The internet world is full of beans right now, thanks to Capcom’s reveal trailer for Resident Evil 6. After the disappointing (but not actually that bad) Resident Evil 5, Capcom seem to be upping their game. So much so, that I turned off the video halfway through because I didn’t want spoilers. That’s how good it was! Other, desperate sites will be pointlessly debating all the implications of the trailer but fuck that; it looks like more of the same, but in Raccoon City, and ramped up nicely. Also, why are Capcom pushing it so heavily (it’s already had TV adverts in the UK) when it’s not due until November? That’s as much as I’m prepared to bother talking about it. It’s just a fucking video, man.

Anyway, that wasn’t the big news. The big news, the ubernews, the Pulitzer Prize news is that Syndicate has hit the PC. No, no, not EA’s pointless fucking FPS. The original Syndicate. The isometric, dystopian vision of an Earth turned into corporate battlefield has hit Good Old Games (our favourite purveyors of retro PC games) which means that finally you can play it on your modern PCs without pissing about. Admittedly, it seems to just be running on a self-contained install of DosBox but who cares. I downloaded it, installed it, played it, came oil all over my chops. It’s still the king. Syndicate, baby. Puts freshness on the line.

Fans of things that happened ten years ago will be happy – Rockstar’s GTA3 and GTA: Vice City have been given ratings for the PS3 which probably means they’ll be hitting PSN or something. You can’t go back. I’m just warning you. Going back one generation is always a bad idea. Go back two and it’s retro; go back one and it’s just a bit shit. For my money, the best GTA is the first one. The idea of having a points target and then just creating chaos to get there is way more fun than re-enacting Goodfellas/Scarface/Miami Vice/Boyz In Tha Hood. Running over krishnas. Enough said.

Speaking of things that shouldn’t be resurrected. Those daft cunts at Namco were already on to a loser when they decided that a port of Soul Calibur on iOS would be a good idea. On-screen buttons for a complex beat ‘em up? It’s a stupid fucking idea. Releasing it for EIGHT QUID with no trial version? That’s beyond stupid and is probably some sort of war crime. Suffice it to say, it can go fuck itself and can take Soul Calibur 5 with it. Even if Assassin’s Creed 2′s Ezio is one of the bonus characters.

Equally uninspiring is the news that Bioshock: Infinite (Irrational Games’ last chance at me giving a fuck about the series) is going to have a ’1999′ mode. This mode will make the game a lot harder and will require you to pay special attention to how you level up your character and what strategies you use in the game. One mistake and it’s curtains. Sounds like no fun whatsoever. I just bet that mode has an achievement attached too. Hngh. Anyway, aren’t they somewhat romanticising the idea that the ’90s was some sort of school for gaming ninjas? I’ll take your 1999 and raise you one 1984. Let’s see how your N64 thumbs deal with Jet Set motherfucking Willy. Dark Souls? Ha! Get through the Banyan Tree level on JSW without dying and I’m calling autistic superpowers, fool.

In stupid made-up-space-money news, rumours suggest that Microsoft could be about to ditch the Microsoft Points in favour of using real money. This was what everyone was asking for back in 2006, but these days your credit card details would be more secure in the hands of a Nigerian prince than in your Xbox, so for many people this could be the end of Xbox Live Arcade gaming unless they include some sort of voucher system. Suffice it to say that I’m more likely to put my debit card in my fucking eye socket than on Microsoft’s blatantly insecure system.

Before I leave you in puddles of your own tears, let’s see what the rest of the gaming world is into by checking out the latest UK charts.

1. FIFA 12 (EA)
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda)
3. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft)
4. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision)
5. Battlefield 3 (EA)
6. Zumba Fitness (505 Games)
7. Saints Row: The Third (THQ)
8. Zumba Fitness 2 (505 Games)
9. Rayman Origins
10. Rage (Bethesda)

That’s two Zumba games in the same chart. We need a flood.
Like in the Bible.

See you next time, Poppets!

Speaking of games, it’s been, in the words of barking mad songstress Tori Amos, a pretty good year. We’ve had all the usual triple A titles, a smattering of juicy lemons, hidden gems and rejuvenated old favourites along side the usual torrent of half-baked dogshit that passes as entertainment for the chavvy gamers that you try not to make contact with in GameStation. Personally, I thought 2009 and 2010 were the nadir of gaming. No good ideas, no good games. At best everything was just average and at worst it was insultingly awful but 2011 promised a lot. Especially as all the good shit that Microsoft announced at E3 2009 (before they nosedived into Kinect hell) was finally going to come to fruition.

January

January started with a hangover and brought us yet another pretender to Warcraft’s MMO throne, DC Universe Online – a PC and PS3 quest-’em-up set in the DC Comics universe (the same universe that Batman and Superman live in). As most MMOs find out, Warcraft isn’t going to be moved from the top and this soon moved into free-to-play obscurity.

Mindjack: a hugely-maligned shooter with a decent possess-’em-up mechanic, which got obliterated in the media by idiots and limped weakly into the five quid bargain basement. Patient gamers looking for an interesting take on the third-person cover shooter genre should check it out. It’s flawed but enjoyable, especially online.

Dead Space 2, the sequel to EA’s awful space janitor simulator, also hit the shelves in January and wisely ditched the chores and the endless backtracking. It scored well amongst critics and fans of the series. Personally I’d rather drink from a kangaroo’s cock than play that bullshit, but it’s probably worth the sub-£10 asking price these days.

January’s final interesting release (not counting Little Big Planet 2 which I have literally no opinion on) was a biggie here at GLHQ. Reality Pump’s technically-awful-but-actually-brilliant RPG, Two Worlds, is probably the greatest lemon in modern gaming. A game as broken as it was ambitious, it was one of the best (and worst) Oblivion-style RPGs and drew a hardcore following amongst gamers of a certain disposition. The off-again/on-again sequel eventually landed in January but a last twist in the tale meant you could only buy the fucking thing from Amazon. This meant that it never dropped in price and the lemony reputation combined with the high-asking price meant that most of us never gave it a go. But it was nice to know it finally got released all the same. Want to know if it’s good? Ask Mark.

February

As is traditional, plenty of publishers avoided getting swamped in the Christmas sales by releasing fucking everything in February. Great. The first biggie was the sequel to the open-world driving game Test Drive Unlimited. A nice idea in theory, Test Drive Unlimited 2 was released hopelessly broken out of the box and is still in the same state now. We weren’t fans, it has to be said.

Capcom released yet another unwanted scrapper with Marvel Vs Capcom 3, a game notable for having arguably the shittest boss in gaming this side of Seth from Street Fighter IV while the Sony Defense Force sharpened their pickaxes in readiness of any unsuspecting sites who gave Killzone 3 anything less than ten out of ten. Meanwhile, De Blob 2, a cute puzzle platformer, was released to universal apathy, as was the latest Xbox hack and slasher, Knight’s Contract. The pointy clicky gods were kind to Lorna though, giving her another obscure clicker to review in the shape of Gray Matter.

March

Beware the ides of March! I disagree. I say beware the first of March as EA chose that date to release the latest in their long line of pugilistic pummelers, Fight Night Champion. Alas, the series is starting to show its age and doesn’t help itself by insisting to you play with the assorted cocksuckers that make up the game’s fanbase. One to avoid I’d say. Joey disagrees though. We’ll be fighting that one out. TO THE DEATH!

You know that story that’s been done a million times before? Well, Homefront did that again in March. The oft-told tale of aliens invading and enslaving or killing everyone in their path led to an incredibly short, unfinished mess of a shooter that looked like it’d been coded in 2005. By idiots. Crysis 2, the console-neutered sequel to the graphics card melting PC original also told a similar story, albeit without aliens. Or maybe it did have aliens. I stopped caring after the first ten, awful minutes. Dragon Age 2 didn’t fare much better either, offering a cut-and-paste mission structure and enough DLC to make Bobby Kotick feel uneasy. Bad times indeed. Lego games, Need For Speed: Shift 2 and another Top Spin game made this a month to commit suicide to.

April

Quarter Two! An old favourite, Mortal Kombat, got its seventh sequel. Eschewing the 3D nonsense of the previous four games, the game went with the 3D graphics on a 2D plane approach of Street Fighter 4 and promised a return to the gameplay of the excellent Mortal Kombat 2. It didn’t work out. In the end it was still a very average beat ‘em up with more in common with the bad Mortal Kombat games than the good ones.

Sequel fans were pleased, however, with Portal 2, the follow up to the mind-melting PC puzzler. GL liked it a whole lot, anyway. The fan-pleasing humour and music of the original was still intact and it had decent co-op. What more can you ask? The rest of April however was all shitty PSP and Xbox Live/PSN nonsense, so moving swiftly on…

May

Rockstar’s big entry of 2011 came in the shape of LA Noire, a detective story with some open-world elements. We’re all for anything that lets us live out our Maddie Hayes and David Addison fantasies and LA Noire didn’t disappoint. Warning: it’s a Mark review so don’t make any plans for the next hour.

Original IPs were few and far between. Iain had some fun with the doomed-to-discount shooter Brink, and fans of retro-styled strategic shooting were treated to excellently Rebelstar-esque Frozen Synapse, but mainly it was a month of sequels with Virtua Tennis, Lego Whatever, MX Vs ATV and Fable all getting the sequel treatment. Out of that lot, Virtua Tennis 4 was pretty good but as predictable as an Andy Murray defeat.

June

Summertime and the living is easy; not for us gamers though as there were tons of things to play. Green Lantern was up first. It was all too predictable; about as average as the film I’d say. Then there was Red River, the follow-up to Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – a game I’ve owned since launch but have never played. Red Faction: Armageddon was a deliciously short and linear, destructive shooter and well worth the five quid it’ll cost you to pick up these days. Avoid the DLC however, as it’s a load of bollocks.

One of the most eagerly awaited titles of 2011 was Child of Eden, the spiritual-successor to the incredibly wonderful trance-shooter Rez.  The initial disappointment of hearing it was a Kinect game gave way to joy with the news that you could use a joypad; I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, rather than being Rez part two, it was really just Rez: X-Factor Edition. Shame.

Less eagerly awaited was the obviously-going-to-be-shit Duke Nukem Forever which, unsurprisingly, was a dog’s dinner of a game and did nothing to repair 2K Games’ reputation, which was in tatters in the eyes of many after the Borderlands DLC debacle.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon was the month’s obligatory film tie-in. It wasn’t very good and somehow managed to barely reference the story of the film. It was mercifully short though and an easy 1000 gamerscore and that’s all that counts. Dungeon Siege 3 and F3AR were the token disappointing sequels of the month.

July

After Lorna’s excellent E3 interview with Vicious Cycle, the dev team entrusted with… nay… honoured with the task of making the next Earth Defence Force title, hopes were high for Insect Armageddon. After all, EDF is a true gamer’s game. A delicious, hi-octane lemon that was ignored by the Modern Borefare cocksuckers but picked up by discerning gamers. A few slipped release dates came and went and then the game was here. EDF but with online co-op… surely the best thing ever?  Nope, it was utter dog-shit and just the thought of it makes me want to weep tears of piss. A butchered, unfinished EDF experience that was full of so many compromises, you wondered when the big pay off was going to come. Unfortunately it never did. Indeed, the game barely has an ending. It did, however, lead to me, and another GamingLives forumer, slogging through two hundred hours of horrific grinding to get all the gamerscore. So fuck us, basically.

Fortunately, Captain America was a much more enjoyable game to play through, even if it was entirely average in every respect and if you ask some of the GL folk about Bastion they’re likely to wank themselves to death, so it wasn’t all bad for us in July.

August

Coming out of the supposed summer drought, the first (and only) big game in August was the sequel to Deus Ex. Mostly positive reviews suggest that it’s a step up from Invisible War but not as good as the universally-loved original. Tropico 4 (a slow-paced dictator sim) padded out the schedule along with two flavours of stupid sports sims, namely Rugby World Cup 2011 and NFL Madden 12. Bodycount, a mediocre shooter that never really took off online, completed the full retail releases.

Fans of digitally distributed games got to enjoy such highly rated games as Limbo (the Windows release of last year’s highly-rated-but-not-as-good-or-clever-as-Braid platform puzzler), Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, From Dust and Gatling Gears. Although looking back, none of them are actually that much fun to play. Ho hum!

September

One of my early contenders for Game of the Year was the improbably excellent Dead Island. For reasons unknown, this game – an open world trundler with all the zombies you can eat – was mauled by several reviews, including the fuckwitted Edge Magazine, but despite itself it was actually completely wonderful.  And I fucking hate sandbox games and zombies, so go figure! The GL review was less than glowing about it than I was, but secretly the reviewer probably has the Dead Island logo tattooed on his scrotum, so don’t believe a word of it!

September’s blast from the past came with the how-is-it-still-going Driver: San Francisco. Don’t ask me what it’s about though as that series died with Driv3r and I ain’t ever going back, y’hear? Meanwhile, fans of Gears of War were well catered for by an orcish version of it in Warhammer 40k Space Marine, as well as the real thing with Gears of War 3 which, according to my friends list on Xbox Live, must come with a disc that self-destructs after two day’s play.

FIFA yet again outclassed the opposition without rising above first gear, providing the best FIFA for the last two or three years, whilst an old favourite (and possible contender for the title of best game ever) resurfaced with Resident Evil 4 HD.  It was a lazy port that couldn’t quite take the shine off of such a great game. Fans of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were equally well-catered for with HD ports of those games on the PS3.

October

With Christmas fast approaching, all the games publishers went a bit mad and started spewing out whatever half-finished bits of code they had left on their hard drives. The savage-but-brilliant Dark Souls disheartened anyone brave enough to try it, Rage saw iD Software doing what they’ve always done i.e. trying to top Doom and failing; Forza 4 came along and was snaffled up by all the Top Gear fans; Dead Rising 2: Off The Record tried and failed to inject life into the massively disappointing Dead Rising 2, and apparently there was a new Ace Combat game.

October, however, was really just about two games. One of these was the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. Namely, the slightly more open-world sequel, Arkham City. Released to near universal-praise, this was seen as a worthy sequel even if it did appear to be playing it safe rather than expanding the series.

Shooter fans however were waiting for just one game: Battlefield 3. After a dodgy beta release that, as far as I can see, looked and played like the multiplayer in Kane and Lynch 2, the full game apparently doesn’t disappoint. I wouldn’t know though as I’m not touching it with yours, mate.

November

As the nights draw in and we all start our pre-Christmas hibernation, the games continue to come thick and fast, starting with an utterly pointless remake of much-loved N64 favourite, Goldeneye. As average as it is, they have re-cast it with Daniel Craig in the lead role, so that’s something I guess. Fans of old games also had the release of Sonic Generations to cheer them up. I’ve never really understood the Sonic games as they just seem to involve running so fast that you can’t react to any of the obstacles in your way; besides I only drive as fast I can see and it’s all in the reflexes.

Jo, the fluffiest of all the Gaming Lives writers, got her mitts on Modern Warfare 3, the latest installment in a series of Ross Kemp wet dreams, whilst Ezio and the less-good Altair got another outing in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Clearly Stu is one of the few people who actually bothered playing Brotherhood.

Need For Speed: The Run was EA’s latest predictable stab at that particular series. Ric sort of liked it, I guess and Rayman capped a busy month for wee Jo who clearly likes guys with no arms or legs.

Skyrim, the eagerly-awaited follow-up to Oblivion, didn’t get the Gaming Lives review treatment, although Markuz is working on his War and Peace epic review of that. The game’s good, although it’s a bit of a slog at times and a somewhat buggy. That said, it’s as epic a game as you’ll ever play.

My personal game of the year was Saints Row 3, a rip-roaringly fun take on the whole gangster sandbox genre. Imagine all the po-faced realism of the Grand Theft Auto series being replaced with the stupidity of a Die Hard movie and the violence of council estate. And then multiply it by fuckloads. Saints Row 3 is a special game indeed. It also has the best in-game radio station of all time. Return of the Mac! Here it is! Return of the Mac! Oh my gawd! Only God can judge Mark Morrison.

December

Oddly, most publishers don’t bother with December and that was mostly the case this year. Mario Kart 7 came out for those 3DS owners who have somehow retained the full use of their eyes, while some game based on the all-too-French Tintin also got a full release.

Aside from that, the year ended just as it began with another attempt at dethroning World of Warcraft. This time it was the turn of Star Wars with Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, given that my PC reacts to games much as I react to being kicked squarely in the bollocks, I’ll be avoiding that for the foreseeable.

So there you have it 2011 in a rather large nutshell. 2012 promises more of the same, with inevitable sequels to FIFA, Battlefield, Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed as well as a bunch of Move and Kinect bullshit and a new Wii. The big question is whether or not Aliens: Colonial Marines will be good or if it’ll spew acidic badness all over our faces. I’m guessing the latter. Hopefully the prophecies will come true and the world will end before it happens.

Merry new year, everyone.

“Where am I? Who are you? What’s going on?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”

I want to play a game. You are a game developer. You have made your living designing videogames in what might be considered the golden age of gaming. You have an army of coders, designers, producers and games testers working on your projects and budgets of millions of pounds. Your games are bought by hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world.

You have wasted our time.

The inexplicable design choices, transforming your games from enjoyable entertainment to soul-destroying chores. Your insistance on sticking to gameplay conventions that nobody wants has gone too far. Now it is your turn to endure the misery that you have inflicted on others. If you survive the tests I have planned, you will become a better developer. The choice is yours. Live… (dramatic pause) …or die.

“B-but… I just make games… I’ve done nothing wrong….”

You are in a maze. The walls are lined with razors, broken knives and syringes of Russell Brand’s blood. You must navigate this maze without a guide and get to the exit before the time runs out. Or this maze… (dramatic pause)… will be your tomb. However, before you can leave you must find the two hundred collectable coins that I have hidden in the maze.

“Coins? Two hundred of them? Why would you do that?”

Why indeed. Given that you keep putting these things in your game, I thought you would find the distraction… (dramatic pause)… enjoyable.

Several hours and two hundred coins later, a grumpy, well-lacerated developer emerges from the maze and goes through a door which locks behind him.

*clunk!*

“You bastard…. let me go. I did what you asked!”

Not when we are having so much fun. This room illustrates the pitfalls of game development; in so far as there is a big pit and you don’t want to fall into it. The only way across is a plank of wood. It is ten inches across. Just as your games need to balance content against timescales and budgets, you too will need to maintain your balance.

“Oh fuck off.”

No.

The developer walks over to the pit but finds that the plank of wood isn’t as wide as he expected.

“Hey… this plank isn’t ten inches wide. It’s only five.”

Yes. That’s the free version. We have a ten inch wide version but that will cost you extra.

“But surely if it’s there and you’ve got it, you should just put it in the room instead of wasting time later making me acquire it!”

You’d think. Anyway, would you like to purchase the new plank? It will cost you two hundred coins.

“But… I left the coins in the other room!”

I know.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!”

I thought you’d like the surprise.

“Well can I go back in there and get the coins?”

No.

“But it’s just there!”

No.

“But!”

You can never go back. No matter how silly that seems. Time is a-wasting.

“Oh you fucking arse.”

He carefully edges onto the plank of wood. Oh this is dramatic. Honestly I wish you could see it. Ooh! He’s about to fall off. Close shave there! Shuffle! Shuffle! Eek! Anyway, whatever, he’s made it across. He’s shaking, his nerves are shot but he’s made it.

Congratulations. You have survived that test.

“Can I go?”

Not yet. You have shown your skill and determination. Your efforts have been admirable but can you perform as well when playing with others. The next room will test this. Run out of time and the explosive contact lens that I have placed in your left eye will explode. Killing you instantly.

“You’re not right in the head, mate.”

There are other people in the room. When the buzzer sounds, all of you must work together to solve the puzzles I have set. Your very survival depends on their cooperation.

“Who are they?”

I thought it would only be fair that you could pick your team mates. Perhaps choosing people with the skills and intelligence to help you through this task. However, I then thought it’d be a lot more fun if you did this with random people with no manners or social skills. Tell me, how do you feel about being… (dramatic pause)… racially abused? Send in the borstal kids.

*Buzz!*

Cue an agonising and arduous period of repetitive tasks that goes on for far too long as Mr. Developer is forced to solve challenges but with the active distraction of horrible bastards.

Good, good. I see you are enjoying this. I may well charge you £40 per year for the pleasure.

One of the borstal kids starts shouting abuse loudly, another is looking for a camera that he can expose himself to. One particular arsehole is playing 50 Cent tunes loudly on his mobile phone for everyone to hear. Mr. Developer is becoming frustrated with their lack of assistance but soon has more to worry about when three of them realise it would just be funny to lie down near one of the puzzles and then fling rocks at anyone who goes near it.

Eventually though, against the odds, the developer solves the last puzzle. The door unlocks and he stumbles out into the next area. The borstal kids have decided they like this game and will stay here forever.

Did you enjoy… (dramatic pause)… playing with others?

“You fucking absolute arsehole. Why make me do that with that scum?”

Why indeed.

“If I ever get out of here… I swear….”

Now is not the time. Your final challenge awaits. This is your moment of truth. Will you perish or do you have… (dramatic pause)… some fight left in you?

A hole opens in the wall, revealing a man in chains. He is six foot five, built like a wrestler and has a face that has seen more punches than Tina Turner’s.

This is your final challenge. I call him… (dramatic pause)… ‘The Boss’. He is strong, pathologically violent, educationally subnormal and will attempt to kill you as soon as the chains are released. I have left weapons around the room that you can use to defeat him.

“All I see are small pebbles, a tennis ball and a wet sponge.”

Yes.

“Are you taking the piss?”

Possibly.

A buzzer sounds. The Boss is released and immediately charges at the developer who dives out of the way. The weapons are doing nothing and the developer is tiring a lot faster than Boss-prick here. He charges again. And again. And again. After ten minutes, The Boss looks stronger than when this all started. The developer scrambles over to a wall to try and catch his breath. The boss charges at him once more. However, as the developer is about to be hit, he dives out of the way.

The Boss stuns himself against the wall and falls to one knee. In ways that make no sense in physics or biology, this causes The Boss to stand up suddenly, so suddenly that displacement of air and energy sends the developer flying backwards. He scrambles to his feet and runs to another wall. Surely this can’t work again?

It does. After just forty five minutes, The Boss finally knocks himself out permanently. The developer makes sure by kicking him repeatedly in the head, like a gang of teenagers might when confronted by a lone man who objects to ‘happy hardcore’ music and the souping up of Renault Clios.

“I did it… I beat you.”

You have done well, developer. However, this challenge is not over.

The Boss stands up again. He seems, somewhat inexplicably, to be back to full health.

“Oh fucking WHAT?”

Yes, annoying isn’t it?

The fight continues, with the developer using the same tactics as before. The Boss falls once more.

“Any more?”

No, this challenge is over. You have survived against the odds. You have shown a great willingness to live. To survive. All that remains is for you to go through this final door.

Wearily he drags his cut and bruised body through the doorway. The room is in pitch blackness. He enters slowly, feeling his way in.

“OWWW!”

The lights turn on. The developer has cut himself on the walls.

“W-wait! This is the maze from before!!”

Yes. With one difference. There are now 300 coins.

“What?!”

Yes. You must complete all the challenges again but this time they will be a bit harder.

“Oh go fuck yourself.”

Gets on your tits, no? Let’s call this (dramatic pause) ‘Hardcore’ difficulty. Does that sound like a good idea?

“No.”

Do you see?

Pwopa geezers smoke.

‘Ello I’m Danny Dyer. And this is Bwitain’s Nastiest Corpowations.

I’m ‘ere in Gweat Bwitain outside the offices of Squidcorp. Now, to the outside world Squidcorp are a respectable technology corporation specialising in prosthetic limbs, genetic research and military tech. In just a few short years they’ve grown from being the best technology company in England to being the biggest corporation in the world, employing millions of staff all handpicked from local areas around their many global offices. The key to their success is the loyalty of their staff. But is this loyalty based on good working conditions or something pwoper naughty? It’s time for me, Danny Dyer, to go undercover. To do this, I’m going to pose as a new employee and get inside at Squidcorp.

Wight, it’s my first day. I’ve got my whistle on and I’m looking the facking dog’s bollocks. Oi oi. I’ll be working as a lab assistant and this right treacle is showing me the ropes. She says we’re working on reverse engineering a flamethrower that was picked up in Germany yesterday. Typical Germans using flamethrowers. If I was out there I’d be too busy nutting everyone cos I’m pwoper hard. Bam! Fuckin’ ‘ave it, Fritzy. Oi oi!

I decided to have a look around when I was meant to be ‘aving a right pwoper piss. Behind the main research lab was some sort of giant freezer. I looked inside and saw some bloke, right. All frozen up. Big bastard too. Pwoper naughty boat as well. Squidcorp have got dozens of these freezers. I don’t know why they are freezing blokes but if they defrost them all at the same time it’s going to kick off pwoper. They’ll be able to turn up mob-handed like when we went to Spurs and they facking cacked it. Oi oi. Pwopa.

On a mission, like dahn the club

The lab tech asked me why my piss took over an hour so I facking nutted the wankah. Work on the flamethrower was finished and we got called into a big room. Some geeza calling himself the CEO started talking about Poland. I said: “what, you need a facking loft conversion done cheap?” but he started talking about some sort of mission; now I didn’t understand what this caahnt was going on about, but I could tell you this much, it was going to be a wight pwoper tear-up. So we fucked off over there on a jolly. Oi oi! Whilst me and the treacle dished out the weapons, I noticed four of these big, frozen nutters had been defrosted and were stomping about like they owned the manor. Now, I’ve met some of the hardest blokes in Bwitain but these blokes were pwopa tasty, all of them with right nasty boats. I went up to one of them to get the scoop:

“Alright, mate? Yeah yeah it’s looking pwopa naughty, yeah?”, I asked.

“I’m sorry, what?”, he replied. This wanker must have been mutton.

“What are you up to?”

“We’re getting ready to roll out into the city centre and acquire our target”

Before I could ask him what ‘acquire’ meant, they were shipped out. The first fella was carrying a mini-gun; the second had a sniper rifle; the third had a gauss gun – pwopa rocket-launcher like out of Commando; the fourth bloke just had a pistol and some fucking gizmo – some sort of iPod or summink.

“‘Ere, you got the new Ministry of Sound compilation on that? Pwopa choons. Oi oi! White Reeboks. Naughty!”

Once they got in the city things got pwopa naughty. The sniper started picking off all the security guards in the area whilst the bloke with iPod kept showing off his playlists to the local population. They seemed proper interested though, following him about like some sort of sheep; before long half the town was in tow. Pwopa little firm. Oi oi! It’s abaht to kick off. Naughty! Suddenly a load of blokes turn up. They look just like our lot but there’s fucking loads of them.

Pwopa tear up! It’s kicking off like Millwall playing Leeds. Pwopa naughty. Top boys everywhere. Some tosser pulls out an uzi and starts spraying lead all over the shop, a few bullets hit our blokes but they carry on. Proper top boys. The iPod fans are all dead though.

Then our bloke with the rocket-launcher starts shooting rockets everywhere. I remember a dream about giant ants, but anyway… our boys are taking care of business, but they are getting tired and the other firm still have plenty of top boys looking for a ruck. All of a sudden I notice the bint next to me is about to press some buttons. Adrenaline? What’s that then. I dunno but she presses it and suddenly our boys are like ‘Enry Cooper. A minute later there’s our lads standing there and the other lot are either dead, on fire or they’ve had their fucking legs chopped off. They turned up acting Charlie Big Potatoes and now they’re eating through straws. Pwopa naughty. They carry on up the road. Not sure why but they don’t seem very interested in putting in any shop windows with bins. Not a pwopa firm after all. Soft as shit.

They come to a building. Tarty next to me says it’s some sort of headquarters and that they are there to go in and get some fucking doctor out. Apparently, he’s the Head of Research for some Polish firm and we need him to join our team to help with body modifications. I was like ‘eh?’ but then she said it was like Joe Cole going to Liverpool and that made a bit more sense. Our boys kick the door in like they’re the Old Bill or something. More enemy agents come pouring out and iPod bloke ends up on the floor covered in claret. The others grab the doctor and bring him back to us. The CEO’s proper fucked off with losing one of the boys, but we’ve won and I take the opportunity to make ‘wanker’ signs out the window as we lift off. Oi oi!

I go home, watch a bit of Glee, have a few lagers and get a bit of kip. I get woken up in the middle of the night though. Some bloke’s in my fucking house. I go to nut him but he shows me his iPod. Persuadatron? Never heard of th…. OBEY. Bloke suggests we go back to the office. Sounds like a good idea. As does his next idea, that I get in the freezer. Fucking hell, it’s a bit fucking parky in here. He gives me an injection and I’m properly cream crackered.

Next morning I wake up feeling pwopa naughty. Stronger. Faster. Lab bint says I’ve got enhanced speed and strength thanks to ‘advanced prosthetic modifications.’

“Oi oi. I’ve got something ‘ere that doesn’t need modifying”, I tell her, but she laughs and holds up her little finger at me. Cheeky facking slaaaaag! I’d nut her but I’m taken outside and put in a chopper. CEO tells us that we’re off to Russia for a right pwopa tear up. We’ve got to kill or recruit every agent in Moscow. Hearts and minds he calls it. Fists and foreheads I call it. Oi oi! Naughty!

We set down in Moscow. I’ve got a shotgun. Pwopa naughty. We’re walking down the street like top boys. Round the corner we run into some Russians. They ask us if we’d go and play pool with them. Fuck off, Boris, we’ve got a job to do. I’m about to go fucking mental with the shotgun but one of the lads is recruiting them. CEO’s in my ear giving it all this and that. Sniper, go onto that bridge. Mini-gun, get round the corner. Flamethrower and Shotgun, proceed ahead. He says if it kicks off, we’re to come back to the bridge. We carry on. It’s pwopa moody and it’s like Moscow’s spoiling for a fight.

We'll give you fireworks geezer if you get claret stains on my fucking Reebok Classics. Oi oi.

Don’t blame them… it’s a fucking shithole. It’s like going to see us play at Charlton. Flamethrower bloke’s not talking to me much, but keeps recruiting people. Before long we’ve got so many people following us that we start getting security guards and eventually the Old Bill to join up. Any fucking Russian agent who turns up now is going to need a fucking ambulance. Oi oi! Eventually a load of Borises show up and start giving it the big ‘I am.’ They must have known we coming as there’s loads of them, all tooled-up. Flamethrower bloke manages to get some of them to switch sides while me and the civilians start blasting. They keep coming and I’m like ‘oi oi! I’m from fahking Lahndan and I’ve got a shootah you slaaaags!’

There’s claret everywhere and the CEO’s telling us to fall back with the incinerators or something; I think he’s only had a couple of combat drops as he’s losing it. Whatever, I start heading back to the bridge. As we get close, our sniper starts picking off targets and the big fucker on the mini-gun comes round the corner and starts mowing people down. I start to realise I’m fahking knackered, my legs feel like they are made of iron. I go to give them a quick rub to get the blood flowing and it turns out they are made of iron. Fahks sake! And they’ve taken my Reebok Classics. Slaaags!

The lab slag comes on the radio. “Prepare for adrenaline increase”, she tells us. Next thing you know, it’s like I’ve been necking cans of Red Bull. I’m buzzing and I’m nutting these Ruskie slags and doing them in the knees with the shotgun. Oi oi! Naughty! ‘Ere, Dimitri! NUT! Nose is all over his face. Slag! Naughty! Knees up Mother Brahhhn! We’ve done it. We came to their manor and took the piss. Right fahking tear up! As we’re leaving we scoop up weapons as a big TV screen says that Moscow is now being run by Squidcorp. Who’s the daddy? Apparently we’re putting up the tax to 45%.

Back at base, they tell us that next week we’re going over to America to take care of some business. They’ve revolted over there or something and the suits upstairs want us to reclaim our territory. Typical uppity yanks. Fahking soccer? You what? Oi oi! Naughty. The lab crumpet says they’ve done some research and I’ll be getting some new mince pies that’ll let me see better at night. Naughty! I ask if she fancies a drink later but she says no.

I think she’s a lesbian.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the industry’s love of mascots. From Mario, Sonic and Zelda through Lara Croft and Snaaaaaaake to your modern day Master Chief and Marcus Fenix, publishers love a recognisable face and back in the 80s we had a different breed of gaming lead characters. From Willy (16 square pixels that represented wealth, greed, excess and penance) to Horace (a head with legs that went skiing), gamers have always gone gaga for a character they can recognise and one of the great stars of the 80s was Dizzy. A somersalting egg. That wore boxing gloves. Did I mention he was an egg? Some sort of boxing egg? What?

Dizzy was the creation of the Oliver Twins, precocious coding talents signed to the budget label, Codemasters. Now you’ll know Codemasters as the huge UK-based publisher behind the TOCA, DiRT and Overlord series but back in the mid-80s not many people would have had them pegged as the most likely to succeed, given that they were known for a very-mixed bag of ‘simulation’ games, a few average action titles and a couple of rubbish adventure games.

Their mediocre output was masked by the hilarious comments that adorned their game cases – a stream of outrageously optimistic claims from the company bosses who’d describe every title as being “FANTASTICALLY ADDICTIVE!!” and having “INCREDIBLE GRAPHICS!!!!” These claims were never that accurate, but at £1.99 per game, you could never stray too far wrong and the occasional sleeper hit would somehow make it out onto the shelves, keeping Codemasters afloat.

Then they hit gold with Dizzy, an ‘interactive cartoon adventure’ game which, in reality, was just a very colourful, solidly-programmed take on the arcade adventure genre. These games alway saw a main character traversing a 2D world, with minor platforming elements, solving increasingly obscure problems by picking up and using the right objects in the right locations. A good arcade adventure game would have a good mix of arcade playability and decent puzzles, whereas the runts of the genre would usually have piss-poor platforming while having nonsensical puzzles that were solved by trial and error. Dizzy, thankfully, was one of the good ones and the hype paid off. Dizzy was huge and spawned several sequels across plenty of formats as well as a number of spin-off titles.

His journey took him as far as the 16-bit era where he plied his trade on the Amiga and Atari ST with continued success, but as the 3D age was ushered in, Dizzy (and the whole of the arcade adventure genre) as we knew it, disappeared into obscurity. We live in the age of the remake though and just a few months ago the Twitterverse started to dribble out details of a return for the ovoid puzzle solver. Dizzy was coming back. YAY! On iOS and Android. BOO!

Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk is a port of the 1991 Amiga game of the same name. The good news is that it looks nice enough, especially the hi-def iPad version, even if part of Dizzy’s charm was his simplified look back in the day. The hi-def Dizzy is a bit like watching Michael Bay give Optimus Prime lips.  The main concern with any iOS title is always going to be the controls and with that in mind, Dizzy POTYF features a very simplistic control system. At the left and right of the screen are large virtual buttons for walking in that direction and above each control is a button for performing Dizzy’s trademark somersault which is effectively a forward jump. Aside from that you have a context-sensitive action button which is used for picking up and dropping items and interacting with the game-world. The controls work but are far from ideal and feel quite awkward. To compensate, the game never really puts you in that much danger and is, compared to the 8-bit originals, an absolute piece of piss to play. Indeed, the only real problems occur when you drop an object in the wrong place and it becomes irretrievable – something that can happen pretty easily if you end up trying out various objects on the game’s less logical problems.

This is a very short, simple game that’s really just a shortsighted attempt to stoke up the nostalgia in an ageing fan-base, but Dizzy veterans are used to harder, more complex games from this series and so, at best, this is something that you may play if you’ve got kids and want to show them what it was like growing up in the eighties.  The final nail in the coffin for this ill-conceived port is the frankly horrible audio. The game’s tune, which has a habit of disappearing entirely if you jump out of the app, is a wholly inappropriate synth-prog-rock mess that has nothing to do with the cutesy tale of an adventurous egg who is looking to rescue Daisy (the female egg) from a castle or whatever the plot was trying to tell me before I started losing interest in it. Worse than that is the fact that the game has absolutely no spot effects at all. Aside from the music, the game is silent. No tippy-tappy footsteps or bouncy jumping sound. No speech from the characters in the game. Just cold silence. Some design decisions are inappropriate or lazy this is just fucking stupid.

ARGH! My citrus addiction must be sated. The one true Lord – whose name is Jif – must have his sacrifice. I love me a good lemon and this game looks like it can be infused into bathroom cleaning products for the ultimate sparkling finish. A cursory look at TrueAchievements indicated that it was also quite the doable gamerscore max as well. Oh fuck me, Lord. Why hast thou created me this way?

Blood On The Sand is truly fucking stupid. It starts off in Genericostan where Mr Cent is finishing a concert, only to find that his TEN MILLION DOLLAR fee has been stolen from his promoter. Ten million dollars to drawl uncharismatically through the laziest hip-hop dog shit you’ve ever heard? Fucking unbelievable plot point number one. Amusingly, Cent is dressed in a flak jacket, complete with rifles and grenades. Actual live grenades. The health and safety Nazis must be lax in Typicalostan; at least as lax as their hip hop listening standards.  Anyway, Cent decides that it’d be fair to kill the promoter instead, but the promoter has (hidden in a safe) a crystal-encrusted skull recently valued on the Antiques Roadshow at roughly ten million dollars. Happy with this arrangement, Cent takes the skull and leaves – presumably to go and bother some other made up country with his weakly-delivered hip hop piss.

Long story short… bitch got my skull. Yes, a woman (by default: ‘a bitch’) has got Mr Cent’s crystal-encrusted skull – a development that irks the purveyor of moronic, lisped rhymes enough for him to shoot everyone he sees. Bitch’s employer (a region-destabilising paramilitary fuckwit who has a decent working knowledge of Cent’s terrible back catalogue) then decides to sacrifice hundreds of goons and lots of expensive military hardware to stop the untrained Cent and his crew of pathetic yes-men, the G-Unit, from retrieving said skull.

Longer story short… Cent is a fucking twat. This isn’t an opinion, it’s right there on the screen. Everything he does and says is either horrible, offensive or massively stupid. Every action in the game is enhanced to a horrible degree by a huge setlist of fuck-awful selections from Cent’s back catalogue, including such fascinating lyrics as ‘Nigger my gun go off’ and ‘I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love. So come give me a hug if you in to getting robbed’. Indeed, throughout the game Cent is portrayed as a misogynistic idiot with absolutely no moral compass and an almost pathological greed.  When it transpires that Bitch only stole your motherfucking crystal-encrusted skull to order because her family was being held hostage, his response perfectly sums up a man with absolutely no humanity: “and your point is?” Oh fuck you, Cent. Presumably, given that the game carries his name, likeness, music and voice, Cent is completely happy with his portrayal in the game, so ipso-facto what a massive helmet he must be.

However, when you and your co-op buddy (playing as a member of G-Unit, Cent’s personal group of male felatrixes) are in the middle of an ambush, indiscriminately shooting people and detonating explosives, the game catches a wave of momentum that rarely lets up, making it at least more exciting and enjoyable than the terribly pedestrian Army of Two titles. It is still an exercise in by-the-book running and gunning with little or no surprises, however. There are turret sections and boss battles with helicopters – practically mandatory in games of this type – but it holds together competently enough and the co-op play is worthwhile just so that your friend and you can chortle incredulously at the unintentionally hilarious lines that Cent and his band of merry sycophants spew out. Although hearing Tony Yayo say “I’m going to kill your whole generation” every few minutes gets a little trying after a while.

Philosophically speaking, there are probably issues to be raised with a game like this. The complete and utter bastardness of the game’s protagonist, mixed with his unrelenting stupidity, is enough to make you worry that a focus group somewhere thought that there was a market for this.  Co-op play and achievable gamerscore aside, this is a game with no charm or humour, just an unrelenting spiral into a twat’s ego, where Cent wears his stupidity and arrogance like a badge of honour; it just makes him look like the dumbest wanker on the planet. It’s like when you are walking along and you suddenly hear obscenely loud dance music playing from a car. You look across and some fuckwitted teenager is there, having his internal organs liquidised by the bass, thinking that the people in the street are thinking “ooh he’s so cool with his loud music” when, in fact, most people are thinking “I hope you die in a fucking fireball you chav cocksucker.”

This isn’t a review and it’s certainly not a recommendation, but it’s not a warning to stay away either. I mean, it’s lemony fun and a little bit of IQ tourism if you want to see what it’s like to be as thick as shit, with no taste. Pay a fiver or so (pre-owned for fuck’s sake, you don’t want to give this man a penny of your money) and you’ll get your money’s worth, but it’ll leave you hating the world a bit and mourning the death of hip-hop. So be warned.

Quite the man of science...

I’m a devotee of science.  I know that the universe is in compliance with natural laws. Belief in God, whilst cute and all, is up there with belief in magic, fairies and Elite 4. However, sometimes divine providence can manifest itself, like the day my mum asked the ten year old me what I wanted from the sweet shop. I said: “some sort of comic, Mother” and she turned up with issue 19 of Transformers. Unfuckwittable choice, mummy dearest.

One of my defining moments came, like many defining moments do, in primary school. This was a good defining moment, not the ‘touched in that way’ by the caretaker type. I was walking along the hallway with my friend – a twat called Allyn who was so much of a twat that his name was spelt wrong – when our teacher called us into a classroom. Ms Stein (the 80s was all about the Ms. pronoun because feminism was the new thing. Well that, AIDS and the band Five Star).

I don’t remember much about Ms Stein. She was tall, thin, had a cheery round face (so far I’m describing a spoon) and, based on my childhood age-reading abilities, was aged somewhere between 18 and 88.  Oh, she had one more thing. A motherfucking, sweet as fuck ZX Spectrum. She called us in and fired up Jumping Jack – a simple but addictive platform game. Prior to this moment I had little or no interest in home gaming (I didn’t mind a quick 10p on a coin-op when I could get on one), but my first go on Jumping Jack was a successful one. I played for long enough on one life for Ms Stein to say: “Your turn Allyn.” He was fucking shit. In your face, bastard. I bet the prick-rotter ended up with a BBC MicrLOL.

Around this time, my best friend was cursed with a Commodore C-16. It was sort of like a pox but it looked worse and all its games were shit. Now, kids always want what their mates have and I didn’t know much better, so a bit of birthday and Xmas money was saved and we went into Dixons to buy a computer. My mum’s shrill foreign accent may have bamboozled the sales guy but he played a fucking blinder because I went home with a Speccy (unless it was mum’s choice, in which case “bravo Matriarch! Bravo!”). 48k of pure gaming bliss. BANG! Right in the kisser.

The Speccy was an 8-bit computer. To put that in layman’s terms, imagine your Xbox 360 was a 4×4 vehicle, the Speccy, technically speaking, is the small, crippled child it has just run over. It’s processor ran at slightly less than 4mhz (your current smart phone is well over a hundred times more powerful) and it had a palette of eight colours. You loaded in your games via audio cassette. You likely don’t even know what an audio cassette is, but that’s okay, you’re not missing much. It was more or less the shittest format for recording data and music that has ever existed and was more likely to fucking mangle your favourite tapes than it was to successfully play them. We put up with a lot in the 80s, for you it’d be like living in Rwanda.

Without the digital sound, high-powered graphics cards and complex processing units of today, the Sinclair Spectrum could look to you what a ball tied to a cup with a piece of string looked to us, but with great power comes great financial responsibility. That wasn’t the case back in the 80s. Games were knocked out in weeks, days or even hours. Subject matter and genres seemed to picked out by surrealists using bits of paper and a dart board and the results were… mixed to say the least. For all of the creative freedom the simplistic medium allowed, it didn’t always lead to great games and, as with any early system, you’ll be searching through a lot of chaff to get to the wheaty goodness and… fuck it, I’m not recommending anything in this article as it’d invariably make most modern gamers vomit actual pixels over themselves.

Classic gaming at its finest

To keep up with it, you needed good, reliable games journalism from people like you who’d tell you how it was. For the Speccy you had three choices: the high-class, slightly-influenced-by-the-publishers Crash magazine, the cheap and cheerful Sinclair User and the anarchic Your Sinclair. Invariably, most Spec-chums would purchase all three, pocket money allowing, to get a good grasp of how good a game was. Crash had the quality, with a thick magazine, staffed by pros who knew how to create a slick product. Sinclair User was the poor relation. It looked average but their scoring was mostly sound. Their rather-unwisely chosen mascot, Kamikaze Bear, made it seem a little bit childish though.

Your Sinclair however was where it was at. They had decent reviewers including the barbed-but-gifted Stuart Campbell and the hilarious Duncan McDonald, as well as a host of oft-repeated in-jokes which gave it the feel of a toned-down Viz meets a Harry Enfield sketch show. The reviews felt more honest and less po-faced than other magazines did and were the star of the mag, even though it was pretty enjoyable from cover to cover and it was a good guide as to what to get and what to avoid. It also set a blueprint, at least in my head, as to how to write about games. You want to be honest and professional for sure but you need to throw in a little attitude. Fuck the publishers, they’ve got enough money. Do your readers need to buy the game, or leave well alone? If you want to be a good reviewer, people need to trust you. These are the lessons that gaming handed to us in the eighties.

I knew back then that I wanted to write about games. I also wanted to be a superstar guitarist, a badass kung fu master and possibly a colonial marine. I wasn’t one for fucking about with photocopiers and the like, making fanzines, although some were planned out. Eventually, after a long time, the internet came a calling and after three or four aborted early attempts, I finally put a site together and tried to shape it to my own style (talking bollocks) and values (talking bollocks, but honestly, while swearing). A couple of years later, I found myself shoving a little content towards Gaming Lives because it’s good to put yourself out there, share the love and test yourself alongside decent writers and people who are passionate about this shit (and don’t just say they are).

These days anyone can put together a decent-looking site and review a few games. With no distribution costs, all you need is a mission statement and a work ethic (and a winning smile). You can be rough around the edges and a bit punk rock or you can put in the time and produce something to a professional standard, but you need to remember that you’re writing for you and people like you. Would you be happy if you bought that game? Would you recommend it to your best friend? If you wouldn’t but are going to be swayed by a few freebies from EA or Activision then it’s time to consider a job you’re more suited to, such as a used car salesman or prostitute. Are you prepared to rush out a review of a game that you’ve barely played just to get an exclusive? Then maybe you’d consider a job in, say, politics or the news media. Or marketing, or fucking sucking off tramps for crack rocks. Whatever.

When it comes down to it, I’m a gamer and you’re a gamer. If you’ve chosen to write about games then do yourself justice because, if you’ve ever been in the press queue for a major gaming expo you’ll know that there are a hundred other people in front of you and another hundred behind you who are writing about this stuff (and they’ll slit your throat and eat your Twitter account, he said dramatically). You’re a gamer. You’re not CoD over Battlefield, or PS3 over Xbox, or fucking EA over Activision. You are not what you own and only a fool gets attached to his or her purchases. You’re a gamer. Be a gamer. Not a shill, not a corporate cocksucker. Maybe you started out with a Speccy, an Atari, an N64 or a PlayStation 2. Who knows. Your gaming journey could be the same as mine or utterly different. But if you love it and want to talk about it, get some content out there. Get your thoughts down on a page. Tell the world if the new Need For Racing A Lot: Twats In Carz is good or a lot of dogshit, but if you’re going to give over-inflate its score or under-rate it based on a pre-existing bias for or against the publisher, you have no place writing about it. And if you do, I’ll hunt you down and flush your dog’s head down the toilet.

First, a little context. I’ve never been a fan of sandbox games. Aside from memorable dalliances with Oblivion, Mercenaries and, if we’re pushing the definition of the genre, Freelancer, invariably sandbox games make me fucking sick. There’s a whole article’s worth of reasons for that but mainly I see sandbox games as an excuse to ignore pacing and level design. If you want a good game, it generally has to be linear otherwise you’re on a horse trotting towards Mexico for the next hour looking at nothing but trees. Add to that the whole ‘gangster’ element that you get with the most games in the genre (GTA, Godfather, Mafia and indeed the earlier Saints Row games) and you’ve got a recipe for something truly mediocre.

Volition, however, have some good form when it comes to making this work. Saints Row was a cumbersome experiment of a game that failed to win over the GTA crowd, lost as it was in amongst all the other pretenders that came and failed to take Rockstar’s crown, but it was a good foundation for what came next. Saints Row 2 was an explosive shot in the arm for the genre with arcadey driving physics, a vibrant city to explore, plenty to see and do, with humourous plot points and easter eggs all over the place. An incredibly enjoyable game, Saints Row 2 was all about the fun but fell victim to such genre trappings as repetitive gameplay, too much travelling and more collectables than a branch of Games Workshop, and just as many cocksuckers inside it ruining the multiplayer for everyone else. Also, it’s no understatement to say that your character in the game was an absolute dick.

Saints Row 3 throws you into the action almost immediately. Your gang, the Third Street Saints, have evolved from wannabe gangsters to a feared and respected crime syndicate, and now become a full-on media sensation. With worldwide merchandising and influence, the Saints are now much more than gangsters but the game’s opening set-piece sees you robbing a bank, wearing caricature masks of themselves. A few wrong moves later and the heist becomes a war, with some of the most ridiculous action you’ve seen in ages with a story that makes Die Hard 4 look utterly believable, Volition leave common sense at the door and bring fist-fulls of glorious fun to the party.

After the breathless first mission, Saints Row 3′s intentions are clear. This game is going to be ridiculous. Ultra-violence mixed with bellylaugh comedy and, just as you are catching your breath, the game’s second mission and major set-piece ramps things up even further. If the game hasn’t captured you completely at this point, you’re missing the point of games. This is momentous stuff – as exciting as it is ridiculous.

Eventually you hit street level and it’s time to build your empire in the fictional city of Steelport, a typical mix of business, industrial and residential districts controlled by three distinct gangs. The Morning Star, a crew of arms dealing business men from Europe, the hi-tech, utterly ridiculous hacking group The Deckers and The Luchadors who, as the name kind of suggests, are easily identified by their wrestling masks.

At this point the game settles into familiar territory, offering story missions and side activities which increase your control of the entire city and your cashflow. After the two glorious set-pieces that open the game, the rest of the story has its work cut out for it but Saints Row 3 keeps the pace going with some truly exceptional, creative story missions. The sheer amount of destruction required for them is truly outstanding but also the humour keeps you interested throughout. I’ve never really been one for laughing at games, with even the supposedly-hilarious Tim Schafer games only raising a half-smile at best from me, but Saints Row 3 is full-on, laugh-out-loud funny. The missions are a real treat and to spoil them in a review would be to steal the experiences from you, but if your jaw doesn’t drop at some of them, you need to be ‘capped’ in the ‘grill’.

The story itself is relatively compact. You can make very decent progress within a couple of days and could finish the game with a week’s worth of play but that’s not the end of the story. As with Saints Row 2, the game world is littered with things to do, and things to destroy. There are several types of activities available from old favourites such as Insurance Fraud (where you fling yourself at moving traffic for money) to new ones such as the brilliant Dr Genki missions (a more fun take on The Club) to a very hilarious road trip with a tiger. Again, these are for you to discover but what I can say, having completed them all, they are as enjoyable as before, if a little easier.

Aside from the activities, there are small pockets of gang members to wipe out, a myriad of vehicles to enjoy (most of which offer a far more enjoyable ride than GTA4′s did) and the opportunity for chaos whenever you want to create it. Some people (cretins) have complained that the city doesn’t offer enough to do. Sure, that’s true if you’re an attention-deficient idiot who isn’t capable of concentrating for more than five seconds on one thing but you people with fully-functioning brains will find them suitably stimulated throughout.

Other improvements – the simplified leveling system, the fully removed adversarial multiplayer component, the perk that reveals all the collectables on your map and a less twattish character to play as – all help to cement the impression that Volition have actually listened to the criticisms of the previous game and have tried to refine what they had but Saints Row 3′s utterly over the top story missions and cast of memorable characters make the game special, more so than any supposed triple-A title I can remember from the last few years (Skyrim aside).

When it comes down to it though, gaming has only really ever been about two things. Stuff to do and stuff to see. Every great arcade game and every great console title works on that premise. You do a lot of fun stuff and then you get rewarded with something special to see. That’s exactly what Saints Row 3 does. The action never really slows down and you’re never that far from something that either makes you laugh up a lung or drops your jaw. And even if you try to say ‘well it’s just Saints Row 2 all over again’ or ‘just another sandbox game’, Saints Row 3 will throw in something so ludicrous that you’ll just fall in love with it that much more. Unlike other, lesser games in the genre, Saints Row 3′s vision isn’t mired in a believable world but rather one that is based in a sugar-frenzy world of possibilities.

What would you rather do? Go out for a game of darts with your cousin or shoot psychotic killers that are dressed up in mascot costumes for cash in a bizarre mix of The Running Man and the Teletubbies? Yeah, me too. All day.

That’s why these football simulation-o-trons appeal to me. I get to use my knowledge of football and tactics without having to exert any effort and, as far as this genre goes, it doesn’t usually get much better than EA’s FIFA series which, in recent years, has adopted the approach of shoving as much extraneous shit in there as possible and letting you deal with it.

Fans of the series will have already bought this and will be on GameFAQs trolling the PES threads, but us normal folks just need to know if this is worth picking up. After all, FIFA 11 was barely distinguishable from FIFA 09, with EA having settled into a series of small evolutions now that they are on the top spot with Konami’s PES series languishing in a puddle of its own tears. The short version is that FIFA 12 just about does enough to warrant a purchase, but with the understanding that when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the game engine, this hasn’t really changed that much. Sure, the box blurb and excitable cocksuckers at other, less good review sources will harp on about ‘improved AI’, ‘more realistic collisions’ and other completely unquantifiable bullshit but when it comes down to it, I play the same way I played every game in the series more or less. The game doesn’t change. It’s all about the modes these days.

Typically, FIFA 12 throws in your usual exhibition matches, leagues and cups as well as a fat career mode that can be played as a player, a manager or both. You can also choose to play matches as a team or just by controlling your individual ‘virtual pro’ so there’s plenty of variation in there. As with previous efforts, this iteration of FIFA gives you plenty of room to express yourself with all manner of tricks to pull off. Most of the time these just involve wiggling your right analog stick and hoping you turn into Zidane but the sheer amount of variation is impressive and the more stuff you do with your virtual pro, the better he gets until you’ve got the next Messi on your hands. Albeit one that doesn’t look like a girl with Downs. Pretty much everything you can do on the pitch gives your player a stat boost until you’ve either created a goalscoring genius, a skillful playmaker or a silky defender and nabbing these ‘accomplishments’ is pretty addictive, to the point where you can easily spend half an hour in the arena trying to score freekicks or dribble past the keeper.

The main on-the-pitch change is to the defending. There is now a choice of defensive techniques available to you, from the usual standing and sliding tackles to blocking and jockeying. A lot has been made of this on the various idiot forums out there and it’s not as big a change as people are claiming but it does feel like a nice refinement, even if playing FIFA these days seems to require having octopuses for hands.

As expected, the matches are represented in beautifully detailed and animated graphics and the players are well-represented as well, with Wayne Rooney looking suitably ugly and Joey Barton looking like he wants to fight you. The commentary is better than ever with Alan Smith drafted in to help Martin Tyler and the crowds are as chanty as ever.

For those of you looking for a bit more depth, the Career Mode should cater for all your needs as the management aspects are pretty beefy for this kind of game, with all the usual transfer options as well as the ability to update your backroom staff and even talk to the press. Most of that stuff can be ignored as a player-manager though (although you can also choose to be just a player or a manager) as you’ll be influencing things more on the pitch, but there’s a good chunk of game here for armchair managers and, of course, a world of licensed players to buy in the transfer market. That said, as with every football game since Sensible Soccer, the most important stat is still speed it seems.

Once you’ve nabbed all those Career Mode achievements, it’s off to the Ultimate Team Mode. This mode served its apprenticeship as DLC for the last three seasons and as such was completely ignorable but now it’s on the disc and is tied into a quarter of the game’s achievements. This mode has you playing tournaments (on or offline) for points that can be spent on Panini-style packs of players, backroom staff or other random things such as contracts or player boosts. These are random though, you don’t know what you are going to get until you buy a pack, yep just like the old sticker albums although you can buy bronze, silver or gold packs so you may want to save up for a gold one if you want a shot at landing Wayne Rooney. As ever, soulless cocksuckers can bypass the winning tournaments thing and just buy these packs with real money. You can avoid online play though and just build your team through hard work. Whichever way you choose, be warned. This mode is as addictive as crack-flavoured Galaxy chocolate. And twice as dribbly.

For those of you who’ve never seen a gaming-capable phone or any kind of website, Bejeweled is the bazillion-selling match-three puzzler from PopCap, the guys who brought you the maddeningly addictive Peggle and the brilliantly charming Plants Vs. Zombies. The original game saw you swapping over pairs of jewels in order to make a line of three, at which point they disappear and more drop in from above in the tradition of Columns or, to a degree, Tetris.  The last game in the series, Bejeweled Blitz, was a lightening fast effort that saw you playing one minute matches of either the Classic mode or Twist (a mode where you rotate groups of jewels rather than swapping pairs) but control issues, combined with a huge luck requirement, made it a little disappointing and the one minute time limit meant you could never really settle into a groove with it.

Thankfully, any concerns I had with that game (or any other in the series) have been dealt with. Firstly, there are a choice of eight modes (some of which you have to unlock, but there’s not too much difficulty involved in doing that) that all give distinct flavours of the Bejeweled formula. These mostly do away with the one minute time limit, thankfully, and have their own set of in-game badges that are awarded for various feats. The great thing about the badges and associated achievements are that their targets are focused on skill rather than chore or luck – definitely a first for the series.  It’s worth mentioning the various modes, as the game borrows from plenty of other games while always keeping true to the series’ roots.

Classic

The basic flavour of Bejeweled that sees you swapping pairs of jewels until there are no more moves left. A simple match three puzzler.

Zen

An endless version of the above but with a bizarre ‘biofeedback’ system that is supposed to chill you out by playing certain frequencies at you and moderating your breathing. The jury is out on if it works but if you want a quick chill out and have played a little too much Chime, this will suffice.

Lightning

This is a one-minute mode, similar to Blitz but with the chance of earning additional time from making special gems. That ability makes this mode far more enjoyable than Blitz and is perfect for a quick bash.

Butterflies

One of the best modes in the game, this plays like Classic Mode but with ‘butterflies’ – special pieces that can be manipulated and destroyed like regular jewels – that climb up the board from the bottom with each move. If they get to the top, it’s game over. A good degree of strategy is required if you want to get the big scores on this one.

Poker

Another excellent mode, that gives you a jewel for each move you make. Clear a set of red jewels and you’ll get a red one in your hand. The idea is to make a ‘hand’ of five jewels. The harder the hand, the more you’ll score. So three reds and two yellows (a full house) scores higher than a pair, for example. It’s a little bit like the XBLA title Poker Smash, but not horribly hateful.

Diamond Mine

Taking its cues from the dreadful Mr. Driller, this mode has you destroying the ground beneath you by making matches next to any soil pieces. Destroy a whole horizontal row of soil and you’ll drop down to the next depth. Tactical thinking is key here and the time limit keeps things suitably frantic as you look to get the next row clear, which will give you a thirty second time bonus.

Ice Storm

Possibly the most frantic mode of all, Ice Storm seems your game board filling with water as you play. Once the water reaches the top, it starts to freeze. If a column freezes, it’s game over. Making horizontal matches will stem the tide a little but you really need to make vertical matches as this will clear entire columns of ice.

Quest

A set of tailored levels that use the other modes in the game (and a few extra ones) but have specific challenges associated. These range from easy to maddeningly tough but this is a very enjoyable mode with plenty of variation.

Although I have favourites, none of the modes disappoint and the twin-stick controls (something that Blitz really needed) make playing any of them almost as effortless as the formats the game was really intended for. With the incentive of getting all the badges, there’s plenty of reason to keep coming back before you even start thinking about the online leaderboards, although those are likely to hot up in a few months time when this game inevitably becomes an Xbox ‘deal of the week’ title. However, despite the cost, knowing what I know now, I’d buy this. It’s a great game, perfectly polished (with the clean, bright look you associate with all PopCap titles) and is ideal for quick plays. Even if those quick plays are likely to stretch out for hours.