Two boobs good, four boobs better

If you’re a die hard gamer, you’ll have this one already and if you do, you’ll have done one of two things:

• Become entirely underwhelmed by the start of it, but give it a chance in the hope it gets better
• Realise that you’ve seen it all before and bring it back to shove up the arse of the fucker who took your hard earned money for it

If you’re a new gamer you might have this and think it’s great.  It’s not.  You poor poor fool you.

I saw Paddy eye this one up in the airport on our recent trip to Thorpe Park, I have to admit that I’d never heard of it, or even the first one.  I’m pretty sure that in order for there to be a 2 of something, there must have been a 1.

So when my Xbox died and I got a game “free” with the new one, I decided to opt for this one.

Knowing nothing about the first game, I can’t tell you if it’s better than the first one or not.  But I will say this, if it is an improvement on the first one, how was a sequel justified?

The only game that SCREAMS to mind when the gameplay starts is GTA, only set in 1940′s mafia territory.  If it sounds like a larf, it will be, for about 10 minutes.

The start off missions begin like any other game, as softly softly missions to ease the newbie to the games into the world.  Fair enough.  Trouble is though with gamers with a little more experience, they tend to judge the gameplay on these first few missions.  And it’s during these early stages that the whole thing begins to go tits up.

There’s so much wrong with this game it’s hard to know where to start, so rather than bitch about them for 1200 words, here’s some handy bullet points

• It’s shit
• Yup, that’ll do it

The fist fights involve you waiting for your turn to throw a punch or dodge your opponent’s jabs.  It’s a three button affair that screams of my Mega Drive days playing Streets of Rage.  The map is Huuuuuuuuuuuge and there’s fuck all to fill it in terms of places to go, or things to do.  You can explore the map, but that’s all you’ll be doing.  There is no interaction in the map, with characters or environment unless you’re on a mission.  So it’s not like GTA where you can just pick randomers off with a Tommy Gun.  The missions are standard stuff like, drive this guy here, take this package there, have a boring and frustrating fist fight every now and again and get chased by the fuzz.  This also may have been a glitch, but at one point I got so bored that I started a fight with a copper, only to run around a corner and lose all the flashing stars that were out to get me.

There is an interesting feature of having to pick locks to steal cars, instead of just running up to one and finding that the owner has left the keys in it.  But this does fuck all when you’re being shot at.

Although, all you’ll have to do in this instance is hide behind something like an orange box and you’re shielded by the bullets.  Popping your head out of cover for a head shot and you’re done.

I don’t know why, but for some reason the first time you get control of the main character (Vito) is in WW2.  This is where you’ll learn to get cover, shoot and kill suckers.  Is this because there’s so many of us stuck playing war games?  Dunno, but it makes no sense to me.

You have to go to bed to rest, you have to eat to replace energy levels, which all sounds like they want to keep a sense of some sort of reality in the game, but it’s all too little that no one gives a shit about.  Plus it’s frustrating as fuck.

There are some good points though.

And they lie in the cinematic sections.  You’ll look forward to these more than the actual game, which is great for the animators of the sections, and shite for the programmers.  They are beautifully put together and really are like mini movie segments, instead of just fillers for game makers who realise that they’ve a shit game.  But then, that may have been what happened here.

It’s out now and costs around the €50 mark for a new copy and probably about €30 for a second hand copy.

Unless you loved the first one and Nurse Ratched took your brain like poor old McMurphy, leave it where you see it.

If you don’t believe me, check out this mega boring gameplay trailer from last years Gamescom.

Over all I’ll give it 2/5.

Shank is, and I mean this in just a cool a way as it sounds, Danny Trejo: The Game. Like the recently released Limbo, Shank is a perfect example of how downloadable games can be gorgeous looking and fun alternatives to their more expensive store released brothers.

Story

The story is something like The Crow crossed with Kill Bill on the set of Dusk Till Dawn. You play as Shank, the titular hero, who has been wronged by his previous employers and left for dead after they slaughtered and (it is implied) raped the shit out of his lady. The game starts you out seven years after the betrayal/rape/beating, with Shank kicking the living snot out of a bar full of scumbags, trying to track down the group who fucked him over. You then spend the rest of the game shooting, stabbing, and chainsawing your way to justice.

The story is nothing revolutionary, and some moments will have you laughing outright at the silliness of it all, but it makes for an amusing yarn. Any doubts as to whether the tongue is placed firmly enough in the cheek will leave you when you fight a certain boss who is decked out in S n’M gear and sends henchmen furries after you. It’s pulpy, trash, funny entertainment – and it works a treat.

Design

Shank shows Barney the "Finglas Cuddle"

One of the best things about Shank is the co-operative multiplayer option. Normally when predominantly single player games throw in a co-op mode it doesn’t actually bring anything new to the table, but newer releases like Splinter Cell: Conviction and now Shank are offering new storylines and narratives to the multiplayer element. Co-op mode takes the form of a prequel to Shank’s tale of vengeange. You team up with a dude named Falcone and bash, stab and bludgeon your way through waves of enemies. It’s slightly different to the single player mode in that you can do double takedowns, and you occasionally have to make tactical decisions about how to dole out weapons and health. A new storyline and bosses make this a very worthwhile addition, but players should be warned that co-op can only be played locally. This is great news for me, a firm believer that couch co-op is infinitely more fun and satisfying than the social black void of headset multiplayer, but it may irk some.

At certain points Shank reaches a near-biblical level of difficulty. Yep, the old-school difficulty curve can be hard to get used to for us modern day molly-coddled gamers, but you can rest assured that it never gets too difficult for too long – apart from one fiendishly hard boss on the co-op campaign, which took me and a buddy nearly 40 minutes to beat. Like its ancestors, Shank features some frustrations that will drive you completely round the bend – such as one level where it rains missiles at random for the entire duration. Thankfully, these wont mar your experience too much, and most are thankfully brief. While it has some hiccups, the game is well balanced enough so that Shank will always feel like the biggest bad ass in the world when you’re in control of him.

Gameplay

Shank is nothing if not ballsy

Shank is strictly 2-D, meaning you wont have to worry about much except moving forward and fighting dudes, with the odd platforming section thrown in. The combat works very well, for the most part. All of Shank’s hand drawn animations look beautiful and feel great to pull off. There has been some hubbub on message boards across the net about the animations taking a while to complete and leaving Shank vulnerable. Yes, this happens, but it’s not gamebreaking in the least, and the exact same thing features in a whole slew of games from Street Fighter to God of War with the intention of forcing the player to think outside the button mashing box and plan their attacks.

You collect a bunch of different weapons to compliment your namesake knives as you progress through the story, and you’ll definitely find a favourite amongst them. Certain weapons are needed for the odd occasion but for the most part they merely serve as more options to dispense with the waves of baddies coming towards you.

The second playable character, Falcone, looks the head off Danny Trejo. Awesome.

And murder them you will. Fuck their day up entirely you will. Annihalate the shit out of them YOU WILL! And by god is it fun. You have basic melee attacks, a heavy attack, and guns and grenades – but the best part is mixing all these together to create that ultimate bad-ass death combo. You can get by at the start fairly easily by mashing buttons, but soon you’ll have to mix up your ranged and close-up attacks carefully. This is great fun thanks to the interesting grapple and pounce mechanics, which feature more prominently than in other beat em ups. The pounce button enables you to pin smaller enemies, you can then stick them a couple of times to keep them compliant as you use your guns to keep more dangerous enemies at bay. Jesus how psychotic did that sound?

The enemies are varied enough and good craic to fight. There are definitely some that will drive you batty but this makes it all the more satisfying when you jack them up proper. Boss battles are well designed and fun, tasking you with staying alive until you figure out the right combination of moves or which weakness to exploit to win.

There is one very odd design choice in that the same button that is used for picking up health replenishing items and weapons also happens to be the main attack button. Oftentimes you’ll accidentally drink all your nourishing cervezas by accident in the heat of a boss battle, or steal some grenades or health that your second player desperately needs in co-op. This is a baffling and frustrating problem in an otherwise tight and responsive game.

Presentation

Only Shank can draw cocks with the blood spatter from his chainsaw.

Shank is absolutely stunning to look at, featuring a slick hand-drawn look that echoes Samurai Jack and the short lived Clerks: The Animated Series cartoon shows. The whole vibe is a wonderful super-polished old school. You get the names of the baddies you’re fighting á la Streets of Rage, which is a nice touch. Environments are nicely varied, making the game feel a lot bigger and deeper than it actually is, with Shank travelling everywhere from a speeding train to a seedy strip club to an old castle on his quest for vengeance.

The Music is great, once you get over the fact that it is heavily informed by the spanish guitar-led Mexicorchestral pieces that Robert Rodriguez has been featuring in his movies as far back as El Mariachi and Desperado. Voice works also fares well, falling  just the right side of 80′s ridiculousness, with Shank himself being voiced by someone doing a pretty good Danny Trejo impression

I may have mentioned a lot of elements Shank has borrowed from, but it is one of the examples of video games taking from movies (that at least this time wasn’t fucking Aliens) where it really works and for this it should be applauded. It has enough of it’s own style and approach that it lands a good deal inside the lovely land of homage, instead of the festering clungepit of rip-off valley.

Overall

The single player campaign lasts about 4-5 hours, with about 3 hours to get through the co-op campaign. When you consider that this game might last you longer than a lot of action titles, then the asking price seems quite fair. As I said in my Limbo review, you’d also be supporting a new studio who have made something genuinely fresh instead of another Gears of War, Resident Evil or Call of Duty clone.

Klei Entertainment have created a fun and addictive old-school brawl em up, with visual flair in spades. Sure there are flaws, but if games like Prototype, The Force Unleashed and The Punisher taught us anything, it’s that a few minor flaws are easy to overlook when you give a player so many different ways to destroy someone – in style!

Danny Trejo for Taoiseach!!

Shank is available on XBLA for 1200 MS Points (14.40) or PSN for €12.99.

We couldn’t actually make it to Gamescom this year, although the invite was there, we were doing other things like getting lap dances.  Still a good friend of mine did happen to be there and offered to share all the things she saw and people she spoke to.

In a guest post from English Mum (A person for whom the terms “yummy mummy” and “milf” were created) she dishes the dirt on Gamescom 2010.

*** *** ***

Admit it, you’ve all got a person in your mind when you think about a gamer. I wouldn’t say there was a ‘type’ exactly, but arriving at Gamescom 2010 in Cologne, there certainly seems to be an awful lot of Comic Book Guys around, plus it’s pretty hard to spot a woman (oh, unless she is dressed up as Lara Croft in tight leather, obviously).

First up, though, I do meet a woman. Not just any old woman, admittedly, but Shannon Loftis, Studio Manager at Xbox and co-creator of the new Xbox Kinect. Shannon is adamant that Kinect, being controller-free (it recognises your body movements from a sensor placed on the TV) will make gaming more inclusive ‘I trialled the Kinect in my home, and everyone from the kids to the grandparents were joining in and having fun – removing the controller means that anyone can walk up to the TV and join in the game.’

As my kids play river rafting on Kinect Adventures (the launch title going out with every Kinect console), we chat about online gaming, and how she feels that it is becoming less ‘niche’: ‘I hope there’ll be a time when it’s not just young men that have gamer tags. I want it to be a safe environment for kids and a welcoming environment for women, too. Hopefully the Kinect will play a part in that’.

I tell her of my own son’s addiction to Halo and ask whether there’ll be ‘shoot ‘em ups’ released on Kinect? ‘I think with technology this new, it deserves new concepts designed from scratch’, hence she doesn’t see a Kinect version of Halo or Fable in Xbox’s future, but is certain that the platform will embrace every genre of game.

And what about the competition? I ask if it bothers her that there’ll be people taking her design apart and trying to copy it the minute it hits the shops. ‘Bring it on. I’m here to inspire the industry. My team designed most of the major technology in the Kinect system, and if that technology starts appearing on the market, then I’ve done my job well’

So with Kinect ready to launch, and ‘most of the bugs’ ironed out (‘I offered my kids $1 a bug, confident they wouldn’t find any – they found 19!’, she laughs), what’s next for gamers? ‘I can’t say too much, but we’re looking at technology that reads facial expressions – potentially the game could react differently to different emotions, and there’s 3D too’. As we leave, and the next German film crew are ready to come in, she asks if we can stay a bit longer: ‘it’s not been like working at all!’ – too late, though, because Comic Book Guy is already in the room.

Kinect goes on general release in November.

Fable III

Next up, I’m introduced to Peter Molyneux, the enigmatic creator of Fable and legendary games designer. He’s rushing off but quickly wants to show me the new Fable III. As we’re playing, he tells me that he wanted Fable III to be completely different. ‘I talked to a lot of people who had played Fable II and they couldn’t really tell me the story of the game. This time, I wanted it to have a beginning, a middle and an end – to be a real ‘quest’.’ He shows me several areas of the game that he’s really proud of. As usual, the setting is atmospheric and beautifully detailed. Gone are the difficult to navigate menus, and a new area with a ‘personal butler’ is easy to navigate. We ‘walk through’ and he shows me how you can try on costumes, rather than see a flat image of them. He laughs when he says his team wanted him to voice one of the characters in the new game. He thought it would be ‘naff’, (they settled on John Cleese instead), but as he rushes off he tells me that if you look closely, you’ll see his name on a gravestone – ‘that’s enough for me’.

Fable III is out 29/10/10.

Halo Reach

Lastly, I meet Brian Jarrard who heads up the 100 strong team from Bungie that have been working on the new Halo Reach ‘unlike ODST which was really just a small project with a few people working on it’. Brian explains that Halo Reach is a prequel game – the ending of which takes you to the beginning on the first Halo – and walks me through several parts of the game. Although, like with Fable III, we can only view a tiny section of the as yet unreleased game, he shows me Firefight, which now has customisable skulls, meaning endless possibilities for game play, and co-op which is now engineered so that the more people play, the harder the game becomes.

As we’re looking at the new armoury (I choose pink armour for my Spartan – well you have to don’t you?), Brian shows me some of the new armour effects (look out for ‘inclement weather’, which although it costs about ten million credits, will make your Spartan crackle and pop with lightening). Money’s not everything though – you need to work your way through the ranks to unlock a lot of the new armour.

Brian is proud of the new vehicles in the game, and explains that with new ‘motion capture’ techniques, they are more realistic than ever. As we wrap things up, Brian mentions that the game will be released on September 14th, and although time differences mean that the game will actually ‘go live’ in Australia first, his team will all be online playing it. I might even join them.

As part of a crossover piece with Chronic Reload, we’re going to pick our top 5 gaming franchises.

Disclaimer: Mario, Sonic and a few choice others will not be featuring in this list. Why? Because we said so, but also because icons like Mario and Sonic have, at this stage, fallen more into the category of branding than gaming – with their cute little faces slapped onto anything and everything in an attempt to get it marketed and sold. That’s not to say that there aren’t truly excellent Mario and Sonic games, but there’s been a whole heap of shite ones too, and franchises like Mario often have so many products that the coherency of the series is completely lost. For this reason, it’s best to leave them off the list as not to have to over-qualify their inclusion. Rant over. Enjoy!

Grand Theft Auto

GTA began life as a controversial top-down shooter, and it went on to change everything. The first GTA was released in 1997, and was one of the first mainstream mature games. It popularised sandbox gameplay, allowing the player to explore the huge city they inhabited, taking on missions and side objectives as they saw fit, or even not at all. For better and for worse, this changed the way games have been designed since, with scores of action titles using the same principle. When GTA III was released, the series went 3d and the critical and commercial success exploded. With GTA: Vice City, the already stellar production values reached a new high, with licensed music for all radio stations and a bevvy of high profile actors (Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, Ray Liotta and many, many more) voicing the game. The latest incarnation, GTA IV, was a landmark in realistic game physics, using the incredible Euphoria engine. At the time, it was also the biggest entertainment launch in history, selling more copies in 24 hours than any game before it until the release of Modern Warfare 2 in November 2009.

Street Fighter

If there’s one fighting game that has always been there for us, it’s Street Fighter. It is included in this list above other beat-em-ups not only for the excellent gameplay in the series, but also for the impact it has had on pop culture. Everyone of a certain age knows who Ryu, Ken, Chun Li and Blanka are, and phrases like “Hadouken” and “Shoryuken” are favourite injokes of nerds everywhere. Other fighting series have traded in the great gameplay and character design for over-the-top gore (Mortal Kombat) and jiggle physics (Dead or Alive), but none can come close to the iconic Street Fighter.  The series has spawned a handful of movies, manga, comic books, and even an RPG. Memorable characters, along with arguably the most fun and addictive gameplay of any beat-em-up, grant Street Fighter a well-deserved place in this list.

Call of Duty

The Call of Duty series went from being a well produced series of war games to being an international online phenomenon with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The series is known for its cinematic and bombastic single player campaigns, but the most important thing it has brought to the table is its addicting and mindblowingly popular online component. The latest installment, Modern Warfare 2, had roughly 8 million players online within the first 5 days of release, making it the most played online game at the time. It elbows out Halo in that the series has depicted more varied environments, weapons, and time periods. It also doesn’t feature a giant, boring, green-suited twat in its lead role.

God of War

From the opening moments of the first God of War title, you knew you were in for something special, as you hacked and slashed your way through a ship in the middle of a storm to battle a monstrous hydra. The game set a new standard for scale and action, with set pieces even eclipsing the outstanding Devil May Cry series, allowing you to interact with the cinematic moments through the introduction of Shenmue-style quicktime events. Like all other game series in this list, God of War has been copied to death, but what really stands out in the series is the protagonist, Kratos. Never before had we seen such a vicious, capable, violent and brooding badass in a game. The ash-skinned baldy had actual depth and backstory too, lending weight to the balletically savage obliteration of anything and everything in his path. The series’ story took a notable dip in the third installment, but the incredible gameplay and scale were still there in spades. This is how action games were meant to be made.

Fallout

An RPG is only as good as the world in which it immerses you, and here is where Fallout truly shines. The series is set in a retrofuturistic world, to which Bioshock owes a great deal of debt, where survivors of a nuclear war dwell in specially designed vaults. This doesn’t mean that the wastleland above is devoid of life though, as it is teeming with creatures, robots, bandits, mutants and more. Fallout 3 brought the previously isometric games to the 3d realm. The series is known for its dark themes (drug use, nuclear war, genetic experimentation) and its gallows humour, and its this personality and character that makes the world so memorable. What also sets the Fallout universe apart from other successful RPG series like Final Fantasy and Elder Scrolls is the interaction it demands from the player; you can be the selfless hero of the Wasteland, of you can be the drug abusing, thieving scourge of the people – with story arcs dramatically changing depending on your actions. The faultless atmosphere, complete with licensed music from the 40′s and 50′s, is just the icing on the cake.

Honourable mention: Halo, Final Fantasy, Half Life, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Soul Caliber, Metal Gear Solid, Pro Evolution Soccer, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, The Legend of Zelda

Have we left out any of your favourites? Let us know on the comments page below or get posting on the forum!

I’m a firm believer that if anything is going to be good that it’ll grab you by the nuts in the first moment and shake you about.

A new album can be judged by flicking through the first 20 seconds of each song.

A new movie by the opening scene.

A comedian by his first joke.

At least that’s how I judge shit and thus far this method has served me well.

So I judge video games on their first level.

It’s one of the reasons I’m still playing LIMBO as recommended by Cucipher last week.  You download the first bit, if you like it, just click “unlock” and you have a great game for a reasonable price.

I did something I don’t do a lot.  While the missus was out shoe shopping the other day I stumbled into a game shop, more to kill time than anything else.  A little surprised and turned on to see girls browsing and working in the shop.  It gives my winky a tingle when I see that, kind of like when a girl would come into the pool hall when I was younger.  They don’t usually inhabit these dark places.

Anyway, a casual stroll towards the Xbox 360 shelves to take a gander at what is on offer and I begin my browsing.

Some sports games, not for me.

Some role playing games., not for me.

Bayonetta is still pretty high on the list, but too expensive to buy when I had already gotten rid of it, even though I love that game, so not for me.

And all of the other titles you’ve read about in gaming mags and online for the last while.

But then, I spot a new game I’d heard nothing about and it’s number one in the game “charts”.  The title alone looks interesting.

SNIPER – Ghost Warrior.

The cover sees a sniper kitted out in sniper gear, clutching a sniper rifle and overlooking some random jungly rainforestery type area.  Looks good so far.

The tag line “One shot, One kill” is a bit dramatic if not a bit disappointing.  I’m used to knocking off two birds with one of my sniper stones thank you very much.  But we went on.

With a publisher name I’d never heard of in the form of City Interactive I should have been weary.

The only reason I sound so down on the game is because I had really high hopes for it.  I never buy new releases because I’ve been burnt in the past.  Too many times to list.  But Army of Two springs to mind.  This is why I spend most of my time killing noobs in MW2.  I like that game.  I love that game and it loves me and when Black Ops comes out we’re going to run away and make babies together.

I got home, stuck the disc in the Xbox and waited.

Looks impressive, but actually took 4 magazines of bullets and some creative bad language to get the controls to actually work for this shot.

The customary cinematic opening greeted me and it all seemed a little Call of Duty reject stuff.  The language, the voice overs, the names.

When you skip past that you get into the “training ground”.  Instead of being the rookie in Call of Duty training rounds, you’re the one doing the training.  That’s a creative twist, isn’t it?

The point of course is to give you a chance to get to grips with the controls, but all they really had to say was this:

“Thanks for taking the time to put Call of Duty down for a bit, we won’t take too much of your time and to make sure we don’t piss too many people off, we’ve copied everything functional about Call of Duty.  The controls, the weapons, the screen layout.  But we haven’t given you any decent game play.  Fuck it, we’ve got your money now.  You can go back to Call of Duty or to some forum and bitch like a little girl.  As you were”

It’s really that bad.

What you are about to see is the trailer, not actual gameplay as it suggests, but a fucking trailer made for trailer purposes.  I’ve been playing the game, and this is not actual game footage.

The controls are exactly the same as COD, in theory.  They’re just not responsive.  Having had too check the batteries in my controller a few times I finally realised that it was the game that wasn’t responding when I pushed the buttons.

Trying to crouch means holding B down for a second, in theory.  In fact you’ll have to try it a few times by which time you’ll have had your brains splattered all over your ass.

And you’ll find the same when you try shooting someone in your sights.  “Shoot!” you’ll scream while your dude just sits there getting shot at.  “Shoot you stupid motherfucker, you’re going to die!”  And he dies. You could try running and hiding, but here lies the other problem.

In the training area you have to hide from your recruits.  You have a little meter on the screen which flashes red when you’re in danger of being spotted, handy.

Trouble is, in “The real world” of the game, this does you fuck all good.  Crawling through grasses means you’ll be spotted from about 700 miles away by every cronie who cares to carry a better gun than you have.

You’re kitted out with so much camouflage that if you had a thought to yourself you’d wonder who said that.  But it doesn’t matter a fuck when you’re on your belly snaking through long grass.  You get shot at by people you can’t see but who can see you and that bugs the shit out of me.

By all means, challenge me, but do me a favour.  I doubt a real sniper in full gear would be spotted by some militia from over 300 meters away when he hasn’t even raised an eyebrow yet.

The other thing is your “radar”.  The thing with little red dots on it to show you where the bad guys are.  Handy little things sometimes.  Fuck all use in this game when the little red dots don’t show up until you’ve already been shot dead.

Maybe I’m a goober.  I have tried to get passed the first level so many times now that if I try it again I risk massive damage to my self esteem and my telly because I’ll be putting my controller through the screen.  It really is that frustrating.  The trouble is that they give you missions to complete that could be done with an assault rifle, not a sniper rifle.  After all, if every motherfucker is going to open fire when you blink you might as well jump out and go apeshit with a fully automatic of your choice.

I reckon that Microsoft and City Interactive have tried to cash in on the culture of those cunts who use a sniper rifle at every opportunity in COD.  They can have those wankers for all I care.

So I’m judging this game on one level, but trust me if you waste your money on it, you’ll be doing the same thing.

If I was to say anything positive about this game it’d be that it has a nice cover on the box.

And for that, I’ll rate this game 2/10.  It’s a snazzy cover.

Out now at around €39.99 in all the usual places.  Leave it where you see it.

Limbo is one of the best games in recent memory. The second you finish the review, go onto Xbox Live and support it. Dont play Call of Duty a little more. Dont buy some shit new clothes for your avatar. Buy this game!

Developed by Danish company PlayDead, Limbo looks like Little Big Planet if it got redesigned by Edward Gorey and the Bolexbrothers. It’s a stark, frightening, black-and-white world of nightmarish creatures and desolate environments. A world that feels lonely, but eerily menacing. The only thing that even comes close is the town in the Silent Hill games, that relentless feeling that something intangible wants you dead.

There’s little story to speak of, with the only hint being a single line on the XBL product description: “A boy journeys into Limbo searching for his lost sister”. That’s all you really need. Like an arthouse film with all the impact and none of the wank, Limbo is all about mood and tone. Your journey will take place over a selection of environments, from a dusty forrest, to dilapidated city rooftops, to spooky industrial areas.

Despite it’s 2D platform style, Limbo is as unsettling and atmospheric as any horror game. There is a relentless sense of dread as you navigate this cruel world; each beacon of hope you come across usually leading to a grisly discovery. For example, early on in the forrest section I saw the first sign of another human being. I raced over to them but suddenly the earth fell from beneath us, dropping me into a hole and revealing that he was dangling from a noose. It was a simple but powerful visual, and one that sent a tingle down my spine.

Indeed, the very rare times you encounter another person in Limbo, it is nearly always twisted. A group of faceless men try to kill you at one early point, always running just off-screen and out of shot as you try to get a clear look at them. Another section requires you to use the corpses of dead children to cross a lake. Platformer it may be, but Limbo is certainly not for kids. The little boy you control will be dismembered, stabbed, shot, crushed and electrocuted several times over the course of the game – and seeing the the whites of his eyes, the only feature on his silhouetted body, go out is a little bit fucked up no matter how many times you see it.

You’ll die in Limbo. A lot. The gameplay is geared towards trial and error á la Abe’s Odyssey and Flashback. A clever checkpoint system stops the game from being frustrating, and you’ll only ever be a few feet away from where you perished. For a black and white game, and even more impressively for a platformer, death in Limbo is swift, nasty and incredibly violent. It’s here where the pitch black humour shines, as when your boy dies you will nearly always have a nervous laugh to yourself. It’s not because it’s funny though – It’s a defense mechanism. Like all the best horror movies – it’s the stuff you dont see that really fucks with your head.

Forgetting the astounding art design, the gameplay still holds up as incredibly clever and addicting. Many times you’ll try to solve puzzles fruitlessly, because you’re trying to second guess the way the game works. The best way to solve most the sections is to simply forget what you know and expect from traditional platformers. It’s here that Limbo shines – eclipsing even the cleverest elements of the excellent Little Big Planet. It can create a more satisfying and intricate puzzle with little more than ropes and boxes than LBP could create with all the visual bells and whistles in the world. One section had me scratching my head for a while, until I started idly playing around with the environment, and it’s here that I discovered the solution to the puzzle. Other sections require you to really think about the mechanics, never let you slip into auto pilot.

The beauty of the gameplay is in its simplicity and refinement. There are two buttons: jump and action. Far from limiting the scope of the gameplay, the world, and how you interact with it, is where you’ll see the diversity here – and there’s a real sense of weight and impact with everything that happens thanks to the robust physics. The designers squeezed every possible action and event they could out of the boys small moveset, and the results are eye opening. You’ll still have to time the odd perfect jump, but there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that, and discovering what you can do at different points is always a joy, with the game letting you experiment and find out yourself.

The game looks jaw-dropping in places, and consistently impresses with its unique visual style. It’s hard to believe that the game is a meagre 120MB when it looks and sounds this good. It’s great to see a game where the art style didn’t limit or define the gameplay and vice-versa, as the black and white haze of visuals has been woven into the gameplay and narrative.

Sound design in Limbo earns big points. There’s no “music” to speak of. What you do get is a series of industrial noises and, even more infrequently, the odd gentle part (similar to Aphex Twin’s more laid back stuff) to highlight certain actions and events. Quite often the puzzles use sound to clue you in to what is happening, sucking you in. There’s a reason this game is so much better at getting into your head than others – it’s because it literally demands that you sit forward and pay attention.

This may seem like a review full of superlatives, but the more I think about Limbo the more I cant actually see anything wrong with it. If I have one complaint it’s about the short length, lasting as it does at between 3 to 4 hours to complete on the first playthrough. Every minute of that time, though, you will enjoy. There are no game lengthening tricks pulled, no impossible sections, and no backtracking. What is here is streamlined gaming bliss, lovingly created right down to each step your fragile little protagonist takes, building up to a beautiful and dark ending.

€14.40 may seem like a lot to pay for a game that only lasts a couple of hours, but Limbo delivers on all fronts. It’s already a forerunner for my Game of The Year, and I cant imagine anyone playing this and not liking it.

Heaven: One of the most original and beautiful looking games ever made. Outstanding sound design. Fundamentally terrific gameplay. Powerful psychological horror. Superb pacing.

Purgatory: Nothing really. Short length may annoy some, but the content that’s here is streamlined and polished to a mirror shine. If they had tried to fill it out it would have ruined it.

Hell: Not a thing. Seriously. Buy the fuck out of this game.

Limbo is available for purchase on Xbox Live for 1200 Microsoft Points (€14.40 approx). If there are less than 200 Microsoft Points in your account €18 worth (3 x €6 500 point bundles) must be purchased to access the content.

"Queensbury or Prison rules?"

Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono announced at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con that fighting crossover game Street Fighter X Tekken is in the works. Onlookers were treated to some gameplay teasers featuring SF’s Ryu battling Tekken’s Kazuya Mishima, with guest appearances by Chun Li and Nina Williams.

This title is being made by Capcom, and it will use the Street Fighter IV engine and mechanics for the game. However, people who prefer Tekken need not fret, as Namco announced that they will be producing Tekken X Street Fighter using the Tekken game engine. This announcement was also made at the Comic Con, although no pictures or footage were shown.

I’ve been playing Super Street Fighter IV quite a bit lately and it’s still as fun and addicting as ever, and my PS2 copy of Tekken 5 nearly had a hole burned in it from all the late night local multiplayer shenanigans. I’m looking forward to both games, and it’s great to see that each developer will be doing their own take on the project. With the upcoming Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Morkat Kombat 9, it looks like the future of kicking the living shit out of each other is very bright indeed.

We don’t play darts much. Maybe because it’s dominated by fat men who live on lager and crisps and we don’t want to admit that we’re there just yet.

Plus there aren’t enough ladies interested in darts for our liking.

Luckily for you in this game, you don’t have to be good at actual darts, just have the hand/eye co-ordination of a brain surgeon. Hit the targets and the sexy southern belle will strip off. Miss the targets and she makes you feel like a loser. Which you are.

Bras are evil and make no mistake. Aliens have come to Earth to rid the planet of these atrocities.

Your goal is to blast them to oblivion with the aid of your super advanced bra busting ray gun.

Get your aim on target enough times and hey presto, you will successfully liberate the boobs and bring democracy to cleavage everywhere.

Got what it takes?

You know those people you see from time to time with the cards or the ball hidden under a cup? You have to guess which is the correct card or which cup has the ball under it after they’ve worked their voodoo and messed with your mind and the laws of physics.

Well, they’ve just gone digital.

The game is the same. You have to guess which cup the ball is under, only this time they mess with your concentration with a jedi mind/boob trick.

Bastids.

Can you follow the ball?

I couldn’t for the life of me and I don’t know why.