And then, there’s you. Twenty four and still the one who has to hold back people’s hair as they vomit, the one who has to walk around passing out glasses of water so that people start to feel better and the one who sticks around to make sure people get home ok. It’s not even your party, not even your house but that’s what you do and no one ever says thank you. Still, you got what you came for, a phone number and some cake and you’re never doing it again. Or at least until you’re twenty five anyway.

It’s not hard to see where MMO games got their inspiration from for the makeup of a good party system. It’s perhaps more fantasy than the games’ settings to think that the Gygaxs who birthed the party system we know in video games ever got invited to those sorts of parties, but that’s all started to change in society now and there are plenty of Gurlgaxs fishing for invites for your next party into the Deeprun Caverns.

It’s one of the most social experiences in an online video game these days, pulling together with friends or total strangers, toppling an enemy and divvying the loot. You each get your own roles, have your own responsibilities and know that failing to fulfil those obligations could cost your party a wipe – an event in which all party members are slain and forced to restart from an earlier point. It doesn’t matter that you’re running the dungeon for the 35^th time and that you’re still waiting for that epic sword to drop, the experience is different every time and the party system is to thank for that.

I can’t pretend that it’s always a positive experience. Any event which requires you to work with complete strangers can easily introduce you to characters you would rather have nothing to do with. Impatient folk who apparently have more important things to be doing, but not so important that they couldn’t wait to do this until after they had been out and done it. Know it all party leaders that demand obedience and insist that fights be dealt with only in manners which have been pre-approved by them in advance. A personal favourite of mine are the ones who walk into the party and the dungeon for the very first time, not something that happens often, but I get a real treat when it does. Usually it’s a harmless addition to the group and the player submits themselves to the experience of others for guidance and instruction, but if any of the other usual suspects are present however, then the poor soul is in for a rough ride and I wouldn’t blame them if their first adventure into these sections of online RPGs also happened to be their last.

As I previously hinted, this isn’t something new and exciting that’s exclusive to the world of MMO. Partying in games has been around for decades. Take Gauntlet, the classic hack and slash coin-op that had you and three friends physically pummelling the crap out of each other to settle who got to plays as whom before you’d even fished around in your pockets for change. Once settled, then you could take to the dungeons and really put your friendships to the test. Sharing food was vital and drawing enemies into environments where you have the advantage even more so. One player could cost you the game if they inadvertently destroyed a potion through shooting like it was going out of fashion, so being aware of your position and taking responsibility for your fire button was that first step into understanding the party mechanic.

To fast forward to a more advanced use of the party system takes us to Baldur’s Gate, the undisputed Jewel in the RPG crown. The game operated on Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd Edition Rules and so the class you chose to play as was a more complex one compared to Gauntlet’s system of Wizard, Elf, Warrior and Valkyrie. As has become the norm for a Bioware game, you’re not simply asked to save the world from the evil of the day on your own. Along the way you acquire a band of thugs, thieves, knaves (and a miniature giant space hamster) who stand with you in your quest. As the controlling player, you have dominion over your party and can readily switch between the other members in combat in order to ensure your survival. It’s not an absolute requirement but in order to save your health potions from becoming another stain on the wall, the persistent use of space bar to pause the action and stack up a barrage of spells and abilities from all angles kept you very much ahead of the curve.

JRPGs approached combat with a different stick. Here you would always have to consider the skills of your party and always command their actions in battle with no AI assistance at all. Some JRPGs would constrain each character to certain roles, with white mages being the only characters with access to healing and enhancement spells and black mages being the ultimate tools for destruction. Occasionally a game like Final Fantasy VII or VIII would bench that approach and allow the player to make up their mind about who they wished to have fill certain roles and expect they would use them accordingly. For people that had ventured into JRPG from the worlds of RTS and action games, this was somewhat of a foreign concept, at first as the primary instinct was simply to kill the enemies before they kill you, with little regard given to how better make use of your characters. Having found that there’s only so far that technique can get you, eventually the player would come around to the party ways of thinking and start to better install their magic and skills, beginning each battle with the tireless process of buff, boost and then battle.

There were variations on this for quite a while, with some RPG games becoming more complex and some becoming more streamlined. JRPGs similarly flitted between the traditional approaches of class and role to more abstract ones where characters could become proficient in alternate skills (given enough pre-planning and commitment to the course). Of course the MMO came along and changed all of that. In a console environment you could readily command an NPC to do your bidding but in online gaming, that was never going to be the case.

World of Warcraft managed to put the party system into the spotlight. Other MMOs had been doing everything Warcraft would for years already but few had the appeal that Blizzard’s behemoth managed to create. A party in Warcraft should feel just like a party. There should be an attention seeking loud mouth to draw in the mobs and there would be a pairing of damage dealing jock jawed hair-brains that could contribute simply by striving to be so self-centred that their damage would be higher than their counterpart. The quiet brain of the operation had a place in the party too; someone who could see the big picture and keep an eye out for opportunity, provide both direct and indirect support with buffs and crowd control tactics that go un-noticed, but which are essential for surviving the rough encounters. And of course the selfless healer to stand at the back and keep everyone alive without so much of a word of thanks or a complaint levelled against them.

Wherever you found yourself fitting inside that system, you strived to be the best, to be able to offer the group something different to what they had already encountered in other people playing the same class. Tanks and healers live and die by the sword but are always in demand; the damage dealers are ten a penny, but the ones who shine in their field are the needles in the haystack and the smartest of the bunch are those who are willing to sacrifice the big damage numbers in favour of talents, which add another ace to the group sleeve.

As a player, you switch off to the rest the game’s mechanics and focus purely on those most relevant to you. As a tank you don’t care if you’re not hitting as hard as Stabby McStupid, you want to know that you’re generating enough threat to keep aggro and that your armour rating isn’t letting too much damage through. Stabby McStupid meanwhile just wants the big numbers and lots of them, but even they keep one eye on threat meters to ensure that their three second cast spells aren’t about to be interrupted by the boss who has become bored of the tank and is now happy to smash you around for the four seconds you’ll last. Healers, of course, sacrifice all offensive abilities and even stop watching the vibrant onscreen action in favour of focusing solely on the four other character portraits, tucked up into the corner of the screen, monitoring players’ health bars and predicting where the fight is going in order to better plan their heals.

So much time and effort is invested into learning to be the best you can that you forget the machine and proudly become a cog. Over time, curiosity pushes you toward dabbling in another class to see how they actually work and slowly your eyes are opened to the challenges faced by the rest of the party, filtering all that information back into your own play as your preferred role. Maybe after having played the role of tank for so long and becoming frustrated that you occasionally aren’t healed enough for any apparent reason, you decide to roll a healer to see what the problem is for yourself. After a few days of investment, you discover that it isn’t simply a case of spamming one heal spell and that there’s actually a much more scientific management of a variation of healing abilities, further complicated by random events which force healers to direct their attention away from the tanks whilst those problems are dealt with.

It’s a wonderful experience to be a part of but it’s completely destroyed my love of a traditional RPG in the process. While I love the carefully laid out plots and lovingly crafted characters, the combat system for me has been harshly kicked to the curb and it’s dragging me along with it. I can no longer charge into battle expecting that the warrior in my party will generate all the threat and soak up all the damage, with the healer keeping him alive while I throw magic missiles over the top. AI scripting in the best of these games sadly isn’t designed to support the modern approach to party mechanics, and before long I find that all of my party members are dead or dying and that I’m next for the chop.

Dragon Age irked me in that sense. I really found myself immersed in the game’s setting and enjoying the company of my party, but each and every fight was filling me with nothing short of dread. I couldn’t get out of the practice of solely controlling my own character and hoping the rest would do their jobs without my interference, but this sadly wasn’t the case. I’d fumble around on the controller to switch between party members, mash out a few spells and abilities that I had no real idea how to best use and then scramble back to my own character, only to find that the AI had decided to make better use of my character in my absence. Because the game focuses around my character, I just can’t convince my gaming mind to look any further beyond her own skills and abilities and I know that my experience of the game is suffering because of that.

Is the party mechanic broken in the traditional RPG or does it simply not work for me anymore? The MMO has changed my way of thinking when it comes to single player games cut from the same cloth and as much as I love my roots in RPG, I’m starting to think that it’s time for me to say goodbye to the party. There are of course games that do it right, games such as Mass Effect which don’t invest too heavily in reliance on party members and who function as more of a squad instead. A simple tap of a button with a little nudge in the right direction and I found that my squad mates in Shepard’s crew respond almost exactly to my instruction.  Even in more tactical situations where I bring up the power wheel, I find that the restricted options available to me are more beneficial to the survival of the squad than the ability to fully control each character individually.

I can’t hope to answer the above question and I know that ultimately I’m never going to abandon the single player RPG. While the experiences in MMOs are entirely unique to each player, the RPG manages to be a more social experience, having those great moments you can share with peers from your own standpoints. My only hope is that the Wizards & Valkyries, Minscs & Boos and Hawks & Shepards aren’t lost to me in the process.

Long Live the RPG

Battlefield is one of the best loved FPS franchises of the last decade, redefining what it means to be a multiplayer shooter on the PC, and then spending the last few years trying to find a way to make that same magic work on the consoles. Whether or not DICE have succeeded with the Bad Company franchise is a debate best saved for another day but few can deny the ambition of the studio in attempting to bring the large scale FPS to the limited net capabilities of the home console, and the advances they’ve still managed to make on the technology side of things with the continuing development of their in house physics engine, Frostbite2.

It goes without saying that the console has been dominated by the Call of Duty franchise in the past few years though, and that the Battlefield games have always had more love on the PC side of gaming thanks to the much wider scope of the games previously released for mouse and keyboard. It should also be noted that the Xbox version of Battlefield 3 has been the most silent of the three platforms in the run up to release, owing to ‘secret’ backroom dealings between the major powers that has seen the title become a beacon for the Sony marketing campaign, while Modern Warfare lends its green advertising palette to the green of the big M.

With the PC version acting as the very definitive version and the call to up the arms race in the next generation wars, and the PS3 version being the favourite child, the very best way to review Battlefield 3 is to go for the weakest link: the two disc, retarded, bastard child that is the Xbox 360 version. Is the hype justified? Should Activision be scared? Should EA breathe a sigh of relief that this huge investment is likely to see a return? Should Captain Price hang his moustache in shame? And does any of this game of peeing highest up the wall actually benefit the consumer?

Let’s start at the meat of it: the multiplayer mode. This is where the game needs to make its mark and a failure here will easily eradicate the good work invested elsewhere. Multiplayer this time arrives in two flavours with a handful of extra toppings and assorted decorations to help keep things mixed up. The first flavour is co-op, a first for the Battlefield franchise, first debuted at Gamescom this year and the answer to Modern Warfare 2′s Spec Ops mode.  Co-op mode stands entirely apart from the main campaign, with only a few references to events from the story and with most of the levels being reconstructed from assets taken from the single player experience. It’s two player only, purely online, with no split screen action available.  On the statistical side of things, the only other point of note is how few co-op levels exist in BF3, with only six on offer, spread across a four tiered tree, with two levels on the first and third tiers and one on the alternate second and forth tiers. Completing each tier unlocks the next, though your progress is not tracked locally and so if you have reached the final mission with one friend, you won’t be able to access that with another until you have made the same progress. By comparison, MW provides more and so Battlefield is going to look far more shallow, but DICE revealed their co-op mode on the promise that this was to be an experience you’d want to repeat and so less was, for them, to be most certainly more.

In reality, I honestly don’t think that’s quite the case. Each mission is a standalone element, designed to be picked up and played when you feel like it, sold under the promise that each time you do, the experience won’t necessarily be the same as the last. By the very laws of videogames, of course that statement will always be true as you’ll never kill every enemy in the same order or catch every bullet thrown your way. Whenever we’re told this sort of thing, we expect that we’re likely to see a random generation of spawns and variation in scripted events, but for BF3 this is not the case. Every enemy will come from the same direction as the last time, and each tank will make its stage call like it’s been running the show on Broadway for five years.

The levels vary from story focused experiences, as found in ‘Exfiltration’,'Drop ‘Em Like Liquid’ and Horde, and wave based type missions seen in ‘Operation Exodus’ and ‘Fire From the Sky’. The latter takes place entirely in an attack helicopter, with one player operating the main gun and one flying the chopper. There’s no option to ever choose who gets to take which spot and it will be entirely random on level load too (with the role never alternating between attempts), so if you’re not any good behind the stick, brace yourself for an awful lot of level reloads while the positions rotate to your needs.

It’s not a bad game mode by any standard as it’s always enjoyable to hook up with a friend and work together against enemies that you know you can handle, but the experience is still a deeply flawed one. There are no checkpoints in the levels at all, so if you’ve fought for 20-30 minutes (which some of the missions can run to) and fall at the final hurdle, well tough. Your progress is still rewarded through the mode’s separate XP system, derived from a system of kills, assists, accuracy and cooperative rewards that will unlock new weapons for the full multiplayer modes, but it still hurts to have got so far and have victory snatched from you by a lucky pair of bullets or one of the many glitches that will literally have you screaming at the TV.

In ‘Exfiltration’, for example,  it’s not uncommon to exit your HUMVEE at the final stage of the level, only for both players to be entirely rooted to the spot and be able to do nothing but move the right stick and pull the trigger. On death, you would hope that you would be able to make use of the mode’s Gears of War inspired incapacity feature that would normally allow you to crawl to the safety of your team mate, armed with a pistol for protection, who could then revive you and allow you to carry on. Of course, that’s not the case and until this little problem gets fixed, you’re just going to have to cross your fingers every time you get out of a vehicle and pray it doesn’t happen to you.

Overall, the mode is alright, but that’s all it is; it feels tacked on and like a late addition to the series. Perhaps patching will help and later DLC may help to expand the mode into something more promising. With no direct ties to the single player and a wealth of options available to DICE in that regard, you really would hope that there would be a far greater quantity of missions on offer, and so you look to the opposite side of things where you expect that they have created a separate and full mini-campaign for you to share with a friend… but again, they haven’t. The whole thing feels schizophrenic in that sometimes they seem to want to give you a full co-op campaign with a nice tight story, and then they throw you a mission where you find yourself just sat behind a wall, waiting for it all to end.  The extra unlocks are a nice touch and they give you reason to check in on the mode every now and again but, given the massive balancing required for a large scale shooter like this, the investment of time and energy doesn’t really justify the rewards to anyone who isn’t pleased by shiny new weapon models and sounds.

Onto the real meat of the purchase then and here we are, still on disc one for the game’s showcase multiplayer mode. Battlefield really was the king of this during the 1942 and updated modern combat setting and I can honestly say that they still are. I felt a little guilty when, a few months ago, I loaded up Bad Company 2 for the first time and saw what DICE were looking to do with the mode in the run up to BF3. I honestly never thought that the Battlefield approach could translate to the consoles, but I loved every second of what I played of my most overlooked game of this year and when the tickets were set to reach zero, I was always amazed to stand and look at the battlefield for what Frostbite 2 had transformed it into, in comparison to how the place looked when the round first began.

Being a PC veteran of the franchise, I still had my doubts for what the next true sequel could bring, knowing that the number of concurrent players would always be restricted to twenty four, whilst PC users could boast a forty player advantage and I worried that the maps would all be pale reflections of their PC counterparts, which highlighted nothing more than wasted potential. With the beta having also being a shambolic display of shambling shambles, my concerns were even more amplified recently, and so my apprehension for getting stuck into the game proper was understandably high. And then it’s four in the morning and, despite wanting to carry on and keep playing, I have to concede defeat and go to bed before tomorrow becomes an issue.  Battlefield has its flaws in the multiplayer and I’ll make no excuse for them, but the game is ultimately a success because of one thing: it’s fucking cool.

The ‘High Five’ brigade is something to fear in the multiplayer shooter. The frat boys that will shout racist remarks down a headset and spout sexist comments the second a girl appears are still present but it’s not them who are giving the high fives to one another, it’s you giving them to your squadmates, your friends, as you overcome a self created challenge or do something so incredibly brave (read: stupid) for the fiftieth time that still warrants an over excited cheer down the headset to a chorus of reciprocal “Woo!”. It doesn’t matter that your K/D is so far negative that even Newton is starting to question the basics of maths and that you haven’t had a kill, let alone a kill streak all round, as nearly everything you do can in some way still make you feel an integral part of the fight.

For the objective based game modes, Rush, Squad Rush and Conquest, you’re just as able to climb your way to the very tops of the scoreboards and earn the coveted MVP ribbon without killing so much as a song through squad based actions such as Heal, Revive, Resupply, Repair, Suppression, Objective Attacking and Defending, or just acting as a spawn point for your squad mates. If you’re able to complete actions multiple times, you’ll earn ribbons that further your score, all of which translates to XP that unlocks new weapons and equipment for each of the game’s four classes; Assault, Engineer, Support and Recon.

Whereas the franchise used to feature more classes (Medic, Anti Tank and Spec Ops), those classes have now been rolled into others to help streamline things. The Assault class now doubles as the game’s Medic, the Engineer functions as a more versatile Anti-Tank class and Support and Recon share the additional features previously exclusive to Spec Ops.  With most weapons able to be used by each of the classes, and only a handful serving as purely exclusive to each of them, it’s incredibly simple to find a way to play the game however you want to. The main draw to each of the classes lies in the special abilities and unlocks such as the Assault’s revive capable Defibrillators and the Support Class’s Mortar weapon and it’s here you’ll really find what suits you and your mood, and helps you find your own way into each of the battles.

The squad mechanics, while far from perfect, will further help you stay in the thick of things, always allowing you to spawn on squad mates when they’re alive and save you the hassle of having to backtrack your way across the maps and, on the flip side, can deliver a new intensity to the battle, whereby a four man squad can continually rotate through the squad spawn feature to make it feel like you’re fighting the army of 300. Mobile spawn platforms such as helicopters and APCs will also provide support in ensuring you can get to the front lines and out of your spawn protected HQs, even during the grimmest of Conquest battles.

Beyond the widescale warfare, more intense and focused experiences are available in the squad based variants of Death Match and Rush, allowing for one full squad of four to take on two other squads in some Death Match combat or, for the ultimate test of squad strength, a head to head, four on four game of Squad Rush. These really are high intensity games where the smallest mistake can cost you a victory and the tiniest of changes to the makeup of your squad could gift you the game. Despite the game being restricted to only twenty four players on consoles, it’s still easy to get lost in the system during the bigger battles of Conquest and Rush, so it’s fantastic to have these two game modes available where you can get a more accurate measure of your worth, if that’s the kind of glory you seek.

The inclusion of Team Death match into the franchise is no surprise really given that it’s where Battlefield’s major rival has made its mark on the console shooter.  It’s the same chaotic mess that you’d expect, with plenty of action to go around and lives so short that you won’t ever worry about holding back. Spawns will rotate around corners of the map as the battle changes up so that you should always spawn in a safe location (though there will be times when you’ll find that the frantic nature of it all can sometimes lead to stray and lucky bullets taking you out before you’ve even set a foot outside). Despite vehicles being a signature mark of the Battlefield franchise, this is a purely infantry only affair with no fixed gun emplacements or tank tipping additions to the scale of action to ever stop this being about you, your own skills and your own tools of destruction.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the mode is the lack of map variants and it feels absolutely bizarre given the incredible size of the maps available. In total, the multiplayer mode features nine maps, all of which are very well represented in the other game modes but in Team Death Match, it feels like they could have made better use of them. Each arena is taken from a small sampling of each of the nine maps, but only one sample is taken, leaving potentially dozens more map possibilities for each environment laying untouched. There are easily three additional arenas available for each of the maps, and it would have been a quick (and welcome) addition to the game had someone at the studio taken the time to make it happen. My main concern is that they’re aware of that fact all too well and we’re liable to see players extorted for that privilege further down the line.

Beyond TDM though, the maps hold up pretty well. There’s never been a time in the twenty four solid hours I’ve dedicated to the multiplayer where I’ve felt that a map is skewed in favour of one team, or that it holds choke points and king of the hill style checkpoints that will gift either team a win purely because they manage to control them. A win is just as likely as a loss, and even when it feels like the other team has you beat or when you’re looking at your own team and thinking that you just don’t measure up, four squad mates can turn that on its head in moments, just by being in the right place at the very right time.

That wasted potential I discussed earlier in reference to the twenty four player cap is dismissed through that high level of balancing.  While there are times when you’re buzzing around one of the larger Conquest maps, spotting stations and elements that were clearly designed to be used as game objectives in the sixty four player versions, the benefit of having fewer control points means that the action stays focused and directed and never just becomes a game of flag-cap cat and mouse.  One of the most interesting examples stands as a contrast to my complaints about TDM’s lack of map variance: in the game’s Rush mode, teams are designated Attackers and Defenders, working within shifting boundaries of an expanding map as you progress through pairs of destroyable/defendable objectives that show parts of the maps that you just don’t get to experience in Conquest.

As an example, Damavand Peak in Conquest charges you with the task of breaking out of your respective bases, capturing a station outside of either end of a tunnel that passes underneath a mountain where the third – and balance tipping – flag is located. It’s a decent sized level with plenty of room for manoeuvre and doesn’t ever feel like it’s something that’s been unnecessarily scaled down, and it plays exactly as it was supposed to. So imagine my surprise when I hit the ground running on the Rush variant of the map, only to discover that I had absolutely no idea where I was.

After breaking through the first objective, fighting my way down a hillside to the next pair of destructible M-Com Stations, I found myself getting quite confused, as the map appeared to end, with the defenders now literally fighting on the edge of a cliff. With most Rush modes requiring the destruction of four to five sets of objectives, it was truly baffling to think that two was the lot, and I was left wondering where it was we were supposed to go next. So when the new objectives loaded up on the game’s UI, imagine the grin on my face when it dawned on me which way the twelve of us were supposed to go next. Down.

The second you jump off that cliff, you realise where you are and where you have been for the past twenty minutes: way up above the Conquest starting point for the US forces. It’s hard to put into words just how amazing that really is, as when spawning for that first time in Conquest, you spin around on the spot, waiting for the green light to get stuck in and never give a second thought about that sheer wall of vertical rock behind you, just chalking it up to level design. It literally extends up into the sky and so the rush of having your entire team shoulder to shoulder with you as you leap from its highest point is like no other I’ve ever had in a multiplayer game. Ever.

For those who aren’t satisfied by the good times alone and need a little more bang for their buck, Battlefield has its own multi-tier XP system in place to keep players coming back for more. All of those points you’ve been earning in a Brink-esque fashion, which pop up all over the lower half of your screen, feed into your overall progress across the game’s level system. Rank up and you’ll unlock new weapons and more customisation options for your soldier, providing new selections of camouflage and perks which enhance your core abilities, like Suppression and Sprint. If you earn those points with one of the game’s four kits, a sub levelling system will provide additional unlocks, exclusively available to you for use with those classes.  As if that wasn’t enough, each of the weapons you acquire have their own levelling system, which provide extra customisation options such as scopes, laser dots, torches, bipods and barrel upgrades such as sound and muzzle flare suppression.  It’s a rewarding experience as the game is always up for giving you a pat on the head for having done well with something and is happy to provide you with this meta game of unlockables that will distract you from playing the same maps over and over again, challenging you to take new approaches with different kit setups into each fight.

Tracking all of this and everything you do is the much touted Battlelog system – Facebook for your War. I’d love to be able to sit and praise the feature as a wondrous addition to gameplay, something that has finally stepped up to Bungie’s stat tracking plate that will change the way you experience an FPS game but, in reality, it’s sadly none of those things. At least not for consoles anyway. For PC users, the website acts as your game client and your entire portal into everything you do in Battlefield. If you want to launch the game’s single player or fire up a game on co-op, this is where it all has to happen. Playing the PC version of the beta, I actually found this to be one of Battlefield’s strongest features as it’s truly revolutionary in everything it does and genuinely makes you question why all games haven’t gone down this route and got rid of their artsy fartsy, useless title menus.  If you pick to join a server on PC, you’re not made to suffer the game loading up, to then sit and watch a loading screen, to then finally get into a game. Battlelog can do all that in the background and when you’re ready to leave the desktop, you can jump straight in.

For console users, however, none of that is important and so when you’re logging in for the first time, you’re left wondering why it is you’re staring at the PC options for launching parts of the game. Three very large buttons for the game’s three modes dominate the top portion of the website’s landing page – three very useless buttons for the console user logging in to check on their status or connect with friends. Further down, you’ll find Battlefeed – another well misused function of the website, which contains nothing more than a long list of ‘Look at what you and your friends have been awarded or unlocked’. I’ve gone out of my way to make sure I get plenty of friends on the service in a bid to discover if it was just a case of people leaving the feed to automatically generate updates, and never doing anything with it themselves, but beyond people occasionally clicking the ‘Like’ equivalent of ‘HooRah!’, one has to ask why the feature exists.

After you’ve navigated through all of that to find your Soldier (of which the service automatically assumes you will have multiples, tied to one account, and so labels them Xbox, PC etc. – because why wouldn’t you have multiple copies of the same game tied to one account?), your stats are at least well presented, your history well documented and your potential unlocks teased to you with a detailed breakdown of what you’ll have to do in order to unlock them. It doesn’t have anywhere near the detail of Bungie’s heatspots service, with any Battlelogs saved simply being a breakdown of your (and everyone else’s) scores and, despite how incredibly fast the service updates (instantaneously on level completion), I don’t expect you’ll find yourself using it all that much.

With a few updates and a dedicated design layout created for the console user, I think it could provide a great service for Battlefield’s multiplayer side of things. As it stands, I’m approaching the halfway mark on the path to top level and a full inventory and my friends are too; once they have everything, my Battlefeed will dry up. More social features may help to redeem it. I’m not going to herald the dawn of a new Facebook, but a great place to hang out with squad mates would help focus this experience dramatically. I have a a niggling that says this is nothing more than a dry run for EA and its online services, with something telling me that this is one day going to be the spark that started something much bigger and provided EA with a whole new social network of cross-platform and cross-genre gaming.

Before moving on to cover the final weapon in Battlefield’s arsenal, it’s important to note some of multiplayer’s fantastic bugs and glitches. At present, it’s entirely possible for you to spontaneously, and with no correlative action, lose the entire of your HUD. If this happens you can’t even play blindly as death will present you with an information-less spawn screen that won’t allow you to interact with any non-existent buttons. There’s also no option to press ‘Start’ and exit the game either, should you encounter the glitch, and so your only hope is to wait for the game to kick you out through inactivity or hope that the round ends so that a new map load can be triggered.

Another favourite of the Battlefield community is how the game will occasionally gift the power of the gods to one lucky individual who is then free to run around like Superman, only with guns. No bullet will harm him, whilst his own bullets do untold damage to people’s scores. You’ll hear cries of “CHEAT” and “HAX0RZ” when the player in question has no idea what’s going on, how they entered such a mode or how to bring an end to it. I say this because it happened to me and, whilst I enjoyed it for the first few kills, I quickly felt pretty cheap about the whole thing and so took to standing in the busiest of firefights, just watching the chaos unfold around me until an RPG took me out.

Note to all players: if this happens to you, be kind. If you see it happen to someone else, one SMAW launched rocket will kill them first time.

Note to DICE: sort it out.

There are other odd things that are irksome in the multiplayer, such as a lack of true spawn protection, which can often see you punished for having done nothing but to push a button to spawn. For squad spawning, that’s to be expected as you can’t unbalance the game by having it any other way, but for fixed base spawning, the game will occasionally drop you directly in front of the only enemy soldier in the entire base (of which the population can be as low as yourself and him), and you’ll find a knife in your back before you know what hit you.

I also find that the lack of any ‘disconnect from server’ options at the end of rounds to be incredibly annoying, helping – somewhat dangerously – to cultivate compulsive habits, as the second a round ends, you lose all ability to drop from the game until the next map loads, forcing you to spend that extra time on a loading screen and on the thirty second post game breakdown. That’s not even a bug, that one’s a conscious decision and it scares me a little as there have been plenty of times when I would have liked to have bowed out gracefully, only for the game to subtly bully me into staying for ‘just one more round’. Granted, the option for me to leave was still in my power at the start of the next game and it’s really a battle of my own wills, but it still feels very underhanded.

One upshot of all of this is that I’ve reported it all to DICE directly using Battlelog’s inbuilt support system. Creating tickets on there genuinely feels like an open invitation and DICE and EA officials will respond to them directly. Should you or another user post the same issue, the system will analyse them and offer you to add it in response to another player’s complaint or suggestion, creating a petition of sorts for the community to rally around. Regular round-ups of the week’s hottest issues are regularly addressed, and so even though it’s a shame that these problems exist in the first place, the corporate monolith that is EA is shown in its best light, making it appear that they want what’s best for their customers, and that they’re happy to hear concerns and are willing to address them.

The single player side of things is a truly compelling experience.  A large part of me made contact with a solid material when I read that Andy McNab was on board to advise on the game’s plot, characters and elements of the gameplay. I thought “great, one of military history’s greatest fuckups is trying to turn a game into something that isn’t a game”. How much influence he really has had on the project is unknown, but one thing that can be said for sure is that Battlefield’s single player campaign is a fantastic example of how an FPS title can do storytelling and shift focus without the player ever having to question the design decisions that ultimately drove them.

It’s standard fair for a shooter game to simply flit between locations and characters with no regard to any continuous sequence of events, all in the name of providing the best, balanced experience possible. You don’t want to play two intense shooting levels back to back, we’re told, we have to break that up with a stealth mission, and the last mission was during daytime in the snow too, so the next one has to be night time in the forest, all with little and no regard for the hows, whats and whys. The Battlefield story manages to circumnavigate all of those problems by telling you one story, from the end (in a very JJ Abrams’ Alias like fashion) that answers as many questions as it asks rather than the infuriating other way around.

The main protagonist acts as a narrator for the entire story, which is retold by him in interrogation for the consequences of his actions. While all being relevant to him, the plot manages to still jump inside the stories of other characters, fighting on both sides of the war and provides enough through those short and unique sequences to create a bond with a character who you never get to see. Whilst they’ll still throw in a tank level, a plane level, a night time level and a stealth level here, there and everywhere, whenever they do it feels entirely natural and delicately done.

The entire single player experience is a fantastic one, still full of the same nuances and problems that haunt the rest of the product, but entirely unique all the same. Part of the problem with all of that praise is that it’s attained purely by doing what’s right for the story and the experience, so if you were hoping to find a place to practice any multiplayer tactics, have a toy around with cool weapons, pieces of equipment, loadouts or classes, you’re going to find all of those things absent.  It’s an extremely schizophrenic change to the multiplayer side of the game as everything you do is a carefully scripted sequence of events. There’s no Battlefield-esque heading off of the road to take a more devious route through the level, or any of the excellent Squad mechanics to ensure the game keeps advancing; it’s a traditional affair of checkpoints and hand holding from A to B, with a whole load of computer generated high fives along the way.

This may sound like a complaint, but it’s not. While it would be great to see DICE take their own stamp and wield it like the master smiths they are, the existing formula, made profitable by their CoD counterparts, has instructed them to not play their own game, but to play them at theirs. At time of writing, I cannot say whether or not Battlefield have trumped the third instalment of the Modern Warfare franchise, as I only have the older, second part of that story by way of comparison. I always found that MW2 tried too hard to impress, introduced too many characters too quickly and moved the story along at a pace I couldn’t keep up with, and it feels that in Battlefield 3 DICE have addressed all of that with professional finesse.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll connect with the characters and want to play the next stage of the game and unlock the next mystery, and all despite playing the exact same basic formula that was created by Infinity Ward. Every sequence of action takes place in a narrow avenue of cover and suppressive fire, quick time events will occasionally take control of your character, and every bullet out there has your name on it, no matter if your AI squad mates are looking like the more dangerous threat or not. In order to advance, you don’t really have to do any serious killing and can often get away with just being so far forward that you trigger your AI team mates into pushing forward with you and actually killing the enemies in the process, rather than just sitting waiting for you to do so. There really is nothing dramatically new here and while DICE haven’t managed to do anything radical, everything they actually do is done in a fashion most befitting of the studio.

Fans of Mirrors Edge will recognise design elements that tell you just how much that franchise means to DICE and I counted two incredible on-foot chase sequences in the game that managed to bring up some incredibly fond memories. Animation across the board is at the absolute height of what you’d expect from a studio under the EA banner and the audio is right up there to match it. Visually, everything from tracer bullets to distant smoke and roaring fire is a visual massage and the lighting in the game in unmatched anywhere else in this industry.

For the very first time playing a game this generation, I did notice that some of the textures and the lack of any proper anti aliasing around certain models was actually a sign of the age of the current tech and that the PC version really must be something special to play. The high definition content upgrade is an essential component for the experience, because while some elements may look bad despite having it installed, they look a whole lot worse without it. There are times when you notice all of these flaws and then there are times when you’re in absolute awe of the visuals, so it’s hard to criticise the game on that front given that these changes in mood tend to occur at ten second or twenty minute intervals, depending on just how into it you’re getting.

I played the game through on Hard mode and the whole thing probably took around nine to twelve hours. Other than going back to dust up a few achievements, there’s no replay value at all in the game other than simply re-enjoying the same content, with no collectibles to discover or alternate paths to follow.  Along the way, I still encountered my fair share of bugs, such as a squad of stacked to breach team mates that just walked straight through the door rather than blowing it up, leaving me trapped until it magically opened to reveal nothing but the level with no enemies on the other side. I also found myself trapped in the terrain at times, at the mercy of dodgy models that allow bullets through where they shouldn’t, and running side by side with AI that would often pay no attention to any clear and present danger.

Bugs aside, there are other problems I found with the game that were, once again, clearly a product of poor design. I accept that Hard mode is designed to be Hard, but half of my problems in finishing the later stages of the game was due, in most part, to bad checkpoints. Each checkpoint in the game is fixed and badly placed, often requiring you to make the same tedious run along the same empty corridors, change up your weapons, have the same conversations and then get involved in a firefight which, on death, will then tell you that you have to do it all over again. At one point I found that after having equipped myself with two new weapons from inside an armoury, that I’d never moved close enough to an ammo crate to stock up beyond the first magazines. In trying to go back to ammo up before I triggered the next fight, I found myself smashing into an invisible wall on a staircase that didn’t want me to go back. Thanks for that.

Still, as much as these things genuinely annoyed me, the game still had me chasing it right to its satisfying end. The hints of a sequel are there and there’s plenty of room for a little extra back-story or sideways based DLC should EA wish to crack the whip. Whilst Battlefield still doesn’t manage to do anything new for the genre, it manages to get some of the very worst parts of it all right, even if they are still ignoring some of the smaller parts that are still wrong and creating a few silly mistakes in the process.

The game was a major innovation in the FPS genre, heavily praised for its no-nonsense approach to shooter mechanics by boldly electing to remove the crosshair from the HUD, forcing players to make use of a weapon’s iron sights should they actually want to hit anything. It was the most refreshing game I’d played in a long time, with 32 man multiplayer battles being more tactical and patient affairs with plenty of teamwork required in order to edge out the win. Six years on from that initial retail release and the team are back with a fully realised sequel, complete with a single player campaign for the very first time, and all released on the eve of the biggest FPS war in gaming history.

Having known that the team had long been at work on this, I was notably keen to get back in the trenches with this one and to see how the six year gap between the projects had impacted upon that. With the rise of Call of Duty making the genre a global phenomenon, and physics and visuals far surpassing everything the original Unreal 2 engine was ever capable of, surely one of the most innovative teams in the field had bigger plans than my own expectations for Heroes of Stalingrad?

No. Well, maybe they did have big plans but none of them have really translated well at all. Given that a lot of early reviews for Red Orchestra were lauding its impressive showing, imagine my disappointment when, after loading up the game for the second time following an initial crash to desktop, I fired up the newly touted single player campaign only to be met by a badly thrown together AI rendition of a multiplayer game ,in which my impressive D/K (Death to Kills) ratio was proving to be incredibly indicative of the very minimal impact I was actually having on the whole experience (which, by sheer fortune and mass confusion, we somehow won).

Of course Red Orchestra isn’t designed to be played as a single player game and the two campaigns provided are, of course, just an extended tutorial to prepare for the more extensive multiplayer experience. Sadly, they’ve attempted to disguise all that through a narrative, charting the game’s focus around the Battle of Stalingrad, offering you the first perspective of the invading Axis forces and then allowing you to drive back the German forces with the Soviet Red Hammer. On digital paper, it sounds like a reasonable thing to do but, given that you’re not actually engaging in a scripted sequence of fire-fights and carefully designed gameplay, shared with characters that you’ll grow to love and hate, there’s just no immersion to warrant you ever paying attention to what narrative has been tacked on either side of a level, catering only for the history buffs, leaving nothing in the way of scraps for the average gamer.

Each stage takes place on one of the varied multiplayer maps, with a series of territory occupations standing between you and advancement on to the next stage. In order to claim an area for your side, all you need to do is get a whole bunch of your friendly killing machines inside the minimap detailed zone, thinning out the opposition forces until you have the numerical supremacy that will allow for the zone to begin changing over to your possession.  Once captured, the enemy forces immediately retreat to defend the next checkpoint and you press on. Never will the defending side be able to reclaim a capture point, with them only able to win by holding back the aggressors beyond the pre-set time limit.

For the most part of both campaigns, you find yourself with your attacking boots on and in the position where AI appears to rely solely on you leading by example. Thankfully, they only seem to require that sort of approach in terms of how far up the field you’re willing push and pay no attention to your skills (or in my case ‘lack thereof’) with your trigger finger and iron sights. As was the case with the game’s earlier iterations, no aim-assists in any form are provided, save for the impeccably detailed weapon models, further complicated by disturbingly accurate bullet trajectories that you’re welcome to compensate for by adjusting each weapon’s range finder. You can try to shoot from the hip of course but, unless your barrel is lodged firmly in your enemy’s hip, don’t expect good things to emerge from this tactic. Either way, expect to suffer more deaths than you deliver and be prepared to spend your time playing this sitting with your back to a wall, waiting for the AI to do all of the work.

With simulation being at the game’s core and the lack of a HUD key providing that experience, don’t ever expect to know just how much health you have or how many bullets are in your mag. There is a regenerating health feature of sorts that kind of eradicates the need to know how much longer you have left to live, provided in the form of a suppression system, which will put you in a much more vulnerable state during times of intense incoming fire, returning to normal seconds later (only for you to then take a bullet to the temple from seemingly nowhere and be forced to wait for the respawn). Coupled with a greyscale camera effect and a narrowing of the audio band, you start to feel the pressure during these instances and it’s here that I started to find myself enjoying the game, despite its shoddy first showings.

The first time I found myself aiming a weapon properly, for example,  I realised I was syncing my own breathing with that of my on screen soldier. With a weapon iron-sighted (a simple right click), you can then further control your aim by holding the shift key to steady your breathing, immobilising you in the process but dramatically improving your accuracy. You’re immobile while doing this because the shift key also doubles as sprint, which is where that immersion is immediately snapped away as it’s something Red Orchestra often confuses (in the game’s current state) and can result in the animation for the weapon entering its sprint cycle when it should be closely sighted. This problem also appears with the ‘Use’ key – left control by default – which also acts as the game’s enter cover and apply bandage functions.  This leads to you often being penalised  for standing too close to a wall that the game believes you wish to take cover behind when you’ve taken a nasty bullet, leaving you to just stand there until you eventually bleed out. Similarly, if you were hoping to swap a weapon out to that of a fallen opponent, you’re going to want to hope that it landed out in the open, because guess which button you need to press for that one?

Bleed effect also currently suffers from an odd issue that has been the source of much annoyance for the more vocal members of the Red Orchestra’s community. Don’t be surprised during the post ‘you just got shot in the head’ moments when the game offers for you to apply one of your two remaining bandages to stop the bleeding, despite being, y’know, dead. Also, brace yourself for the frustration of when you are actually bleeding for the game to never offer you the option to heal yourself, leaving you unable to move and only able to fire blindly as the screen slowly fades to black. I don’t doubt that this will be patched further on down the line, but with this being a twice already patched retail version with six years experience and an existing base already in place, you have to ask yourself what else is wrong with the game if its control system isn’t communicating with the rest of the product.

Relevant to the single player campaign, be prepared to take what you’re given when it comes to class selection. Players aren’t able to fully customise their kit, instead being asked to fill the roles of Rifleman, Machine Gunner, Engineer, Sniper, Squad Leader and Commander. In the later missions of the Axis campaign, you’ll find yourself starting each level as either a Squad Leader or Commander, but that’s about as far as the developers appear to have wanted to go when it came to assigning you a class. On death, you’ll randomly assume command over any surviving AI, which could place you as a Sniper at the back of the map, a Machine Gunner mounted in the window of a building that you have no idea how to exit, or a bog standard soldier, literally, in the thick of it and only seconds away from death. While this may be the best way to learn all aspects of the game, it’s certainly not the best way to achieve anything as you really do need to be on the frontlines at all times and if you don’t have the right tools for the job, you’re even more screwed than you were already.

The whole game is tailored as the most accurate experience you could ever have of 1940’s warfare though, and perhaps that feeling of hopelessness and despair is exactly what Tripwire were trying to capture. Quite why you’d want that experience so accurately detailed is a question best saved for another day, but despite any technical flaws the game may have its design certainly lives up to the billing. Maps are as large and open as you’d hope for, with no bottlenecks and plenty of opportunity to go off on a little sneaking mission behind enemy lines all on your own. As previously detailed, the weapons are incredible accurate, with haunting bolt and gunfire sounds and only some jarring voice work that ever gets in the way of all that, most notably that every Russian soldier sounds like Heavy Weapons Guy – an incredibly disappointing corner to round.

What really scared me about the passion for recreating the era was my first experience inside a Panzer Tank. Each tank has to be manned by multiple players, offering a first person perspective from inside each of the stations with the option to then look through the incredibly narrow view points, or to be bold and pop the hatch, surfing your way to glory like a pony on the back of a pickup. While the levels I played where I was operating a tank were probably some of the worst (and, amazingly, the most punishing), it was hard to do anything but admire the work that had gone into capturing that feeling of authenticity that I know other players could spend days enjoying.

Having wrapped up both of the single player campaigns within a few hours (following a day long wait for a patch to fix an amazing error in which troops that you were supposed to destroy during the artillery spotting training miraculously survived the whole ordeal), I at least felt familiar with all of the maps, having played them from each side and was, in some way, confident that I could take on the world in multiplayer. This was provided they were all looking the other way and horribly out of ammo of course, so scratch one for the single player – just one.

It’s here that my ability to persuade you whether or not you should buy Red Orchestra will end. If you’re a fan of the series, chances are you’ve purchased the game already or have been sat on the fence waiting to see if they’ve sacrificed anything in order to provide for the new armada of cash laden FPS fans. By now, you will already have read that they haven’t, the game is still only for the strong of heart and true of aim. There are, however, some odd concessions that the game makes which suggest the experience is a little more schizophrenic than it should be. 3D spotting, the new must have accessory, appears to players who activate the tactical view, instantly cluttering the HUD with icons and markers that are available in every other shooter, but shock you when they appear given the minimalistic approach. Players will insist that this isn’t true 3D spotting as it’s only available if you hold ‘T’ during the Commander’s Air Recon ability, or when players have tapped ‘Z’ on an confirmed enemy target, but the fact remains that the feature exists and if you want to gain an advantage over the other team, you’re going to need to use it.

It’s almost heartbreaking given that the game is enforcing a simulated approach, but allowing other players to cut corners for easy kills. If having worked your way into some fantastic lone-wolf fox-hole has allowed you to escape that wrath, don’t for the love of god kill anyone unless you want to pay a penance because the dead player’s now going to get a kill-cam shot of exactly where you are. To me, that just doesn’t make sense. Even though I think it’s what works best for the game in terms of fairness and balance, that’s what every other game has and the franchise has always been about setting itself apart from that up until now.

With the ability to select classes in multiplayer comes the added ability to also level up. XP is awarded for the completion of levels, scoring of objectives and the killing of your enemy, and with increased levels comes added bonuses to the classes such as faster reloading times and the obligatory unlockable weapons. Being able to select a class offers the system to abuse though, or it would if Tripwire hadn’t already foreseen that possibility. Every class is restricted to just a few open slots to avoid a team of twenty snipers and one lone machine gunner, with a voting system in place to eject players who are believed to be performing badly in the more exclusive roles of Squad Leader and Commander.

For game modes, the Attack/Defend capture mode (dubbed Territories) that’s heavily abused in the Single Player Campaigns takes pride of place on the server browser, with Countdown providing a more tactical experience, but with long delays separating waves of respawning, and Firefight offering a more casual experience ,which encourages spawn on squad. All of the game modes still focus around the capture of territories. There’s a notable absence of any straight Team Death Match modes though and it can be difficult to tell the difference between the three even when you’re playing them, as you’re essentially doing exactly the same thing.

Despite struggling to ever get to the same skill levels as everyone else currently playing the game, I did enjoy these bursts of multiplayer. Red Orchestra is, without doubt, one of the most challenging and punishing games I’ve played in a very long time, but all of this only helps to make the rewards feel that little bit sweeter. Whilst skill does play a heavy part, the mechanics of the game are put in place in such a way that always makes the playing field feel level. The guy in the window who shot me from sixty yards away may have had impeccable aim but I know it wasn’t his first shot, and I know that if I can just take a different route around that building I can eventually work my way up to him and dispense a little justice of my own.

Perhaps what gets to me the most though is that the game is still in development. I don’t mean that in a sense that suggests Tripwire still have a lot to do in order to make this a better experience – they do – but they’ve already announced that they have much greater plans for the game beyond the basic (and long) list of bugs. A full and more traditional single player experience has already been announced, promising scripted set-pieces and a story driven campaign that’s set to make full use of everything the game has to offer, along with Co-Op support for both this newly announced campaign and the existing AI slaughterfest. More vehicles are also set to feature later in the development cycle as well as numerous other features that are yet to be announced. This is perhaps a current high horse of mine, given my recent experience with Dead Island, but given the game’s already exhaustive development cycle, why is it that players are being asked to purchase a title that clearly isn’t ready yet?

Get ready to rumble...

It’s not often I find myself unable to categorise a game. By conventional standards, Burnout CRASH! is essentially a racing game, except without any of the racing, which then downgrades that to a driving game… but there isn’t actually all that much driving involved, and so then it just becomes a game with cars in it and that’s hardly the description you came looking for. On reflection, it would be equally as unhelpful for me to describe the game as “Something I’ve spent four hours playing just to beat one high score”, as you’d need to understand exactly why it is I dedicated that amount of time to it and, if after that, I was still willing to keep going. Considering that it was hard enough to classify any of the other titles in the series, surely we can trust that this abstract excursion into whole new territory for the franchise is equally capable of planting its proud flag in the great unknown?

When first laying eyes on the game in early July, I freely confess that my faith in all things Burnout was severely tested. The game wasn’t giving me the same feeling of anticipation that the previous games had offered and I know that was a sentiment shared by others. When first going hands-on with the game at Gamescom, however, all of that changed. It’s hard to explain exactly how all of that happened, but think to the last time you were angry or upset and a good friend comes along, begging you to crack a smile and not letting up on it until you do. That was how I felt about CRASH; I was mad at it for no good reason but the second I stopped being so blinkered, I instantly felt good about things again.

Styling itself as a journey down Route 77, through Burnout’s fictional Crash City, the game immediately draws attention to just how simple it wants to keep things. You start by picking one of the crash junctions on offer, select an available crash mode, make a quick note of the achievable objectives, pick your car and crash. If you earn one of the five available objective stars, you unlock the remaining two modes for that crash junction and access to the opening game mode of the next junction. Collect enough stars and you’ll be able to pay the toll and unlock access to the next road – themed trios of crash junctions that take inspiration from instantly recognisable areas of the United States.

Sounds simple? It is! Of course it is, this was never a title that was designed to be played as some hardcore experience. The underlying philosophy behind the whole game is to just pick it up every once in a while have some fun and then wander off when your interest starts to trail. You can be crashing cars within minutes of the game loading and how long you decide to stay after that is entirely up to you. Naturally, Criterion provide plenty of reason to stay thanks to AutoLog and they make fantastic use of the Kinect sensor to warrant busting this one out at parties, or just give you perfect excuse to put down the pad and push back the sofa (all in the hope that a gang of youths aren’t watching from outside the window on their pushbikes).

I’ve read that the game boils down to little more than a zanily themed game of Tower Defence and for two of the modes, that’s certainly true. The starter on the menu of destruction is Road Trip, the mode which will first introduce you to the game and attempt to teach you Crashing 101. As with all of the game modes, you enter each junction through the south road, using only the left stick to control the car as you thunder towards traffic. After crashing into your first car, you’re left to sit and wait for your Crashbreaker meter to fill, allowing you to tap the A button and begin to direct your now airborne wreck towards more destruction, with the intention of causing more vehicles to crash.

Relevant to Road Trip, your objective from here is cause a set number of cars to crash in order to trigger a feature, one of three special events, preset and appropriate to the road in which you are crashing. Whilst trying to do this, you also have to keep an eye on the junction’s exit points and try to make sure that no more than five cars escape – an otherwise crash ending event which will take your score as it stands and add that to the scoreboard. It’s not a failure by any standards, as any stars you may have earned until that point are added to your totals regardless, and it’s not out of the question to set a respectable score despite never reaching the final features, with some of the current top scores on my AutoLog having been attained in exactly that fashion.

Should you have incurred a penalty X in Road Trip for having let a car escape, don’t panic, it’s not the end as Doctor Beat is in the house and this is where the game starts to show its real charm and true character. Along with the returning stylings of DJ Atomica, DJ from Paradise City’s CrashFM, the game is filled to the brim with snippets of 80’s music that chirps up at all the right moments. At set intervals through the crash you’ll hear it announced that Dr. Beat has been paged and is on his way. Allow him safe passage through the junction and an X will disappear. But why is it important to safeguard your Xs? Well, that’s where things start to get really silly, with each Road on the journey boasting a Super Feature – something highly ridiculous and ultimately destructive ranging from your basic Tornado and Meteor impact to a shark surfing Tsunami and the explosive stomping of Rock Lobster. The more unchecked blotches on your record, the more powerful the super feature will be, giving you that last minute push up the scoreboard and getting you up off of the sofa in victory celebrations, regardless of whether or not you’re playing with Kinect.

In Road Trip, things are far less constrictive and things get really manic. Gone are the ‘five strikes and you’re out’ system, replaced instead by a timer; when it hits zero, your wreck instantly detonates, atomic bomb style. It’s all about causing as much mayhem as you possibly can in the time given to you, encouraging you to worry less about blocking up the exits and giving you all the freedom in the world to blast your way from corner to corner in search of extra scoring opportunities. With score awards constantly flashing up all over the place, it’s one of the most satisfying parts of the game as the pinball sound effects fire through the speakers and the Pizza Truck of Destiny enters for a second time, gifting you a second spin on the Pizza of Fortune (It’sa like a roulette but widda cheese!) and keeping you smiling until the grand finale big badda boom.

Away from the chaos comes the technical play though, and fans of the previous games’ Crash modes are really going to connect best with the third and final mode on offer, Inferno. Like with Road Trip, you’ll be punished for letting cars escape although, this time, allowing them to do so will not cause the event to end.  Here you’ll start with a x5 multiplier, decreasing to x4 when your first car escapes, down to x3 when a few more escape and dropping as low as x2 in the event you fall asleep at the pad. There are only a set number of cars for the event, however, and so it’s in your interest to not only crash those cars for the points, but to keep that multiplier as high as possible for the final event. When all cars have crashed/passed through the junction, Inferno mode begins, activating that score multiplier and challenging you to keep cars and buildings burning to prolong your scoring opportunity.

And that’s where I first took notice of the game’s depth. It’s a simple enough task to just block up the junctions and see what happens, but if you plan your routes carefully, keep the cars from exploding until the very end, you can easily turn what would otherwise be a bog standard $24 million score into a triple digit screamer. Taking that mentality back through the other game modes, you find yourself trying to apply that new found logic at every opportunity, more carefully timing triggering your Crashbreaker to punt a car into another, earning an easy million through a skillshot, or positioning the traffic in such a way that you can set off the perfect explosion combo chain without compromising the flow of traffic. Of course you don’t have to look at the game like that at all as the objectives are, for the most part, fairly easy to obtain and you’re only ever going to take this logic into battle with you when you’re making the best use of the game’s massive adaptation of Criterion’s now infamous AutoLog.

AutoLog Recommends is either going to be the bane of your life or the cherry on the top. When viewing Route 77 from the main stage selection, each junction will be highlighted with the AutoLog logo to let you know that the opportunity is there for you to take on your friends list and claim top gun. Given that the unlocking of every junction will only take you an afternoon’s play, excluding the hunt for every star, this is where the game really starts to show its legs, teasing you to always come back for more in order to check to see who is on top. It’s incredibly depressing to see a friend take the top spot on one attempt, only for you to come along and take twenty four in order to take that top spot back from them.

If you’re already thinking ‘I’m never that person though, I just don’t play games like that and can’t hope to beat that guy’ well then fret no more. AutoLog has expanded this time to introduce AutoLog challenges, one attempt, 1v1 sessions in which you can pick the junction and the mode, set a score, instantly send that to a friend and when they next log in, they’ll be asked to beat it. As mentioned, you get just one attempt to do this and so the field is entirely level, with no one ever able to recreate that perfect run that has them sitting proudly at the top of a scoreboard, and just as likely to post a bad score as they are a good one. With both sides having completed the challenge, your personal trophy is then awarded to the highest scorer, only ever able to change hands between the two of you and then silently asking you to give it another shot. The ultimate bragging rights.

What’s really clever about all of the AutoLog features is that everything you do still counts towards your overall progress. If you had only got three out of the five stars the first and only time you’d played it, that return calling through AutoLog provides you with, not only with the opportunity to defeat your friends, but also to make another dent in your race to 100% completion. In AutoLog Challenges, this gets even cooler for players who are issued challenges for junctions they haven’t actually unlocked yet. Despite not otherwise having access to the event, you’re able to have this one off opportunity in the challenges to do so, and if, during that event, you happen to earn a few stars, you get to keep them. When you do eventually unlock that junction, expect those stars to be there waiting for you.

If you don’t have any friends who have picked up the game, however, you’re going to miss out on all of that. AutoLog does provide a service in which it will comb your friends list for friends of friends that are playing it so it may not be a total bust. There is, of course, one final avenue of pursuit should you be feeling robbed of your cash for a short four hour experience. If you have a Kinect sensor, you could always invite some actual friends over for what is, quite possibly, the party experience of a generation.

Earlier this month, I visited Criterion Studios in Guildford to go hands on with the game, or rather ‘hands free’, in a pre-release showing of the game’s Xbox only Kinect Party Mode. With Producer Dan McDonald as my guide, he talked me through everything you have so far been told about the game and then ran off back into the offices to grab programmers Gary Casey and Sean Donnelly for a three on three testing of the games ‘hellafun’ party mode. When on the main menu, a flashing stickman in the corner is constantly encouraging you to throw what’s dubbed the ‘Cheerleader’ pose, throwing both hands up in the air in order to get things started. After the on-screen introduction explained how this was all going to work, we were then asked to split into two teams of whatever size we wanted and to choose how many rounds we wanted to play; three, five or seven.

From here, the player left in control of sensor then has to start the Fruit Machine with a hand gesture to pull the old school one armed bandit, rotating the dials and stopping on the Crash Junction, the car you’ll be crashing and the gesture you’ll need for the Crash Breaker. Wait, what? That’s right, a gesture that changes each round in order to activate your Crash Breaker. As if the game wasn’t silly enough, prepare to give it the Cheerleader, throw a Hadouken, bend it like Beckham and the ultimate (and now infamous) favourite, lay an egg like the Hoff.

Using both arms in a steering wheel position, you drive up to the Rush Hour only junction, make your first crash and then start what will be the first of plenty of gestures, leaning or moving around the playing space in order to direct your wreck and making a complete tit of yourself. It’s exactly the kind of thing you want to break out at a party as it’s accessible to just about everyone. As you advance through the rounds, points are awarded to Blue and Red team, ending the entire experience with cheekily taken snapshots of each player who achieved the highest explosion combo, set the highest score and whatever else they can think to award as treats for having taken part.

It was fantastic to get the opportunity to play Burnout CRASH! with those who had nurtured it to its final release. I always expect to see a lack of enthusiasm or signs of annoyance at being made to do something they have to do every day, but the guys were loving every second of it, laughing as hard as everyone else in the room and swapping comments between each other about the AutoLog scores they’d set and beat in between games . Being passionate about your product is one thing but genuinely enjoying the game for everything it is? That’s Burnout CRASH and Criterion Studios all over.

With the game now in my own play space, I wanted to see if it really can appeal to just your Average Joe. I don’t actually know any Average Joes, but I do know an Abnormal Cindy and she thankfully agreed to come over and join the party for a night. She plays games; a bit of Angry Birds and a LOT of Plants vs. Zombies, with a history in Final Fantasy VII, amongst others, floating around in the background, but Kinect is something she wasn’t familiar with and that requirement was vital for me in discovering the game’s true appeal. With no alcohol to interfere (although I think the bag of Skittles may have tampered with my experiment somewhat) she really got into it, loving the game for what it was, laughing, and forgetting her surroundings so completely that she gave the leg of my sofa a fantastic kick during one animated session.  To top it all off, she beat me!

That’s what I think makes that final sell for the non-believers. The game has mass appeal and elements of both the random and the strategic that can give every level of player something to sink their teeth into. It’s gorgeously presented with a vivid and changing colour palette, consistently high frame rate and social features on a scale you don’t see in a full RRP release. There are things like replays, more detailed scoreboards and perhaps even a level creator that would really push this game out into the stratosphere, but for 800MSP, you’re already getting far more than you bargained for.

I must confess from the off that I was walking into this one blinder than most. I had never heard of the game in 2006 (having taken permanent residence in Cyrodiil that year) nor can recall ever having seen the game featured on a list of ‘Top 100 games [Publication X] is looking forward to’. I don’t doubt that the game had failed to develop a following and I can recall, during the earlier part of the year when the trailers for it made a return to the web, just how much of a buzz was generated from its overdue resurgence.  The fact remains that I was coming into this with zero expectations, no daydreams to satisfy and no opinions beyond those of what I think it is that makes a good open world RPG and how best to stop the undead horde.

Taking place on the tropical island of Banoi, a fictional isle situated in the Papua New Guinean region of the Pacific, just north of Australia, the game opens with a pre-rendered cut-scene taken from the perspective of a guest at the Royal Palms Resort, on the eve of the outbreak of the end of the world. You’re at a party and already quite drunk, bouncing off of people as you stumble your way through the bar and onto the dance floor, bumping into all four of the game’s playable characters as you do so, and witnessing the first zombie attack (which no-one appears to pay any notice to). Deciding that you quite need to pee around this point (it always happens at the most inconsiderate of times), you’re then shown to stumble into the women’s toilet in search of relief, finding instead a badly bitten hotel guest who is being cared for by one of the staff who insists you leave immediately.  You return back to your room where you collapse onto the bed, never to wake again and, presumably, wetting yourself in the process.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a solid opening that, despite being pre-rendered, shows off the game’s solid lighting engine, the fluid animation and the more natural use of a first person perspective, which was last seen in DICE’s Mirror’s Edge. You also soon get a feel for the game’s adult theme, with plenty of well used swearing (minus a bizarre application of the word ‘git’) , a hip-hop soundtrack blazing throughout and the standard inclusion of plenty of blood with a hint of over the top violence. With you now able to select to start a new game from the beautifully designed menu screen – a portrait of drops of blood flowing down into a pool of water – you are now able to choose which of the four survivors you wish to play as.

As you may well expect, each of the four have different proficiencies, different backgrounds and access to different abilities. It was here that I first suspected the game was missing a trick as I was faced with having to elect who it was I would be spending the next twenty six hours with, but without any information on what it was I could expect from them outside of their individual labels as firearms/blunt weapons/sharp weapons/throwing expert. I would have hoped to be able to take a sneak peak at their individual skill sets at this stage, but with only a profile for each of the survivors on offer, I decided to go with Sam B., the rap maestro behind the one hit wonder ‘Who Do You Voodoo (Bitch)’ that played during the introduction. I wasn’t selecting him for his musical styling, nor for his expertise with the sledgehammer he was shown to be wielding, no sir-ee. You see, Sam B is from New Orleans – the zombie survivor’s capital of my world.

The sunbed dibs system breaks down

Were I not lured into my selection based solely on an imaginary shared heritage, my other choices were the egotistical ex-NFL star, Logan (the throwing expert), Purma – a former police officer, currently employed as a bodyguard for the rich and famous (the firearms expert) and Xian Mei -the hotel’s receptionist with dreams of getting off the island to see the world (the sharp weapons expert). Each of the characters are well realised, with a nice diversity in appearance and vocal talent that is sure to offer a way into the game for everyone. Being a core gamer who likes to plan in advance though, I really did feel like the labels of expertise weren’t enough to allow me to make an informed decision on who to play as, and it really did feel like I was taking part in a lottery that I had a one in four chance of losing, as there’s always one character that never quite stacks up.

Of course all of this is settled in the game’s levelling system, a standard affair as far as the genre goes, with XP gained from the completion of quests and the killing of zombies. There’s been a little bit of tweaking to the formula though, with the addition of challenges that dynamically track and update you with an onscreen popup that you may have experienced in both the open world and shooting genre, with all levels gained awarding you talent points to spend on a three tree skill system, from which no game seems to be able to escape from these days. Each trio of trees is, understandably, varied for each character but still centralising around the same basic themes of character specific ability enhancements, increased weapon proficiency and then general character enhancements. The differences between all of the characters are subtle, with only a few options remaining entirely exclusive to individual characters, which aren’t worth highlighting given the minor impact these skills have on the game experience. For the most devoted of RPG gamers, you will of course be able to find something that really draws you in to one particular character, but you’re going to want to do your homework well in advance of hitting ‘New Game’.

What stands out the most for each of the characters within the level system is Dead Island’s ‘Rage’ system. Used solely in combat, the feature acts as an ultimate expression for each of the character’s combat specialties – a meter fuelled by killing Zombies which, when filled, enables the player to enter ‘Rage’ mode, dropping all but red from the colour palette, severely increasing your damage output and rewarding the player with an increasing XP multiplier bonus for all enemies killed in that short time. For each character, the ‘Rage’ mode presents itself in different ways, with Purma able to draw her own personal sidearm and automatically aim and fire critical damage shots; Sam B dropping all weapons in favour of a knuckle duster that can send enemies flying through the skies; Xian Mei able to unleash a deadly flurry of swipes with her blades and Logan free to throw as many throwing stars as he can at multiple enemies. It’s an excellent ‘get out of jail free card’ that, when deployed correctly, can change the course of a hectic battle, but if you don’t happen to get the tooltip that explains the feature, and have been otherwise investing points in other talents you deemed more useful, you’ll never actually know anything about it.

With your character selection made, the game begins as you awake in your hotel room, giving you the opportunity to test out the standard FPS controls and head out into the now deserted and creepy hallways of the luxury five star hotel, stopping only for the obligatory looting of everyone’s personal belongings. I again found that shadow of doubt creeping over me once more as I ran into piles of abandoned luggage with on screen icons lighting up to indicate I was able to interact with them and then loot them. As welcome as piles of free stuff and cash is, I quickly became very frustrated in having to stand and activate each icon before then being able to actually loot, with each action requiring a very brief (but entirely notable) animation which meant you were actually spending more time looting than getting on with the actual tutorial.

Deciding that the extreme quantity of lootable objects was a sign that this wasn’t going to be my only opportunity to gather resources, I ploughed on, encountering interactive locked door sequences in which I was required to throw my shoulder into a door in order to progress, made possible by flicks of the right analogue stick in a Tiger Woods-esque mini game. As is required in the zombie survival rule book, I was accompanied in this section only by a surviving security guard at the hotel who was watching and guiding me through the disaster via the hotel’s CCTV system, eventually emerging out into the tropical sunlight of a hotel balcony.

This provided the game’s first ‘Wow’ moment as I stood there, soaking up the view and beginning to plot my adventures through Dead Island’s open world. The graphics are certainly of a 2011 standard, with great use of reflections on the ocean bay ahead, contrasted by the shining white sands of the beach and the rich, green jungle beyond. Palm trees are swaying in the wind and this couldn’t look to be anything other than a paradise of pure bliss. Turning around to look back into the beautifully lit hotel corridors, it was quickly apparant that the game’s much touted ‘WYSIWYG’ Chrome Engine 5 really is capable of producing a wide range of fantastic settings. The tutorial continues to build upon that charged optimism as it concludes with your first interactions with the undead, manically running away from a trio of the infected with no hope of defending yourself, straight into the arms of some fellow survivors.

The feeling of vulnerability is pitch perfect, with you joining your avatar on screen as they begin to pant with you in sprint mode, sitting forward on the couch and gripping the pad like it’s your last ticket to life. The survivors you now find yourself with then go on to really drive the whole survival aspects home, doubting that you’re clean from infection, panicking in equal measure, with no sense of reason dictating their lives since the outbreak. An outstanding introduction with only a few niggles that you’ll be quick to dismiss if you find yourself as easily sucked in as I was.

Carrying straight on from there, you’re thrust into the game’s first combat sequence, arming you with nothing more than a wooden paddle and placing you down on the beaches to fight off your first wave of zombies. This was where things got really interesting, with a beautiful emphasis placed on the need for each of your blows to connect with your attackers beyond the standard ‘Stab, Stab, Health-Decrease’. Connect with the head and you’ll see them visibly knocked to one side; land a devastating blow on the arms and you’ll hear bones snap, receive an instant XP bonus and then watch as the zombie staggers back toward you with a now defunct arm hanging limp at his side. When you eventually gain access to a blade, those swipes can similarly dismember those limbs and sever the head from the body, instantly ending the fight (no matter how many hit-points the zombie had remaining) and giving you the biggest, most twisted grin imaginable to wear on your face.

Weapons, both statistically and visually, receive damage during combat, with each blow causing degradation to the weapon, eventually rendering it useless and reshaping it to account for how many brains you’ve exposed through attack. All of these are, of course, repairable for a cash fee, instantly restoring the weapon to its original condition, but in the earliest stages of the game, nearly every weapon is disposable and you’re seemingly encouraged to swiftly adopt that approach, with most weapons quickly reaching low durability where they are ready to be thrown straight at a zombie’s head with no enticement given to ever go back and collect them. For blunt weapons, the throwing mechanic will result in the weapon impacting upon the enemy and then dropping to the ground, though for sharp weapons, expect the blades to stick and stay wherever they land throughout the rest of the fight.

With combat forming only one part of the total gameplay experience, the rest of the game is constructed around the main plot, a need to escape the chaos at any cost by making friends, forging alliances and uncovering the mystery behind the outbreak. It’s fairly standard stuff, entirely competent with few flaws, but nothing you weren’t expecting from when you read that the game involved zombies and surviving. Side quests are present in abundance across the game’s four acts, each taking place in four distinct open world environments with plenty of collectibles, locations to reveal and achievements to unlock. It’s all optional of course and there for the player who likes to play for total completion, extending the experience beyond the main quest. For those hoping to more accurately gauge the scale of the game, my save file stopped at twenty two hours, having completed everything within the game’s first act, dabbled only in the sidequests for the second act, ignored them entirely in the third and spent the best part of the game’s final act in a full on sprint towards the end sequence. Twenty two hours, having skipped probably 70% of the additional content, is a very respectable chunk of play time indeed.

Audio can also walk away from Dead Island with its head held high. Whilst the characters are hardly memorable (save for Jin – you’ll like her, she’s designed that way), the voice work is consistently solid throughout, and the typical groans and wails of the undead provide ample immersion on those dark lonely nights. Anyone hoping for a score worthy of the genre may well be disappointed, but will still be surprised during the bigger and better moments of Dead Island’s quest.

I’m hoping by now that you’ve been nodding along with me throughout this review, enjoying these positives and considering making the purchase. As I’ve relayed thus far, the game has its tiny flaws but looks good, is fun to play and has plenty to justify the RRP. I’m not even trying to lure you into a false sense of security, the game really is enjoyable. Swinging a broomstick at a trio of zombies is incredibly satisfying as the blood splatters and body parts begin to fly, and the physics supporting all of that are well utilised. There were several instances in the game where a zombie was hurtling towards me at uncontrollable speeds, only for me to trigger my melee knockback attack, a low powered and defensive ability which saw me extend my leg, connecting with the zombie’s head, pushing the neck back to breaking point and instantly ending its undead life. Instant and random gratification.

For many, this really will be an enjoyable conquest, especially if they’re bringing friends. Drop in/drop out co-op is fully supported, never restricting players from entering anybody’s game at any time (provided your settings allow for this), and never requiring you to select one of the playable characters not already present in that save file. If you don’t have any friends playing the game, a handy feature will occasionally make itself known to you that a player of a similar level, at the same point in the game as you is nearby and ready to accept you into their game. Tap right on the D-Pad and you’re in, quickly loaded into their version of the world and free to team up and tackle the quest at hand. If you find that you no longer wish to play with them, you can drop out at no penalty with the game asking if you wish to continue as you are or revert to your last local save. Neat, huh?

As I previously suggested, if you have friends playing this, you’re going to get a lot more out of it than if you just plod along on your Larry Lonestar. The random group mechanic is a welcome addition and will definitely help you out in the horribly unbalanced situations that appear towards the end of the game. Being constructed so that anyone can join is, of course, open to the abuse of the internet however, with players able to grief you in ways that the developers didn’t conceive. If you have your game set to open and a random player joins, be prepared to be running like mad for any looting opportunities as there are no mechanics to support sharing or need before greed. It’s also possible that other players may trigger actions you weren’t prepared for, engage quests you weren’t ready to do and pick fights with enemies you can’t hope to beat. How do I know this? Well I know because that’s pretty much the mentality I took when people joined my game. They were in my game and were taking my stuff, getting in the way of my quests and so I treated them with contempt. It’s now a patched out problem but I also lost one of my best blades to this problem, having panicked and hurled it at a nearly dead Zombie, only for another player to pick it up and then disconnect. Cheers.

This is something that can of course be avoided by simply restricting your privacy settings, but know that Dead Island is not something you can hope to complete on your own; the game simply isn’t designed for single player. Having grown incredibly tired of the need to loot, I eventually stopped and relied solely on income through quest rewards to see how I fared. During the game’s second act, this became a major issue, with me hacking away at everyone, causing all seven of my quick access weapons to lose all durability and end up in desperate need of repair.  Only five additional slots are available as backup in the inventory, two of which are generally taken up by stores of incredibly rare (and mostly useless) Medkits and supplies of highly sought after Alcohol. Thanks to this, I eventually ran out of damage producing weaponry and then found myself dying more and more, resulting in an otherwise painless five second incapacitation period that will then respawn you at a location near to where you died, taking only a percentage of cash by way of penalty.

Now, there are quite a few addressable problems with that. Firstly, weapons require cash to repair and if you’ve lost the ability to fight, you’re going to incur far more death penalties. This means that when you eventually escape the chaos, you’re back at square one, with no cash and no usable weapons. You can of course pick up any old thing and use it as a weapon, but this means dropping something you’re currently using, something which is more likely of a much better quality. In the later stages of the game, you will gain access to a bank but if you run into this problem early on, you’re screwed.

Secondly, the respawning mechanic is far too random, dropping you at fixed points around the map, regardless of what else is in the surrounding area. In the city environment during the second act, I would often die on one street only to be respawned on the next; a logical decision you may believe but this was, more often than not, a street I hadn’t yet cleared and so I would often find myself simply lumped in with a whole new horde of zombies. During co-op play, I also found a wonderfully unique application of the mechanic during a fight through one end of a room to a control room on the other. I was actually co-operating quite well with my randomly connected friend and we were making good headway until the combat mechanics I was touting so much earlier worked against me, snapped my own neck at near full health and then respawned me… in the control room.

The control room was only designed to be accessed from one doorway, a door that only had a trigger mapped to outside. Sure, it was technically a win as I was now at the objective, but all objectives have to be met by all connected players – a player I can no longer assist, what with me being trapped and all. Were it that the game scaled the experience to the number of connected players, this would be an even worse problem as he’d now be fighting at odds of 2:1 against. Fortunately for me in this situation, the game doesn’t apply that logic and so he was fighting a group of zombies that anyone in single player would also be expected to fight, so eventually managed to make his way over to me.

There were also several encounters during Dead Island’s frustrating escort missions (of which there are many) where the game’s AI was all too happy to run headfirst into combat, only to then die and force a reload. In order to avoid that you, of course, had to run in and ensure that every zombie was attacking you instead, resulting in more death, more decay, only for the AI to die anyway and force a reload… upon which you discover it’s only a soft reset whereby you continue as you were, with poor condition weapons and less money. If you’ve ever (or never) played World of Warcraft, prepare yourself to be reintroduced to the many frustrations of the escort mission, with AI happy to wander past some attacking enemies and keep going while you fight them off, walking straight into the scripted instances where your help is genuinely needed. Five years development time apparently never saw that one coming.

Another disappointment rears its head in the advertised crafting system, allowing you to take the items you find in the world and combine them to create the ‘ultimate zombie killing tools’. What this actually translates to is a return to the appalling loot mechanics and a painstaking hunt for all of the materials. In order to craft, you simply have to visit one of the many workbenches in the game that can also be used to repair weapons and drop cash in order to offer stat boosts.

Providing you have the blueprint for the weapon and all of the required pieces, you’re free to craft it. There’s no free-styling here, no experimentation and no customisation. The crafted weapons soon outgrow their uses and you’ll die a little inside when you find a standard white Fire Axe on the wall with better numbers than your two hour long crafted Purple Bashing Stick. Having made that mistake once, I went through the game never again bothering with the system and was never penalised for having made that decision.

On more basic levels, Dead Island fails to impress in the simplest of ways. When first entering the a car and engaging with the driving mechanic, I was genuinely pleased with how detailed the inside of the vehicle was and how well it responded to my controls. I even let out a little ‘eee’ noise when I rolled a zombie up onto my bonnet and into my windscreen, shattering it like frosted glass and triggering an automatic response from my avatar who quickly punched out the glass to clear a view. But after getting out onto the roads, you realise that this is all just a gimmick to detract you from how little visibility you actually have in the first place from a first person perspective, and is nothing more than an attempt to soothe you as you crash into a fixed placement of a crashed car which doesn’t budge so much as an inch. For a game that does so well in the combat physics department, surely there was room to carry that over to such incredibly basic physics on movable objects, and maybe even some limited exposure to destructible terrain? Apparently not.

The menu systems also fail to deliver on a basic level, with your inventory being an absolute mess.  Broken tooltips litter the bottom of the screen, failing to tell you your options, and the whole thing manages to become even worse when you visit a store and attempt to buy or sell anything. Knowing that I was never going to bother with the crafting mechanic again, I made a decision early on to sell my garbage components. Expecting that the game would simply roll the list up to the last point of sale after I first clicked to sell, what it actually did was jump the highlighted selection to any random point it wished, never asking if I wanted to bunch-sell any multiple items and never providing any indication of what it might sell off next.

On the topic of bugs, you will hopefully have avoided the majority of them after some extensive patching followed the game’s release. It’s an open world title and so there’s always likely to be a few odd glitches in the system, such as heads stuck in doors and bizarre ramping of the laws of physics, but there are some truly shining ones of note which are still yet to be fixed. Most notably, in my experience, do be on the lookout for instances where a reload moves you to an entirely new location, somewhere you may never even have visited in any one of the four act specific environments. Having thought I had simply pressed a wrong button, I quickly went back to reload the save, placing me somewhere different, but I was then dropped  in somewhere fresh once more for luck after that. It took fifteen minutes on foot to get back on track from my final resting point when the game finally decided that this was, in fact, where I should be and completely made me want to switch it off at that point and just walk away.

I know these may seem like minor and rare niggles but there are plenty of them. Multiply that by the core length of the game and then amplify that by the extra time you want to spend in the world and you’ve got a serious problem. I’ve previously cited Dungeon Siege III as being worthy of a place in the naughty book of game development but I was at least happy to continue with that one, I genuinely found the game fun and it was well paced throughout. For Dead Island, they really did knock that right out of my park though, as there were so many instances where I simply found myself wanting to do nothing more than to eject the disc, feed it do a homeless person, dress them up like a Gazelle and wait for a Lion to seriously fuck them up.

The combat is fun but you do get tired of it and the game will never make an excuse for that. There are times where you will be able to switch from melee to gunplay but Techland strictly control when these sequences can occur, given that you’re only ever able to gain ammo from those who were shooting at you. In a way, it sort of adds to the whole survival aspect in that it wants you to use your ammo wisely but even for the gunslingers, your bullets don’t do nearly enough damage to zombies to warrant using it in the event of an emergency, and the whole sanctity of gunplay goes clean out of the window in the final act where they literally throw ammo at you so that all challenge disappears from the final fights.

On the same note, the game has plenty to do but the more time you spend in the game working towards completing it, the less time you actually want to spend with it. With everything about Dead Island running at a standard or just above average level, it’s far too easy for the game to be dragged down into the realms of disappointing and unplayable when you find something that grates. It’s a cruel task reviewing a game of this scale as you’re committed to playing it in a critical fashion. For a game like this, I would personally choose to play it until I get annoyed and then leave it for a few months and see how I get on further down the line. I’m still playing Oblivion and I’ve never finished that but I love it. It’s a tough one to call as I may have got that same experience from Dead Island given the luxury of time, but for all of the things it does wrong, I seriously doubt it would have made any difference in a pre-Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim filled end of 2011.

With Black Box having taken the reins for the next iteration of Need for Speed with ‘The Run’, questions were starting to arise surrounding what it was that the Guildford based studio were planning to release next. To discover that it’s Burnout is fantastic, but to see that it’s not exactly the next big thing for the racing genre came as a disappointment to many, myself included. Having been given the opportunity to go hands-on with the game that has broken their silence at Gamescom recently, I realise that I’ve been far too harsh, incredibly narrow-minded and so very, very wrong about Burnout CRASH.

In the same way that many were disappointed that CRASH isn’t a racer, I think back to the release of Paradise and remember how disappointed I was that the game was lacking in the crash department, given its strong showing in the franchise since Burnout 2. I got over that with Paradise and I think that once people have seen Burnout CRASH running, that they will with this too. The focus of the game is, understandably, all about crashing. Players begin any of the three game modes at the foot of the screen in the game’s new isometric view, tap a button to remove the good to go dialogue and then simply steer their way with the left stick to the crash junction ahead and then… well, crash! Each game mode takes a different approach to what happens next, but your primary responsibility from here is simply to ensure that every car that passes through the junction meets their untimely demise, filling your Crashbreaker and increasing your score.

As far as a Burnout game goes, that all sounds fairly standard, but of course we all know that Criterion doesn’t do ‘standard’. A Burnout game has to have humour, a decent soundtrack, the ridiculous, the unexpected, the awesome, the explosions and Spandau Ballet. Wait, what? Pretty sure that actually isn’t a hallmark for the studio, but everything you’d expect to find in a Burnout game is here, polished, refined and more fun than it’s ever been. To go back to my example of a typical playthrough, you’ve selected your car – almost toy model-like representations of all the series’ most loved and instantly recognisable manufacturers – chosen what colour you want it in (always important to look your best) and then began to steer your way towards the junction. That first crash throws $60,000 straight onto your score up in the top right corner, your car spins off to the left and your hapless victim off to the right. A bus comes in from the top and makes the turn to go right, swerving to avoid that first wrecked car but crashing into a building on the opposite side of the street, perfectly blocking up the right side of the road.

Cars are now entering on the right of the screen, only to slam straight into this accidental roadblock, your score is now into the hundreds of thousands and your Crashbreaker has filled – welcome news as the next car has entered from the south and is turning to go left, except you’re on the opposite side of the street and he’s easily going to sneak by. So you detonate your Crashbreaker, the radial explosion reaching the other car and giving you some air time to reposition yourself. In the explosion, you happened to destroy the building you had smashed into when you first crashed and your score is now in its first million. Traffic is entering more frequently now and you’re starting to think tactically; the right junction is safe and you’ve made good progress blocking up the left, all you need to do now is set up a disaster on the north junction and you can hopefully just rely on good fortune to ensure nothing makes it through any one of these junctions in order to escape through the south. It’s only been thirty or so seconds and you’re feeling confident, awaiting the imminent arrival of the Pizza Truck of Destiny, completely unprepared for what may happen next. You manage to Crashbreaker your way over to it, annihilating it from the front and triggering the Pizza of Fortune – a spinning wheel of random bonuses, special events and multipliers. The wheel spins, stopping on Thunderstorm, prompting a rousing chorus of The Weathergirls ‘It’s Raining Men’ and promising you mega-bonuses for every car you explode in the next few seconds.

If you’re starting to smile, you’re starting to realise that this truly is something very different for the Burnout franchise. It’s silly, it’s quick, it’s loud and chaotic and so much fun that you really can’t help but want to spend hours and hours rattling your way through junction after junction playing it. When the above example drew to its conclusion (with a giant sea monster smashing its way from right to left across the screen, I might add), the game dropped out to the final scoreboard, breaking down where all of your points were scored and instantly throwing it out there to your friends list, heralding the return of AutoLog and waving goodbye to long standing friendships. The addition of Kinect to the gameplay may have some people doubting whether or not this one will qualify for eligibility to a core gamer’s library, but it’s an entirely optional feature that the game has in waiting for those who haven’t joined the Kinect family yet, and something that the game can really get you in the mood for given just how over the top it all is.

This is a true labour of love though, and for Richard Franke, Creative Director on CRASH, this has been the twinkle in his eye for three whole years now, finally entering full production in these last twelve months and all set for release later this month on September the 20th. Having him on hand to talk me through the game as I went hands-on was a real treat, as I could see how despite having nurtured this game throughout the entire development process, he still couldn’t get enough of it. He was still laughing his way through the sillier moments that he must have seen a hundred times before, as well as still getting frustrated when his high score was posted, placing him beneath his fellow developers on the scoreboards, knowing that if they had seen it, it would lead to some grade A banter.

I’ve always loved Crash mode in Burnout, even back before I was working with Criterion, it always made me smile as it’s so ridiculously over the top. I wanted to take that and push it even further so we’ve gone to town on the audio and widened the scope of the game as well.  I really wanted to get some depth into the scoring so, whilst it appears very silly, frivolous and over the top, it’s actually got a lot of depth for gamers. I’m a hardcore gamer and a casual gamer at the same time, I guess you could say, I’ll play anything… bit of a game whore really! I really wanted to satisfy everyone with CRASH so you can put your Mum in front of it and she’ll enjoy it, it’s got Spandau Ballet in it for goodness sake, and you can also put this in front of a gamer and they’ll really get into the depth with the scoring. There’s an awful lot to it, much more that meets the eye I would say.

With Richard having talked me through the first game mode, Road Trip – a survival mode that requires you to stop traffic from flowing through the crash junctions, which gives you five lives that expire with every car that manages to get through – I was all set to go hands-on with the game’s second mode, Rush Hour. As you would expect, Rush Hour is less restricted than Road Trip, not punishing you for escaping cars but simply giving you the playing field for you to destroy inside of a time limit. It’s hectic and there’s so much going on that you’re panicking and laughing all at the same time. I’ve been trying to play strategically by systematically clogging up junctions, but I’ve triggered a Magnet power-up, drawing all of the cars on screen toward me and gifting me the awesome ability to cause a massive super explosion but, at the same time, completely buggering up my strategy. It was in that moment that I saw the depth Richard was talking about, that I could just hop in, have fun and sign out at the end of it, or I could go in with the intention of destroying a friend’s score, trying to make the most of every opportunity available to me – something that drives a core gamer and turns a five minute playthrough into a five hour session.

I can already see it now. It’s Hot Pursuit all over again, with an ongoing battle taking place at the top of my friends list as the two best racers struggle to displace one another but, this time, even if that one friend has been sat at the top of the scoreboards all week, I can challenge them in a one-attempt battle and claim a scalp for me to humiliate them with, celebrating my own personal achievement without ever having the stress of spending countless hours trying to get just as lucky as them in trying to take the number one slot.

AutoLog is back for CRASH, we feel like it’s one of our trademark pieces of gameplay at Criterion now after Hot Pursuit and so we wanted to bring that into CRASH. We’ve evolved it a little bit so think of it as AutoLog 1.5, I wanted to do it my way for this one, so what we did was we stripped it down and made it a bit more concise so we just have a recommendations page, but the recommendations have a bit more detail than they did in Hot Pursuit. We also have friend recommendations which allows you to expand your friends network, because the more friends you have, the better AutoLog is, and also we have a new feature called AutoLog challenges.  What that enables you to do is have one on one, tit for tat battles with your friends. With each of your friends you can have a separate challenge running, so you choose a friend and then you choose an event; you get one chance to set a score on that event and then you ping that score over to them and then, when they get in from work, they can check their AutoLog challenges and they’ll see in their inbox that there’s a challenge.  So, they get one go at that to beat that score, and whoever wins at that gets to hold on to this Cup. With each of your friends there’s a Cup to fight over, so once the Cup’s been won, you can challenge each other again to then try and win the Cup back or to try and hold onto it. AutoLog challenges will track your longest winning streaks too, a little number that ticks up on the Cup, and it’s just sort of a way to generate trash talk and makes it all a bit more personal. It’s a different way of playing I think, which I really like.

With Road Trip serving as the game’s loose story mode – a battle through junctions all across the game’s world, varying the locales as it progresses – and Rush Hour providing adrenaline pumping, fun-filled mayhem, the final mode available in the game understandably takes a more strategic and traditional approach to Burnout’s crash legacy in Pile Up. It’s old school, almost a puzzle game, with the cars you crash into not disappearing after they explode like they would in the other two modes, and with only a preset number of traffic that will cross through the junction, meaning that you have to make every crash count. Once it’s all over, you enter a mode dubbed Inferno where you need to set as much of the un-exploded and crashed traffic burning as possible, awarding you points for each fire you light, but also rewarding you with a multiplier bonus that is dictated by how few cars you allowed to escape, making it a far more strategic experience for those players who really enjoy the less chaotic aspects of the game and who want ultimate scoreboard bragging rights.

With the hands-on session over, I thanked Richard for his time and walked away wanting more. I honestly didn’t think I was going to get anything out of what I had previously believed would be a watered down, arcade only Burnout experience, but when I got to stand with its proud father and hear the ideas that led to this Pinball/game-show inspired chaos, I really did fall in love. Thankfully, I think Richard liked me and hopefully when I start dating his digitally conceived daughter, I’m going to get that pat on the back of approval that says he’s happy for a CasuCore gamer such as myself to spend a great deal of time with CRASH, maybe even get off the sofa and go at it on the floor, or perhaps invite my friends over so that they can have a go too.

Wow, that analogy took a weird turn.

‘Guten Tag! We have a lot of talented teams at Bioware, making games of all shapes and sizes, spanning the spectrum of platforms and reaching our fans, wherever they live. We’re going to talk to you about four of them today, first off -Dragon Age: Legends….

It’s ok, I still have time. I’m not a big Facebook gamer and, while I welcome the move to Google+ and the game’s expansion to even more players around the world, this wasn’t the announcement I was waiting for. I chance a glance up, and everyone is making the most of the time to prepare for some epic announcement with all eyes down and ears only partway open.

…Out in Virginia, the Bioware Mythic team are also exploring new gaming platforms with our long time partners, Games Workshop. Today we’re pleased to announce Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, a new player vs player, Play4Free game for the PC.

I sit up. My eyes are forward and I’m listening. The reveal trailer rolls and I’m transfixed. A montage of a battle I don’t understand, from a fantasy rule set I’m not familiar with and all drawn from a game I never did get around to playing. My interest is officially piqued though, with what I’m seeing being played out on stage looking fondly familiar, like the very best parts of my days spent PvPing in Warcraft, but without the tiring and drawn out score system, offering you a choice of pre-designed Heroes that you’re able to switch through on the fly, rather than forcing you to invest time diligently creating your own. Muzyka’s moving on, I however am not.

In the weeks preceding my adventure to Gamescom, I moved house, one of life’s great stresses where things disappear into boxes, never to be seen or heard from ever again. With all of the buzz surrounding Battlefield 3 and the chance to go hands-on with it drawing ever closer, I’d been keen to spend what little free time I had putting in some flight time on its earlier incarnations, so that when that 64 player moment hit, I’d look really cool. Sadly, I could only find my CD and not the manual so I didn’t get the chance to relive the dream without my sacred serial numbers. What I was able to do however, was download the recently launched Battlefield Play4Free.

The Play4Free approach to gaming has always been a turn off for me as, for some reason, I equate the act of spending money with that of the right to being allowed to actually enjoy a game. Play4Free has always suggested to me that if I’m not actually paying out any money, then I really shouldn’t look forward to anything and that I also shouldn’t expect to get anything back out of it all the same. But this is Dr. Ray Muzyka, the CEO of one of the most successful game development studios on the planet, standing on stage in front of hundreds of industry professionals and streaming live to millions around the world, telling me that I need to reconsider that stance. That week spent with Battlefield Play4Free was a real eye opener. This was every bit as good as Battlefield 2 was, with the addition of a levelling system that rewarded players who sank some time into it, but never stopped anyone who was just turning up once a week from competing at the same levels as everyone else. The visuals were solid, the latency was smooth and the gameplay tweaks they’d made, learned across the many years in which the PC FPS has changed since the original’s launch, were welcome. The free to play game had changed and I was ready to change with it.

Rising early one morning I headed to the Koelnmesse with the full intention of making sure I beat the rush, arriving in the EA Business Lounge to find bleary eyed developers tightly grasping their N7 Mugs of half drank coffee, making the most of the last free time they were going to get before the half hour cycle of presentation after presentation began. I circled the lounge and entered the ‘Behind Closed Doors’ area, walking past the numerous PR girls, each flashing me a smile and asking if I wanted to be first in with Battlefield, SSX, and Need for Speed. No, no thank you and maybe later, I knew where I wanted to be and I wasn’t going to be swayed by anything else.

Sticking my head around the door of the shared room for Burnout CRASH, Dragon Age: Legends, Need for Speed: World and Wrath of Heroes told me everything I needed to know about the game straight away. Sat down and happily playing their own game before the day had barely started was Carrie Gouskos, Producer at Bioware Mythic and Graham Bennett, Lead Designer on Wrath of Heroes. I watched for a few minutes as they traded instructions, laughed as they scraped through a tough fight and panicked as their health bars disappeared into the ether. You know that you’re onto something fun when those who spend every second of their days constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing a new title are still able to start their day with a smile on their faces, without coffee but with Warhammer.

Having surprised them that I was keen to go hands-on so early in the morning, they quickly dropped out of the game and started to reset so that I could get the whole spiel, seating me between them both while we swapped notes on our favourite keyboards, mice and headsets that we’d seen at each of the booths around the show, and devising plans to steal them for our own evil purposes. While Graham got things ready, Carrie jumped right in to tell me all about the game.

So we announced on Tuesday that we’re making a 6v6v6 companion to Warhammer Online. We looked at Warhammer Online and we said this game is pretty hardcore, pretty complex and the people that play it spend a lot of time Min/Maxing gear, knowing which ability sequences are the best, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of investment. One of the main reasons that people have told us that they left is that even though they like the scenarios and the Realm vs. Realm combat, they just don’t have time and don’t have the money. So we wanted to find a way to get to those people and we thought part of it is that they don’t want to put a whole lot of investment into it, part of it is that they don’t really want to spend a lot of time levelling a character or Min/Maxing, reading on ElitistJerks how to get the best DPS ratio per…la-de-da-da, right?! So, the thought behind this has been to take the core elements of Warhammer Online that people really like, the scenario gameplay and make it into a standalone product, completely free, keeping it small (it’s under a gig right now) and focus on just giving the player cool, iconic Warhammer Heroes to play with…

This is the one for me. I used to be that guy, I used to spend my time ‘Theory Crafting’ as it was known in World of Warcraft, punching numbers into damage calculators, arguing until I was virtually blue in my virtual face about how assigning my talents across Survival and into Beat Mastery provided a better DPS than if I had done it the other way. I lived for the good fight, the repeated call to arms for the battlegrounds with the same group of players, getting used to our play styles and compensating for each others’ weaknesses. But then I ran out of steam, I got left behind and I never again had the same energy to catch up. Life invariably gets in the way of these things and, even though things got better for me personally, I still always felt like I was missing out on that part of my MMO life.

With everything now all set on the screens in front of me, Carrie reaches over, grabs the mouse and starts to show off just how the game works, explaining how they’re here showing off seven characters, six of which will be instantly familiar to those who play Warhammer Online, (the Black Orc, Bright Wizard etc.) and with one specially created Hero that has never been seen before, Nethys the Vampire. Each of these Heroes, condensed representations of the classes available in Warhammer Online, have five iconic abilities which are available to everyone, with every player who picks to play as any of the Heroes, each gaining access to that very same skill set and taking their place on the same level battlefield.

Where we bring it back around though is when you’re playing as the individual Heroes in game, you’re levelling a Meta-Character and that’s where you want to be thinking about your account level so that you can use these Heroes to contribute towards that. The Meta aspect of play gives you access to things like tactics (our version of buffs) which you can earn as well as being able to purchase, tactics load outs which you can take into the game with you that you can swap out on the fly, that all give you an edge, which is really the major benefit to levelling. All of our Heroes have alternate skins which will be available for purchase, but they won’t be created so that players will want them because they have armour that have different values, it’ll be that they want them just because it looks cool.

I feel good right about now. It’s always a concern with a free to play model that the player won’t be able to get involved unless they’re willing to open up their wallets, but the approach to Wrath of Heroes seems to be going against that, wanting to reward the player who has the time to invest but not the money, while still making the game accessible for those who don’t have the time but are willing to drop some cash, and still managing to do all of that without severely impacting the Casual Core who sit quietly in-between. Better still, during a separate interview with Carrie earlier in the week, she promised that those who are subscribers in WH:O can look forward to being treated like VIP’s in Wrath of Hero, helping to bridge the gap between the two and maybe even enticing Wrath’s following into joining the full fledged experience.

…Oooh this is cool but you know what? Actually, I want more, I want something more complex, richer, deeper and if they’re willing to become a subscriber then great, we can provide all that access to Warhammer Online, plus whatever else we can then put in for the existing subscribers for use in Wrath on top of all that. We haven’t finalised that yet, so we don’t know what it is, but we want to do them right because they’ve been loyal to us for so long and we really, really value those guys. I’ve been working on Warhammer Online for five years now and it’s this huge part of my life, so it’s very important to me to serve that community and to make sure that they’re happy.

Back to the demo and it’s time to start talking gameplay, looking at what drives this game and finding out if this really is worth all of the wonder that’s still floating around my chest. First up is the ability to swap your Hero out when you die, allowing you to take a good long look at the makeup of your squad and think ‘Did we bring enough healers? Are we doing enough damage?’ so that you can return to the fight in a different class, without having to worry that you haven’t played enough as that particular Hero and can add that straight into the mix. It also adds in a rock, paper, scissors approach to gameplay that constantly refreshes the experience, with you bringing in one Hero that can readily deal with one threat, only for that player to utilise that very same mentality against you and come back with an even more dangerous trump.

We also have three teams, something which we learned from working on Dark Age of Camelot and something which we thought would bring an element to the game of advanced team strategy with three teams helping to balance each other out where you don’t ever have that situation where just one team is dominating because two teams can work together to take that one team down. My personal favourite is when you’re just coming up into an area and you can see those two teams fighting, so you just hang back for a second, let those guys take each other out and then we’re going to just storm in and roll through!

I’ve been watching Carrie’s hand twitch towards her mouse this entire time, with all of the passion from this presentation of the game just calling her back to the scenario, and even though there’s plenty more to talk about, she knows that best way to explain how this all plays out is to do it as we play, directing me towards the big red button at the top of my screen labelled ‘Play Now’ that I was somehow struggling to find and explaining that we should, hopefully, all be placed on the same team. Having caught glimpses of the chat window at the base of the screen during the presentation so far, I’ve seen a continuous stream of chat scrolling down, and with there only being three PCs in the room, I turn to ask Graham who it is we’re playing against. Its three a.m in Virginia but the team at Bioware Mythic have stayed up through the night, just as keen to be a part of the first presentations of the game as Carrie and Graham are, four thousand miles away in Cologne.

They’re all a little loopy! They really do get loopy at the end of the day! You’re actually going to be the first match too so they’re not going to be all that co-ordinated!

The loading screen is telling me I’m headed to Mourkain Temple, a scenario that featured in Warhammer Online but which has been re-designed to better suit Wrath of Heroes’ new approach. There are three flags around the outside, available to be captured by each of the three teams at any point, but which exist as non-scoring objectives, specifically designed to prevent the scenario where everybody just runs around swapping flags but never actually fighting. What the flags do provide are score modifiers, giving you more points per kill and allowing you access to the Artefact which, in this scenario, is the Temple in the centre of the map. If we were to lose our flags around the outside, we lose the ability to score with the Artefact, the one area in the map that is designed to be the absolute focus of combat and what promises to be the place where all of the action is.

So let’s jump in now, it plays like an MMORPG, tap targeting, F is nearest target, you can hit the one through five keys or click on the abilities with your mouse depending on which sort of player you are, you can look around with left mouse like you do with an MMO and…..no! You can’t /dance!

I was listening, honestly. As soon as Carrie had started delivering these instructions, I had already cycled through all of my usual button presses, finding out how tailored this was to the average MMO gamer and completely making myself at home by attempting some /dancing without even thinking if it would be a feature in the game at this stage. Carrie continued with her tutorial, explaining how the game has been designed to make things as comfortable as possible for the player, with features like map-pinging allowing you to simply click on a location in the game’s mini-map and broadcast that position automatically in chat to your teammates. Having already demonstrated how they’re making the most of as many good ideas, adapted to work from all ranges of genres within gaming, Carrie then directed me to hit the X and C keys, bringing up a list of Counter-Strike styled quick radio commands that intuitively interpret your key strokes to produce readable announcements for your team mates, directly into the chat window.

We’ve already captured our first flag and we’ve headed for the Artefact. We’re arriving later than the other two teams though, as Carrie has been making sure I was comfortable with the controls, explaining how the abilities are arranged in order of cool down length, with number one as your spam button and five serving as your ‘Oh Shit!’ button. I hung back to watch the fight, purely as a curious spectator and I wasn’t thinking about it tactically, despite being given this as a very example of how a three team system can lead to moments like this. Just as the dust was beginning to settle, we stormed in, wiping out the rest of the guys in no time at all and waited for the imminent onslaught of both respawning teams as they descended upon us from their separate corners of the map. Yeah, we didn’t stand a chance. Vengeance was swift and we were all brutally cut down, every one of us laughing as we struggled to hold on and feeling far better about having died than you’d ever expect a game could evoke when you’ve just been royally ganked.

Making the most of being dead, I switched Heroes from Nethys to Korith Deathbringer, a ranged class that I would usually opt for, and jumped right back into the fight. Instead of heading straight back in for the Artefact, however, I took the time to see who was currently in control and headed for their flag, curious to see just how easy it would be to turn this battle on its head. I neutralised the flag and turned it in our favour, just as those who had respawned from the ongoing battle in the Temple came barrelling down the hill toward me. I ran for it and headed back toward the Temple to meet up with Carrie, expecting to get no further than a dozen steps.  Spinning my camera back around, I saw the other team stop at their flag, waiting for it to return to their possession before chasing me down, only delaying the inevitable perhaps, but highlighting how the smallest use of strategy could be vital to turning a game in an instant. As I ran back up to help secure the Artefact, I suddenly remembered that I’m here to ask questions and so we returned to discussion about what other features Bioware Mythic are looking to introduce before launch.

We are looking at voice chat for the game, we’re not sure if we’ll get it in but it’s something we felt that might be needed when we realised just how fast the game played, that communication really is key. Right now, we have a team that’s communicating really well but that’s still all text so we need to consider voice for sure. All of the radio commands all have voiced dialogue, its a little quiet, but in the meantime that’s what we have and no! No /dance! [Laughing] To be fair, I think all of our emotes are still in from Warhammer Online but if you type them it’ll just say ‘You Refuse to Dance’. We haven’t really finished what we’re doing yet with the emotes yet have we Graham? Maybe we’ll get Taunt in there? Everyone likes Tea-bagging right?! Oh and I just want to point out, we are dominating this match!

I look at the scores and she’s not kidding. I’ve been keeping an eye on the chat log since I sat down, expecting at some point to see a message that said ‘He’s playing on System2, take it easy on him so that he enjoys it and wants to tell people about it!’, but there never was. We were all just in this together, trying to beat the crap out of each other and go for glory, no matter the cost. Winning was a bonus when, in truth, it really didn’t matter. I was having a blast and it really was a struggle to remember that I was actually here working, that I’d only had a few hours sleep or that I had a ton of other things to do in the day ahead of me. I was now running with my fourth Hero, a Black Orc named Bax who specialised in the old fashioned approach to combat of smashing things in the face really, really hard. There were seven Heroes to choose from in the demo I was playing, though having asked if this was the final line-up or the closest approximation to one, Carrie informed me thusly:

I think we’re actually going to launch with a couple fewer. We’ve made a lot and we’ve been going through this process of just narrowing, narrowing, narrowing, trying to find the best characters. The nice thing about all this is that we have such a huge selection to work from, there are twenty four playable careers in Warhammer Online and because we get to decide what characters are playable, we can make lots and lots of Heroes and we plan to do that. It’s probably what’s at the core of what we’ll end up monetising too, I mean you can have some of the Heroes for free but if you want a big Toolbox to work with then you might want to buy them.

It’s truly bewildering. If you tell me that I don’t have to spend any money to have a good time and then show me it working in practice, I become a very happy man indeed. Once I’m in that state, if you tell me I can have a better time by dropping a little money here and there, that’s when things get dangerous. This may well be the oddest analogy I ever make concerning video games, but think of it like a strip club. I won’t labour that point, I’ll just move on to the part where I asked the real technical stuff and hope that no-one ever quotes me on that.

It’s the same engine as Warhammer Online, we’ve obviously made some big visual changes but it is the same engine with all of the same assets. On the net-code side of things, we’ve been working on that for a very, very long time and the benefit for that is that it’s only eighteen players, so all the work we did to make sure you could have as many people as possible fighting in open Realm vs. Realm combat in WH:O, now governs these scenarios. The other thing is that we did make some changes to the net code as there’s no main or central server here, you won’t be connecting to the server ‘Badlands’ in order to play with your friends, it’s just the lobby, you can find your friends from there, group up, go play and it’ll put you all in a team together. We also provide all of the hosting for each individual game too, no local games so all the benefits of a first person shooter approach to hosting but without having to make a clan pay for hosting a server. I haven’t actually been asked that one yet! I’m going to use that one!

So what do you think?

What do I think? I think I’m in love. I need this kind of game in my life, something I can hit up for twenty minutes, play through a match to put a smile on my face once a day, or something I can arrange to get some friends together for and hammer away at for a few hours. It’s quick, it’s streamlined, it’s a constantly refreshing experience, it’s bold, it’s different and it’s fun. I am literally surrounded by tens of millions of pounds worth of massive, huge AAA titles, all of which I’m excited for, but none of which I’m amazed by. Wrath of Heroes is just about the most intelligent approach to the Play4Free model I’ve ever seen, putting the player’s enjoyment first and then giving you the option to take that further if you find yourself wanting to.

Something that was often commented on during my week with Electronic Arts UK is that when it comes to an EA product, the team creating game X have access to this incredible network that instantly puts them within arm’s reach of games Y and Z, games which may not be in the same genre, but which still make good use of features that are cross-compatible, should the team working on game X decide that they also have a use for it. Bioware Mythic already have this incredible wealth of resources available to them from Warhammer Online, a deep history with successful PvP titles in Dark Age of Camelot, and Games Workshop ready and waiting on the other end of the phone to ensure that their content is well represented and authentic to the experience. That they’re extending themselves beyond that, making regular visits to the teams responsible for both Battlefield Play4Free and Battlefield Heroes to find out firsthand what works and doesn’t work in the free to play world is testament to the desire the studio have for making sure that this game can proudly walk its way onto the stage at EA’s press conference like it did that week, and invite the world to look up from their holes in the sand.

I spent an entire week sitting in on presentations, going hands on with the blockbusters and interviewing some of the biggest names in the industry, but none of that could top the experience I got when I sat down to play Wrath of Heroes. When my time at Gamescom came to an end, I sat with my fellow EA Community Writers and we talked about what we were the most impressed by. There was a lot of love in the room for SSX, a great deal of fawning over Mass Effect 3 and plenty of good things to say about Kingdoms of Amalur, with everyone keen to hold each of the titles up as their individual Game of Show.

This was my Game of Show and that surprised people; it even surprised me but it couldn’t be given to a more deserving title. There’s a lot of passion at Bioware Mythic for all things Warhammer and when you have the privilege of sitting down with those who live and breathe the stuff, it really does show. Nine in the morning in Cologne during the week of the world’s biggest games show is early enough, and three a.m in Virginia is even earlier, but the energy that surrounds this entire project really is captivating. I thank Carrie and Graham for taking the time to talk to me, for the gift of my very first Warhammer piece and for putting a spring in my step for the rest of the show. Anyone hoping to join me when the game enters closed Beta can do so by signing up here and I very much hope we’ll meet again, out on the battlefield.

If we really are the finest the USMC has to offer I think the hostage would be best served if he jumped from the window and took his chances with the windscreens of our Hummers. There was, of course, a purpose to all of this; we were hands on with the very first demoing of the PS3 version of Battlefield 3’s newly announced Co-Op Mode. Following a short presentation by Producer Patrick Liu, in which we took another look at the incredible Caspian Border trailer, Patrick offered us a few general pointers  for the mission we were about to play, Exfiltration. “Try to use your silenced weapons for as long as you can, watch out for cameras in the corners and don’t leave your Co-Op buddy behind because if you go down, it’s not going to be easy for him to get you back up. I think we’ve only had about eight people make it through this one without a total wipe this week!”

Were it that I had more experience with a PS3 controller, that probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem. Sadly, I think the last time I invested any time with a DualShock controller was back in the days of Cortez and the TimeSplitters so, despite how welcome Patrick’s advice was, it wasn’t going to be all that much use to me as I had far bigger problems to deal with first. Thankfully, Kierse was a much more able player than I and within no time at all, we’d snuck our way into the first room and taken out the two idle soldiers with some carefully executed headshots. Or, at least, that was what Kierse saw on his screen; I was too busy staring at the light bulb, panicking as the first shot was fired and inadvertently changing weapon to my much beefier assault rifle, unloading an entire clip into a wall before hitting my mark and raising every alarm in the building in the process.

It doesn’t sound good, but it was actually probably the best thing that could have happened in this situation. My crazed spray and pray approach to gunfire had taken out the light bulb, plunging us into darkness and taken some rather meaty chunks out of the far wall, demonstrating both how subtle and how powerful the Frostbyte2 engine really is.

We fought our way through the hallways, battled up the stairs and then barrelled our way down a corridor, running down some considerably quieter stairs before emerging back onto the street where our platoon of Humvees were parked up. We exchanged confused looks, both with ourselves and then again with the beautifully rendered, grizzly manly men of war that were manning the various seats in the Hummers who, in turn, returned a look of shame and disappointment. In all of our excitement we’d completely forgotten about the hostage, something Patrick was quick to remind us of, and so back through the building we sprinted, getting a better feel for the controls and quickly freeing our clearly confused hostage from his equally disorientated captors.

Having escorted him back out onto the street, we had the boys fire up the Hummers and moved into flanking positions on either side of the road, protecting our convoy as we pushed deeper into enemy controlled territory. They came out of nowhere, firing from every balcony, every rooftop, putting all of the panic and fear I’d managed to shake straight back into the pit of my stomach. I was too exposed, losing health and running out of bullets. I dashed for a row of pillars on the far side of the street and hid myself from all of the many crosshairs that were trained on my chest. I thought I was safe, but then the pesky – and brilliant – Frostbyte2 engine reared its wonderful head once more and, before too long, I found myself emitting worried squeaky noises as I struggled to find a bit of the pillar that offered enough protection as bullets blasted their way through it, destroying not only the pillar but any hope of actually getting out of here alive.

I figured it was time to find safer cover and so turned to dash back toward Kierse, but it was too late. One final bullet forced me to the ground, leaving me only able to fire my pistol as I slowly started to bleed out and the world began to blur and fade. Keirse tried his best, but in trying to save me he killed himself, ending the mission and prompting Patrick to wrap things up for this preview. The game had reloaded quickly though, so I asked Patrick if he’d mind me doing one last quick thing. I ran back through the street, re-entered the building and headed back to that very first kill that I’d missed. Keirse had already absconded from the battle and so it was just me, but with flawless execution, I silently head-shotted the first guard and charged straight at the second to execute a brutal and magical knife takedown, which put a far bigger smile on my face than society should really allow.

A grateful nod, a thank you to Patrick, the receipt of my Battlefield 3 VIP Floor Pass and my dejected (at the thought of no more Battefield 3 until October 27^th) eyes lit back up (Genuine Eyes). It may have been over for my Co-Op experience, but the 64 player PC version was now only a short queue jump away. I felt guilty flashing the pass to the security guard, glancing over at the thousands of people who were patiently queuing for their chance to go hands on with this mind-bendingly epic FPS, but that soon passed when a diligent EA representative passed me a free T-Shirt and told me to enjoy the demo. I’m very easily distracted where freebies are concerned. Before entering the hall, I was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the sixty three other players and look through to those currently enjoying the demo. There were only a few minutes left, but this only made it all look the more appealing as everyone in the room seemed to have already slotted back into the Battlefield PC groove and were just stacking up the awesome as they tooled around the Caspian Border in Tanks, hurtled through the skies in Jets or battled for the streets with their varied kit customisations.

The door ahead of us all opened and our heads all turned away from the action.  We piled through to a cinema showcase of the game’s epic twelve minute long gameplay trailer, followed by a tutorial video to teach any new Battlefield players how to play and acquaint returning veterans with some of the game’s newer features. I’d like to say that I was prepared for all of this, but that tutorial presentation was delivered entirely in German, and so I made my way over to the keys armed only with my hundred and thirty hour service to the USMC in BF2 and my keen love for the mouse and keyboard to call upon.

It was like the true Battlefield and I never went our separate ways all those years ago. I was running alongside my squad mates, clambering into a buggy and speeding through a burning town without even thinking about it. Had we not have all been mousing around to take in the stunning views we’d probably have seen that M1 Abrahams Tank coming the other way, and probably would have done something about it. I died (a recurring theme for the rest of the demo, I might add). I remembered why I was here after that first death, thinking that I’d possibly rushed things a little and began to worry that I’d perhaps come on too strongly, fully deserving that nine hundred ton armoured division slap that someone across the room had delivered to me with glee. I started to treat this more professionally, started pushing buttons on the spawn UI, re-adjusted my class, selected a new spawn point and headed back into the battle… in a jet.

I’ve never been a great pilot in the Battlefield series; I’ll freely confess that fact. I take a very Indiana Jones approach to it all “Fly? Yes! Land? No.” I thundered down the runway, fired up the afterburner with a touch of the shift key and marvelled as the plane began to violently shake, pushing worrying thoughts in through my ears to think twice about taking this jet lightly. Once I’d levelled out and brought the nose down to a sensible angle, I was stunned. The forest was burning, fire was raging, smoke was pluming and I could see for miles. I’m never one to push graphics over experience but this was an experience all in itself.

I flew around happily for a few minutes before deciding to test something that had been revealed to me earlier that morning in a Community Q&A session with Battlefield 3’s global community manager, Daniel Matros. The sky isn’t even the limit to Battlefield 3 at this stage, something that the game has always prevented you from doing in the past, where planes, helicopters and jets all eventually reached a stall height – but this is no longer the case in Battlefield 3. I climbed to almost five thousand feet in the jet before deciding that this could go on for quite some time and so I thought, what with the limited time available to me with the game, I’d practice an old party trick of mine.

I bailed, five thousand feet high, leaping from my seat in the cockpit and allowing momentum to push me higher, before that Wil. E. Coyote moment where things go from up to down and I started sky diving my way back towards my rapidly plummeting Jet. I was worried I was going to miss it but I smashed my way back into the cockpit with some rapid hammering of the ‘E’ key, flipped the nose of the jet instantly back down towards the ground and then attempted to defy the laws of physics by pulling out of a violently fast nose dive, failing to do so miserably, only to then slam the entire weight of the jet directly onto that M1 Abrahams.

I’d like to claim revenge, I’d like to say I was aiming for him or that I’d managed to eject at the last second and had somehow survived. I honestly had no idea he was there as I was going far too fast and having far too much fun to notice. If I’d tried to do that, I would have failed spectacularly, but I still exchanged nods with an on looking developer who was watching from the sidelines and got straight back into it. I spawned at a destroyed gas station and made my way over to the flag capture point in the forest, the only one capture point my faithful team of Russian forces had so far failed to secure. I got into the foliage and I went prone, picked off the spawning US forces and locked down the flag. At the exact moment I managed to tip it back into neutral a friendly helicopter gunship flew over, letting lose a hail of bullets that burst through the leaves and cleaved the surrounding trees clean in half. I should have really been annoyed that the guy was on the verge of team killing me, but this was far too epic to get shirty when I was being treated to the magic of Frostbyte2.

The forest secured, me and my new squad headed back in towards the main town, emerging from the trees to a view of a road, a ditch and then a nine foot high wall just behind it. I glanced down the length of wall, looking for a way in until I remembered what it was I was playing.  I switched instantly to my grenades and blasted a spectacular hole for us all to pile through, amazed at the dust it had kicked up and at how each individual piece of the wall had responded in a completely random, albeit authentic and downright cool way.

With a Death/Suicide ratio to be proud of (and a Kill/Death ratio to not be so proud of), I hung my headphones up on the edge of the screen and headed for door, exchanging one last knowing nod with my on looking fan and passing back out into the great Hall Six of Gamescom 2011. I rounded the Battlefield 3 queue one last time, looking into the hungry eyes of everyone that was waiting dutifully for their first chance to play the game. I felt a bond, a connection with these people. In just over two months, we’re all going to be out there, on the battlefield, fighting for victory at all and any awesome cost. My new brothers and sisters, comrades and enemies, all part of one giant shared experience with those proud few of us who can stand amongst the others and say ‘I was there man, I was there’.

I couldn’t wait for Battlefield 3 before I got my hands-on time today and now, I really can’t wait. I’ll see you at the beta.

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Tom and Rich from Newbreview.com, along with our very own Staff Writer, Adam, recorded this exclusive interview that you can stream or download below. Be sure to check the EA UK Gamescom page later tonight for the full transcript along with impressions of the EA Conference and the games on show.

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