character can effectively cling to a wall or surface and use it as temporary cover. You can safely “blind-fire” your weapon whilst in cover and without the fear of exposing yourself to enemy gunfire, or you can lean over the cover and take advantage of slightly better accuracy at the risk of being an easier target.

Unfortunately, Breach is not without its fair share of problems — crippling problems, in some cases. Most all of which are a result of Atomic Games’ choice of opting for Peer-to-peer (P2P)-based online matchmaking. Breach does not use dedicated servers to power its online component, and the reliance on one gamer being the “host” is very nearly game-breaking. After selecting a game to join, attempting to connect to the host can take anywhere from 10 seconds to an indefinite amount of time, regardless of latency, and there is no way to abort once the connection process has begun — except by closing the game via the Task Manager. There were also occasions where the game completely crashed altogether. Once you have successfully join a game — loss of connection to the host can also be an alarmingly frequent occurrence. And when you are able to join a game, it’s very common to witness enemies ‘teleporting’ from one place to another due to latency coupled with struggling netcode.

There are a minor issues and tedious quirks that tend to crop up, too, from your Server Browser ordering preferences not being saved, to not being able to use your keyboard to navigate menus, to the lack of a reloading animation when your soldier is clinging to a wall for cover — which which just gives off the impression that the game lacks polish. It’s likely that a patch will be issued soon to address the concerns with the game, but the fact that some of the more damaging bugs managed to wrangle their way into the final release is rather disconcerting.

Breach is a title which attempts to dive head-first into an already crowded genre with nothing exceptional to show for itself, and adorns too many issues to ignore. The inclusion of semi-destructible environments is most welcome, but the game skimps in other departments such as maps and character customization. It’s difficult to recommend this title even with its generously budgeted price tag. When the game works, it can be a decent amount of fun and make for a nice break from some of the more popular products on the market. When the problems begin to rear their head, though, that’s when the game stumbles into an infuriating mess of disconnections and crashes.

Breach is available to purchase from the Steam Store right now.

The GeForce GTX 580 is Nvidia’s current, top of the range, bleeding-edge graphics card solution for gamers whom want the absolute best performance from a single card. This thing is a monster. Much like the GTX 570, the GTX 580 also sports the superior vapour chamber cooling method to ensure that your beastly hardware remains as cool as possible, without having to sacrifice on performance. The baby is also relatively quiet; whatever noise it may or may-not be generating is easily drowned out by any ambience noise, and that of my other component’s fans whirring away.

Anyhoo, I’m £385 down now. But I’m also up a GTX 580, so that’s good enough for me. I pre-ordered mine via Amazon UK for, as mentioned previously, £380 before the V.A.T. price increase kicked in. As of my writing this, you’re looking at £408 for the please, right now, which is still a fair enough price considering just how mind-numbingly awesome this card is. If that’s all you needed to know — “is it mind-glowingly awesome?” then, yes. Yes, it is.

I’ll continue on with my brief, mini-review regardless, mind, as I’ve started now. I’ll primarily be focussing on gaming benchmarks, as that is what happens to interest me and, hopefully, those of you whom might be reading this article.

We used the following hardware

Let’s begin with a quick image-by-image walkthrough of how the GTX 580 went from the postman’s hands… into mine… hands. Yeah. GO.

All settings were absolutely maxed out… to the max. Well, except for one case: Crysis: Warhead, but more of that later. All DirectX 11 features enabled, where applicable. All games were played in offline single-player modes in order for me to have to worry about online latency ‘hiccups’ affecting the benchmark results.

Aliens vs Predator (2010)

I decided to test AvP during the during exterior area of the facility during the ‘Colony’ mission. I was hoping to capture some actual combat footage but, alas, it seems my previously ‘complete’ save-file didn’t survive the recent transfer process to my backup hard drive. Reformatting my primary hard drive also means that the file has been lost forever.

Regardless, even with everything maxed out, AvP still ran relatively smooth. There were a few dips below 50 FPS, but overall performance was very impressive.

Worth noting: The DirectX 11-exclusive ‘Advanced Shadows’ options is quite the resource hog. Disabling this feature will result in some substantially higher performance read-outs. However, in keeping with the ‘maxed out’ rule of thumb that I’ve been going with, I went and enabled it.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

With the DirectX 11-specific HBAO option enabled, most modern graphics cards will struggle to keep up consistently high framerates. The GTX 580, however, took virtually everything that Bad Company 2 had to throw at it.

I decided to test the GTX 580 and see how it handled the second, rather hectic mission called “Cold War.” Suffice to say — the GTX 580 more than impressed during this segment of the game. Chaotic firefights where grenade explosions and gunfire effects were handled effortlessly.

Crysis Warhead

Okay, yes, even the GTX 580 struggles with the ‘Enthusiast’ option. Considering that the GTX 580 is currently the most powerful single-GPU card available right now, and Crysis Warhead is nearing its third year of release, it really does make you wonder how many years it’ll be before graphics cards come out will will trounce this game.

Still, while there were a fair amount of dips under the 60 FPS mark, Crysis Warhead still ran comfortably smoothly. In the GTX 580′s defence: I did load up a particular “busy” save file, which launched me into a fight that was choc-full of enemies flanking me, explosions going off, and generally all manner of anarchy going on.

I’m still very much looking forward to revisiting this game after I’m done with my current ‘play-list’. Hopefully by then I’ll have invested in a second GTX 580 and be able to enjoy flawless performance on a dual GTX 580 SLi configuration. I’ll need to upgrade my motherboard to a newer SLi-compatible model, too…

Dead Rising 2

I’m reluctant to say that Dead Rising 2 is a particularly GPU-stressing game, primarily because that would be a lie. There’s still a fair amount of fancy graphical punch on show in the game that would otherwise bring a weaker graphics card to its knees. Despite my benchmarking statistics informing me that there were a few dips below 60 FPS, I really, really wouldn’t have guessed it. Performance felt absolutely silky smooth, and dishing out a healthy dollop of zombie genocide has never been so enjoyable.

DiRT 2

I’ll be honest: I’m absolutely useless at racing sims. I really am. I let the AI-controlled cars from the built-in benchmarking tool do the driving on my behalf. Absolutely flawless performance. Dirt and sand was kicked up by car tires to beautiful, almost life-like effect. The GTX 580 allows you to crank all of the DirectX 11 settings up to the max and still enjoy incredible performance. In my limited experience of driving simulation games, I haven’t seen a more realistic, visually appealing racing experience to date.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The

Perhaps this game is getting on a bit, but that doesn’t stop it from being among my all-time favourites. Just roaming the great outdoors was an absolute treat and even climbing to the highest mountain and gazing on into the distant fortress that is the “Imperial City” didn’t even make the cause the card to break a sweat.

Of course, you could argue that Oblivion is getting on a bit, that much may be true, but very few modern cards (if any besides the GTX 580) can boast of never dropping below the 60 FPS line. Absolutely staggering.

Just Cause 2

Sadly, despite having had this sitting in my Steam library since May ’10 when my fabulous mother-in-law purchased this on my birthday, I still haven’t managed to get round to peroply taking this for a spin. Aside from the brief 30 minutes I managed to sneak in before being enveloped by Splinter Cell: Convcition, that is.

I decided to use the first 60 seconds of ‘The Dark Tower’ benchmark demonstration as a means to see how the GTX 580 held up against this game. I was very pleased with the results.

Killing Floor

I decided to go solo on this one. Don’t get me wrong, the multiplayer element of this game is superb, but I didn’t fancy the idea of having to have to worry about lag from online matches screwing with the performance figures. I also decided to try out the new Santa’s Evil Lair map which was introduced in a recent Steam update, and the only map which I had not yet encountered during the online rotations. Needless to say: My ignorance of the map layout lead to some rather quick deaths.

Also: the GTX 580 destroyed this game — in a good way. The “specimens” looked wonderfully, beautifully horrifying, and performance almost literally could not have been better. Aside from overclocking or chucking in a second card in SLi mode, that is.

Left 4 Dead 2

I decided to see how the card help up against the seemingly-endless waves of zombies during the finale of The Passing campaign. Benchmarking began almost immediately after meeting up with the original survivors and exiting through the descending elevator — where the “horde” is immediately alerted to your presence.

Flawless performance. Even the billion-and-one zombies littering the screen couldn’t make the card throw in the towel.

Mafia II

I actually purchased this game during the recent Christmas sale on Steam and only after acquiring the GTX 580 did I feel this game was worth visiting for the first time. During the 30-odd minutes playtime I managed to steal from the game during my testing. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable this gangster yarn was turning out to be.

Benchmarking took place during the initial World War II segment of the game, where plenty of heated gun-fights are taking place.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is sometimes referred to as the “Crysis of 2010,” simply because it’s extremely demanding requirements and habit of bringing modern cards to their knees.

I decided to benchmark the first 10 minutes of the game, simply because my old save file was another of the casualties of a recent failed back-up attempt. The card held up splendidly during my encounter with the two mutant creatures and, while there was noticeable slow-down, the game was still very playable and enjoyable regardless.

Red Faction: Guerilla

The engine of Red Faction: Guerilla allows for your to take advantage of the brilliant “Geo-mod” technology and blow the crap out of the environment. This was a surprise favourite for me in 2010 and having revisited it just to test out the GTX 580 ended up in me falling in love with the game all over again.

Despite many considering RFG to be a simple “console port,” this game is still pretty demanding of modern hardware. The eye-candy produced as a result of you raising hell on the colonies of Mars really does take its toll on your rig. When there’s plenty of explosions going off, then there is some pretty noticeable slowdown. But, for the most part, performance is very, very tolerable. I can’t wait to test this one out in an SLi configuration.

Resident Evil 5

Fortunately, Resident Evil 5 includes a pair of handy benchmarking tools, which are both readily accessible from the main menu. For the purpose of this test, I ran with the ‘Fixed Benchmark’ option. Sadly, the built-in tool does not display the minimum and maximum FPS results, so I instead continued on with using FRAPS to measure performance as opposed to RE5′s own internal benchmarking.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

Benchmarking took place during the opening half-tutorial sequence, half-action introduction portion of the first mission.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

I’m still working my way through Tomb Raider: Underworld and enjoying every moment of it, but I decided that perhaps the “Coastal Thailand” mission of the game would be the ideal candidate to test the GTX 580 as this, in my opinion, is among the most beautiful locations to visit during Lara’s adventure, and also sports what I consider to be the most intricate details to the environment.

Even during the wildly expansive sections of the level, the card was barely taxed and didn’t even drop below 80 FPS. Just incredible.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

Much like driving simulations, I’m not all that great with real time strategy games. I am a huge fan of ‘em, however, and my lack of skill certainly won’t put me off from pre-ordering a digital copy of the Retribution expansion pack for Dawn of War II.

I must say this: I used the internal benchmarking tool that is present in the game and it certainly does a good job of stressing your hardware. However, during the actual campaign, I was faced with very little slow-down. The benchmarking results below are the results of using the in-built tools. You can expect absolutely first-class performance during the relatively ‘calmer’ single player campaign.

With the new developer(s) at the helm, this 2010 version doesn’t attempt to be a remake of the original Hot Pursuit. If anything, it steers the series in a slightly different direction — a much more Burnout-inspired direction. Considering that Criterion Games is also the very same studio that has brought us countless Burnout games over the years, you would perhaps expect that a little of their work would rub off on this title — well, Hot Pursuit borrows quite heavily from the Burnout series. You’d be forgiven for thinking that you were playing a Burnout game. Some of you might even consider this game a spiritual sequel to 2006′s Burnout Revenge — this reviewer certainly does.

Regardless, Hot Pursuit whisks you off to the fictional, but beautiful, land of Seacrest County. It’s really very pretty. It would look a helluva lot prettier if us PC gamers were granted the options with which to bolster all those fancy graphical settings we see in most other games, but, unfortunately, this game doesn’t even allow you the choice of switching on AA. The extent to which you are able to crank up the graphical fidelity really is very limited indeed. V-sync is, tragically, forced on by default as well. Regardless, the game does look fairly pretty, albeit in a pretty jaggy sort of way. You won’t be able to jump in and begin admiring the visuals right away, though, as you’ll need to sit through a minute-long promotional trailer for another game before you’re free to parooz either the city, or the menus for that matter. Bad form, EA. Bad form.

Upon being greeted with the main menu, or more accurately ‘the hub’, you’ll be able to take advantage of the game’s ‘Autolog’ system which will allow you to keep in touch with any mates currently in-game, view any screenshots you’ve taken using the game’s built-in screen-grab feature, share-said screenshots with your chums, share event results, and generally just socialize. The Autolog system will also suggest users as candidates for potential mates, too, if you should request it. One nice touch if that you’ll be able to use your web cam to take a picture and assign it to your profile as an avatar which will be displayed by your username when gaming online. It’s just a crying shame that you can’t actually use your mouse to navigate the menus or, in actual fact, any part of the game. Your mouse is, effectively, rendered inactive for both the menus and in-game. While this might not be a terrible crime, it is a nuisance to not be able to just hit ‘ESC’ and exit straight back to the desktop at any point. You’ll always need to back-peddle your way back through a series of screens in order to return to the main before before being able to close the game down.

Moving past the promotional material and menus — Seacrest County does have its highlights and it’s brimming with some really quite striking weather effects. Whether there be nothing but blue skies above, or raining cats and dogs, the city still looks like its been digitally crafted with care. My only gripe would be that the textures of some of the scenery is lacking that same level of detail — with stretches of greenery and mountainous regions looking a little muddy. Still, most everything will resemble a blur when you’re rocketing past at break-neck speeds in some of the sleek and sexy licensed cars that have been jam-packed into the game. You’ll begin the game with only a very, very limited selection of motors, but you’ll slowly begin to unlock plenty with every event you complete. In fact, the game is really quite charitable to begin with, with vehicles being thrown at you after almost every successful race. Of course, you won’t be able to use each and every car you acquire, on each and every event for balancing reasons, but you’ll still have a fairly beefy selection of cars to choose from within an hour’s worth of gameplay. Speaking of cars: you’ll be given the chance to get behind the wheel of all the top car manufacturer’s finest offerings, as well as a few prototypes; brands include but are not limited to: Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda, Chevy, Subaru, Dodge, BMW, and an awful lot more. Most all of which handle noticeably different and have their little idiosyncrasies for you to become accustomed to. You won’t be allowed much in the way of automotive customization, sadly, with your options being limited to choice of paint colour.

Having all these licensed motors to choose from certainly is nice, but seeing as how most of ‘em are able to reach blisteringly-fast speeds, you’d expect at least a few scratches to show up on the paintwork when you inevitably wrap your engine around a tree or something. This is where the game excels, for, you see, much like the Burnout series, when you crash at speed, your vehicle can potentially be launched into a spasm of flips and rolls, and spew up an unholy number of components the likes of which I’ve never seen before — making for a very satisfying viewing. It might mean you drop from first place right down to last, but there’s a certain poetry to the way crashes are handled — even down to the usually well-placed cinematic camera-positioning that takes. You’ll only be taken out of the action for a short while, mind, so make the most of the brief crash-cutscenes that kick in. Your once-pristine car will also retain the smashed-up look when you return to the race, but it won’t be carried over to the next event, though.

It’s all well and good that the crashes are pretty enough, but what of the gameplay leading up to these aforementioned crashed? Well, you’ll be given the choice of playing as either a “Racer” or a “Cop”. Racers race and Cops are tasked with “arresting” Racers by smashing the living shi– sugar out of their cars. Harsh justice, perhaps, but certainly quicker than forcing them to pull over, reading them their rights and slapping the cuffs on. Bizarrely, and in an almost comical fashion, after wrecking a suspect’s car, you’ll hear a voice say that a “ticket has been issued” over the police radio — when really I’m sure a hearse would have been more appropriate. Making use of the mini-map and keeping an eye open for shortcuts could mean the difference between escaping your pursuer or failing the mission. The choice is yours as to which side of the law you wish to affiliate whilst perusing the ‘events’ screen — an aerial view of Seacrest County which allows you to navigate through the missions you have unlocked — also allowing for you to return to previously completed missions to beat your old scores and times — for either the Racer of Cop factions. There isn’t a loyalty system in place, so, playing as a Racer will not put you in bad sway with ‘the pigs’ and deny you access to specific Cop-based events. You will however have to complete missions as a Cop to unlock brand new ones for that side, mind, as is the way for the Racers. Both sides have their own separate levelling system, with the Racers having a “Wanted Level”, and the Cops having a “Rank” — both are essentially the exact same thing, though, as they both require experience points, or “Bounty”, in order to climb the ranks all the way up until level 20, unlocking new cars and events as you go along.

There is some variety in mission structure, with, for example, certain missions requiring you, as a Cop, to chase and “apprehend” a single vehicle, or multiple vehicles, or just plain running a time trial. Performing your duties quicker and with fewer mistakes will net you more Bounty for levelling up. What is perhaps most frustrating of the event selection screen is that, while you are to select a specific area of Seacrest Country to play on, there’ll normally be more than one event with which to take part in; however, they might be greyed out, or ‘locked’, and not explain just what is required of you to ‘unlock’ them. In an equally confusing manner, some of these locked events will sport a ‘preview’ mode, which you would presume would only allow you to, well, preview the event and not acquire any Bounty or new vehicles — but they apparently do. There is no discernible difference between regular events and ‘preview’ to this reviewer. While I’m sure there is, any attempt I made to scour the in-game menus for information regarding this quandary ended in failure. A welcome addition is that of the free roam mode which will allow you to take to the road without a care in the world, and take a tour of Seacrest County in its entirety at your leisure, take in the sights, and not have to be hindered by mission goals.

Both sides are able to make use of nitrous-powered speed boosts in short bursts in order to help put some distance between you and the Cop casing you or, alternatively, allow you to close the gap between you and the suspect; nitrous can even help with climbing those steeper uphill roads, so there is a hint of strategy involved in deciding when and where would be the most ideal moments to make use of this resource. The Cops are privy to a slightly more extensive arsenal of tools, though, with helicopter support, road spikes, EMP blasts, and road blocks sometimes being at your disposal depending on the mission.

On the multiplayer front, the game allows for you to take part in any of three gameplay modes: Hot Pursuit, one team of four playing as Racers looking to make their way to the finish line, and the other team of four as Cops baying for the Racers’ blood; Interceptor, a 1v1 mode; and your typical Race mode — where everybody races to an arbitrary point of the map. To the game’s benefit: Matches are relatively painless to hop into thanks to the magic of the Quick Match system, with lobbies being populated fairly quickly. There isn’t an option for keyboard-based chat as you’re waiting for the lobby to fill up, though, so you’ll just have to be patient and enjoy watching users enter or leave the room before a match begins. No dedicated servers to be found here, sadly, just bog-standard peer-to-peer online performance. Having said that, I didn’t encounter any maddening latency whilst gaming online, with races generally performing relatively lag-free. The online component certainly isn’t especially thrilling by any stretch of the imagination, and even seems quite lacklustre when compared to other competing racing titles on the market.

Perhaps the most concerning problem with online play is that of the matchmaking system’s habit of bundling low-ranked gamers and high-ranked gamers into the same game. The automated lobby balancing feature does, however, mean that one side won’t be made up entirely of rank 20s, and the other of newbies, though, which is nice. I also managed to happen upon a very worrisome exploit during my time online, one which allowed a player-controlled Cop to trap a Racer against a piece of scenery — more specifically: a barricade — and slowly whittle the Racer’s life down while he was unable to wriggle out of danger.

The audio department really has done a splendid job of making sure that the engine of a vehicle roars as you put your foot down on the accelerator, and that crashes sound loud and nasty. The soundtrack features a generous mix of licensed artists spanning multiple genres including: Hip-hop, rock, dance, and electro house. To name just a handful of the game’s many famous artists and bands: 30 Seconds to Mars; Weezer; Benny Benassi; Deadmau5; Pendulum; and Chiddy Bang. One alarming oversight that is lacking from this game but present in previous Criterion Games games was that of the option to disable individual music tracks that you just weren’t especially keen on. In Hot Pursuit, you’ll just have to grin and bear any artists blaring away over the speakers, or manually skip them whilst in-game using the ‘M’ key.

In closing: Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is an okay, yet immediately forgettable racer with an overly convoluted mission structure, average driving mechanics, and a distinct catalogue of symptoms which would greatly suggest Consolitis. While the visuals are quite impressive, short of forcing-on anti-aliasing via your graphics card’s software, be prepared for jaggies aplenty as you cruise through the areas of Seacrest County. A steering wheel/controller would certainly help heighten the immersion of the experience if you have one lying around, but it won’t hide the decidedly average game double-parked underneath; there’s already handful of racers from this year alone that leave this title in the dust at the starting line.

Without wishing to give away too many details regarding the story and the Joker’s motives for willing being banged up, so to speak, I can say this: The story is excellent. Excellent in a delectably over-the-top, not to be taken even remotely seriously sort of way. And the story is woven in such a way as to include a ton of familiar faces from the Batman universe. Almost all of your favourite Batman villains will likely make an appearance in one form or another, even if its just a quick, off-the-cuff mention. And they’ll all — those that play a pivotal role in the story, that is — each bring their own unique flavour to the events going. The voice actors whom have so kindly lent their voices to bringing their respective in-game avatar to life provide some superb performances. Fan-favourites Kevin Conroy returns to play the husky-voiced, determined Batman, and Mark Hamill provides a brilliant effort as the clearly-unhinged Joker. Even lesser characters whom might not feature an enormous amount of screen time are able to deliver spot-on performances.

It’s just as well that each and every one of the heroes and villains you come across bring so much personality with them — you’ll be coming across an awful lot of them as you wander the menacing halls of the asylum. As you go along, you will be steadily introduced to Batman’s extensive arsenal of Bat-gear which will not only aid you in despatching the Joker’s endless legion of goons, but will also allow you to access areas of the asylum which might require more unconventional means of bypassing. The batarang, bat-claw, bat-cryptographic sequencer… will all require your attention a number of times before your adventure through the Joker’s house of horrors is over. Yes, even the batmobile and bat-jet have a few brief cameo appearances. Bat-fans will be frothing at the mouth, thanks to the tremendous amount of bat-stuff jam-packed into the game. Harnessing Batman’s wide assortment of bat-themed gadgets is essential to both your survival and progression. The environment can also lend the occasional hand as well, elevated platforms will allow for you to access the situation before you dive straight into thick of it. Playing it crafty and taking your time when clearing a room might also mean you can net yourself one or two of Joker’s less-bright guards thanks to the intuitive stealth system.

The inclusion of bat-gear sure is nice, but Batman isn’t one to shy away from fisticuffs — and you’ll be throwing your fists around like a lunatic and beating the crap out of the in-mates, at almost every turn. Fortunately, Batman is pretty nimble on his toes and not at all uncomfortable with dishing out some fancy marshal-arts moves. The combat system of the game is, in a word, superb. It’s flexible enough as to allow you to make combat as straight-forward or as advanced as you would like for it to be. Allow me to elaborate: You can, for the most part, get by by just making use of the two mouse buttons to take out the majority of cronies that come at you — you are given that choice, if you so wish. Mouse button one handles the derrière-kickery, while mouse button two informs the Caped Crusader to perform a blocking or counter-manoeuvre.

Alternatively, if you really fancy showing off and making ol’ Batty perform ninja-like moves left and right, you can happily do so by pulling off guard-breaks, stun-moves, lightning-fast evasions, throws and more. You can even use your bat-gear to yank enemies over cliff-edges, suspend them upside down from the rafters like Christmas decorations, or just spam the heck out of ‘em with batarangs if you so desire. This multi-tiered approach to the combat mechanics allows even the most laid-back of casual gamers to be able to enjoy the game, and also leaves plenty of room for the more demanding beat-’em-up gamers to expand on their butt-kicking repertoire. My 9-year old step-daughter found it to be immediately to her liking and she was pulling off some dazzling flippy-moves in no time, for Pete’s sake. Many of the bosses and sub-bosses that you’ll come across will require that you’re quicker on your feet, than with your fists, which makes for a nice change from fighting Joker’s thugs.

Your bat-gear, and your bat-judo is all well and good, but the inclusion of an upgrades system means that your skills can be honed and become even more proficient as you go along. Going about your business in the asylum will steadily reward you with tokens which can be used to purchase new abilities and power-ups from the WayneTech ‘shop’ interface. You can remotely bring up the upgrades screen at any time, but the game will also helpfully throw up the screen whenever you earn yourself a fresh new token.

Even with the gadgets, combat and new abilities you’ll be using, there is still one tool left that will prove invaluable to you: the Detective mode. You see, Batman’s most vital weapon which will ultimately save the day is his wits. No — his wits. He’s a clever one, is Batman. And you’ll need to take advantage of Batman’s combination of ‘Detective vision’ and expert puzzle-solving skills to make sense of the many abstract clues left lying around. Need to track down a certain someone? No problem: Have Batman pick up their scent using his handy detective tools, and follow the smell right to ‘em. Easy-peasy. The Detective mode also doubles as a means of examine the environment for the Riddler’s many optional riddles he’s left scattered about for you. Not a big fan of riddles? Why not use the Detective vision to scope-out your enemies through a darn wall. A concrete wall — made of actual concrete. You might even be able to whip out some plastic explosive to turn that wall into a handy new door, too.

You might also be pleased to learn that you’re not simply confined to the gloomy corridors of the asylum during your stay; you’ll be granted free-reign to both the inside and outside after a short while. Despite having the moniker ‘Batman: Arkham asylum’, you’ll be able to explore the remote island that the asylum is situated on, take in the sights, hunt down more of the Riddler’s messages, and even stop by the Bat-cave for a quick break. There is plenty to see on the island, and more and more of it becomes available to you as you slowly unlock new toys for Batman to play with. Don’t worry about getting lost — it’s not quite that dauntingly big, but you’re certainly given enough room to breath and to go and do your own thing if you so wish. Oddly enough, there’ll also be a brief segment where you’ll visit Wayne Manor — but I’ll leave it at that as that part is best left unspoiled.

Thankfully, both the interior and exterior environments are absolutely stunning from a visual standpoint. The level of detail put into every last pixel of the game is truly breath-taking. If you have the hardware to crank up the graphical settings then you really are in for a treat. Not only is Arkham Asylum a great-looker, but you’ll also appreciate the subtle, visual nuances of the world, too. Take for instance Batman’s rugged suit: It’ll develop wear and tear depending on the location and the damage you sustain during battle; your cape will begin to show rips and tears and you might even be able to notice the occasional bloody scarring on Batman’s face when he’s just come out of a particularly rough scrap. Any bruises or scuffs to either you or your armour will result in that imperfection sticking with you for the remainder of the game — which I thought was a genuinely nice touch.

We used the following hardware

Batman: Arkham Asylum comes bundled with Microsoft’s Games for Windows service/DRM. One of the benefits of having Microsoft’s own GFW service is that if you’re something of an achievement hunter then you’ll perhaps get some enjoyment out of completing the game’s many tasks and unlocking virtual points. You’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for the vast amount of collectibles that are sprinkled throughout the island; there’s quite a few that have been left by the Riddler that will present you with a puzzle that’ll need cracking before they’ll be yours. And Joker has gone to the trouble of stashing a tremendous amount of chattering-teeth toys around the island, too. Of course, the fact that these side-quest-like extras are all optional mean they won’t detract you from the mission at hand if you’d rather not bother with them. Whereas, if the idea of scouring the island for hidden collectibles sounds appealing you, then be prepared to invest alot of time doing so as there is a ton of stuff hidden in the deepest, darkest areas for you to claim.

The truth is: Batman: Arkham Asylum is a fantastic game and an outstanding effort by developer Rocksteady Games. I went in as someone whom wasn’t exactly that big of a fan of the whole Batman franchise. The earlier Michael Keaton films were entertaining when I was younger, but I wouldn’t lose sleep of a night if I happened missed out of anything Batman-related, be it video-game, movie, or otherwise. Whereas, now, Conroy’s sublime voice-work performance as everybody’s favourite Dark Knight, married with the ridiculously over-the-top story of Arkham Asylum has me craving more bat-shaped goodness to sink my teeth into. My Batman-related trivia has improved tenfold, too, which is nice. The campaign will likely last you anywhere from seven to ten hours on the normal difficulty on your first playtime. Incentive to replay the game comes from unlockable achievements awarded for sniffing out hidden collectibles, completing the game on the most challenging difficulty, and generally just chipping away at those last straggler-achievements. If you’re not a big fan of achievements, there’s always the ‘Challenge’ mode, which you’ll gain access to after completing the game for the first time, that will allow you to test your mettle, rack up the highest scores possible and earning a place on the global leaderboard by chaining together some crazy-combos.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a fantastic game, and I happened to enjoy virtually every moment of my journey through the twisted asylum. Roll on Arkham City, baby.

We used the following hardware

For starters, you’ll no longer be dropped into the shoes of a soldier conscripted into fighting against the Nazis. Oh no. This Medal of Honor “reboot” will have you sent off to modern-day Afghanistan, taking on the roles of several independent military personnel whom all have their own individual missions being played out in parallel. To elaborator further: When you assume the role of one character, your other remaining avatars will be continuing their mission elsewhere. They’ll usually be assisting you from afar, searching for you, or just plain saving you. You will all be playing your part in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, though.

Sadly, none of the soldiers whom you take control of offer anything in the way of dialogue. It’ll be your squad mates and superiors radioing in from HQ that’ll be keeping the flow of narrative going, as well as barking orders at you. The voice acting is thoroughly convincing, with military slang delivered with almost every line uttered. Dusty, the chap sporting the ‘epic beard’ found on promotional artwork and also on the box art, serves as one of the more developed characters, but still manages to retain a certain mystery about himself. The story is quite tame in comparison to say that of other rivalling games of the shooter genre; you won’t be seeing anything in the form of: nukes, astronauts, crooked generals, government conspiracies, or any of that jazz.

The plot basically sees you playing out “a day in the life of” a group on soldiers whom are stationed in Afghanistan — only it’ll be two days, in this case. That’s not to say it’s bad, because it’s certainly not. The story is pleasantly restrained and doesn’t attempt to go over the top — which is something I found quite welcoming. Sure, there’ll be moments were you’re tasked with defending or attacking a fortified position and explosions will be going off left and right, but it’s certainly still well within the believable confines of the sort of real life scenario ‘our boys’ are faced with over there.

Realism is the name of the game here. The HUD is pleasantly minimalist in nature which helps maintain a sense of immersion. Don’t expect to be able to run straight up to an enemy’s face and perform any fancy Bruce Lee-styled executions — you’ll no doubt be shot to ribbons before you get within spitting distance. You won’t be facing much in the way of enemy diversity, I’m afraid. If you happen to like your shooters with crazy boss battles concluding every chapter then you will likely be sorely disappointed. Bin Laden will not be waiting for you at the end of the game, in a mech-suit with WMD-launchers attached to both arms. This is a good thing, believe me.

You’ll basically be facing the same enemy over and over again. Sure, the developer’s saw fit to offer this enemy several different ‘skins’ to give of the impression of variety, but the first batch of hostiles you encounter will be no different than the final batch of hostiles you face during the closing chapter of the campaign. That doesn’t mean that just because they’ve seemingly broken out on a nearby cloning facility that they’ll just roll over and die for you. Your opponents’ AI is mostly competent. They’ll take cover, provide suppressing fire for their buddies, flank, throw grenades with deadly accuracy, and generally keep you on your toes, but they’ll also occasionally, for whatever bizarre reason, become entranced with whatever is going on behind them and pay no attention to you whatsoever — when this happens, you’ll be able to rack up an easy kill. There’s also the one or two baddies that, you know, forget to take cover because they think they’re Rambo.

And while the ending seemed to kick in surprisingly early, I found it to be respectively sombre, given the source material. I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say that before the credits roll you’ll begin to develop an idea of just how unshakable the loyalty and comradery of squad mates really can be. It’s just a pity that the campaign flys by so incredibly quickly. I was able to plough through the campaign on the medium difficulty in just over four hours. Cranking up the difficulty to ‘hard’ will artificially lengthen your playtime, yes, as you’ll likely need to tackle several areas multiple times before successfully progressing, but re-attempting an infuriating scenario over and over again just to be able to chalk up an extra hour of playtime does not make for a pleasant experience. I personally felt that the default ‘medium’ difficulty offered just the right amount of challenge for me, and will be perfectly suitable for most.

You won’t need to worry about getting lost in the caves or mountains of Afghanistan, though, for invisible walls and barriers are plentiful and endeavour to keep you on the correct road. Straying from the designated path is nigh-on impossible as your team mates serve as ‘keys’ for opening and closing these magical-scripted doors. Try as you might, you won’t progress until the demands of your superiors are met — which usually consists of wiping out everything in sight that isn’t you or your chums.

The campaign certainly is linear, but the startlingly diverse locales you pass through can be absolutely breathtaking to behold if you have the hardware that’s up to the job. The development team have done a superb job of optimizing the visuals and maintaining a terrifically crisp, polished look; I was able to max out all settings in 1920×1080 resolution and suffer barely any dips below 60FPS on a Radeon HD 5770 CrossFireX configuration. The lack of advanced anti-aliasing options is quite disheartening, though; you’re basically given the option of turning AA “on” or “off” — which is presumably set to 2x AA when enabled.

The audio certainly doesn’t skimp on quality either, if you happen to have a decent surround sound system in place then you will be able to reap the benefits of a much more immersive experience. Weapons fire with a thunderous rattle, and are about as realistic as you’re doing to get without actually setting foot on a battlefield.

You’ll pass through Afghani towns, cave networks and mountains whilst cruising through the campaign, and the attention to detail is sublime. The missions set during the day were a particular highlight for me. Although, the night-themed missions also helped promote the feeling of needing to be stealthy. You’ll be tasked with sniping, manning turrets, rescuing, defending positions, escaping on an ATV, flying an attack helicopter, launching assaults on settlements, and more, before your stay in Afghanistan is over. The ATV section isn’t particularly riveting, but it does provide a quick break during a stealth-heavy mission. The mission which sees you piloting an ‘on-rails’ attack helicopter, equipped with all manner of insane fire-power, drags on for perhaps a little too long, but there’s plenty dialogue from a neighbouring pilot and HQ to distract from the level turning your brain into mush because of the seemingly endless waves of enemies to fend off.

There were a few times I was required to re-evaluate my strategies as I would end up being chewed up by enemy gunfire one too many times in a row, but there weren’t any scenarios that had me tearing my hair out and cursing the game. Any deaths that were incurred felt like they were my fault alone, and not that the AI was holding a grudge against me and somehow cheating me. Taking cover and allowing your comrades to provide some suppressive fire will does help an awful lot. And your squad mates, while immortal, will lend a hand occasionally in taking down that last elusive enemy hiding behind that huge rock. Damn that rock.

I had an enjoyable time during my time with the brief single player element of Medal of Honor. However, it’s the multiplayer aspect that I’m sure many of us are the most excited about. And this is where a lot of gamers might be surprised to learn that the feel of the multiplayer aspect differs quite substantially from that of the campaign mode. You see, the single player and the multiplayer components were developed by two entirely different software houses; with Danger Close having worked on the campaign, while DICE have lent their talents in creating the multiplayer experience. This immediately becomes apparent once you actually dive into the multiplayer portion of the game. Even the menus have a totally different llayout and array of options at your disposal.

If you happen to have sampled DICE‘s previous shooter effort, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, you’ll very likely feel right at home with the competitive multiplayer modes in Medal of Honor. The feel, the movement, the responsiveness of both Medal of Honor’s and Bad Company 2′s online portions is just uncanny. Of course, the HUD, lobby and menu screens might have a different coat of paint, but there’s certain some remarkable similarities between the two titles. The two titles feel very much cut from the same cloth — the same beautifully-woven piece of cloth, but it’s as if the perfectly acceptable mechanics of the single player game were neglected in favour of something much more akin to the recent Battlefield games. And the splicing of the two components makes for an oddly disjointed feel because of it.

Still, after getting over the somewhat unfamiliar feel after migrating over from single player to multiplayer, there is an awful lot of fun to be had with the online segment. You’ll be granted the ability of choosing between three playable soldier classes, all of which are available from the get-go: Rifleman, Special Ops, and Sniper. You’ll have the choice of sinking your teeth into a variety of competitive multiplayer modes such as team deathmatch and several differing, tactical-based objective game types. There are also plenty of incentives there to help provoke you into continuing your online rampage, including: unlockable rewards, stat-tracking, levelling up, amongst other lesser details. And, much like the single player, the wonderful variety of maps available to you and your online comrades is absolutely breath-taking. You and your foes will do battle across a multitude of Afghai-based locations, and, provided you have the graphical horsepower to get the most out of the game, you will be treated to some beautifully detailed areas.

Medal of Honor is an enjoyable military romp. The fact that the entire campaign takes place in Afghanistan makes for a welcome change from the norm. The game manages to tackle the sensitive topic of the States invading the Middle East very respectively and doesn’t attempt to tread on anyone’s toes. As a whole, the game doesn’t quite manage to grasp the level of quality to make it stand out amongst the sea of shooters out there, but it’ll make for a worthy compliment to your first person shooter library if you’re looking for an enjoyable, albeit fairly brief escape from the likes of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. I happened to enjoy it and I’m looking forward to revisiting the campaign in the not too distant future.

Not many games can boast of being able to both simultaneously engross you and gross you out. Well, the Silent Hill series is certainly up there, too. But Amnesia is able to bring an impressive amount to the table, despite being an “indie” title. Developer Frictional Games truly deserves a standing ovation for what they have managed to bring to life.

We used the following hardware

Amnesia begins with you slipping into the very British shoes of the very British “Daniel”, a poor chap who awakes to find that he has no recollection of almost anything. Ever. Well, besides his name and the fact that he once resided in a lovely flat in Mayfair, London. The first thing you’ll notice when you gain control — and consciousness — is that you’re situated in an eerily vacant castle hallway and you have no idea how it is exactly you managed to wind up there. Your only companion in the darkness is a friggin’ migraine.

You are unarmed, you are defenceless, you are vulnerable. You’ll never come across a single thing that will even remotely resemble a weapon of any kind. You’d do well to remember that, for you are no longer at the top of the food chain in this mysterious castle. Your only option when confronted with danger is to run and hide. Really. You have no alternative. The feeling of being unarmed and helpless adds greatly the game’s ‘scary’ element, and is really quite a unique twist on the genre. There aren’t all that many titles out there that can boast of not even allowing you, the player, the option of equipping weapons. You’ll essentially be relying on your wit when faced with a spot of bother, and have to make almost-instantaneous judgement calls as to whether or not you can outrun the evil and make it that exit down the hallway, or perhaps opt for hiding in the wardrobe in the room just round the corner.

Amnesia rewards you for leaving your comfort zone and exploring areas that would otherwise scare the pants off you. You will encounter untold horrors during your adventure, and there’ll be moments which you might find quite disturbing. The game pulls no punches in showing you that you are, in fact, its bitch. And it’ll soon become apparent that perhaps Daniel might not be ‘playing with a full deck’, either. You’ll be wrestling with his state of mind almost as much as you are solving fairly straightforward puzzles, and collecting the necessary items to allow you to progress through the rest of the game.

Your task is to piece together all of the clues scattered around that will ultimately reveal the reasons as to why it is you have lost your memories, and why it is you have ended up in this strange place. Answers will be drip-fed to you slowly via flashbacks and conveniently placed journal entries, but only by scouring the entire castle will you begin to understand the true nature of your role in this tale.

There’s a healthy system in place, as you might expect, but there’s also an ‘Insanity’ meter that you will need to keep an eye on. Failing to keep Daniel tranquil and relaxed will result in the poor boy hallucinating, suffering blurred vision, and even collapsing to the ground, leaving you exposed for valuable seconds. The inclusion of a sanity meter is both brilliant and a hindrance; it’ll help promote the need to stick to the brighter areas and to make sure that ration your lantern oil for desperate times, but there will be moments where you simply can’t avoid the darkness and will be forced to trudge along and endure the ‘collapse’ sequence two or three times on the trot. This is particularly more prevalent if you happen to spend your lantern oil reserves too quickly and have nothing to fall back on. It’s a nuisance, but it will be helpful in teaching you to be more conservative with your supplies.

Daniel’s questionable sanity will be pushed to breaking point as you wander the desolate hallways of the castle. The intense darkness only aids in accelerating your insanity. You’ll need to collect lamp oil to fuel your lantern, and light plenty of candles to quell the looming evil. But, sadly, not even then are you guaranteed your safety.

You’ll also need to ensure that areas are appropriately illuminated to make sure that you don’t accidentally pass-by items that will be of value to you. It’s all too easy to overlook objects such as keys or journal entries when they’re hidden behind a pile of books in a dimly-lit room. You will also need to take advantage of Amnesia’s superb physics-based, world-manipulation system that’s in place; virtually anything you come across that you would expect to be able to interact with in real life will behave accordingly in-game.

You can hurl chairs across the room, if you so wish, open and close table drawers, throw rocks through windows, throw open doors, manually turn cranks, and an awful lot more. All of this is entirely down to how you handle your mouse-based actions. The speed of your mouse movement will influence the severity of your actions, ie: gently pulling back on your mouse might mean that a lever is pulled quite slowly, whereas fiercely dragging your mouse will mean that the lever is pulled much more quickly and sharply. It’s a great system that feels much more refined than your typical ‘press X to interact with Y’ scenarios present in most games nowadays.

The fully interactive puzzles are imaginative in most cases, but aren’t especially taxing. There’s a small number of them with really quite abstract solutions that might have you scratching your head for a short while, but the game tends to highlight goals and provide more than adequate item descriptions to help alleviate any trouble you might be having. To provide an example: If a certain door requires a certain key, both the door and item will usually include the keyword in the description.

It’s just as well that the visuals are just so rich with detail and polish, as they help convey the mood of the game. The castle interior is just so beautifully sculpted with just a spot of the macabre. Rooms are furnished to an astonishingly realistic level and feel very ‘lived-in’. And the level of graphical clout afforded by this game is really quite surprising. You really will need to have the latest top of the range hardware to run this puppy at the highest resolution with all options enabled and cranked up the max. Having said that, the visuals are still absolutely superb even when you have to sacrifice a little here and there.

Developer Frictional Games has also done a superb job in the audio department. The developers know exactly when to use soft, chilling music to keep the tension up, but also make great use of silence to really keep you paranoid. Smashing, banging and distant foot-steps occasionally litter the atmosphere, usually when you least expect them, and will have you suddenly stopping in your tracks and hurriedly looking for your exit plan should trouble come your way.

You might also be pleased to learn that “boo” scares are kept to a minimum. It’ll most likely be the dead silence and distant, clattering noises that’ll make you feel most on-edge. Frictional Games has done a superb job of making you feel very uncomfortable even when seemingly nothing is going on.

Voice acting is competent for the most part, with Daniel, oddly, being the weakest of the cast. The story does not suffer because of this, though, and is still carried through nicely regardless.

Sadly, however, while Amnesia is genuinely able to illicit emotions of fear and anxiousness out of you on an almost constant basis, the game is really quite heavily scripted. And, to be truthful, really doesn’t differ all that much with each individual play-through. It is possible to ‘jump’ at the same event even when you encounter it numerous times, but the predictability of many of the scares only aids in diluting the experience each and every time you come across it.

The game does tend to primarily rely upon ‘artificial’ scares, and putting you in situations that really aren’t all that dangerous but trick you into believing so. One such moment occurs when you are passing through the sewers and being chased by… well, something really quite unpleasant, and you must follow the narrow tunnels as quickly as possible until you make it to the exit. The fact is, unless you are practically standing still, you will almost certainly make it through with plenty of time to spare. Don’t get me wrong, the first time I played through this part it was tremendously scary, but when you’ve successfully completed Amnesia once, you begin to see just how much the game relied upon your own mind to fill in the blanks.

Amnesia really is intended to be played only by adults as it contains many themes that really are not suited for children. There’s some especially unsettling moments concerning torture that even had me needing to take a break.

With that said, the game is still incredibly fun to play and the authentic feeling of intimidation that the castle provokes only helps to further immerse you in the story. It’s a superb effort by an already-established Indie developer, and makes for an excellent addition to their portfolio. I was able to get around nine hours worth of playtime out of the story mode on my first attempt, and it made for one of the more enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve had this year. My second play-through consisted of considerably less time due to my remembering the solutions to puzzles, and triggers for the majority of enemy spawns.

The lack of additional difficulty levels is a real shame, but there is some incentive to replay again in the form of interactive developer commentary nodes scattered throughout the castle upon your first completion of the game, and there are three endings in total. Achieving all three endings will provide you with a code to unlock a secret zip archive situated within the game’s main installation directory. I won’t spoil exactly what goodies lurk within the archive, but there’s some good stuff in there and the inclusion of these bonuses is much appreciated. Nothing in the way of unlockable DLC, mind, so don’t worry about missing out on any additional game-play. The community is already showing interest for user-contributed custom stories and campaign modes, though.

There’s no multiplayer functionality to speak of, which I find to be a good thing. Having a partner, or partners, accompany you throughout your quest would only take away from the feeling of isolation and solitude, and, to be frank, just plain would not work in a game such as this. The single player experience alone is thoroughly enjoyable.

To give you a general idea of just how scary I feel this game to be, I’ve compiled a quick score sheet which compares some of the top survival horror games that immediately spring to mind. My wife insists that I’ve been desensitized by horror games over the years, though, so your mileage may vary. I typically don’t tend to just leave games with just a score for general ‘scariness’, but many forum discussions concerning Amnesia stem from people’s curiosity of just how frightening the game shapes up when compared with other popular games of the genre.

I personally found Amnesia to be about a billion times scarier than Dead Space, F.E.A.R. 2, Resident Evil REmake, but not the early Silent Hill titles; especially Silent Hill 2. Your preferences regarding what makes a game ‘scary’ will likely differ vastly from mine.

If Amnesia were less scripted, and a little more ‘dynamic’ with its monster placement, I’d certainly rank this up there as being one of the single scariest games ever but, as it stands, the predictability of enemies and generally trouble-free methods of escaping from harm means that I can’t honestly feel myself getting quite as caught up in the tension as I had done so during my initial play-through.

However, please do not let that put you off this superb title. With a very charitable price tag, this is a game that really isn’t difficult to recommend. An absolutely sterling effort and a prime example that a studio needn’t require an insanely enormous budget to pull off a thoroughly riveting and terrifying title simultaneously. Amnesia demonstrates exactly has single-handedly rejuvenated the survival horror genre and also raised the bar at the same time.

Gaming Benchmarks

This is the part that really matters, isn’t it? What kind of performance are we presently looking at with AMD’s last generation cards. At first, I began the benchmarks with the 10.9 Catalyst drivers, then the 10.10 drivers, and finally the 10.10c beta drivers before reverting back to the seemingly-archaic 10.4 which actually happened to provide the best CrossFireX performance. This’ll be more of a benchmarks list than a complete review.

We used the following hardware

Oh, and you may notice that I’ve included what might be considered some fairly dated games for this compilation of benchmarks, just for the craic.

Aliens vs Predator

The CrossFireX configuration held up pretty well against this game when the details were cranked up, especially when you consider that the 5770 is last year’s mid-range model. I was able to enjoy running through all species’ campaigns with mostly uninterrupted performance. A single 5870 would have been a much, much more worthy performer for this game, though.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is among my current favourite games and, despite unlocking there is to unlock weapon and gadget-wise online, it’s still an absolute blast to load up a game of Conquest and get stuck right in there. Unless I was right in the middle of a barrage of explosions, I noticed little-to-no performance dips.

DiRT 2

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m absolutely shocking at racing simulations, I truly am, but this superb game managed to perform extremely well in a CrossFireX configuration. Funnily enough, it seems I was able to attain almost double the number of frame rates in CrossFireX mode as I did in a single 5770 set-up. Remarkable scaling, if I do say so myself.

F.E.A.R. 2

Perhaps my favourite shooter of 2009. F.E.A.R. 2, while seemingly more “arcade-y” than scary, was still an incredibly enjoyable romp from beginning to end. A single 5770 was able to dominate this game performance-wise, but two 5770s showed no signs of ever dipping below the 60 FPS threshold.

Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 might very well be the most resource-hungry game on the list thus far. While not being a DirectX 11 compatible game, it still manages to display some absolutely stunning uses of DirectX 10 features to really tax your graphics card. The 5770 CrossFireX configuration held up admirable during a hectic fire-fight in the Casino section.

Killing Floor

By no means a game that requires ultra-top of the line hardware, but still an incredibly enjoyable game to play with your friends. I thought I’d include the benchmarks for the hell of it since I really fancied playing this game again. CrossFireX performance is off the scale with a maximum frame rate peaking at 277 during some especially dramatic action sequences in the Mansion level.

Left 4 Dead 2

I just can’t get enough of Left 4 Dead 2 — the wealth of mods available really helps keep this already stellar game as fresh and addictive as ever. Even with what seemed like a billion zombies on screen, both the 5770 and 5770 CrossFireX set-ups were able take everything L4D2 threw at ‘em, with the CrossFireX system attaining a maximum 229 FPS during one particularly demanding wave of zombies.

Resident Evil 5

Another personal favourite shooter of 2009 for me. Of course, it may only be a third person shooter, but RE5 pulls no punches when it comes to throwing wave after wave of parasite-ridden locals at you. I decided to benchmark the “Savannah Chase” sequence where both Chris and Jill are pursued by the not-especially welcoming Uroboros-inflicted chaps on motorcycles. The CrossFireX system was able to chew this game up and spit it out — not even dropping below 75 FPS.

Conclusion

AMD’s last generation efforts for the HD Radeon 5770 still stand up proud even by today’s standards. When compared with its successor, the 6870, the 5770 really shines from a cost-effective point of view. The 5770 may not perform as well as its newest little brother, but it’s also not nearly as pricey. For the budget gamer: there probably couldn’t be a better time to pick up 5770, of even a pair of ‘em if you’re feeling naughty!

We used the following hardware

The story of SSHD pulls no punches in attempting to be so deliberately and laughably over the top — in a good, nostalgic sort of way. It’s brilliantly stupid. Aliens, time travel, pop-culture references, and insanely large weapons are all mercilessly shovelled into the campaign mode and delivered in such a manner as to make it crystal clear that the game really shouldn’t be taken at all seriously. Sam, your nonchalant in-game avatar, isn’t the deepest of heroes to grace the FPS genre; he won’t even so much as bat an eyelid when confronted with the endless waves of “Mental” alien forces charging towards him, but he’ll deal out cheezy one-liners to break the silence every now and then. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Sam might just very well be Duke Nukem’s long-lost brother, as they not only appear similar in appearance, but mannerisms also.

Without veering too far away from the campaign mode: It’s very enjoyable. It’s ideal for those times when you simply can’t muster up the concentration necessary to absorb a moment’s worth of story, and would much rather just dive straight into some frenzied and nonsensical action. Aside from brief interludes consisting of perhaps 30 seconds of cutscenes kicking in at the end of a mission, you won’t be granted a moment’s rest from the unrelenting legions of “Mental” forces. Virtually each and every mission structure is laid out like this: You enter a room, you’re locked in, you’re presented with an alarming number of enemies baying for your blood, you blow them away, door unlocks and you continue onto the next room. From time-to-time, the game will toss an exorbitantly large boss into the mix in order to keep you on your toes. However, the general gist is: once you enter an area, you’re not leaving until every last straggler has been wiped out.

During your adventure through the exclusively-Egyptian setting of SSHD, you’ll come across some surprisingly rich and varied environments: from crypts and tombs buried deep within the heart of a pyramid, to secluded green valleys littered with beautiful greenery. These areas usually offer plenty of breathing room in battle and will allow for you to strafe circles around your foes, but there will also be times when you’re forced into extremely narrow and confined spaces where fighting for survival becomes more tedious than enjoyably challenging.

As you march through the campaign, you will be treated to your a fairly wide assortment of weaponry ranging from the bog-standard shotgun to the room-clearing SBC Cannon. However, my only gripe with the firearms is that they are so slowly drip-fed new toys to add to your arsenal that I was quickly becoming bored of the lack of variety and strategies that I was able to employ. At the start of the game, when you are only equipped with a knife, a pair of pistols and a shotgun — albeit a pretty powerful shotgun — it quickly becomes monotonous.

Fortunately, the game does encourage you to explore every nook and cranny of the areas you pass through by rewarding you will health and weapon bonuses should you happen to stumble upon any of the many “secret areas” hidden throughout the missions.

Sadly, the game does have a nasty habit of occasionally spawning enemies immediately behind you, or have them waiting right behind a door that you will have to pass through to progress. One particularly infuriating moment that springs to mind was when I attempted to open a door only to find an enemy standing there — not even five digital feet away — and waiting to greet me with a deal-dealing blow. It’s just as well that the hordes of “Mental” creatures hunting you down are so woefully stupid. The typical AI patterns of the “Mental” aren’t especially diverse either. They will not attempt to flank your position, or co-ordinate with others in any which-way, or even hide behind cover when under threat. If a particular enemy doesn’t immediately charge at you, it’ll likely be stationary for the duration of your scuffle. This doesn’t make the game any less enjoyable or challenging, though, as the sheer massive volume of enemies hurtling towards you — sometimes from all directions — are able to easily punish you for any mistakes you might make.

The auto-aim or “aim-assist” in place is unusually generous for a PC-based first person shooter and the fact that there is no in-game option available to disable it — or even minimize its effects — is quite disappointing. The level to which auto-aim helps magnetize your bullets towards enemies just seems to border on patronizing.

Where multiplayer is concerned: There’s a Co-operative or Deathmatch mode to choose between. Co-op will allow for as many as sixteen gamers to tackle the campaign mode as a team. Yes, sixteen. Naturally, it can get quite hectic with such a large number of players frantically running around each area. I found co-op matches which consisted of a total of four friends made for the best experience; missions remained challenging and attempting to get a word in to communicate with your buddies isn’t nearly as difficult.

The only competitive multiplayer mode, Deathmatch, was, sadly, decidedly mediocre. You and fifteen other gamers are tasked with scoring the highest number of kills during an allotted time. The person whom manages to secure the highest number of kills is the victor, but with no levelling up or rewards system in place — victory is short-lived and reaps no real benefit over your opponents other than bragging rights. There are seven multiplayer maps to choose from, some with an emphasis on chaotic 16-player frag-fests, and some much more suited to much quieter 4-player sessions. And while the maps were entertaining and pretty enough in their own right, I was surprised to find no inclusion of a valley-themed level; I personally found the gorgeous, lush valley missions were by far the most visually striking, and it’s a shame they were overlooked in Deathmatch. Co-op is, without a shred of doubt, where the game shines, though.

There’s a certain old school charm present in SSHD which harkens back to the good old days of Quake, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. I found the game really quite entertaining — in short bursts. While the story isn’t especially taxing on the old grey matter, developer Croteam obviously didn’t attempt for it to be. Instead, vying for the satirical, and having it take a backside to good, old fashioned, ludicrously over the top shooter gameplay. And the upgraded visuals make for an enticing reason to revisit this old gem.

Naturally, a follow-up was always very much on the cards and here we are now with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; the first true canonical sequel to a Call of Duty game, which carries on from the events of the first Modern Warfare. Does it live up the unprecedented level of hype that is has received? No. Not to this humble reviewer, anyway. The game is certainly very good in its own right, but much of the magic that made the original so brilliant has been lost for the sequel.

Without wishing to spoil the story for those of you whom might not have yet gotten around to completing Call of Duty 4′s campaign mode, Modern Warfare 2 continues the story of Russian Ultranationalist leader Imran Zakhaev’s goal of trying to rebirth the Soviet Union. Only, this time, Zakhaev’s former second in command Vladimir Makarov takes to the helm as the primary antagonist of Modern Warfare 2 in the hopes of continuing his former-leader’s cause. There’s a number of twists and turns that pop up during the campaign that will leave you scratching your head right up until the very final chapters of the game, and even a few revelations that will come to light during repeat play-throughs. Missions are much more condensed this time around, usually lasting anywhere from five to twenty minutes on the medium difficulty; and the campaign shouldn’t take longer than 5-6 hours for the average shooter-fan on the same difficulty. Craftily bypassing certain firefights will obviously bring the total playtime down a fair bit, too. Before all is said and done, you’ll have visited some refreshingly unique locations for a shooter-game, though, such as Afghanistan, Rio de Janeiro and Russia. A tongue-in-cheek Museum bonus level awaits you at the end of the game which will not only test your mettle, but also make for a pleasant break from all the seriousness that is terrorists causing havoc and the threat of nuclear war.

Although, It won’t long into the campaign before you’re left wondering just how it is Makarov plans to pull off some of his nefarious schemes, especially considering how he seems to have only the most incompetent of soldiers this planet has ever known under his command. Their real strength is in numbers — one enemy alone doesn’t necessarily pose much of a threat, but when you’re being engulfed by gunfire from all directions then that’s when things tend to go pear-shaped. These guys are also very picky about whom they attempt to kill, apparently. Aside from scripted events and cutscenes, your enemy will show extreme prejudice to you and you alone. The terrorists seemingly have no quarrel with your AI team mates and collectively will concentrate their fire on you, or, opportunity permitting, happily dash past your chums in the hopes of planting a knife in your face. Your immortal allies don’t seem to be in any race to help you either, they’re just as content to watch the enemy march right towards you they pretend to be providing you with cover. They might as well have brought in a sick note and sat this war out, for all the help they provide. Ramping up the difficulty to “Veteran” — the hardest difficulty in the game — makes the game almost infuriatingly tedious to play with virtually every combat scenario you come across; enemies are not in any way given an intelligence boost, they are just granted more opportunities to kill you in cheap ways: shooting you through what would normally be impenetrable cover; shooting you in a heartbeat — even before their ‘aiming’ animation has been triggered; and your allies still won’t give a damn if you’re in a bind; to name a few just off the many aggravating situations that you will no doubt be thrown into if are brazen enough to brave the Veteran difficulty. Still, to the game’s credit, if you like a challenge: Modern Warfare 2 will provide it in spades. You’d have to be only the most patient of masochists to garner any pleasure from it, though. Much like most every other Call of Duty title released, random, famous quotes by historical military figures display during those “You’re dead” screens in order to inspire you to try again, which is nice. The option to reduce the difficulty at any point is also a welcome addition.

You will assume the role of, arguably, five individual characters during your journey through the campaign, with one only being controllable for less than five minutes. For the beginning part of the game, you will step into the shoes of one PFC Joseph Allen, an army Ranger stationed in Afghanistan, followed by SGT Gary “Roach” Sanderson, a member of an elite counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force 141 — Roach will be the character whom you follow for the majority of your time through the campaign. For the most part, you’ll be swapping through characters in between every few missions and having the story fed to you through multiple perspectives.

Everything feels all very over-the-top and typical action-movie-like with the main characters managing to escape some impossibly-dangerous situations without a mark to show for it, and explosions and all manner of carnage occurring left and right. You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for something on movie-director Michael Bay’s résumé. Whereas the original Modern Warfare was able to showcase some incredible moments of explosive action, and keep them little and often, the sequel seems very unrestrained in hurling what feels like a seemingly-endless cavalcade of blood, fire and debris flying everywhere. I believe that less is more in this case. Gameplay is frustratingly linear and offers very little in the way of allowing you the freedom to tackle each and every firefight differently — aside from coming into battle with a few different guns equipped.

Combat feels very fluid when playing as any one of these soldiers — whom are essentially clones in the sense that they handle no differently from the next — and remains largely the same from previous Call of Duty titles. You’re able to equip and carry any two guns at one time — with the exception being akimbo weapons, in which case three guns — and swap them out for whichever weapons might be lying around on the ground. Aiming down the sight means that your shots will be roughly a zillion percent more accurate and find their mark much easier than by standard hip-fire spraying alone. You’ll also permanently be carrying a tactical knife for those missions where you’re required to be a little more stealthy, or when enemy is right in your face looking to give you a kiss with the butt of his rifle. If there’s anything that the Call of Duty has excelled at since day one, it’s been the feel of gunplay, and striking a delicate balance between realism and enjoyment.

There is one notable segment of the campaign that will certainly have tongues wagging, and perhaps even disturb and offend many — and that is during the brief “No Russian” mission. A mission whereby you are tasked with accompanying a small group of terrorists with the sole intention of carrying out a mass slaughter of all the security personnel and unarmed civilians occupying a Russian airport. While the option to completely bypass this mission is available to you at any time, without any risk of penalization whatsoever, you will end missing out on a pivotal part of the story which serves as a catalyst for events that transpire later on. While I can applaud Infinity Ward’s attempt to take on something quite such a controversial idea, and handle it fairly tastefully, this part certainly won’t be for everyone.

Visually, the game isn’t half-bad to look at. There are even occasions where everything looks really quite stunning. You won’t need a beast of a rig to run this title either; my duo of mid-range AMD Radeon HD 5770s in CrossFireX mode were able to handle this game wonderfully — in 1080p with all graphical options maxed out — with very few drops below 60FPS and, even then, it was only down to the immense number of explosions and bullets spraying all over the place that my cards even hiccuped for a moment. The audio, on the other hand, is in a league of its own. Not being a gun enthusiast, I can’t say how accurate the shooty-shooty noise were, but guns roar with unprecedented ferocity when unloading a magazine into an enemy, grenades deafen when going off next to your skull, and your superiors bark orders at you with crystal-clear clarity. This is one game that almost demands a surround sound set-up. The music is equally as excellent, with dramatic music kicking in accordingly during those intense battles, and even just the right melancholy tracks cropping up during the more sombre occasions.

Sporting complete Steamworks integration, you can engage in the addictive pursuit of unlocking achievements, shelve that installation DVD, bask in the knowledge that the game is protected by VAC, and you’ll even be able to hop into a friend’s multiplayer match straight from the Steam client. It’s just a crying shame that the online is tantamount to unplayable, much of the time. Unlike virtually every other title in the Call of Duty series ever released, Modern Warfare 2 does include dedicated servers as a means for gamers to indulge in some friendly online slaying-sessions, instead opting for a peer-to-peer-based matchmaking solution, powered for Infinity Ward’s own ‘IWnet’ program. This shocking move from the tried and tested dedicated server approach to that of the greatly inferior peer-to-peer system means that you, and almost every single person in a match, will be completely at the mercy of the host’s internet connection. If the host happens to be downloading 10TB of adult-oriented… viewing… in the background, or is in any way handicapping his connection through any number of means, then everyone in the game will feel the effect of increased lag and latency. Another minor quibble would be that the single-player and multiplayer portions of the game are classed as entirely separate programs and require you to close either the either program before moving onto the other.

To IWnet’s — and indeed Infinity Ward’s — advantage, getting into a game is a straight-forward process of simply selecting your preferred mode and allowing the matchmaking system to work its magic. There’s a huge assortment of gameplay modes to cycle through, too, catering to those of you whom might prefer more objective-based modes: Capture the Flag; a King of the Hill-esque mode called Headquarters; or the unforgiving bomb-disposal mode, Search & Destroy. For those of you whom might be more akin to run ‘n’ gunner-type modes, there’s always Team Deathmatch, FFA, and many other variants to charge right into. With a grand total of 16 multiplayer maps available at launch, each with their own distinct look and layout, it should take a while before any of the maps begin to feel too stale.

Much like the more recent Call of Duty games, Modern Warfare 2 allows you to customize your online soldier’s loadout via the use of classes. You can tailor your weapons, equipment, perks, killstreaks and deathstreaks to suit your own playing style. Guns range from assault rifles to shotguns, SMGs to sniper rifles, and what feels like everything in between. Claymore, throwing knives, grenades, C4, etc. all fall under the umbrella of equipment and certainly help rescue you from some sticky situations. Perks allow you to equip a total of three bonus attributes to your soldier, allowing for him to reload quicker, remain hidden from enemy radar, move quicker, do more damage with firearms, and much more. Killstreaks are rewards granted for killing a certain number of enemies in a row without dying; you can choose a total of three Killstreaks before diving into a match, and, depending on how well you play, you can earn yourself anything from an enemy-revealing UAV to an actual tactical nuke — guaranteeing you and your team victory. Balancing on all fronts is questionable, at present, but will hopefully be further looked into in future patches. Deathstreaks work in a similar vein to Killstreaks in that you can assign a specific benefit to your character, but it will only come into play if you happen to die a number of times in a row; especially acting as a crutch for struggling gamers to help get them back on their feet.

Whether it be new weapons, equipment, Perks, Killstreaks or Deathstreaks, you won’t be privy to the entire catalogue of toys straight from the get-go. You will have to earn experience points (XP) by killing enemies, completing objectives and beating challenges in order to climb up through the ranks before new goodies are slowly made available to you. This works to your benefit in that you are slowly introduced to newer, sometimes even game-changing, unlockables and given sufficient time to experiment with the items you have before, as opposed to having everything laid out and readily accessible from the start, leaving you dumb-founded by the extensive list of unlockables that would otherwise only be available at the maximum level. There are also the superficial unlockables in the form of “Callsigns” and camouflages for your weapon; A Callsign is basically your own unique badge that you can design by selecting from a vast list of backgrounds and emblems, to put across your personality; it’ll show up most everywhere when playing online and help distinguish players apart a little easier. Weapon camouflages mostly serve little purpose other than to give you the freedom to choose the colour or pattern that displays on your gun; it very rarely makes the difference between blending in with the environment or not — it’s more of an aesthetic option for those of you whom might fancy a change from looking at a slab of black and grey all the time.

For all the shortcomings of the competitive multiplayer, the two player-focussed co-operative mode, Spec Ops, is perhaps the finest achievement of the game. Allowing for you to go ‘lone-wolf’ or invite a friend over Steam, Spec Ops presents you a total of 23 missions, spread across five categories, to tackle and unlock ‘stars’. Acquiring stars translates to opening up new Spec Ops missions, with only a select few only being exclusive to co-op gameplay. The difficulty steadily begins to ramp up regardless of the difficulty you assign with each mission, but not quite so quick as to overwhelm you. By the time you reach the final three missions, you should hopefully have learned the necessary skills and be adept enough to work out a few strategies to accomplish your tasks.

One of the highlights of the Spec Ops mode is that no two missions are identical, and the diversity in missions really is remarkable. While many of the missions are bite-sized chunks lifted and modified straight from the single-player campaign, many have been given a unique spin, and the addition of a second player fighting along side you really makes it a thoroughly entertaining experience. Taking anywhere from two to thirty minutes to complete, some missions while have you racing against the clock to defuse a situation, some will have you fortifying a position and defending yourself against wave after wave of enemy forces. Perhaps the best mission to this reviewer is that of the mission where you or your friend are whisked off into an AC-130 flying overhead and manning the terrifyingly powerful turrets, with the goal of protecting your teammate as he makes his way through a crowded enemy hotspot to the evacuation zone. The superb variety helps ensure that every new challenge feels like a fresh and welcome one. There’ll be frustrating occasions where you and a buddy will struggle to conquer one or two missions, but overcoming these obstacles makes for a very thrilling and euphoric rush.

However, much like the competitive multiplayer element, the Spec Ops mode is also prone to problems: Occasions where two players simply cannot connect to either person’s game, no matter who is hosting or who is joining — even when those two players were kicking butt not 24-hours previous. It’s incredibly temperamental at he best of times. And with no matchmaking system or server-browser in place, it can sometimes be a roll of the dice as whether or not you’ll be able to invite a friend into a game, or be forced to go it alone.

Modern Warfare 2 is very nearly three games rolled into one: A decent campaign; a fantastic co-op mode which almost cries out for repeat playthroughs in order to notch up better times an beat old scores; and a terrific multiplayer game, let down only by the bizarre decision to implement Peer-to-Peer-based matchmaking over dedicated servers. Not one of the three points to this triangle is perfect — the Spec Ops mode certainly does come close — but there is a generous amount of content to sink your teeth into. The obscenely high RRP, brief campaign mode(s), and better alternatives make this a difficult product to justify as a good candidate for your money and attention, though; for instance, the exceptional Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare would make for a better, more affordable choice.

Where else to begin than with the game’s main menu: Yes, even the main menu is able to evoke a certain sense of eeriness from you; there’s barely anything to see, bar for a number of settings and the option to begin a new file or continue from a pre-existing one, but the chilling and somewhat melancholy music is genuinely able to stir up feeling of tension and dread. From the main menu, you are given the choice of immediately diving straight into the game — not recommended — or learning the ropes with the Tutorial mode — highly recommended — which will help teach you how the game’s physics-based item-manipulation system works. You see, unlike other games, in order to, say, open a door, you don’t simply press “E” on your keyboard or whichever key you might prefer to bind to the action. Oh no. With Penumbra: Black Plague you must manually use the mouse to grab the handle and either pull or push the door towards or away from yourself. The door will open slowly or quickly depending on how quickly and fiercely you handle your mouse movement. While Penumbra: Black Plague may not be the first game to pioneer such an ambitious control scheme, the developer Frictional Games has done a sterling job of implementing it. The beauty of this new way of interacting with various worldly objects is that it’s very easy to get used to, and also offers some very interesting ways for solving puzzles.

Whether you decide to see the tutorial through to its exciting conclusion(!) or skip the foreplay and immediately plough into the, ahem, action, is entirely up to you. The real meat of the game only begins when you create a new file, and no amount of tutorial-grinding will prepare you for the horrors you will face. Bewildering introductory sequence aside, you’ll essentially begin your journey as Philip, a chap who’s just hazily waking up in a decaying office of a research facility. Vulnerable and disorientated, all you can hear is the faint whimpering of a woman begging for her life, while presumably being slaughtered. You’ll have no clue as to what is going on, or where you are, or why you are trapped in such a creepy, foreign place. Your instincts will tell you that you must push on in the hopes of obtaining freedom, but you’ll soon learn that with every new room you enter, you’re effectively gambling your safety. You are completely unarmed and helpless — and you will be forevermore. Any dangers you face, you will do so alone, and with only your wits to protect you. All of these unnerving realizations will quickly become very apparent to you — and the feeling of desperation, isolation, and being yanked out of your comfort zone all add up to make for a frighteningly immersive experience. The game will allow you a grace period with which to get your bearings and properly learn how everything works, but, don’t expect for the game to be quite so charitable for so long. It won’t be long before you’re plucked out of the facility and whisked off to a nightmarish, Silent Hill-like Otherworld sequence.

There’ll be horrifying creatures, which you’ll come to refer to as “the infected”, that patrol the long halls of the facility, that you must avoid and bypass in order to progress. You won’t exactly come across millions of these… things during your stay at this mysterious facility — the game’s real strength comes from not chucking wave after wave of enemy upon you every five minutes. Navigating the eerily vacant rooms and hallways helps to build up enough tension as to keep you on your toes at all times. The idea that one of the monsters could spring out at any moment will have you jumping at your own shadow, and generally becoming increasingly more and more paranoid as time goes on. Hiding in the shadows and out of sight will become second nature over time and will, for the most part, be your only real means of survival. Beware: Ogling these monsters, even when they cannot directly see you, will cause your in-game avatar to begin to panic and inevitably give up his position. This mechanic helps give off the impression that these hall-wandering nastys are perhaps that little bit more threatening than they might actually be — and the fact that even gazing upon them will result in your character slowly unravelling is, well, really quite neat. When you can hear a monster breathing down your neck and you just know that if you so much as establish eye-contact it’ll turn you into its next meal, really makes for some very memorable moments. Flashlights, flares and glow sticks will help illuminate the especially-dark areas, but both are in limited supply; conserving what little number of items you have littering your inventory is vital, and keeping those eyes peeled for bits and pieces scattered throughout the facility will become a necessary task for you.

It’s not just the monsters you’ll need to worry about, though. For Penumbra: Black Plague is guilty of one of the more tedious gaming sins: sudden and unforeseeable insta-kill moments. Yes, there will be times when you will die and there’ll have been nothing you could have done to have prepared for it beforehand. These extremely punishing, but infrequent, moments that seemingly leap out of nowhere are not in any way, shape or form one of the game’s highlights. There’s a certain elated feeling that one can garner from these events should you be lucky enough to escape without error, but any delay or mistake will usually result in a rather untimely death. Making sure to save at regular intervals will help to reduce the number of rage-induced exits to the desktop.

When you’re not running away from the jaws of doom, you’ll usually be hunting items or puzzle-solving. I’ll say this: Penumbra: Black Plague has some of the most brain-taxing puzzles I have come across in recent memory. There was many a time where I was left dumbfounded by what was required of me. Fortunately, many of the puzzles you will be presented with will provide a reasonable enough challenge as to have you exercising the old grey matter, and will remain with the realms of a believable realism. There’s a certain sense of accomplishment to be had after working out the solution to a problem that has had you perplexed for some time. However, there are also the normal-looking puzzles which can require some bizarrely-abstract solutions. The night and day approach to realism in these puzzles will have you jumping through the sort of metaphorical hoops that you would never even consider jumping through in real life and, thus, the game’s attempt at having you problem-solve puzzles can swing from “Oh, that does actually make sense,” to “What. The. Fu– Heck?” You’ll really need to think outside the box for the most part.

I’m also able to report that one or two puzzles of the earlier puzzles seemingly-glitched out on me. To paint you a better picture: One of the first tasks that you are required to complete is figuring out just how you can gain a staff member’s certain… characteristics with which to order a locked security door; I did what I thought to be correct — twice — and was informed by the game that I was, in fact, wrong. Having spent another 30 minutes of attempting much less-likely methods of solving this tricky puzzle, I decided to try my first approach again, despite being previously notified by the game that my initial attempts were wrong. Although, oddly enough, this time it worked flawless. I did nothing different — I approached the puzzle the exact same way as I had done previously, only it seemed to work this time. I have never had that problem arise since. I can only presume it was a glitch, but one that ended up having my chase my own tail for the best part of half an hour. Pleased, I was not. Another puzzle later one required me to almost literally press my face against my monitor in order to spot the difference in colour between a number of orbs.

The majority of the story will drip-fed to you slowly via cryptic conversations between characters; loading screens which also serve as makeshift diary entries; actual diary entries and computer logs will also help to provide a few more answers should you decide to review them. There’ll only really be a small number of characters that you’ll actually come across during your campaign to uncover the truth, which helps to further promote the feeling of an uncomfortable solitude. The voice acting isn’t entirely convincing, nor engaging for any of said-characters. There is also a certain mysterious chatterbox called “Clarence” living inside your head — which might lead you to believe that perhaps your character is a few sandwiches short of a picnic — that almost-constantly interrupts the overall mood of the game by coming out with the most annoying rubbish, and generally just being a burden. Sadly, this character — or persona — plays a pivotal part to the overall storyline and will accompany you right up until the very end of the game. After 5-minutes of hearing this voice go on and on, you’ll welcome the next monster to come along and end your suffering. Fortunately, the visuals make up for the mostly mediocre voice work, but are unable to properly “wow” you. The offices are littered with stationary, the laboratories are cluttered with all manner of bizarre scientific apparatus, but many of the hallways and larger areas are almost entirely devoid of detail.

Penumbra: Black Plague is a good game. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but I’m certainly in no race to return back to it in a hurry. It won’t last you an eternity, but the budget-pricing is certainly very appealing. I’d say that you’re looking at somewhere in the region of 5-6 hours for your first playthrough on the medium difficulty. There isn’t much in the way of replayability, aside from upping the difficulty, I suppose. Puzzles will not differ from the last time you tackled them, and will basically just end up losing their original challenge if you happen to have a good memory. My best time for completing the game was three hours and three minutes, and that included plenty of sightseeing. You’ll definitely get a much greater sense of immersion from the game when playing with the lights off, turn the volume up nice and loud, and kick your mates out of the house. Do be on the look out for a secret Space invaders mini-game which the developer has craftily snuck in there via the means of a terminal unlock code.