Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands preview

As promised, Ubisoft delivered the first trailer for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands at the 2009 Spike VGAs. In the years since we've seen him, it seems the Prince has kept his stupid goatee.
The cinematic trailer shows a town getting attacked by uh, sand. The game is a return to the Sands of Time storyline so we're being asked once again to ponder the magical possibilities of sand. According to the narrator, it's harboring some kind of "dark secret."
Forgotten Sands is due in May 2010 for consoles, handhelds, and the PC. It'll arrive alongside the Jake Gyllenhaal film Prince of Persia: The Sands In Time.

Call of Duty Modren War Fare 2 Review

Even if your willpower or geography has kept you from picking up Modern Warfare 2, you're probably reading this as you drive to go do just that. Activision's marketing people like to call this one the most anticipated game of the decade, and there's no doubt it will sell oodles of copies from now until Modern Warfare 3: Even Moderner. But is it worth the hype? I spent some serious time pounding plastic to see if Infinity Ward's latest has the fun to back it up and you can find out what I thought right after the break.

Just pull over first, okay?

Single Player

Modern Warfare 2 picks up five years after the ending of the original game, and there's a montage to bring you up to speed and introduce returning favorites like "Soap" MacTavish (now a Captain), Nikolai and Captain Price. Though, for the most part, you play as Sergeant "Roach" Sanderson, you'll again embody different characters and encircle the globe in the process, touching down in places like Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Washington D.C., Kazakhstan and ... Virginia.

The global conflict centers on a full-scale war that whisks you through characters and exotic locales at a dizzying pace, and that's the heart of the campaign's only real stumbling block: It has so much story to tell that, at times, it feels far too frantically paced. What's the hurry? Personally, I'd like more time to enjoy some of the jaw-dropping levels Infinity Ward has created.

The most prominent example is the controversial Airport scene, which seems sorely out of place here. Sure, the entire plot of the game hinges on it, but did we need to play through it? Served up early in the game, it's not only one of the shortest scenes you'll play, it also feels incongruous to the point of being jarring: one minute you're training in Afghanistan as Private First Class Joseph Allen, and in the blink of an eye you're asked to kill dozens of innocents. A cut scene (which is what you get if you skip the scene) would serve just as well, so why IW baited controversy this way is a head-scratcher. Sure, that controversy can mean publicity, but it's a shame that it comes at the cost of storytelling, particularly when there are so many other powerful moments that pass by unused.

For instance, at one point you come across the hulking wreck of Air Force One crashed nonchalantly in a front lawn. Isn't that sort of a big deal? That could be the entire plot of a season of 24, yet it isn't even mentioned in the game, underlining the disconnect between story and gameplay. When you jump from character to character with each level change, and miss big chunks of the narrative that unfolds around you, you're not as personally vested as you would be if you played the same character all the way through. Yes, it's a staple of the CoD world to jump from soldier to soldier, but it's not the best way to tell an emotional story.

Another minor complaint was that the squadmate AI would randomly turn from "capable" to "boneheaded" without notice. There were times when an enemy would run into a room we were defending, and our squadmates would completely ignore them. It didn't happen constantly, but enough to be noticeable and frustrating, usually about once per level during intense firefights. The enemy AI can be so smart that it's scary as they flank you, seek cover, and hang back to use ranged weapons, making it all the more frustrating when the friendlies just give a bad guy a hall pass.

Graphically, Infinity Ward hasn't reinvented the wheel here ... but it has made that wheel look a heck of a lot better. From the photo-realistic bloodsplatter on the screen to indicate you've been hit (no more red haze), to the textures and colors that pop off the screen, the imagery of Modern Warfare 2 is dazzling. There's a classy new voice cast too, featuring actors like Keith David, Barry Pepper, Glenn Morshower and Lance Henriksen, all benefiting from improvements to the character lip-sync animations. Paired with the graphics, it's a presentation that feels like you're really being plunked down into a tangible world.

The user interface is cleaned up as well: the new HUD is very streamlined and consolidates all of the information in the lower right-hand corner in a tight, redesigned package. A new radial, vertical compass encircles the D-pad layout, and where CoD 4 only had waypoints marked on the compass (which sometimes made it hard to figure out where you were heading) MW2 actually paints the waypoint over the actual destination on the screen. Being able to glance down and get all of the information in one corner, rather than searching the screen, trying to figure out how many frag grenades I have left or if I'm crouched or standing, is a welcome addition.

As much globetrotting as Modern Warfare 2's story has you doing, gameplay is similarly all over the map: Vehicles and mild platforming (the ice picks and snowmobiles from E3 play a notable role) combine with your basic array of different mission types ranging from protect and defend to flat out obliterate and destroy. I don't want to spoil anything, but rest assured that this story truly is global, and you'll understand what we mean by that in one of the later levels. More of this, and less civilian shock and awe, would have been appreciated.

And finally, yes, Infinity Ward has tucked in another "Mile High"-esque post-game nugget, and no, I'm not going to say another word about it. Sorry. Zip. Nada.

I finished the entire campaign (and yes, I killed civilians in the airport and will require therapy later) in about 10.5 hours on Hardened, though your mileage will probably vary if you aren't stopping to gawk at the landscape. The story has a fairly satisfying conclusion and there's a very strong hint that Modern Warfare will continue. Yes, shocking. Did I enjoy all of those hours? Yes. Would I play through the campaign again? Most definitely ... if I ever got tired of multiplayer.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer was where the replay value paid for itself over and over again in the first game, and Infinity Ward obviously realizes that. The team's taken what works in multiplayer (the Killstreaks) and improved on it, and taken what doesn't work (like multiple grenade spamming) and removed it. That's right: you won't hear the "tink, tink, tink" sounds of rolling grenades in your sleep anymore.

Grenades are still in the game of course, but gone are the Martyrdom and the Frag x3 perks, so you won't have to run away from them every second. Well, nearly every second. Killstreaks now go all the way up to 25, and while IW includes old favorites like the UAV and Airstrikes, there are now a lot more toys to play with as well. You can guide in Predator missiles, call in airdrops, jam the enemy radar, and summon multiple airborne vehicles (no more waiting for enemy copters to disappear before you can deploy your own). My personal favorite is Emergency Airdrop, which showers down four crates containing random Killstreak rewards. It's Christmas!

On the flipside of Killstreaks are the addition of Deathstreaks. If you are being pwned in multiplayer, these are your new best friend. There are four total and you'll start by default with the Copycat Deathstreak, which gives you the Perk load-out of the enemy who last killed you if you suffer multiple deaths in a row without killing anything. New Deathstreaks (including Martyrdom) are unlocked as you level up, and you can only select one to use per match. It's a nice boost that takes a small step toward balancing the game, but it's not going to turn the game around for you single-handedly. Remember: If you're being helped by a Deathstreak, it means the other team is racking up kills. So it's like a badge of honor made out of dog poop. Sure, it's a reward, but do you really want it?

Other than the addition of new Killstreaks, the biggest change to multiplayer is that Perks can now be upgraded. Take Sleight of Hand, for instance. It allows you to load any weapon a lot faster, and when you get a certain number of kills using the Perk, you upgrade to Sleight of Hand Pro, which will let you switch to down the sights or scope aim faster.

There are a ton of other additions to the experience (unlockable custom weapons, the ability to decorate your in-game information tag with Emblems and Tags, Capture the Flag) and gametypes have been revamped. For example, on Headquarters, when a new HQ spawns, it will be visible on the map, but you'll have to wait 30 seconds for it to activate before you can attempt to control it. This totally alters the flow of the mode, making for more of a battle than a camping festival.

A Winning Kill camera has also been added to deathmatches, and at the end of each match everyone on both teams will be treated to a slomo shot of the final kill. This is particularly fun if the player in the spotlight dies in some comical fashion, like getting whacked in the head with a grenade that hasn't armed. It's just a pity that nothing is recordable to your console for playback later. I'd love to see a video editor as robust as the one in Halo 3 so I could share triumphant moments and stellar blunders with friends online.

New game modes are unlocked as you level up, and this includes the new 3rd Person playlists. I gave these a whirl, and it's extremely jarring to suddenly play behind your character, but you'll soon see how it allows you to peep around corners or notice if someone is sneaking up on your six. It's kind of neat to try, but by no means is it going to replace your go-to first-person modes.

Multiplayer is where the action is for most Modern Warfare players, and there is enough new stuff here to make you feel like you're not just getting a few new maps; a much-needed shot in the arm from the original, which has since grown stagnant after it saw only one map pack with four new maps over the past two years.

Special Ops

Arcade mode is (happily) jettisoned and in its place is Special Ops co-op. These are missions that you play with a friend via split-screen or online or just by your lonesome. There is a ton of variety here: vehicles, Ghillie suits, breach charges and more all make appearances in the 23 different missions.

As difficulty increases, you'll soon learn that you're not going to be able to survive some of these challenges unless you communicate. A good example is Overwatch, which features one player overhead in an AC-130, as the other on the ground tries to reach an extraction point. The airborne player clears the path using the trio of massive guns, but at times he'll rely on the ground-based soldier to laser-sight targets for him. Oh, and if one person dies, it's all over.

Each tier scales in difficulty, with one mission description even teasing, "This probably isn't even possible." The final three Spec Ops feel that way, especially when you play on Hardened or above. I spent a long time with a buddy trying to clear one level, and although we must have died 30 times, we kept hitting "Replay," which is probably the best compliment you could pay to a mode like this.

Hopefully, Infinity Ward can include new Spec Ops in future DLC, because the mode was much more enjoyable than I expected it to be. Playing through them solo almost feels like cheating, because they are scaled back in difficulty, but playing with a friend or a random player online will have you working in tandem in ways that you don't even get close to in Multiplayer.

Final Thoughts

Though we can't comment on the plastic night vision goggles or the other bonuses you'll get in the Hardened and Prestige editions, the actual disc containing the game is well worth every cent you'll shell out for it. The single-player campaign might not engross you enough to want to play through the entire game again, but multiplayer and Spec Ops will both bring you back many, many times.

Army Of Two 40 Days

A few campaigns into Army of Two, and mercenaries Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem are lugging their risible body armour, pimped hand-cannons and mismatched names towards their next encounter with a bunch of insurgents who look like a street gang, in an army base that looks like a skate park, in an Iraq that looks like the outskirts of Denver. Rios (bald, scarred, The Serious One) is being Basil Exposition, wondering aloud to Salem (tousled, tattooed, The Impetuous One) whether a mole might be betraying them to the enemy.

"Don't know don't care," barks Salem, and the mindless killing begins once more.

In case you hadn't guessed from the getup that makes its supposedly macho heroes look like camp, sado-masochistic, medieval ice hockey goalies, Army of Two doesn't take itself all that seriously. This co-op-focused, third-person shooter is no Tom Clancy's Advanced Military Anorak Fantasy. Why are we killing these men? What's the plot again? Which third-world country are we blowing up next? Don't know, don't care. In the middle of one firefight, Salem starts banging on about who the best rapper in the Wu-Tang Clan is. It's practically self-parody.

Yes - that is a codpiece with 'Merc' written on it.

It's a good thing, too. The light tone helps you get past the drab locations, dodgy politics, dumb machismo, clumsy dialogue and production-line plot of this superficially standard action game, and focus on what it does well: tactical AI, weapon customisation and superb two-player co-op dynamics.For all that it revels in shooter cliché, the fact that Army of Two was designed from first principles for two players makes it quite an unusual beast. The core of this is the "aggro" system that splices the cover-and-flank tactics of a squad shooter with the threat management mechanics of an MMORPG, and then telegraphs it to the player with all the subtlety of a sucker punch. When one of the pair of "private military contractors" is shooting at the enemy, he draws their fire and glows red. His partner fades to transparency and can move to a flanking position unmolested, the better to take out the enemies behind cover, in body armour, or at machinegun posts. Or to not die, if he's the one under fire already (a "feign death" move also allows you to instantly drop aggro when your health is low).

Versus mode lets you play as any enemy character.As if the visual cues weren't easy enough to understand, there's an aggro meter at the top of the screen, showing you where things stand. It might seem like overkill, but the absolute clarity of the aggro system is Army of Two's greatest strength. It makes it supernaturally easy to fall into the game's steady, swinging rhythm, and means that EA Montreal has been able to notch enemy behaviour a few levels above blind and brain-damaged without making the game frustrating to play. Your opponents frequently attack from two sides and use cover properly, blind-firing and falling back when threatened - but since they can always be outsmarted and outflanked by using the aggro system, you've always got options.

The game is best enjoyed by far with another player, and supports split-screen play as well as a robust drop-in drop-out mode over Xbox Live or PSN. But the AI that takes control of your partner when you play alone is surprisingly capable, too. It's not that it's outstandingly clever, believable or error-free - rather that the command system is elegant and effective, with directions on the d-pad allowing you to toggle between passive and aggressive versions of advance, regroup, and hold-position. Between this and the aggro system, it's simplicity itself to manipulate the AI to get you out of thorny

Whether alone or with a friend, progress in Army of Two is consistently effortless, without being dumb. Outright deaths will be rare, thanks to the healing system that allows downed players to keep firing while their partner drags them back to cover for a heal. There's a clear GPS overlay to point you to the next objective if you get lost. And despite not requiring any button presses to stick or unstick you, cover works seamlessly and intuitively, giving firefights an easy flow.

These are the only things that really matter, even though it's unfortunate to find not everything in Army of Two works so perfectly. There's a whole plethora of other co-op mechanics built into the game, and the majority of them are mildly pointless and prosaic in their implementation. Boosting up to high ledges, simultaneous co-op sniping, pre-animated feats of twin strength, and the scripted moments of back-to-back, slow-motion massacre all feel rather forced and flow-breaking.

The swear-filled camaraderie commands - press X to play air guitar, pull trigger to butt shoulders - just make you cringe. The hovercraft sections are devoid of challenge (or any discernible handling model), although parachuting in with one player controlling the 'chute while the other snipes enemies has a dash of daredevil cool to it. Best of the bunch - and also the most overtly homoerotic touch in a game that's not exactly short of them - is the riot shield system, which allows one player to use a shield or car door as portable cover while the other cuddles up close behind and dispenses "lead" from his "iron".

There's nothing like the love of one Mexican wrestler for another.

Virtually all of this comes into play in Army of Two's cunning and original Vs. mode. Wisely, EA Montreal has realised that without co-op and aggro, there's nothing to distinguish Army of Two from a very run-of-the-mill shooter, so it's enshrined these in the competitive multiplayer, too. Two teams of two are dumped in one of four large maps, crawling with AI enemies and a series of rolling targets. They compete for the cash rewards, vying to be the first to down a helicopter, kill an armoured enemy, or escort a wounded contact to an extraction point. The varied objectives, race-against-time feel, and the busy firefights on two fronts make this an original blast, but it must be said that the performance during our demo session on PSN was on the laggy side compared to standard co-op play.

Army of Two's guns feel dismayingly flat at first, but time reveals this apparent oversight to be a stealthily smart move. It encourages you to shop around and customise in the game's tantalising armoury (access is given midway through each mission), tuning your weapons for aggro, accuracy, ammo capacity, damage and ludicrous, gold-plated looks. Initially bland guns can develop a lot of character and tactical function over the course of the game, and you'll find yourself developing strong attachments to some of them, and swapping with your partner to try others. There are also some OTT super-weapons like a minigun and rocket launcher to unlock for a second play-through.

Mummy, those boys are laughing at us!

But that second play-through is Army of Two's Achilles heel, its sticking point. The campaign is short, painfully anti-climactic, and (with the exception of a memorable attack on an aircraft carrier) it lacks any imaginative spark in its level design or set-pieces. It's just room after corridor after cave after factory after canyon after room full of cover points and shouting terrorists and rattling guns. There's not much in the game's presentation to draw you back either, with its graceless, gawky animations, blanket over-lighting, ugly art, wallpaper music and desolate lack of atmosphere.

The fine-tuned excellence of Army of Two's co-op gunplay will easily sustain you through one run through this gutsy, broadly enjoyable game. But the desire to revisit it is weak, and for a game that's designed with social online play in mind, that's a big problem. Any level of the current co-op king, Halo 3, has more spectacle and incident packed into it than the entirety of Army of Two; more that you'll want to relive in company over and over again. Bearing the strong Vs. mode in mind, it would be wrong not to warmly recommend this as a smart twist on a stupid shooter, but perhaps it should have taken itself a little more seriously after all.

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Bayonetta Review

The best two Japanese action games of the year are diametrically opposed in approach. Demon's Souls is a brooding traipse through the corridors of purgatory, fair but relentlessly unforgiving. It teaches that modern videogames have made us weak and stupid, that our gaming muscles have atrophied through the efforts of so many mollycoddling developers. Every sword strike must be carefully considered, and button-mashers are not so much ridiculed as downright abused for their lack of sophistication. The result is a tense but ponderous experience, one that demands supreme trepidation before each step taken, careful contemplation before every input made.

In Bayonetta, meanwhile, you press a button and your television implodes.

Beloved is a celestial giant with the face of a three-year-old cherub and the body of a weightlifting Buddha, who falls from heaven to cobblestone with a squelchy thwack. Standing just 20 feet from this sudden epiphany, Bayonetta smirks to the cameraman, who's angled our viewpoint on the scene from ground level in order to fully celebrate the titular anti-heroine's ninja Barbie physique and secretary-cum-sex-worker attire. Her wink to lens is the starter pistol for interactivity.

You rotate the left analogue stick and hit the X button on cue, and Bayonetta cartwheels into a handstand, firing the twin pistols attached to her stilettos into Beloved's rolls of fat by clicking her heels in rapid succession. You break the sequence short with a triple jump through the air, esoteric purple wings momentarily sprouting from her arched back as you do so, before landing on Beloved's shoulders. The camera wheels and dives around, matching the kinetic assault of Bayonetta's body blows with dazzling movements of its own.

Finish him: an invitation to execute a Climax Attack on your wearied angelic opponent stamps onto screen. As you make the input, Bayonetta plants her feet square on the ground. Her black latex suit is absorbed into her skin, inexplicably extending the strands of her hair as it's drawn up through her body.

In between levels you play a lightgun-style arcade mini-game, in which you're given a limited set of golden bullets with which to shoot down some angelic beings. Points can be converted into cash or performance-enhancing lollipops.

Shielding what's left of her modesty with her arms, Bayonetta flings her head backwards and her new 30-foot hair extensions assume the form of a black dragon: follicular shape shifting. It bares shadowy tooth shapes before lurching forward and down onto the cherub's torso. You madly hammer X to fill a Megaton bonus-point gauge, each mash encouraging the beast to chew a little harder. Then, in the final moment of climax, it rips Beloved's torso in two, dropping a crimson waterfall onto the cobblestones below like a dead weight.

Bayonetta's hair retracts itself back into her scalp. Her clothes re-envelop her body. She pops a lollipop into her mouth and sucks twice. Lara Croft shivers. Airport massacre levels, be damned. Bayonetta eats angels with her hairdo. Let's have a discussion about that on the Today programme.

For director Hideki Kamiya, Bayonetta is the final destination of a stream of flamboyant creative endeavour he first tapped eight years ago. With Devil May Cry, Kamiya invented his own sub-genre: a scrolling beat-'em-up that combined kung-fu wire combat with near endless combo strings and wrapped it all up in a camp gothic aesthetic. Rather than attempting to merely recreate Devil May Cry's successes in Bayonetta, Kamiya's bravely stripped away all of the dead weight from his initial template, ruthlessly streamlining the form and function to deliver something at once fresh and familiar. It's also, unquestionably, the greatest game yet to spill from this niche.

Developer Platinum Games' influence is clear from the off. Bayonetta discards the dark and dry anime tone of Kamiya's earlier work for something more tongue-in-cheek and irreverent. The story is delivered in bite-size, snappy cut-scenes, with slightly ropey albeit effective cutaway stylisation and camp voice-acting that soon wins you over. The approach suits the game style well, allowing for humorous quips and wry visual gags to be interspersed with the action, revelling in the silliness of its scenario in a way Devil May Cry never quite dared.

While the presentation teeters on the edge of objectification, with long, lingering shots of anatomically perplexing females, the characterisation does much to counterbalance the sexist overtones, and Bayonetta emerges as one of the strongest Japanese leads in recent memory. Discarding a grand gothic soundtrack, the game instead settles upon an incongruous but irresistible mix of J-pop and jazz. The thrill of batting away celestial bodies to a poorly enunciated lounge version of "Fly Me To the Moon" is unforgettable.

Darksiders Review

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your jo

b is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes

the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshe

d out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

When you're not on the warpath, there's an enormous world waiting to be explored and dozens of intriguing puzzles to solve along the way. Traversing from one area to the next isn't always straightforward, for your progress is often hindered by your gear, or at least by your lack of it. As you proceed through the many dungeons on your journey through Darksiders, you find that each one includes a useful new item, such as a bladed boomerang, a grappling hook, or an armored gauntlet, each of which opens up new paths for you to travel and is used in often creative ways to solve puzzles and defeat bosses from then on out. Puzzle complexity ramps up nicely, and each new variation encountered is a fair step up from the previous one. Though some can initially look overwhelming--such as a series of puzzles near the end of the game in which you must redirect a beam of energy from its source using mirrors, moving platforms, and interdimensional portals--they never feel impossible and are extremely gratifying to complete. At the end of each dungeon is a large-scale boss battle that puts what you've learned solving these puzzles to the test. These impressive, multifaceted fights are sometimes a bit on the easy side, but not so much that it makes them any less fun.

Throughout the game, you are constantly rewarded with new pieces of equipment, weapons, and abilities--every hour of gameplay yields something new, which keeps you wanting to play to see what's next. The unfortunate downside of this is that there are so many different things to keep track of that it can get confusing sometimes. Unfortunately, the complex controls don't do much to curb this confusion. Every single face button on the controller is used (sometimes for more than one thing), and some moves require combinations of buttons to be pressed. Certain actions, such as throwing a charged boomerang at several targets, require a dizzying array of inputs to be made: in this case, you have to tap the right analog stick to enter aiming mode, hold the left trigger down, paint your targets with the cursor, and hold then release the right trigger to finally charge the boomerang and toss it. Because only so many pieces of gear can be instantly accessible through the D pad, in the latter parts of the game you'll find yourself frequenting the cumbersome inventory menu to swap out items for easy access, which can be annoying. Finally, the controls aren't always as responsive as they need to be, which can cause you to flub a jump, miss a dodge, or inexplicably fall while hanging off a wall or ceiling when you meant to do something entirely different. This doesn't happen often, but it's always troubling when it does.

War's a pretty big guy, but many of his opponents tower over him.

Though the world of Darksiders is one of decay and neglect following the premature apocalypse, it is still one of visual splendor. From the lush vegetation of the Drowned Pass to the barren desert of The Ashlands, a refreshingly bright and colorful palette is always on display. Varied and imaginative, the open world and dungeons look great, though there are some unfortunate graphical issues in the Xbox 360 version. Screen tearing is a huge problem that surfaces almost any time the camera is rotated, and it's bad enough to distract you even when you're just exploring. In addition, battles that get too big make the frame rate suffer, causing graphical slowdown. The PlayStation 3 version suffers neither of these issues. Action in Darksiders is punctuated by an appropriately moody and atmospheric soundtrack, and the vocal cast does a good job bringing the characters to life, considering how meagerly they're fleshed out. Mark Hamill in particular seems to relish his role as the Watcher, a sadistic demon tasked with keeping an eye on War (though it's a bit odd to hear him recycle his Joker voice so soon after Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Darksiders unapologetically borrows gameplay ideas and mechanics from all over the spectrum and is constantly cramming new ones in all the way up to the very end. While it's not innovative by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it entirely derivative, as these myriad features not only gel together surprisingly well, but when put together even feel fresh again. Though it's hobbled by a disappointing story and excessively complex controls (as well as some technical issues on the Xbox 360), Darksiders is a fun and entertaining adventure with a host of fair but challenging puzzles, a lengthy single-player campaign, and an engaging combat system.

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

6244941War isn't about to let anything stand between him and vengeance.none

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

Executions are bloody, violent, and fun to perform.

While plenty of games are set in a postapocalyptic wasteland, not many let you participate in the actual end of the world. In the case of Darksiders, this is precisely where the action begins. Influenced by games like God of War and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and often dangerously straddling the line between homage and plagiarism), Darksiders offers an expansive world to explore, with satisfying combat and intriguing puzzles to solve peppered throughout. Though it falls prey to a poorly fleshed-out story and overly complex controls that don't always work the way they should, Darksiders is nonetheless a thoroughly fun and visually engaging adventure that manages to take some old ideas and make them feel fresh once again.

6244941War isn't about to let anything stand between him and vengeance.none

As War, the red rider of the Four Horsemen, your job is pretty simple. An enforcer of the Charred Council, a neutral body that maintains the balance between the forces of heaven and hell, you apply pressure to make sure that both sides play fair in their endless bickering. Perhaps the Four Horsemen's most important duty, however, is to heed the call of the Endwar and punish anyone unlucky enough to be found on Earth. When you're somehow prematurely summoned to Earth, which begins a chain of events that ends with the unfortunate extinction of humankind and the victory of the armies of The Destroyer, it's time for vengeance. You are charged with the crime of upsetting the balance and are sent back to Earth to find answers, or die trying. Though it's a grand setup, once the first hour or so of gameplay passes, the plot quickly runs out of steam and devolves into absurdity. None of the characters you're introduced to are fleshed out beyond weak stereotypes and one-dimensional cliches, and the various plot twists and turns are predictable and unsatisfying.

While wandering through the great wasteland that was once civilization, War takes out his boundless rage on both the legions of The Destroyer and the armies of heaven in fun and brutal combat. Slow-paced and methodical, battles typically pit you against large numbers of foes, which the wide, sweeping strikes of War's weapons allow you to hit en masse. Once beaten to within an inch of their lives, enemies can be brutally executed with the press of a single button (indicated by a floating button icon above their heads), though some of the weaker enemies can be similarly dispatched from the get-go. Besides his massive sword, War can have a secondary weapon equipped (such as his brother Death's scythe), and it's simple to switch between the two even during a furious assault. With a quick sliding move that can be activated at almost any time to dodge an attack or break off a combo and switch targets, War is surprisingly nimble for such a bulky guy. This freedom, when coupled with your ability to transition instantly into an execution, makes fights feel extremely fluid, even when their generally slow pace is taken into consideration. But while it's incredibly satisfying to eviscerate an enormous horned devil or cut the wings off an armored angel, battle is, surprisingly enough for a guy named War, only one half of the equation.

Executions are bloody, violent, and fun to perform.

Dragon Age Review

Since the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998, BioWare has cultivated a strong reputation for quality role-playing games, exploring various aspects of the genre ranging from traditional D&D roles and rules to space marine and Jedi Knights. Dragon Age: Origins is a shift back to traditional swords-and-sorcery standards, unashamedly embracing the archetypes that made RPGs what they are, and using them to tell a complex, interesting story in a familiar yet unexplored world. In addition, BioWare has done yet another iteration of their combat system to make it deeper and allow the player to dictate the level of engagement. The result is that Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best RPGs in recent history. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.
Character creation starts you off with a few simple choices that have far-reaching effects. There are three races (Human, Dwarf, Elf), and three classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue), and they are much as you'd expect if you've ever played a fantasy RPG before. Depending on what you pick, one or two of the 'Origins' stories becomes available. These are short scenarios which detail the introduction of your character to the main plot line. For example, Human Rogues get their beginning as part of a noble house. Dwarf Warriors can choose either the dwarf noble or dwarf commoner starting areas, and both Elven and Human mages share a starter-story due to their class. (The only race restriction is that Dwarves can't be Mages.) These decisions affect how NPCs interact with your character throughout the game.

While only having three classes may seem limiting, your characters will have a high degree of customization as you start leveling up. You have talent trees (well, not so much 'trees' as 'lines') and each level gives you a talent point to spend. The talent lines are divided up into major fighting categories. The categories for Warriors are Dual Weapon, Archery, Weapon and Shield, and Two-Handed. Within each of these categories are sets of activated and passive abilities that grow progressively more powerful as you spend more talent points in that line.

The result of this is that you can easily have multiple Warriors in a group, each performing a different role and having different gameplay. One can swing a massive axe and lay waste to whatever he touches, and another can grab a shield and take on the tank role, utilizing a host of defensive talents. Mages get a similar selection of roles, and are able to play as elemental sorcerers, healers/buffers, or dabblers in the dark arts. On top of all this, each class has a set of four Specializations, which confer certain bonuses and unlock another set of abilities. Rogues can choose to become bards, which grants them songs to buff their party and mesmerize their enemies; they can also choose Assassin, making them better at finding weak spots, or Ranger, which lets them summon forest creatures to their aid. You get to pick a specialization at levels 7 and again at 14, but perhaps the most interesting part is how you acquire them. Some you can purchase, some are trained by various NPCs or party members, and others are unlocked by quests.

The stat system will be instantly familiar to anyone with experience in the genre; strength makes you hit harder, constitution makes you tougher, etc. It's quite simple, and the tooltips explain everything you need to know. Every level gives you three stat points to spend as you will. Various items and talents will have a stat requirement to use or acquire, but it's a fairly smooth progression. You won't typically have to wait very long to use that shiny new sword you picked up. There's no single, monolithic alignment system, but your actions will have an effect on how NPCs treat you. Perhaps more importantly, your actions will have an effect on how your group members feel about you. Each of them has an Approval Rating, which is a measure of how much they like you. Extreme ratings can unlock side plots — friendship and romance for high ratings, mutiny and abandonment for low ratings — and they can have an effect on the characters' stats.

The Approval system is a fun way to learn about each of your companions. There's a surprising amount of story to be told for each of them. Surprising, at least, until you realize how much story there is in the rest of the game. I was impressed by how often I had a meaningful choice in how the plot unfolded. That is, when the dialogue allowed for different options, they didn't feel like window dressing. (e.g. Do you want to kill him? Yes/No Yes. Are you sure? No/I Guess Not Damnit.) I just picked whichever option I felt like picking, and the plot still worked.

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The story succeeds, by and large, for two reasons: the writing and the voice acting. BioWare made a lot of noise about getting some big names for Dragon Age: Origins (and they did; Kate Mulgrew, Claudia Black, Tim Curry, Steve Valentine, and Tim Russ, to name a few), but that isn't a guarantee of good voice work. Virtually all of the NPC dialogue in this game is spoken (you can skip through it if you care to; I rarely felt the need to), even when you're asking them about mundane things, so poor voice acting would be hard to tolerate after a while. But this cast turned in a performance that (sadly) I don't tend to expect from video games. What helped a lot in this regard is that the characters are very well written — which is to say they actually seem fleshed-out and believable, with a personality that's consistent from one scene to the next. The details of how the characters react to events and interact with each other are spot on. Your companions will occasionally trade jokes or insults at random times throughout the game, whether you're in the middle of dialogue or just wandering through a city.

Now, don't get me wrong; the plot itself is interesting too, but it's hard to tread new ground here (Doom threatens the world; a hero arises; things go wrong that the hero must put right), and the writers don't really worry about doing so. They're just trying to tell a cool story. Without spoiling too much, the Mage Tower story in the main plot is particularly fun. The writers leave you a trail of breadcrumbs to figure out what happened, dump you into fantasy land for a few puzzles and a different way of fighting, then top it off with an epic battle, all while maintaining an atmosphere of hopelessness and dread. What's more, all the different portions of the main plot are completely distinct, each with its own moral dilemmas, level layout, look, and back-story.

In addition to countless hours of dialogue, one big way BioWare goes about establishing their game world is through books, scrolls, and notes scattered around the areas you visit. When you click on them, they'll put a page or so of text in your Codex explaining who's who and what's what, so you're not inundated with a flood of made-up, fantasy-world names at any one time. The Codex entries are relevant to whatever task you're currently doing, and vary in form from dictionary-style explanation to diary entries to poems.

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So, how about the gameplay? Many RPGs have met their downfall on the weakness of their combat mechanics, or have succeeded in spite of it. (I'll name no names, but one such rhymes with Moblivion.) Like several other BioWare games, you can pause the action and queue up an ability that will fire off when you un-pause. You can also take control of any other party member(s) whenever you please. Group size tops out at four, which allows a fair amount of micromanagement without becoming tedious. For general commands like attacking or movement, you can control multiple party members at once. There's not a lot of movement during combat. Rogues have bit of an incentive to move behind their targets, and mages will occasionally have cause to kite a monster, but most of the running you do will be to get your melee in range to hit something. My only major gripe is that melee classes tend to run out of stamina quickly, so for long battles they spend a lot of time auto-attacking.

Even with just that, it would be a solid combat system, but there are three other major features which allow you customize your level of engagement. First, there are four difficulty settings. Easy will let you basically just point-and-click to win. Normal will require some planning and pausing, and some potion use on the tougher fights. Hard makes you do a lot more micromanagement, use consumables often, and watch out for friendly fire. Nightmare is for people who should probably be medicated. Second, you can set generalized behaviors for each of your party members; this will make them run to seek a fight, run away, ignore it altogether, or a few other options.

Third is your Tactics page. This lets you set up responses to a large variety of actions or game states. For example, you can set a Mage to cast a heal when somebody drops below 50% health. Or, you could have your warrior tank run over to attack whatever monster is beating on your rogue. There are hundreds of trigger conditions neatly laid out in a set of drop-down menus. You can set some some fairly complex behavior if you'd like to, or just automate the basic tasks. When you put this whole system together, you end up being able to tailor the fighting to your personal preference for involvement. You can micromanage as much or as little as you want.

The UI is very streamlined and responsive. The camera is over-the-shoulder, and if you zoom out far enough it pulls back to an almost top-down, "tactical" view. (The console versions are restricted to over-the-shoulder.) For using your abilities, you have a boilerplate action bar, and your group portraits are off to the left for monitoring health and mana. If I were nitpicking, I'd say the health and mana bars should be somewhat thicker; they're a bit small to take in the whole group at a glance. Click-able bars pop up on the bottom of your screen whenever you get quest or codex updates (and a few other things), which makes it very easy to keep track of what's going on with the plot. You can hold down a button to highlight everything on screen that you can interact with (chests, NPCs, monsters, loot-able corpses, quest items, doors), so finding what you're looking for is dead easy.

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That streamlining carries over into the gameplay as well. Any of your party members who fall in battle come back to life if the remaining characters win the fight. It's silly from a realism perspective, but at the same time it saves me from spending 30 seconds casting Resurrection every other battle or keeping 500 Phoenix Downs in my bags. (Though, oddly, characters come back to life with injuries — minor stat debuffs — that require an item or a visit to base camp to heal.) Itemization is perhaps a victim of this streamlining. As I leveled up, I naturally picked up better gear, but it never felt like the items made a significant difference. On the other hand, stat gains from leveling were constant, and new talents provided obvious improvements. Quests are sometimes quite simplistic because of the interface as well, but those quests mainly exist to serve the narrative. I expected this to bother me, but it didn't; I just wanted to see where the story was going.

Dragon Age: Origins has a ton of (quality) playtime in it; even more when you consider replayability. I'm sure I could go through the entire game again and have a largely different experience, both in story and in combat. (I tend to stick with a group configuration I like, so one of my potential companions has been sitting on the sidelines the whole time, and I slightly killed another one. Not to mention different talent choices and specializations.) BioWare didn't blaze a new trail within the genre, but they succeeded in their effort to create a game that presents a new, fun take on the familiar with elegance and polish

Uncharted 2 Review

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is unafraid to be exactly what it is: a big, rollicking summer popcorn flick of an action game, a finely honed piece of thrill-a-minute pop entertainment. There are no pretensions toward dramatic gravitas or new gameplay tricks, just a relentless drive to be as exciting, larger-than-life, and fun at every moment as it can possibly be. And you know what? At meeting that particular goal, this is the single most successful game I've ever played.

Naughty Dog has improved on every single aspect of the first Uncharted, a game that built a great blueprint out of components taken from other properties-- Gears of War's cover-based shooting, gymnastic traversal a la Tomb Raider, the swashbuckling treasure-hunting of Indiana Jones--but then failed to add those parts up to a whole that surpassed its own inspirations. Uncharted 2 fulfills all of that potential and then some, with better drama, better shooting, better graphics, better moments. Better everything. It's not that this game does anything particularly new, it just does what it does with a higher degree of presentation and polish than just about anything on the market.

Uncharted 2 turns on the strength of its story and characters; none of the game's numerous mechanical improvements would mean much if Nathan Drake, equal parts Indy and John McClane, weren't such a relatable and likable guy. Tough-talking but good-hearted, the guy absorbs an inhuman amount of physical punishment in every scene, and does it with a smirk and a one-liner. All the characters fit into some sort of action-movie archetype. Cigar-chomping old Sully and field-reporting love interest (and now heartbreaker) Elena are back from the first game, filling their respective roles as mentor and romantic foil the same as always.

New this time, there's Drake's sleazy British counterpart Harry, and a psychopathic warlord named Lazarevic who's way more frightening and sinister than any of the first game's villains. Then there's the game's best new character Chloe Frazer, the sultry, husky-voiced thief who has an eye for Drake but whose motivations are never completely clear. She serves as one-third of the most believable love triangle I can remember seeing in games, a medium that isn't exactly known for its realistic depictions of romance.

The story here has the crew hitting locations like Turkey, Borneo, and Nepal as they retrace the steps of Marco Polo in a search for the mythical kingdom of Shambhala and a priceless Buddhist artifact thought to be hidden there. The premise is pretty boilerplate treasure-hunting stuff, and best serves as a vehicle for the wonderful interactions you get between the characters, which must have been facilitated by the recording of the voiceover and motion data simultaneously between the actors while they were in the same room together. The result is, these characters also feel like they're in the same place together, riffing off of each other, responding to body language or a raised eyebrow, genuinely interacting. It all feels about as real as I've seen in video game cinematics, and though the lines aren't the work of Shakespeare (and don't need to be), they achieve exactly the sort of tone and emotional response you need to appreciate this sort of lighthearted action story.

You do need some interesting ways to occupy yourself in between expository cutscenes, of course, and this is where Uncharted 2 feels both the most improved over its predecessor and the most impressive in its own right. I have to mention the gigantic setpiece action moments right upfront, because those are the scenes that will stick with you long after you've finished the story. You're engaged in a pitched gunbattle on top of a speeding train. You're frantically fleeing down a tight alleyway from a pursuing jeep. You're playing cat-and-mouse with a tank that's methodically obliterating every piece of cover around you. You are continuing to trade fire with enemies inside a building that, under a hail of missiles and gunfire, is quite literally collapsing around you.

You're in control of all these moments. The sorts of action scenes that other games might relegate to prerendered video are the bread and butter of Uncharted 2's most exciting playable sequences, and they come at you frequently. Sure, plenty of games before this one have dropped you into similar impossible scenarios, but they've rarely done so with the sort of cinematic flair that colors nearly every minute of Uncharted 2. You get the sense that some designer at Naughty Dog studied every minute of this game intently throughout production, constantly asking "How can we make this part more awesome?" It feels like there's no end of inventive camera moves and angles, unexpected special effects, and smart, directed visual design all drawing your attention to exactly how incredible the action is. These sorts of thrills are hard to describe in words; you need to see them yourself to get the effect. But to show them to you would be to rob you of the joy of playing them firsthand. So all I can say to you is: Play this game. You won't be disappointed.

On a more basic mechanical level, I should note it's actually a ton of fun to shoot at and punch people in this game, in contrast to the first game where the shooting sometimes felt laborious and the melee combat was awkward. The shooting has been tightened up considerably in the sequel, with more and better guns, some much-needed changes to the grenade-throwing, and enemies that don't soak up a dozen bullets before they finally go down. The melee combat has been made simultaneously easier to handle and flashier--Drake has a huge number of hand-to-hand ways to take down enemies--and sneaking around to take out enemies stealthily is actually a viable option in a number of scenarios. Rather than an obstacle to unfolding the story, Uncharted 2's combat is a highlight of the game.

It's good enough to support a surprisingly robust multiplayer mode, anyway. With its cover-based setup, Uncharted 2 multiplayer ends up feeling a bit like Gears of War, with a similar priority on fighting up-close, melee attacks, and grenades. But the traversal mechanics from the campaign carry over here to let you climb, crawl, and shimmy your way up and down the maps, giving you more mobility than you'd ever see out of Marcus Fenix and enabling some quick escapes during intense action.

I had the most fun with the game's cooperative modes. These are limited to three players, which I'd like to think was due to a conscious design decision and not technical limitations. The arena is the best, rawest demonstration of the game's combat, as it subjects your team to 10 increasingly harrowing rounds of encroaching enemies in the style of Gears' horde mode. There are also three standalone co-op scenarios adapted from the single-player (each with their own brief cinematics and unique voiceover) that let you fight tons and tons of AI enemies while moving from point A to B, rather than holing up in a single defensible position, as you do in the arena. Both modes are a blast, and can get painfully, ridiculously busy and difficult at the higher levels. But it's a good sort of hurt.

There's plenty of great competitive multiplayer in here too, with a number of small-team objective modes based on the sorts of game types you see in most multiplayer games, focusing on delivering an item to a capture location and that sort of thing. The online mode has a full character progression system a la Call of Duty that lets you rank up and access weapon upgrades, new character skins, and "boosters" (perks) that modify all sorts of little variables in your gameplay, like reload speeds and how much experience you gain. The multiplayer progression is really smartly designed, with separate upgrades that go toward the competitive and cooperative modes, so you can specialize in the game types you like playing more. These upgrades are in addition to the typical single-player unlockables you get with a Naughty Dog game, including new character models, visual filters, and some nicely produced behind-the-scenes videos. This is an incredibly complete package, overall.

I'd have to reach to offer any significant criticisms of this game, because none readily present themselves. You might end up ducking behind the wrong cover or grabbing the wrong handhold once in a while, I guess. (There, are you happy?) Naughty Dog set out with a very specific goal in mind, and in focusing intently on that goal, they blew right past it. Uncharted 2 is a sublime example of how to make a great action game, the result of fantastic execution on every aspect of the game's design and development. It's the best, most memorable game I've played in a long, long time.

Splinter Cell Conviction Peview

Ever since its showing earlier this year at E3, Splinter Cell Conviction has been the darling of the games press at large. It seems that the rough, tough hero of the series, Sam Fisher, is no longer merely a poor-man's Solid Snake, but rather a legitimate action game icon in his own right. The wait for Splinter Cell to be considered among gaming's elite has been a long one, but from what we've been able to get stuck into so far, it's a position that it seems to be taking up quite comfortably.

The story surrounding the events in Conviction is hardly an original one. It involvies you searching for clues as to the identity and whereabouts of those responsible for killing your daughter, while trying to stay one step ahead of constant attempts on your life at the hands of your former employer, the Third Echelon. If you've ever seen a Bourne movie or an episode of ‘24' then you probably already have a decent idea as to what you can expect in terms of narrative - i.e. excitement first, explanation later or perhaps not even at all.

As Fisher is no longer on anyone's payroll, we find ourselves at the start of the demo without the usual collection of fancy gizmos and gadgets one would use to partake in the kind of tactical espionage action used by a man of such talents. The order of the day here is to make do with whatever you can find until you get a chance to steal something altogether more expensive - preferably with a few little green lights that look cool in the dark - starting with a piece of a car's wing mirror that you've happily smashed with a quick whack of your elbow. The piece of mirror comes in handy for looking under doorways, allowing you to observe any enemies on the other and plan your assault (or evasion) accordingly.

Your mirror handling skills are put to the test immediately. After silently disposing of a guard monitoring anyone coming back and forth through a door leading into the museum (with a little help from a ledge and the accompanying hard landing), you need to use the mirror to locate the guards on the other side. There are then a number of different options available to you, depending on how you eliminated the initial guard. If you disposed of him silently (i.e. without him, or anyone else, seeing you) then you're rewarded with a couple of execution points. Execution points make it a whole lot easier to kill enemies quickly and efficiently, without being seen or wasting lots of ammunition.

To use your earned points you simply move the cursor over the desired target and hit the button to tag him, resulting in a white circle appearing over his head. The white circle is visible through walls and ceilings, so you always know where your victim is and in what direction he is moving. When you've got yourself into a good position, with a line of sight to your target (the white circle turns red to indicate you're in range) you need only hit the ‘Y' button (on 360) and Fischer will take him out with a well-placed shot to the head.

As you needn't be concerned about lining up a head shot the flow of the game (at least during the segment we played) is much improved from previous instalments in the franchise; removing the painstaking process of setting up a good position and slowly moving the target reticule until you've got the perfect shot. Despite taking some control away from you in these moments, you feel more powerful - able to use all of Fischer's abilities without worrying so much about committing an error on your part. Whether or not the need to aim manually is completely removed remains to be seen, but it's certainly possible to complete the demo we played without firing a shot outside of the targeting system - providing you're playing using stealth and earning enough

DEMON SOUL REVIEW

From Software is a strange and fascinating developer. Mention the name and Armoured Core is what usually springs to mind, or occasionally Otogi, but when it's not making mech games From's output encompasses a vast range of extremes - cutesy co-op platformer Cookies and Cream, Tenchu, card-battler Lost Kingdoms, horror adventure Echo Night, broken, miserablist cult series King's Field. And this, the most interesting PlayStation 3 exclusive I've ever played.

Demon's Souls is a brutal, bleak action combat RPG that pits your lone character against a universe full of violent demons. They range from former human soldiers to agile, double scimitar-wielding skeletons, pouncing flame-creatures, octopus-headed guards, embryonic plague-carrying monstrosities, even Death himself. The game's five worlds - all massive - are split into four different sections, each guarded by a horribly large and hardcore boss monster. Everything in the entire world is designed to kill you, quickly and often without warning.

The only safe place is the Nexus, a haven for tormented souls. It acts as a hub from which you can access the five worlds, or buy and upgrade your character's weapons and abilities to give them a slightly better chance of survival. It is one of the most difficult modern videogames in existence, refusing to make even the slightest concession to your happiness or mental well-being. For this reason, developing a devotion to Demon's Souls has been the gaming equivalent of falling in love with an emotionally stunted, occasionally violent sociopath.

It's not a hack-and-slasher, though Demon's Souls incorporates the best elements of that genre into its accomplished weapons combat. The pace is slower, and you can learn to use magic, miracles, ranged attacks, scavenged items and enchanted equipment to give you a wealth of alternatives to slicing things up with a sword.

Demon's Souls is deeply tactical, preferring to pit you one-on-one against vicious and high-level enemies that can use the same tactics, weapons and magic as you rather than drowning you in a sea of lesser foes. You slowly build up a large inventory of vastly differing equipment and skills for yourself as you inch your way through the levels, finding treasure, killing demons and using the souls you get from them to buy a tiny bit more health, strength, magic power, carry weight or life-saving equipment.

What you fight with is entirely up to you. Any character can scavenge, buy and use any weapon. Go with a sword and shield and you can parry enemies' attacks with the latter before stabbing them through the heart in slow motion, if your timing's good enough (mistime your parry, and you'll probably die). Choose a dagger and light armour and you can roll and dart around before stabbing demons in the back for a similar, satisfyingly gory critical hit.

Using a bow lets you stalk enemies in first-person from a distant turret. Find a wand, and you can cast magic; find a talisman, you can heal yourself with miracles. The closest comparison is Monster Hunter, but Demon's Souls' combat controls are more precise; the weapons feel realistic rather than comically extreme. Fighting is physical, violent and cathartic, and you find yourself forming genuine attachments to favourite weapons.This, meanwhile, will kill you by shooting a metal bolt three times your own width through your chest from the sky.

There's unrestricted scope for developing your character in different directions. You can play it as a nimble magic user with an assassin's dagger, or hide behind a heavy shield and two-inch-thick body armour whilst skewering things in the dark with a lance, and you can switch between these two strategies at will by changing your equipment.

That flexibility prevents the game from ever getting stale and equally prevents you from falling into easy habits or closing off interesting options from yourself through your choice of class. You're constantly forced to change your approach, if not by choice then by the sheer variety of aggressive enemies that the game throws at you. No one strategy works against all of them.

When you die in Demon's Souls - and you will die, a lot - you lose your physical body, becoming a soul with half a health bar (although in practice it's more like a three quarters, as there's a ring in the very first world that lets you cling a little closer to life). The only way to get it back is to kill a boss monster.
When you die again you lose all of the demon souls you've collected from your hard graft, and have to fight your way back through the level to your own bloodstain to regain them - at which point you either have to sprint for dear life away from whatever killed you the last time, or face getting unceremoniously dispatched by it once more. Die a third time before you make it back to your bloodstain and those souls are gone forever, which is truly heartbreaking when you have to work so hard for them.

To summarise, you end up playing the vast majority of Demon's Souls as either a dead person or a dead person with no money. Every time you die, you start again at the beginning, with all the enemies you just struggled to overcome back where they were. There is no compromise. There's not even a pause button. You get better, or you get nowhere.

(Oh, and also - after a certain point, other players can invade your game at any point and attempt to assassinate you, just to make life even easier. But more on Demon's Souls' online capabilities later.)

If that sounds unbelievably frustrating, well, yes, it can be. It's harshly punishing. But it's not unfair. Demon's Souls puts you up against impossible odds, after all - you're the only living thing left in the world, apart from the stranded, struggling survivors that you occasionally come across exploring some dark tunnel in the Tower of Latria, or down a forgotten mineshaft in Stonefang Tunnel.

The only thing to do is try again, and again and again, observing the demons' behaviour and the layout of the levels, learning the cruel tricks that the game plays on you to lure you towards death, until, finally, you're capable of winning.

Precisely because the odds are so stacked against you, precisely because the game sometimes seems to hate you with every fibre of its being, when you do finally kill the bastard f***-off enormous boss monster that ended you within half a minute the first time you approached it, the resulting heart-in-mouth euphoria is the purest kind of gaming thrill. Demon's Souls is about facing up to the impossible, and winning.

Because dying sends you straight back to where you entered the world from the Nexus you spend a lot of your time working through the same sections to make it back to where you were, especially if you were slaughtered by the boss at the end of that section. But it's not grinding. It's not about slaughtering things mindlessly until you've built your stats up enough to progress, though repetition is a part of it - instead it's training, learning, figuring out new strategies, experimenting with different techniques.

Skill is what determines your strength in Demon's Souls, not numbers. Technique will always make up for thousands of souls spent on attribute points. Every time you die, you learn that little bit more, get that little bit further; it's addictive, masochistically so.

And yet, the game manages to hold the constant threat of death above your head without ever feeling meaningless. In games where you spend a lot of time dying, that fear of death tends to dissipate - death is rarely even an inconvenience in modern videogames, nothing more than the threat of getting sent back two minutes to the last automatic checkpoint - but not here.

Once you get your body back, finally, the very fear of losing it again makes you chicken, reluctant to probe too far into unfamiliar caverns. Demon's Souls can inspire sheer terror, make you fear for your life; you never know what's lurking around the next corner, exactly whom those two glowing red eyes in the dark at the end of the tunnel belong to, but you do know that whatever it is, it will probably hurt you. Badly.

Demon's Souls' foreboding atmosphere reinforces this fear. One of the first things the game asks you to do is turn the brightness down. Its world is comprised of dark, ominous places - a prison tower wracked with the tortured screams of undead captives, an abandoned mineshaft that gradually opens out into a massive underground complex inhabited by a variety of horrible things, a crumbling fort guarded by skeleton warriors.

GOD OF WAR 3 PREVIEW

August 19, 2009 - There's no getting around the fact that God of War III is going to be a massive game. Kratos, the god-killing warrior with his legendary Blades of Chaos, will undoubtedly turn some heads when he lands on Sony's current-gen console. As the previous two God of War games (and the Chains of Olympus PSP prequel) are cornerstones of the action genre, God of War III has a lot to live up to. Although I was excited to get some hands-on time with Kratos' latest bloody outing, I was disappointed to see that this was the same demo as the demo Roper went hands-on with during this year's E3 show, which in turn sounds like the demo Jeff covered long ago. So nothing I say here will be new.

If you haven't bothered reading our previous coverage (shame on you), the demo involves Kratos tearing through a series of soldiers, harpies and more, and then culminates into a feverish escape from a crumbling tunnel using massive feathered wings. All the head-ripping, blood-flailing, harpy-riding goodness has returned, which is certainly awesome to see, but there's nothing new to speak of.

The game already feels fast and ferocious, but I'm actually a bit concerned with the visuals at the moment. Sure, God of War looks really good when you get up close and personal, but there are moments, as Kratos runs about slashing skeletons, where I find the art style to be very generic. Perhaps this is due to the visual style of the particular level, or maybe the God of War formula isn't quite clicking with me yet, but sometimes I just don't see the appeal.

But that doesn't matter right now. This demo build could just be really old. So move along.