Battlefield 3 - and a new focus for the blog

Well! This blog, like so many others across the wilderness of the internet, has been casually abandoned for a few months, plunging its readership from a whopping high of 2 to a dismal low of zero. But fear not noble imaginary reader! I have a new direction in which to take this masterpiece of internetery.

I've been in a monogamous gaming relationship with Battlefield 3 since its release, and I'm committed. What can you buy for £40? That’s one ticket to a football match. A nice new shirt. An expensive lunch for two people. OR DAYS AND DAYS OF SHOOTING PEOPLE IN THE FACE UNTIL THEY CRY.

£40 spent on Battlefield 3 will grant dozens of hours of enjoyment (100 and counting for myself.) That’s £2.50 per hour of enjoyment. What else can you buy that provides £2.50 worth of enjoyment for a whole hour? Nothing outside of a house of ill-repute in the Far East, that’s what.

Pew pew pew

So this blog is going to refocus on all things Battlefieldy – from guides and tips, tactics and musings, right through to the secrets of how to annoy as many people as possible in a 64 player metro game.

Upcoming features will include -

Jihad Jeeping 101

How to do annoying things

Expand the map – expand your mind

and

Alcohol and Battlefield – the perfect partners

Read on, fearless explorer, and experience ye treasures beyond.

Deux Ex - Human Revolution

I am very pleased to welcome a guest blogger posting for this review. Step forward the wonderful Mr Ian 'Ratius' Riordan with his steamy opinions on Deus Ex : Human Revolutions - Winstons

I am loathe to use phrases like “my generation” and “defining classics” since I’m frankly not that old (Maggie came to power, Sony released the Walkman and 3 Mile Island caused a scare).

However, when reviewing computer gaming history I think it’s fair to say people of my age do recall certain events or games that give us an almost collective consciousness. The first time you inserted that cartridge into your SNES to play Street Fighter, rather then paying 50p in some grotty arcade that your parents didn’t approve of. If you were lucky enough, the first time you got your Amiga 500 (an actual computer?!) with, wait for it, 500kb of RAM. Installing Doom for the first time from an old floppy your friend lent you and wondering if it’s as good as everyone made out. The first time you rolled that silly looking Dwarf in Warcraft for an MMO.

And in the midst of all that a little game was released in 2000 called Deus Ex.

Simply put, Deus Ex at one point, was my favourite game of all time (yes Warcraft did usurp it as did the original Operation Flashpoint) but it still ranks in my top 5. It took two genres, FPS and RPG and combined them with a futuristic world where you didn’t simply follow the corridors around until you met a boss or battle weird looking elves in a clichéd Tolkein-esque environment. Its plot was so involving and incredibly well thought out, the ability to complete each level two or three different ways (how did you deal with those Bots in Vandenberg; go toe to toe with them, stealth around or send them against each other?) and the character development choices and engine were second to none for its time. Some of my favourite gaming memories lie within this game, from playing it back in 2000 right up to last year.

I've come to fix your hole

As a result, when someone somewhere linked up a teaser trailer to Deus Ex 3 I had two conflicting emotions run through my chest: fear and hope. Fear that they would simply butcher another sequel and finally kill off the franchise and hope that they would emulate the original and return to its roots.

I’m happy to say hope triumphed. Deus Ex 3 was released in 2011 as a successor prequel to Deus Ex.

It takes place some years before the DX1 setting, dealing with the beginning of widespread human augmentation and how the games different factions and main character deal with this. It is a little slow in my opinion and there is one fairly glaring omission towards the end but overall it holds up solidly enough. I’m not going to give an in depth plot summary, since I never agree with reviews that spend the first page detailing a plot that in abstraction makes little sense and can spoil elements of the game. If you like the series as much as me playing through it and experiencing it first hand will be a reward in itself.

Charming flat. Good south facing view and plenty of Neon

So let’s start with the basics: GFX, sound and engine.

The graphics in DX3 are very good. They aren’t the best out there but they most certainly get the job done. Where it excels is in some of the lighting and bloom effects, each city feels real, there are glowing neon signs, soft sun beams across floors and dark alleys with lit windows (check out the vista from your apartment window, really excellent). Draw distance on some levels is great, it really gives an epic feel to the levels.

DX1s music was genuinely iconic. Anyone who played it will still remember the intro music and certain key levels. DX3 plays a nice homage to it in this sense. I don’t think its as good overall but it certainly keeps the mood and fits with the overall games tone. I don’t think there are as many tracks as the original however. The sound effects again are solid, cant say they are spectacular but they do invigorate certain levels (Detroit/Hengsha). You can hear police sirens in the distance, people chatting and your footsteps on those ladder rungs.

The engine is decent, its definitely slick and moves well. However, I did notice several clipping issues from around walls and boxes etc. A clear ironsite on an enemy head does not always hit. It isn’t a major deal but it’s a flaw and one which shouldn’t be in a big production game. The switch to 3^rd person view on ladders is quite annoying too I felt and unnecessary. Having said that they are minor flaws, overall it’s a good engine allowing you to navigate through vents, up ladders, under walls, jump well and pick up and throw certain objects around. I cant recall ever getting stuck or having a polygon fall away from a wall or noclip into a box. Thats a bonus in today's bug ridden game releases.

Mrs Robinson, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?

Level design was always going to be an important factor in DX3 since the series predicated itself on the hack/stealth/attack formula. If level design was poor then this triad would inevitably fail. DX3s levels are well designed but there are not enough of them. You essentially have only 4 city locations (and one end level) and one of those – Montreal is too short. I was very disappointed to find around two thirds of the way in you get sent back to both Detroit and Hengsha again. Nothing has changed since your last visit and only two new map areas open up (Detroit conference center and Hengsha port). For me this was the games biggest flaw.

The original had at least 8 distinct and varied areas/locations. Whilst the DX3 maps are bigger and much more detailed one cant help but feel cheated. Even though DX3s maps are large there isn’t a huge amount to do in them. Interactivity is somewhat lacking, even in basic apartment rooms, you can turn on the TV/hack the computer or run the tap. That’s about it. Medical clinics are similar, as are warehouse and facility rooms. Whilst the detail in each is incredible, I think a better balance should have been struck, more levels and locations with less detail would not have detracted from the game, since once you have seen one apartment or server room you have seen them all.

In addition some of the areas within levels do feel a touch contrived, almost blatantly highlighting the fact that there’s a vent to the next room, a computer to hack the security terminal, a roof to climb onto or a supply of ammo for a firefight. It certainly isn’t present in all levels, some more then others but I couldn’t help notice it.

Was the original the same? Probably but it felt less contrived.

Having said all that as mentioned before some of the levels and scenes are really beautiful and you will remember them a long time (the elevator in Sarif HQ, the Hengsha port facility and the final level reception vista).

As mentioned the gameplay triad of hack/stealth/attack returns from the series and I have to say it is thoroughly enjoyable. There is a new close combat kill move, where a 3rd person camera kicks in and you can take down one or multiple enemies with some fairly funky hand to hand moves (either lethal or non lethal). It really adds a nice new gameplay element, hand to hand in DX1 was more about smashing a mouse button as hard as you could whilst equipping a lead pipe. Even with your non upgraded HUD you can see enemies on the mini map, their orientation and their movement direction. It really allows you to plan your stealth moves and path well. Most levels have great cover elements to use and abuse and I never felt trapped or overly frustrated. Having said that its a hard game, I died a lot but the ability to try another tactic keeps things fresh. The hacking element is very nicely done too, it feels semi realistic, is well balanced and simply works (I still have nightmares about Fallout 3s debacle). Combat is fun if unoriginal in its execution. All in all the 3 tactics work well together and there is at least one full replay of the game waiting on completion because of it. Again a nice addition considering some of the one time play "hits" of late.

So is it as good as DX1 taking into account the difference in release years?

No, in my opinion. It is still a fantastic game but I feel that in a way it’s a re-skinned and updated DX1. Detroit feels like New York, Hengsha feels like Hong Kong, Tai Yong medical feels like Versalife. The plot isn’t as strong as the first and your main character isn’t actually very likeable. He’s cold and unattached, quite sarcastic and only once does he betray any real emotion or feeling. I did not really feel for him or the secondary characters at all, whereas in the first you built relationships and feeling.

If you haven’t played the first then definitely pick up DX3, you’ll really enjoy it, its still a great game. Then go get a copy of DX1, get the GFX upgrade pack and experience a truly generation defining classic.

Ian has asked me to provide a suitable animal to sum up his feelings of the game - Winstons 

Deus Ex : Human Revolution scores -  Happy Hippo

World In Conflict

Hello. This review is about a computer game called World in Conflict. You play it on your PC. You make men shoot other men. When all the other men fall over, you win.

Those opening lines are about as exciting and innovative as the game itself, and sum up nicely almost everything you need to know. There is nothing particularly wrong with World In Conflict. The individual parts of it are all competently done, but yet when you put it all together, it has a sort of low-key, depressing tedium to it, like spending an afternoon with your aunt, or seeing a dog being sick at the side of the road. This game has been done a thousand times before and is really no different from any ancient old RTS fogey, from Red Alert onwards. And even then, you had amusingly over-the-top FMV sequences of Stalin strangling his subordinates or getting poisoned by his sexy female head of secret police - whereas here you have boringly self-important intro speeches by Alec Baldwin.

The pretty colours and loud noises decieve you into thinking this game has substance beyond that of a dead pigeon

So I can't really be arsed to review this game in any proper context. I feel vaguely insulted that I played it in the first place. I'm not going to say that my time here on Earth is as valuable as that of Jesus – that's for you to decide - but you all know exactly the sort of game it is, and the most damning thing I can say about it is that you can figure out everything there is to really know by just looking at the screenshots. It does nothing particularly new or exciting. The explosions are nice. The sound is good. You can call down a confusingly large amount of off-screen artillery and airstrikes – and that is about it really.

The lovely graphics and smooth animations serve to distract the brain and fool the senses

Instead, I shall pedantically and cynical de-construct the flaws in the military reasoning that underpins the game's plot and development, which will not only be exciting and interesting for you to read, but, and I'm sure you'll all agree, is also an excellent chat-up strategy. Feel free to use it as a conversation piece next time you are trying to woo someone.

(I would warn about SPOILERS BELOW, but really, the plot is so poor that I am in fact doing you a favour and saving you from having to discover the disappointing reality of it on your own. No need to thank me. That's my job. In essence, I am dying for your sins, so touching on my earlier theme, again, you can perhaps see the similarities between myself and Jesus.)

1. The Russians invade Seattle

What the fuck? What sort of fucking military retard came up with this idea? Who the fuck wants to invade Seattle? Were they Frasier fans and wanted the Space Needle as a souvenir? (The observant pedants among you may point out to me that Frasier wasn't actually IN Seattle in 1989, he was propping up a bar in Boston with Norm and the others, but you probably didn't notice that, so you should be ashamed at your own lack of knowledge of 1980s seminal American sitcoms. Are you ashamed? Good. Then I'll continue.) At the very beginning of the game, before you have to think about it too hard, this is kind of cool. Russians invade America! POW POW POW! That's badass and exciting. No fucking around – right in there with tanks rolling off the docks and helicopters popping out of containers and shooting up shit! But then you realise you are not 11 years old anymore and can understand that this is an awful idea.

Seattle is in the middle of fucking nowhere. It has no military value whatsoever. The Russians seem to have no plan at all beyond WE NEED TO FUCKING INVADE SOMEWHERE AT ONCE. It's not even on the proper fucking coast, you have to go miles up a huge, convoluted bay to even get to it. You learn a little later on that they have decided to push for some sort of research facility, almost as an afterthought - “Well jeez Petr, we took Seattle, what do we do now?” and want to find out its secrets, but Jesus, you wouldn't launch a massive cross ocean invasion to do that – you'd drop a bunch of Spetsnaz on it, with all balaclavas and knives and shit.

Then a little while later, you realise that the Russians are already fighting in Western Europe and that “America's Army” is over there, and that's why Seattle can't be defended properly. So, America would just send ALL of its army over to Europe? Of course. How silly of me not to realise this. That is almost as dumb as Russia's idea of invading whatever the fuck is closest to them.

Something's going on . . . some troops are . . . The Russians nearly . . . I'm sorry, I just don't fucking care

2. The military chain of command makes no fucking sense

Your boss throughout the whole game is a fucking Colonel, who seems to be in charge of everyone and everything. I don't really know the difference between a Major and a Colonel or whatever without looking on wikipedia, but I do know that Colonels are not in charge of whole fucking armies. Actually, wait a minute – in the name of good investigative journalism, I will check – and in fact, wikipedia tells me the typical modern Colonel is in charge of a brigade, around 3000 to 5000 bodies. What the fuck did people do before wikipedia? I have no idea. For all I know, humanity was ignorant for 2000 years, then spent 5 years using Microsoft Encarta, before finally evolving into using wikipedia to solve all of its problems. Either way, a Colonel is not in charge of everything in an army. Someone needs to tell him this and calm him down a bit.

Then as we go down the chain of command, things make even less sense. Captain Bannon (who is an amusingly cowardly character and well voice acted) seems to be in charge of all the tanks. ALL THE TANKS. All of them. A captain. Now what I do know is that a captain is generally in charge of a company, which can be around 100-300 men, or the equivalent bunch of tanks and stuff, if he's the armoured type. I also know that a Captain often reports upwards to a Major, of which there are none in the game – he does not take over all the fucking tanks he wants!

Then even more oddly, your character is a type of junior officer, a lieutenant! Yet YOU seem to be in charge of whatever the fucking Colonel thinks you should be in charge off – huge squads, helicopters, tanks, airdrops, laser guided bombs, napalm strikes, the guns of a battleship, and at one fucking point a godddamn NUCLEAR MISSLE.

The only explanation to all this is that America was REALLY SERIOUS about sending its army over to Europe, and that you three are the only officers left in the entire continental United States.

I see the flashes and explosions here, and feel nothing but pity as one would when seeing a disabled man chewing on a grey sock

3. No one is using nuclear weapons

This is frankly unbelievable. If the T80s started rolling over the Berlin wall at any time in the 1980s, it is pretty reasonable to assume that at some point, big red buttons would probably have been pushed and a whole lot of shit was going to end up mushroom-shaped. It already came as close as possible to happening in the real world as it could have without actually occuring, and that was without any direct conflict between the US and the Soviets (although not in the same time period as the game, read up on the Cuban Missile Crisis, history fans, and be prepared to shit your pants. I'm sure you are vaguely aware of it being a dangerous incident, but until recently I had no idea just how dangerous - at times only a phonecall away from certain nuclear destruction, it really is quite frightening).

In fact this statement of mine is not entirely true – you do get to drop a smaller, tactical nuclear weapon, in order to wipe out a large number of Soviet forces on US soil – but apparently, this is ok, the games narration informs me, by essentially saying “the Russians won't mind, because we are using it inside our own country.” Yes, of course. They wouldn't mind at all, even though they have shown the ruthlessness needed to invade both Europe and America at the same time. How nice of them to play by Queensbury rules. 

More explosions. Colour too. The hopelessnes of man's endeavours fills me with ennui and a cold, dead heart

     4. The infantry squads consist of only four men

Sometimes it's four. Sometimes it seems to be five. Either way, it's fucking retarded. You will rarely command more than 15 individual soldiers.

     5. The units are fucking tiny

So you are forced to make a choice between either being zoomed in to see the animations and accurately direct and click on them, or zoomed out so you can actually understand what the hell is going on in the battle, which way is north, and where all your other units are, and why people are shouting at you and telling you to go somewhere else. 

     6. All reinforcements are delivered by airdrop

Including tanks, using cute little parachutes. Fucks sake.

     7. The Americans don't notice a fucking army of Russians crossing the Atlantic.

Despite satellites and AIRPLANES and RADAR being present, and active, and used, in 1989, this whole issue is swept under the carpet by an emotionally wrought Baldwin informing us voiceover style that “Our navy was supposed to protect us while our army was fighting in Europe. It failed.” I am no military expert, but I know the invasion of Normandy in 1944 was the most difficult military operation of all time, with planning, logistics and secrecy up the wazoo, and this across only a tiny stretch of the Channel. To instead cross the frickin' Atlantic ocean, in a suspiciously huge fleet of civilian cargo ships, undetected, with enough manpower to invade a sizeable section of America, DURING WARTIME, is incomprehensible.

'Hi, this is the US Western Coastguard. I notice you have a lot of ships out there Mr Cargo-ship captain. What are you guys up to?'

'Um....we're not invading. If that's what you're worried about.'

'That's cool. Where are you going?'

'Umm. Seattle. We hear it has excellent tourist facilities. And also, needs cargo.'

'That's great. You go right ahead. I'll make sure not to inspect any of your ships as they approach the coast.'

I could go on. On and on. On and on and on, filling up page after page with constant depressingly bland substance from the game, like a blog version of a Michael McIntyre show. But you can probably already tell by my world-weary tone that I would rather lick my own armpits than continue pointing holes in this flawed piece of tedium. There's no challenge to it and it benefits nobody, like brutally lambasting the uneducated working classes for their pointless lives. It's just too easy a target. So I will end here, with a sense of dissapointment and frustrated melancholy that fills me with pity for the human race.

World in Conflict scores – bored sloth

Batman : Arkham Asylum

I'm a big fan of Batman. He is by far and away my favourite superhero. I have serious man-boners for him. Primarily, this is because his main "super-power" is nothing more than spite-filled, acidic determination with the willpower to melt steel.

Bear with me here while we take a non sequitur detour - At one point in the recent comics, Batman has been captured by agents of Darkseid, an immortal and utterly evil demi-God. He is strapped into a chair with a mind-control device placed over his head, connecting his brain to rows and rows of duplicate Batman clones. The evil scientists are of course trying to clone an army of evil Batmen to do their no doubt 'evil bidding' (one day I hope to use this phrase in a managerial capacity), by stealing his thoughts and memories and programming the clone army. So far, so classic.

Gordon has been hitting the gym - and the HGH

Of course, using his immense mental strength, he breaks through their mind control illusion, and the powers that drive him are SO INTENSE that they actually cause all of the clones to go mad and melt. A telling line from one of the panic-stricken evil scientists is "My God . . . what kind of man can use his mind like a weapon?"

ANYWAY, It's only the first paragraph and I've already gone way off course. You're not here to listen about my man-boners. Or so I imagine.

Shut up and kiss me, you fool.

Essentially though, that is what the game is about – not man-boners of course, but the pure, bloody minded determination of one man. Here is a man who has forsaken using firearms and all other forms of lethal weaponry in his pursuit of justice. And although you've observed this for years in both the comics and the movies, it is really only when playing that you begin to understand why. Deep down, it's not out of some non-killing moral code. It's that killing is too easy. It is simply not enough of a punishment. 

This man is about to soil his undergarments

 

The sheer amount of pure physical violence that this one man can inflict is terrifying. In any other concept he would be labelled insane, and in fact, that is a recurring theme in the Batman mythos, that he is merely a flip side to Gotham's many villains, somehow worse than them, yet working on the side of normal people.

Batman finishes 2nd in the annual Arkham breakdancing competition

Playing batman, you truly understand the sense of satisfaction that comes from pounding two-fisted justice into evil doers. These are bad man you are facing. Even the ordinary goons are no doubt murderers, drug dealers, rapists or violent armed robbers. There is a sheer, healthy satisfaction in cracking bones. You are positively encouraged to go to town on them. You will find yourself reloading checkpoints just to see how efficiently you can dispatch the group of proles who dare to smash up the Batmobile. 

What is about to occur? A beating so brutal it would put LA police officers to shame.

  

Batman doesn't just knock people out with punches so that they can be arrested later. Batman doesn't even try to tie anyone up. This to me is clearly because he wants them to wake up later and try again. He gives them the option. You mow down countless henchmen in the game and who's to say if some of them aren't the same ones from earlier? In fact they clearly are not, as they are all walking upright and with no facial disfigurements or internal haemorrhaging.

Killer Croc provides some genuinely threatening moments. And a great set-up for a Joker gag.

 

Batman destroys his foes, both physically and mentally. To wake up after a beating from Batman must truly be an awful fate. He breaks bones. He twists limbs until cartilage and sinew snap. He hits people with such force that there is no doubt brain damage could be inflicted. He punches people on the top of the skull, in the base of the neck, or jumps on them with his knees and pounds their heads against a granite floor. As Churchill once said "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm"

'Nope, can't smell anything, your shoes are clean'

 

So the very essence of this game is inflicting a vast amount of violence upon already violent men. Sure, occasionally you have to save some boob who has got himself tied up or captured. But these are merely distractions from the punching. And very admirable punching it is too. This is a thoroughly excellent game with a great cast, sound, free-flowing gameplay and combat. I eagerly await Batman : Arkham City.

Batman Arkham Asylum scores - BatCat

Football Manager 2011

Playing this game brings into question the metaphysical reality of living as a human being. We supposedly exist as rational beings, driven by two main things; firstly, the base, primal urges such as the need for food, sleep, sex, and so on. Secondly, the higher, society-based conformaties, like social company, interaction with other humans, rule of law, having a job, being productive and so forth.

This game provides an enjoyment which has no apparent connection to either of these two factors, and it remains a profund condundrum. Why do so many hundreds of thousands of people gain pleasure from playing what is essentially a spreadsheet?

Looking at other games, I can understand why my human mind enjoys and craves them. Fast-twitch action games provide a primal satisafction, sometimes of violence, sometimes of danger or fear, and sometimes just satisfying beep or boop sounds accompanied by flashing lights - rewarding me with squirts of dopamine for my button pushing efforts like some hairless Pavlovian dog.

Tactics - YOU pass the ball to HIM, and then YOU score a GOAL

Strategy and roleplay games provide escape, imagination and depth. MMOs provide interaction and goal-sharing - and the insulting of random people while drunk, safe in the knowledge they cannot punch you through trade chat.

So – here we have a game which is essentially a vast amount of minimalist pages containing numbers, graphs and occasionally, photos of gurning deliquents. There are also the matches themselves, where you have no real control over what happens. Any changes you make are lost to the infinite mysteries of the match engine, with human interaction reduced to making such simple commands as "substitute the tired man" or "try and score a goal by attacking".

The sadly unrealistic match engine missing a.) diving b.) spitting and c.) childish histrionics when easy chances are missed

Yet this game draws you in, almost like no other. Perhaps it is the fact you DO see the game as an unfolding story, that you transform the stats and the virtual players into a soap opera in your mind. Perhaps it is also the divergant aspect of history that occurs, whereby Fulham lead the premier league, Rooney goes to play for Swansea and Beckham scores a hat-trick in the world cup final.

Trying to explain the appeal of this game to someone who has never experienced it is nigh impossible. You would be branded mad by any court of law, a danger to society. You would be locked up, confined to a solitary cell, scrawling tactics and training plans on the walls with a piece of chalk you had obtained in exchange for giving a guard a hand-job.

YOU'RE ALL IDIOTS! Only 1 up against fucking LINCOLN?! The shiek is going to have my fucking head for this!

Essentially, one plays this game as a sort of librarian, or dusty archvist, shifting through endless tomes of information, scouring the spreadsheets for the right numbers. It is truly bizarre, yet compellingly addictive, beyond what a sane man should experience. Does that mean all who enjoy the game are mad - or does it just mean that everyone else is? Sadly, it's a question that cannot be answered - as I am still hunting for a decent left-back.

Football Manager 2011 scores – Rabid Hyena

Gemini Rue

There was a time, aeons past, now only viewable through rose-tinted lenses, when cartoons were violent and hairstyles were large, when clothes were bad and Michael Bay had not yet sodomized our transforming childhood heroes. It was that most tumultuous of times– the late 80s and early 90s. It was a time when lone men worked up a sweat in their bedrooms, creating things of beauty and delight. These hardy souls wielded their minds and their fingers upon that modern day anvil, the computer, and they forged things of wonder and beauty - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY2gK1MPgh8. And also many, many things of crapness.

It was the era of the bedroom coder, when gaming was in its infancy and brave pioneers surged ahead with their creations single-handed, conjuring up graphics and code and plot and sound. It was a time when you could walk into WH Smiths, pick up a Dizzy cassette and still have enough change for copy of Commodore Format. However, like any species, the bedroom coder reached its zenith, then began to wither and die. Indeed, for a long time, he was considered an extinct breed, driven away by powerhouse publishers and the increasing graphical complexity of games. It was proclaimed that no longer could a single man create anything worth playing.

Despite these howlings of doom, indie gaming has been the resurrection of the home coder, and now offers a new path to tread for the bedroom wonderkids. And this brings us neatly to Gemini Rue, a point-and-click adventure – traditional yes, but polished until it positively gleams.

The graphics immediately harken you back to this golden era, one you now only see through sepia-toned memories, when 16mb was a lot of RAM and Doom was causing waves of panic throughout the readership of the Daily Mail. The pixellated excellence recalls the golden age of adventure gaming, stirring memories of everything from Legend of Kyrandia to Beneath a Steel Sky, but carrying it's own modern visual depth and flavour. The opening scene gives us an iconic theme of the dark, perpetually rainy metropolis clearly inspired from Blade Runner and film noir, but no less impressive for that.

Buses remain unreliable in the future

The plot involves the familiar staples of memory loss, detective work, oppresive governments, secret facilities and brooding intensity, but presented with perfection. The top notch sounds and music draw you in, and the gritty voice acting, especially of the main protagonist, a man who sounds like he chews sandpaper, harks back to the grizzled gum shoes of the 1950s.

The atmosphere of the game achieves that great goal of all, immersion. Lights flicker, rain spatters onto the sidewalk, you feel the heavy, rotten burden upon your characters shoulder's. The quest for answers and the dual problem of untrustworthy memory span across two main characters, who's link drives the plot forward.

Alleyway - check. Rain - check. Replicants? Not sure.

What is truly remarkable is the effort and skill that has gone into fashioning this game. The production values are crystal perfect and to be told that the entire thing was constructed (save the music) by a single man is wonderful – the impressively-named Joshua Nuernberger http://twitter.com/#!/thejburger

Sim Dentist 2011

There are various attempts by the author to freshen up the genre – control of dual characters, some shooting and combat sequences and some detective work – all of which provide pleasant little morsels of gaming satisfaction, but the real meat and gristle still lies within the pointing and the clicking. It is not a terribly difficult game, and neither is it a particularly long one, but when one goes to a fine restaurant, one does not stuff one's face with all-you-can-eat food – you savour the taste and subtle flavour of the exquisitely crafted dishes placed in front of you. So it is also with Gemini Rue.

Gemini Rue scores – Sophisticated Fox 

Civilisation 5

The Civilisation series does of course have a long and distinctive history, like some aged and hallowed relic handed down through the generations and talked about in hushed tones. Civ is indeed a grand old gentleman, with a twirly grey moustache and a gleam in his eye. He has seen countless pretenders come and go, but still sits there, confident in his pedigree.

Honeycombed beauty - although the hexes are optional

I cut my teeth on Civ as a teenager, and spent many, many hours secretly preparing swarms of tanks to surround enemy cities before sneak-attacking an entire country into rubble. In another society, perhaps spending countless evenings plotting the downfall of empires and culling inumerable civilians with nuclear aggression would be a hallmark of concern, but happily my parents failed to ever check up on my megalomaniacal leanings.

Since then, I have dabbled with Civ 4 for a while, but haven't properly played one of the Civ progeny until Civ 5 was birthed unto the world. It's the usual score – you lead a civilisation from prehistoric times until the future age with a variety of ways to win. The traditional “crush all beneath your jackboot” style world domination, the spaceship launching science victory, the rather boring method of just scoring the most points by the end of the game, or the equally dull diplomatic victory, which essentially just consists of bribing vast numbers of city-states to vote you in as a World President-For-Life.

'No, of course I'm not going to attack you." Lying through your teeth to the A.I. remains a Civ staple

The most interesting is the cultural victory, where your civilisation's arts and culture become so ubiquitous to the people of earth that they cannot imagine life without them – interesting because cultural advances become increasingly difficult and expensive to acquire the larger the empire you own, promoting the use of a small, tightly organised Civ instead, and denying you the use of the typical Civ mega-army to crush all. However, you may very well try and win peacefully, but of course we all know that what you really want to do is grind that smug A.I.'s face into the ashes of his capital city until he chokes - so war is often waged for fun as much as it is for strategic or political reasons.

A mention has to be made of the new hex-based movement and the fact units cannot stack – which makes combat a little more tactical than it used to be. Units are now more expensive and can level up, rewarding you for holding on to them and using them carefully, and bringing your trusted spear-men all the way through to the modern era as mechanized infantry is possible with careful management.

The introduction of strategic resources such as oil, iron and uranium is a very nice touch, especially as they are not revealed on the map until you discover the relevant technology. This brings the intriguing possibility of a previously weak civilsation becoming a major player upon discovery of a vast horde of oil within his borders, or a sudden power-grab by yourself in order to secure some precious uranium to construct your nuclear, ahem, 'deterrent.'

Work faster you fools! I said gold, I wanted gold! The city management screen is where you tweak your solvenly citizens into perfection

The A.I. as usual has some gaping flaws – its use of its navies is laughably poor, and its ground forces will often put themselves in hopeless positions from which you can pick them off, but it is not overly terrible – its higher grand strategy often proves threatening, even though it has still not learnt how to successfully manage empires across more than one continent or island.

The political machinations are equally one-dimensional, and are limited mostly to trading resources and the constant requests for open borders that the A.I. seems obsessed with.

It is a good game – very addictive, in the same way popcorn, or indeed, crack cocaine is quite more-ish. Just one more, you say to yourself. Just one more turn. I'll just capture this city. I'll just defeat this opponent. I'll just wake up next morning with a throbbing head from a 4am bedtime and get fired from my job for turning up late again. The risks are high with this game.

Population and city management is key as ever. Rushing to expand too fast will result in a vast amount of unhappiness, potentially crippling your growing Civ and making you easy pickings for hostile A.I. All things in moderation, slow and deliberate expansion is the key. The cultural “talent trees” are a nice touch, allowing you to modify your Civ's internal characteristics as you gain more and more culture – another benefit that the smaller, more focused Civ can acquire faster than the its ugly, larger cousin.

Gandhi once again tries to crush the world

The map screen is beautiful and smooth – trees rustle, cows moo, units shuffle around – it gives a real sense of being alive, and the landscape changes over the millennia as you modify it.

Like any Hollywood vixen however, when viewed in the cold light of day with no make-up, there are plenty of flaws to pick up on. There is a vast and terrible slowdown in graphics loading as the map opens up and becomes larger, which is utterly baffling considering how uncomplicated the graphics really are. The loading times for saved games are truly criminal for the 21^st century and remind me of my Commodore 64 days.

There also comes a point in the game where you find yourself doing very little except clicking on the 'next turn' button, and the lack of tangible reward from the game when you finally win victory is rather galling. In Civ 2, for example, when you launched your colony spaceship, you were treated to a rather epic video and thumping classical soundtrack (which can be seen here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y47nxo_uvA), in Civ 5 however you are “rewarded” with a single still screenshot and a scoreboard. I know it is more about the journey than the destination with a Civ game, but still, throw us a frickin' bone here.

So in the end, a very good, achingly additive game which will suck time away from your life – but after all that, rather empty in a hollow, soulless way, and actually a lot more simplistic and lacking depth than a simulation of the world's civilisations should be – in many ways, it feels like a step back from earlier games.

Lovable, fun, but slightly simple at the core, Civ 5 scores -Sleepy Pug