It’s going to be a good holiday season for any gamer who has a a bit of spare cash, there are a wealth of titles out, and from the looks of things, quality is at an all time high.We’ve just had Uncharted 2, and Brutal Legend, we’ve still got Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Ratchet and Clank: ACIT on the way.

If there are any more titles I can’t think of, then I apologise. My Question is, if you only had a limited amount of money to spend, what one game would you get? And also which title is going to suffer due to the competitive market?

I already have Uncharted 2, and if I could only have one, it would be that (I’m also getting Demon’s Souls). I feel Borderlands might be the title to suffer.

2 of my favourite games of this generation are Bioshock and Mass Effect, both were excellent, narrative driven games, with wonderfully deep and developed settings that stood out from their competitors.

So why is it that I feel such a sense of apprehension about their up and coming sequels?

Of the 2 games Mass Effect is more naturally suited to recieving a sequel, you would be carrying one where the storyline of the first game finished off, there were already characters with whom you’d developed relationships and with humanity’s position in the game’s universe as an emerging superpower, there was a wealth of potential directions the game could have been taken in, that were innovative and unique.

Instead the devs have gone for the Dirty Dozen inspired storyline, about a team of rogues on a suicide mission. Yes there are differences, but the character reveals so far; Thane, a deadly assassain, and Subject Zero, a gang member who is locked up in a high security prison, both seem to fit the bill perfectly for a Dirty Dozen-esque line up.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, it’s just something that has been used before, and of course it’s an excellent way to increase the impact of the paragon/renegade system, which seemed to have a very minimal impact in the first game.

Bioshock on the other hand did not seem to have an obvious direction in which to proceed when it came to the sequel, neither of the endings you could achieve, paved the way forward for a new chapter (unless it was an RTS in which you invade the surface world using armies of splicers).

Instead it was necessary to create a new protagonist, and more importantly to create new antagonists with as much personaility as Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. So you will be stepping into the large iron clod shoes of a Big Daddy and will be facing up against the quick and quite scary looking Big Sister, hopefully there will be some sort of mastermind working behind the Big Sister, as I can’t really see where the intelligent conversation will come from between these two characters (as far as I remember Big Daddies can only make Whale noises)

Perhaps it’s just the extremely high standards that the benchmark titles set that’s got me worried, it’s hard to live up to the hype that is inevitably generated when a superb game gets a sequel. I want these two games to be great, I really do, but then I also wanted the second Matrix film to be good.

Am I overreacting?

Yesterday I welcomed a new member of my family, a healthy Xbox360 Elite weighing in at 120GB. I already have a PS3 so I thought it would be a nice addition, I need to sort out cables and stuff to be able to get on Live, so for the time being I’ll be playing through, Mass Effect, Gears, Halo: ODST, and Fable 2.

Any other recommendations? (Also how can I tell if I got a jasper?)

As most of you have probably heard, a french magazine supposedly went crazy and gave Uncharted 2: Among Thieves a 21/20. Now I enjoyed Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and I’ve played the Uncharted 2 beta, so I’ve no doubt that it will be an excellent game but I’m not quite sure how to feel about the hyperbole that the score represents.

A 20/20 represenets gaming perfection, we are supposed to realise that something will never be truly perfect but to give a game full marks concedes that it was a close run thing. The reason why it won’t be perfect is because in a few years time, if nothing else, graphics might have improved in some way. In fact I’ve seen shots of Crysis at 25000 x 16000 pixels, which just shows that even now, a game might not represent the pinnacle of gaming technology.

Full marks is something that lies within an excepted scale, people understand what it means. To say that a game is better than that, in fact so significantly better as to require a new addition to the scale, it doesn’t really make sense. The joke in Spinal Tap, with the amps going up to eleven, was that it didn’t really mean the amp was louder than a another amp that only went up to ten. (Although in this situation the amp would go up to 11/10 and not just 11/11)

People are currently going crazy over at sites like N4G, and unfortunately a few fanboys are coming out of the woodwork as to be expected, some claiming that PSM3 are stupid and unprofessional for breaking their own scoring system, whilst others proclaim the new savior of the PS3 and the end of the console war (not that the PS3 needed saving or that the console war actually matters)

Regardless, the point is, unless this is an elborate hoax, PSM3 must really like the game, enough to make a statement so bold, it’s hard not to talk about it. Can the game really be the greatest thing ever? I can’t wait to find out.

That is the question that many men often ask. Just today as I sat and watched the end credits to Red Faction Guerilla, I thought to myself, how long should a single player campaign last?

The answer will differ from genre to genre, in a RPG that’s all about character development and plot, you should expect to be able to spend a lot of time working your way through the story and maxing your stats out. Whereas the single player for an FPS might be more about getting a good dozen hours of solid action and incredible set-pieces and hopefully getting a half decent plot line thrown in. I’d says that you want playing an RPG to be reading your favourite series of novels, you can take your time, and delve into masses of info, whereas you want playing an FPS to be like watching a good action movie, fast paced, intense and with lots of explosions .

Of course it’s a difficult balancing act to get right, if a campaign is too short there isn’t any time to connect to the characters, and it’s difficult to make you feel rewarded for your actions. If it’s too long, it’s hard to keep the adreneline rush going, and in a FPS things will probably start to feel repetitive.

I think that less than nine hours is too brief for a shooter, be it first or third person. Although multiplayer is where you will undoubtedly sink most of your time, the single player campaign is where the great moments of a game should lie. Red Faction took me 13 hours and 15 minutes, fairly acceptable in my opinion.

For action games that have no multiplayer I’d like to get at least 20 hours of gameplay time, not including collecting various dodads and secrets.

For RPGs I think 30 hours has to be the minimum. Games like Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, have enough content so that they can match the amount of playtime that you might get from the multiplayer of another game although there is no doubt that plenty of attrition would be involved to work your way through everything available.

So those are my thoughts on the matter, if you happen to disagree feel free to comment.

The terrible beast that is employment sunk it’s razor sharp claws into me even more deeply then usual in the last few weeks. Some sickness in the office and someone calling it quits has resulted in me being called upon to work an absolute shedload of hours, but it also gave me an epiphany about why the Wii is this generations runaway success. It’s not that it’s magical motion controls fooled a vast number of people to buy a product that was little more than a gimmick, but rather it’s that the Wii finally let people play games that were really really short and didn’t take a long time to learn to play.

If you don’t have a lot of free time it’s hard to enjoy a lot of games that are on the PS3 or 360. If you are playing a game for the storyline, but you can’t play the game for a good length of time, the pacing is ruined, just like if a movie is too long. If you are playing online multiplayer then you need to practice in order to be good, otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time respawning or getting continually killed by cheap but effective tactics.

Sport games are a bit better for those with no time, and games like Fifa and Madden and assurred of selling big numbers. They make it easy to jump in and play a quick exhibition match, and you can feel like you have accomplished something in even a short space of time, that would not be possible with other types of games.

The Wii futher expanded on this. Yes there are some games that have long and fullfilling campaigns, but Mario Kart, Wii Sports and Wii Fit, can be used for very small time periods and still allow the gamer to reach certain achievements.

As a final piece of supporting evidence for my crackpot theory, I point to the sales of the map packs for the Zombie mode of CoD:WaW. It’s a mini game that is arguably more popular than it’s parent title, and all because it’s quick to pick up and play and yet you can still enjoy it in its fullest extent in a short period of time.

Of course there may be other factors involved…

So I’m back from holiday, a mammoth holiday at that, touring the West Coast of the USA and then going to Vegas and the Grand Canyon.

However seeing as Fat Princess came out, I wondering whether it was all worth it. No matter how awesome real life can be, video games are always that little bit more awesome, except perhaps when the ladies are involved.

whenver it gets to that NPD time of the month I start to feel a little sick. The thought of all the fanboys going crazy and boasting that they’ve won the console war once and for all is something that fills me with a dead abiding dread. The problem is, that sales are use as a yardstick of success, and of course, for the company executives of business analysts, it is the conculding factor in determining whether or not a game has been a success.

But should that matter for us, the consumer? We are supposed to play games for the pleasure of it, for those of us without a finacial stake involved with the publishers or the developers, there is no tangible benefit to us, for seeing Prototype outsell Infamous, or the DS outsell the PSP.

The funny thing is that no one ever uses sales figures for Nintendo’s consoles when they argue on forums, perhaps this shows that part of the truth is getting through to them. It doesn’t matter if Wii Fit outsells Halo 3, because enjoyment of one is not mutually exclusive from enjoyment of the other. Good games often sell well, but there is a percentage of the market who don’t do research before they buy a product, and who don’t use the game after they buy it anyway.

If you want to talk about the finacial state of a company, profit margins, stock prices or other business related topics, feel free to use sales figures as much as you like. If you need to talk about sales to prove that a game is good, you are probably fooling yourself.

I must be one of the worst pilots in Battlefield 1943. I have an irresistible urge to jump in any plane I come across, but rarely have 30 seconds elapsed before I have crashed in a tree or a bunker, or the sea.

Yet I love every second of it. Somehow those majestic first seconds of being airbourne, remove any possible disapointment I could have with the ensuing crash.

So remember if you happen to see me plummet into the sea shortly after take off, I’m having a good time.

It’s a simple question really. Can adding in a co-op mode make the difference between a game being bad or good?

You see, my brother lives in the US, whilst I currently reside in the UK, when I do see him, we like to jump onto the Ps3 and spend some quality time gaming. We normally play a few games on Madden and Fifa, but after a while, it’s nice to work through a story and enjoy progressing through a full game.

When he came to visit me this time around, we went to blockbuster and pick upped a few games second hand, including Army Of Two. I also borrowed RE5 from a friend. To be honest both games are good fun in co-op mode and considerably less enjoyable in single player.

This is most likely because both games were built from the ground up to be co-op, AI can be good, but it will never quite match up to the teamwork possible with a human controllered ally. But what about games that were built as single player experiences but have co-op added in, for like Halo: 3 or Resistance?

Both of these titles have a strong single player campaign, but were equally enjoyable if played with a friend, the addition of co-op simply added some replay value. It is still possible to show skillful teamwork in achieivng the various objectives that are set out, and yet you are fully capable of completing everything single handedly with your friend acting as little more than a distraction.

It almost seems as if concentrating solely on a co-op experience may actually limit the structure of a title, in such a way that serves to limit the overall range of experience that you might have with it. It is not always possible to have someone else around to game with, and even with online capabilities opening up more avenues than ever, I still want to be able to enjoy a game by myself.

This said, it is nice that people are taking a more detailed approach to 2 player gaming, having objectives that require both players to be present at the same spot, or split up at appropriate junctions and causing players to think differently and adopt different strategies because they need their team-mate to survive. RE5 and Army of Two have certainly shown that co-op can make the difference between a game being good or bad, It’s hard to tell if that is only because of the shortfalls in the single player.