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The Creeper is possibly one of the best villains in computer game history. For a green, kind of phallic cactus thing, it’s surprising, but I think I’ve never shouted at my screen louder at anything more frustrating. The shock of seeing a creeper a second before dying at its hands makes me scream like a little girl in an unmarked, windowless van.

The Creeper is king of all bastards, and here are some of the reasons why he’s an interesting, compelling villain, and deserving of all our hate.

1) He is the Unmaker

Minecraft is a game where you build things. They could be small and practical or vast and ostentatious. You create, and that’s why it’s one of the best games around. In a video game culture where shooting foreign people in an environment made of varied brown hues, this is a colourful world where you make.

The Creeper does not make though. He destroys. He is death, he is the internet troll, he is the terrible remake of a song you like, forever etching a ruined version on your ears.
You build a hut, a creeper gets in and while you’re swinging your sword like crazy, he starts to hiss. He flashes. Then boom! He destroys everything.

If you die in Minecraft, there’s little cost. You respawn right away, and maybe you lose some nice items you had, but that’s not the problem. He’s killed your cabin, and night WILL fall. You have to start again. A creeper in your castle is a nightmare. Hillsides outside your home fill up with massive craters, scarred by his passing. Death isn’t the most important thing here, but your home, your project, your art is. They are the diametric opposite of you and that is why they are best.

2) Jumpscares Are Lazy , But Effective Horror

The hiss. That damn hiss. I’ve scared people out of the game by making that noise, and it’s a dick move. I’d fall for it too, I bet.

Zombies groan, spiders make slurping noises (again, I do a great spider noise), but creepers make no noise until it’s too late. You might be exploring a cave, wandering a beach, up on a hill or in your own home. There’s the fizzing noise and it’s too late. You spin around, see that green face and BANG! The deed is done. You’re dead, your home’s ruins and your possessions are scattered all over the place. I’ve played Minecraft since early in the beta, yet it’s still a surprise every time.

3) He Doesn’t Give a Shit

The creeper has no ties, no allegiance, nothing to limit it. You need to eat, it doesn’t. You need shelter, you have a home and you have trunks full of items. This makes you weak. The creeper doesn’t need these, it is not weak.

Its kin, the zombie and the skeleton, burn in daylight, the spider becomes docile. The creeper couldn’t care less. Even in the brightest day, you’re keeping an eye out; desperate not to die at their hands. They don’t have the same need, the same foibles. You are nothing, and the creeper knows that.

4) He’s His Own Man And Looks Good Doing His Thing

Nothing looks like a creeper. Well, a cactus, maybe, and that’s a whole other problem in itself. Still, it’s not a zombie, otherwise the creeper wouldn’t be identifiable as its own brand of bastard. It would be Minecraft’s version of a zombie. Don’t get me wrong, zombies are sods when they’re pounding on your door, but they’re not unique.

The creeper is entirely Minecraft’s monster; from the shoddy, blocky look to the purpose and its way of inconveniencing you. It is pure Minecraft and perfect for that reason. So many villains aren’t interesting, generally they’re just foreign people with guns (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc), pointy aliens (Halo and its kin) or zombies (pick a game, go on, pick any game right now). Maybe they’re distinct, but have been used in the IP for decades, like slimes in Dragon Quest or Koopa Troopas in Mario. The creeper is a new piece of IP which looks interesting. He graces t-shirts, Lego, memes, he’s iconic after only a year or two, and that’s pretty unique for new intellectual properties.

5) Even The Creeper Isn’t Happy Doing What It Does

Look at the creeper’s face. It doesn’t take pleasure doing what it does. It looks sad, like there’s possibly some kind of backstory going on. Who knows how they’re made, where they come from. They know they’re going to die, and they may not care (see point #3), but they’re still not happy. That sad face has unspoken tragedy, horror. If they laughed, if they giggled, did anything to show that they loved their job, they would simply be a dick, or an evil clown. Instead, they’re not killing you out of spite. It’s all they have, and they’ll have their way.

So there we have it, five reasons why the creeper is the best enemy in video games, or at least one of them. They’re nice, simple, evil creatures that makes going up against them both a blessing and a curse to be. Without them, Minecraft wouldn’t have a serious threat to your projects. Rather than put you off of Minecraft because of how effective and how vicious these green sods are, I hope it gives you impetus to buy it. These creepers are an interesting challenge, a worthy adversary, and the risk they bring makes a completed project even more satisfying.

Now you’ve read this lengthy, purposefully sweeping statement, do you agree or disagree? Are there more effective nemeses in videogames? Do you have any war stories from the fight against the creeper menace? Comment in the thread below.

Though it may be more game-like, Datura retains Plastic’s love of the experimental, and induces just as much head-scratching as its predecessor. Played entirely from the first-person perspective, it opts to utilise the PlayStation Move (though the DualShock 3 is also supported) to give you direct control over a disembodied, floating hand through which you can interact with the world and solve rudimentary puzzles within an eclectic and unpredictable series of locales.

Datura’s opening does an excellent job of grabbing your attention, immediately differentiating itself from standard fare. Staring down at your prostrate body, slumped on a stretcher in the back of a speeding ambulance, you gingerly remove a bed sheet and heart-monitors with a flick and a pinch of the PS Move before flat lining and witnessing a panicked nurse plunging a syringe into you chest. The screen fades to black and you awaken in a leaf-strewn forest….and are given a few moments to catch your breath.

This striking opening gets Datura off to a great start and bodes well for the experience to follow. It’s a shame then that ambition promptly gives way to a rather typical example of ‘Bog Standard Game Tutorial School of Game Design’. Press the Move button to walk forwards, you are told. Press Circle to walk backwards….pump the trigger to run. It’s as uninspiring as the opening is inspired and does much to break the sense of immersion that’s so important in an experiential-focused title such as this.

Thankfully, once this is out of the way and you’re free to concentrate on the world around you, Datura manages to create a wonderful sense of atmosphere through gorgeous, painterly visuals and ambient sound effects. The wind blows countless leaves through the mysterious wood that surrounds you and the crunch of your feet as you stroll helps to instil a real sense of solitude. Though the plodding pace of movement might be a touch slow for some, it definitely adds to the feeling of tension and encourages you to soak up the visual and aural feast that the game delivers.

We won’t delve too deeply into the other locations featured as to do so would ruin the surprises that lie in store, but that last paragraph should hopefully have given you some inkling that Datura’s presentation lives up to its demoscene heritage and evidences Plastic’s visual flair. Throughout its hour or so play time, your eyes are constantly treated to images that are at once technically impressive and thematically disorientating (in a good way!); there might not be any flying beagles this time around…but there’s plenty of other oddities jostling for your attention, and this makes – on a visual level at least – Datura one of the most unique gaming experiences you may have had for some time.

Sadly, although Datura’s visual and audio production shines, its gameplay is a mixed bag, rife with issues belying Plastic’s lack of experience in game-design proper. The biggest problem stems from its attempts to do so many different things with the PlayStation Move controller. One minute you’ll be rubbing trees with your disembodied hand, then grabbing at door handles, throwing balls, smashing glass, aiming guns or pulling ropes. When it works well, the illusion that your own hand is inside the game’s world is mightily impressive, but when things go wrong they often do so in spectacular fashion. The toss of a ball can be woefully unpredictable, the fingers of you virtual hand bend, contort and clip through scenery, movements aren’t recognised and simple puzzles can be rendered hugely frustrating. Though the Move controls work more often than not, the lack of consistency is a definite issue.

This very much makes Datura a game of two halves; on the one hand it’s imaginative, beautifully rendered, and strives for a rare degree of uniqueness. On the other, it’s an experience marred by mechanical shortcomings and over-ambition, with Move implementation that frustrates as much as it inspires awe. Taken as a whole however, Datura is worthy of your attention (especially given its low price) – there are plenty of genuinely surprising set pieces and the developers get the Move implementation right enough times to nudge the game towards the technical showcase they so obviously want it to be. There’s something endearing about titles that reach for the stars but ultimately fall short, and Datura is certainly endearing…even if it is rather clunky.

Datura was reviewed on the PS3; copy of the game provided by Sony.

One possible reason for this failure is that the structure of superhero adventures is not easily converted into game format; a video game for the most part requires a steadily-rising challenge comprising a number of different skills (for example platforming, fighting and collecting items) – but not in the same way as a superhero film or comic would use them. Game-like quest progressions are parodied in some comics (an issue of Judge Dredd has the hero having to negotiate a series of themed zones in a museum, for example) but if someone were asked what their favourite part of any recent hero film was, it probably wouldn’t involve 3D platforming or fighting weak enemies with simple move-sets to get to a pattern-recognition based boss.

Comics are a series of set-pieces; superhero films have to balance big action sequences with things games don’t usually concern themselves with like romantic subplots or character development. As a result, licensed games tend to gravitate towards being distinctly average action games set in levels visually similar to bits of films or comics, but with added movable crate puzzles or crawl-sized vents. These are often interspersed with chunks from the film in question as a kind of reward for playing – the player completes a challenge and receives some familiar scene.

“Ensemble” licensed games tend to be even less satisfying, with characters reduced to simple ciphers or sets of abilities; the Marvel crossover action games are cases in point. Characters with massive back-stories and diverse abilities end up compressed down to functionally similar pawns padding out a roster, while villains become boss fights often acting in ways that don’t really get across what players might want from the chance to pit their favourites in mortal combat.

The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from this is that action games don’t work for superheroes. The pacing and structure of an action game can work with licensed characters (as the Aliens or X-Men arcade games show) but the result often feels like a re-skin of a mechanically strong concept with different characters – it ends up not really mattering if you’re controlling Spiderman, Homer Simpson or Ellen Ripley.

It was discovering the massive but – largely unknown to Western gamers – Super Robot Wars franchise that led to me considering the strange idea that the best way to handle comic-book style action is not with an action game but with a strategy game. The franchise, which has spanned consoles from the Game Boy to the PSP (with PS3, Vita and 3DS entries in the pipeline) works on a premise somewhat like the crossover comic books that Marvel and DC love – massive numbers of recognisable characters interact, team up, and fight their respective villains who are all working together. The characters are all plucked from a 30+ year back catalogue of giant robot anime, and inclusion in a franchise entry often reinvigorates interest in an otherwise forgotten series.

In gameplay terms, SRW works in the same vein as Fire Emblem, albeit less punishing; losing a unit does not permanently remove it from the game, but simply gives you a resource penalty at the end of the mission. Where it fundamentally differs, though, from most strategy RPGs, is in the massive variety of weapons each unit is armed with. If a unit used an obscure weapon in one largely unremarkable episode of the series it is drawn from, that weapon will probably be featured in its move list somewhere. This makes every piece under the player’s command a specialised, yet still functionally diverse, tool; exactly as a hero should be. If, in its source series, a robot is a slow-moving mobile fortress, it will fulfil that role in-game. If it has no melee weapons, it will not have any in the game.

Already SRW is taking a far closer grip on series canon than some licensed games; however, the design goes even further in replicating not only the fighting styles of each unit but also the pacing and choreography of cartoon and comic battles. Especially in Japanese animation and comics, superhero fights tend to feature big set-pieces, heroes testing powers and villains responding with their own. Everything is given its chance to shine in full. This is ideal for a strategy RPG; the idea of the hero throwing their best punch at a villain and then the villain coughing up some blood and throwing one right back is superhero brawls. In a SRW level weak enemies will explode spectacularly as your stronger units breathe on them, carving a path through to a boss who you then slug it out with trading blows until the hero wins. Doesn’t that sound more like superhero fighting than mashing X-X-X-Y when the boss reveals its weak point? Even the sound design contributes, with soundbites from the shows in question, characters shouting out their catchphrases and attack names as their theme tunes play.

The Will and Spirit mechanics take this even further, turning comic cliché (the hero’s sudden burst of last-minute vigour, the gradual arms race of blows until the big finish is brought out) into tactical gameplay mechanic; Will is accumulated by killing enemy footsoldiers, or taking blows, and most signature moves rely on a certain level of it to activate. Spirit is a pool of MP spent to allow your units to take fatal hits with only a pithy one liner, or to increase damage to astronomical levels when needed. All the things that define the genre being celebrated are turned directly into game mechanics.

What’s more is that the SRW franchise takes its ensemble storylines seriously; often an original plot along the lines of “some massive enemy appears, enlists a bunch of villains and tries to take over the world” features which is then embellished by creative attempts to mesh together 5-10 or more completely separate plots; branching campaign paths group together similarly-minded villains by agenda or methods, and add replay value. Were it simply to stop there, with similar plots merged, that would be interesting; but it’s when SRW throws series canon out the window and goes off the wall that the most memorable missions occur. Scenes begin to play out as expected and then something completely different happens, be it a spaghetti Western-quoting ninja telling the apocalypse to hold on a moment, or an alien invasion stopped by a hair metal band getting in jets and giving an impromptu concert with military-grade sound systems. Bonus content in the games is then added by the chance to completely go against established plots; saving characters who die, helping villains see the error of their ways and enlisting their support, or even rewriting entire endings and adding completely new final bosses. This doesn’t even touch on the numerous series entries with completely original casts of units and storylines, which have ended up getting their own spinoff TV series (resulting in a TV series spinoff of a game that’s itself a spinoff of a licensed game series)

It sounds, therefore, like a player would have to be au fait with a huge amount of source material to enjoy this franchise; this isn’t entirely true. Played “blind” the games work as amazingly over-the-top but yet nuanced strategy RPGs with often massive amounts of content and superb sprite-based graphics. The crossover stuff is an added reward for dedicated fans, while the option is there after having played the game to track down the series featured and find out more. Anyone interested, though, in playing a SRW title has limited options: the only entries available in English are fan translations of SRW Alpha Gaiden (PS1) and SRW J (Game Boy Advance). However, minimal knowledge of Japanese is required to play the games and a vast number are available on region-free consoles – W, K, L and Lords of Elemental on Nintendo DS, or MX Portable, A Portable, Lords of Elemental 2, Z2 Destruction and Z2 Rebirth on PSP.

This topic was recently brought to my mind upon realising that many of the games I’ve had most enjoyment from of late have been wonderfully single minded of vision and mechanic; titles that only attempt to do one or two things, but to do them extremely well and as a result avoid getting bogged down in the needlessly complex or distracted by side-quests or secondary goals. Put more simply, they resist the urge to pad out their experiences, confidently walking their own path towards clearly defined goals, finding genius not by adding more but by focussing on delivering less.

Here are a few prime examples of titles that do so much, with seemingly so little:

The Impossible Game (iOS/Android/Xbox 360/PSN/PC)

As with a number of the other games featured in this list, The Impossible Game is played with single finger. Visually, the game barely even exists (some squares, some triangles, some blocks, a line) and the gameplay can be summarised with ‘tap to jump, hold to keep jumping, avoid obstacles’. By rights, it should be considered rudimentary, basic and underdeveloped, but in practice The Impossible Game is fiendishly difficult, addictive, challenging and strangely hypnotic.

Groove Coaster (iOS)

Over time, the rhythm-action genre has got more and more complex, with this evolution coming to a peak with Harmonic’s Rock Band 3, since which the rhythm-action gravy train has ground to something of a halt. Taito’s Groove Coaster goes back to basics, reducing player interaction to a series of taps, holds and swipes of the touchscreen, and this minimalist approach allows the player to focus on …or, more correctly…get lost in the rhythm of the game’s wonderful soundtrack. Combine this with its dizzying pace and psychedelic visuals , and Groove Coaster effortlessly reminds you of what made rhythm-action so appealing in the first place.

Dear Esther (PC)

I recently attempted to extol the wonders of thechineseroom’s Dear Esther to my mother but quickly realised that my description was destined to fall horribly short of capturing what makes the game so engaging. ‘Dear Esther is great’, I said. ‘You walk around this really beautiful island and a narrator tells you a story’. This is not something a publisher would want to splash over its promotional material…

Glancing at a few screenshot, Dear Esther looks like the prettiest first person shooter ever made (or, arguably, one of the most beautiful games ever made, period) but don’t be fooled. There are no guns, no interactions and – beyond being able to walk and turn – no special abilities for you to get to grips with. And yet, it manages to craft one of the most memorable gaming experiences you’ll ever have, wringing feelings of dread, isolation, sadness, awe, fear and many more besides out the player by committing wholeheartedly to its core concept and avoiding the temptation of diluting it with collectibles, fetch quests or other standard gaming tropes.

Journey (PlayStation 3)

Though mechanically more complex, thatgamecompany’s PSN hit Journey shares a lot in common with Dear Esther, similarly managing to be equal parts game and pure experience. Starting at point A (a nameless desert), your mysterious, unnamed character is gently nudged towards point B – a shining mountain far in the distance. In terms of actual gameplay, very little really happens in between – there’s a little bit of sliding down sand-dunes, the odd period of floating about and a smattering of collecting flapping bits of cloth. There is virtually no skill involved (beyond being able to manipulate an analogue stick and press a button) and no fail-state.

It’s as if Nintendo crafted a Zelda title with one quest and only a couple of characters, and also forgot to add any plot exposition or subtitles. And yet…even without these things, Journey is utterly engaging and genuinely memorable, rewarding repeated playthroughs not through increases in difficulty or by arbitrarily flinging new bells and whistles your way, but by simply creating a world that is a pleasure to inhabit. Additionally, its lack of exposition and overall feeling of ambiguity allows the player to project there own meaning onto events; though it can be considered an adventure in the most traditional sense of the word, the minimalism of its design gives it the purity of a mirror that reflects right back at the player.

The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character(PlayStation 3/PSP/PS Vita)

He’s rendered in two dimensions. He rotates. And he’s an octopus. Simples (as they say in insurance adverts nowadays). In this lovely PlayStation Mini from Dakko Dakko, the titular character constantly rolls around retro-styled two dimension world while attempting to collect all the baby octopi scattered throughout the levels. The player’s input demands two buttons – one sending octopus character flying across the screen at right angles to the surface on which he’s stuck and the other changing direction. The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character is a fine example of design-driven gamelay that’s accessible, elegent and surprisingly deep. Not bad for an out of control, two dimensional cephalopod…

Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2/PlayStation 3)

Of all the titles listed in this feature, Shadow of the Colossus is arguably the most mainstream/traditional – and yet, even amongst its AAA, blockbuster peers, the simplicity of Team Ico’s game provides a striking contrast. A criticism that has often been levelled at Shadow of the Colossus is that it is nothing more than sixteen boss fights, interspersed by a lot of travelling around on a horse. At its most rudimentary level, this statement is actually not that far off the mark. It is, however, entirely missing the point.

Jonathan Blow (creator of cult favourite ‘Braid’) commented that game designers who ‘[don’t] trust that players will find the playing of a game to be rewarding enough […] add baubles and unlocks to keep the player playing’. Shadow of the Colossus (and Ico, for that matter) is the antithesis of this. Rather than stuffing the impressively large world with side quests, collectibles, non-player characters and other such distractions, Team Ico has ensured that the focus is always on Wanda, his horse Aggro (to whom it is almost inevitable that you will become attached) and the sixteen colossi that must be hunted down and slain. This was an incredibly brave design decision, and one that has paid off in facilitating a game of breathtaking intimacy that contrasts beautifully with the epic production values, in turn evoking feelings that are not normally associated with interactive entertainment.

So there you have it; a small collection of games that achieve so much by doing so little and ensuring to do it well. From rhythm action to quirky arcade romps to the beautifully epic to the quietly introspective, all demonstrate that trimming off the fat does not automatically equate to dumbing down and that lean game design can in fact make for more impactful experiences. This is obviously just one way to create engaging and enjoyable titles, but publishers forcing developers to ram unnecessary features into their titles should take note and remember that, sometimes, less really is more.

This feature appears courtesy of www.gametaroo.com

As an off-shoot of the main games, ORC sits alongside the likes of the Wii’s Chronicles series, by changing familiar Resident Evil game mechanics and putting fresh perspectives on classic scenarios/eras from the past. Operation Raccoon City takes place around the same time as the second and third games in the series, a period that has already been utilised by Capcom (most recently in the second Wii game, The Darkside Chronicles). In Operation Raccoon City the twist is that you play as the bad guys, taking control of one of six different members of the Umbrella Security Service trying to stop the T-Virus getting into the hands of the US military.

What this amounts to is a squad-based third-person shooter from Slant Six, the developers behind the SOCOM series. Once again Capcom’s practice of handing development duties to a Western outfit (see also Dark Void, Bionic Commando) has produced less than spectacular results. Quite why Capcom decided on external help is questionable, when Resident Evil 5 had already made such big strides towards a co-op focused campaign; perhaps ORC is something of a testing ground for the forthcoming sixth game in the main series, which is rumored to follow a similar simultaneous multi-character set-up. If that’s the case then Resident Evil fans have every right to be concerned.

The problems with Operation Raccoon City begin on the surface; this is a game whose animation and level of visual detail never rises above perfunctory, and where a combination of an awkward camera and sloppy controls will often result in an untimely death. Whatever their faults, Capcom’s marquee games have always boasted glossy production values, but here the suspicion of cynical cash-in stems from the cheap aesthetics and continues throughout into the rest of the experience.

For a title in such a crowded genre as the third-person shooter, it helps if you get the basics right. While the shooting itself is passable, it’s undermined by imprecise melee combat and an unwieldy cover system that doesn’t always work when you want it to; it’s not even possible to move from one area of cover to another without having to stand up into the line of fire. We’re a long way from Vanquish.

The single-player game quickly becomes tedious, especially when played solo. Played online it’s better, albeit still fundamentally let down by the wider issues such as bland level design and poor pacing. Although it may be an unfair comparison, Left 4 Dead was such a compulsive experience because it engendered a sense of dependency on your fellow team members, the panic rising to a crescendo as each mission reached its end. ORC has little of this vitality; online play is preferable because the AI of your computer-controlled squad-mates leaves a lot to be desired, but as an experience it still falls far short of other, more visionary, games.

A glimmer of the game that ORC could have been lies in the multiplayer portion, and in particular Survivor mode. Here waves of zombies descend on the team, which you and your squad-mates need to repel whilst waiting for a rescue helicopter to land. Ingeniously, there are only limited spaces on the chopper, which triggers a switch from co-operative combat to selfish scrambling as everyone races to get one of the precious seats for fear of being left behind. The open arenas of multiplayer – without the burden of a directed narrative – are somewhat liberating in comparison to the narrow, linear passages of play in the single-player.

It’s not enough to save Operation Raccoon City though, which ultimately is a title that feels too rushed to warrant any great investment on the part of the player. That it’s sold in such high numbers (at time of writing it’s number one in Japan) says a lot about the strength of the Resident Evil brand which, if ORC is anything to go by, is in danger of being fatally diluted.

This review is based on a PlayStation 3 copy provided by Capcom.

The answer to this question, had you been playing the game shortly after its February 22nd 2012 launch, may well have been leaning slightly toward the latter, with many gamers around that time complaining about poorly implemented touch controls and frustratingly limiting objectives. Two months on, Fun Bits has listened to the complaints and criticisms and reworked the game by means of a patch that (in an App Store-esque move) also included additional content free of charge. While post-patch Escape Plan doesn’t mess dramatically with the core concepts of the game, it has been buffed into much ruder health and now feels like the right time to be appraising its charms.

Escape Plan can loosely be described as a mixture of Psygnosis’ classic Lemmings and a traditional point and click adventure. Cast as part-director, part-unseen guide, players are tasked with ushering the PVC fanatics Laarg and Lil through sequential rooms which are stuffed to the rafters with all manner of death traps. Ensnared in a fiendish prison devised by the heinous Bakuki, our heroic duo’s sole goal is to escape….oh, and to avoid being squished, squashed, pummelled, impaled, burnt, poisoned, popped or reduced to a pile of chopped liver.

As this list of possible deaths may suggest, there is a distinctly dark undertone running throughout Escape plan, but in practice the game is actually a fairly sedate affair. After being presented with any given level, your first step is to assess the traps that are laid out in front of you and identify the location of the exit to the next room. Once you have done this, you can set about ushering Lil and Laarg to safety and it is here that things get interesting, as the PlayStation Vita comes into its own with its impressively large suite of inputs.

At its simplest, Lil and Laarg can be directed where to move with a tap of the touch screen or a swipe across their torso; similarly, the pair can interact with items within their reach with another tap. You are not restricted to directing the duo however, and levels are sprinkled with interactive items such as sliding blocks, fans, mattresses, pistons and more, all of which can be manipulated with taps and swipes of the touchscreen and rear touch pad and pinches of both. Certain sections also require that you tilt and turn the Vita itself, such as when Lil inhales gas to be inflated to spherical proportions, with tilts determining the direction in which he floats. The Vita’s many buttons are largely ignored, though an analogue stick assumes camera duties (despite the game’s focus on touch-controls, this actually work rather well).

In its current form, Escape Plan manages to avoid too many frustrations born out of any mechanical or technical issues – taps, pinches and tilts all impact on the gameplay just as you would expect and lend the experience an impressive degree of tactility. With that being said, gleaning enjoyment from the game does require a degree of patience, with a methodical and patient approach being essential to your ultimate success. If you are a fan of twitch gaming or adrenalin pumping action, then this is unlikely to be to your tastes. Strangely, fans of reactively heavily tactical gaming experiences may also find Escape Plan something of a turn off, mainly as the solutions to many of the eighty-odd levels are heavily pre-described, with there usually being only one possible route by which to lead Lil and Laarg to safety; deviate too heavily from this path, and a gruesome death awaits.

The real joy of Escape Plan is how it’s wonderfully realised monochrome visuals complement Fun Bit’s twisted imagination and keen eye for character design. From the first moment you see Lil lolling about on a dirty mattress in a cold, bare prison-cell it’s hard to not to feel a slight tug on your heart-strings and Fun Bits do a consistently great job of making you care about the two unlucky souls who have been placed in your care; it’s as if a much cherished pet had been stolen away and placed in the most horrific of situations.

In terms of the actual puzzling that takes place, Escape Plan doesn’t quite manage to be consistently inspired, but it rarely falls short of being solid, and there is certainly real breadth to be found in the variety of puzzles on show. One minute you’ll be spinning a fan to cool down a pool of molten lava so that Lil can pass, and the next you’ll be helping Laarg to manipulate a circular-saw to trim chains restraining Lil (007 style!). There are also frequent occasions where quick reactions are required to manoeuvre Lil and Laarg into the correct position while you orchestrate the level around them, making sure that blocks, blades and bubbles are placed just so. It’s in these latter moments that, at times, Escape Plan gets closest to being overly frustrating, but as a means of showcasing the finger-twisting possibilities of a multi-touch device such as the PS Vita, there is much to admire. Gamers who really want to put the dexterity of their digits to the test can strive for a perfect 3 star rating on each level, achievable by hitting strict times.

Escape Plan’s biggest problem is its brevity; though eighty levels sounds like a lot, most can be completed in a matter of minutes and, unless you have a burning desire to gain a top score in each there is minimal reason to revisit them. It could also be argued that, despite its striking visuals and quirky sense of humour (the ‘Interlude’ for example, really is a sight to behold), Escape Plan will feel a bit too pedestrian for many – though consistently entertaining, it rarely feels essential and is more than happy to lackadaisically assume the role of idiosyncratic distraction; hardly what you would expect from a launch title for an ambitious new handheld.

When the credits roll, Escape Plan leaves you satisfied of time well spent; getting know its cast of charming characters is a pleasure and its gameplay is largely on the right side refreshing. Though it rarely feels essential, it is a quietly charming game that feels perfectly at ease with its glacial pace, and it is this – along with Lil and Laarg’s PVC-clad charisma – that ultimately enables Escape Plan to meander its way into your heart.

Project Sylpheed

Fans of Freespace or Elite looking for some space fighter action on their Xbox might be a bit put off by this game’s aggressively anime-inspired plot and art style – there’s no dodging the space cops and smuggling narcotics to Tau Ceti here but there is a lot of screaming and taking on insurmountable odds. Indeed, if you sit down and watch the between-mission FMVs, which is not recommended, the plot reveals itself to borrow more than a few hooks from the series Gundam SEED run through the wringer of video game cutscenes. However, the poor storyline shouldn’t let anyone stop playing this because hidden beneath it is an at times frustrating, but undeniably rewardingly hard to master space sim. A score-attack game at its heart with, the real enjoyment in Project Sylpheed comes from running through the decently-long campaign multiple times to try and get the high score and complete all the hidden bonus missions for maximum points.

Each mission earns credits which can be spent on upgrading your fighter, and while early missions seem daunting prospects with basic weapons, on a second run it’s positively encouraged to ignore the briefing telling you to avoid the battleships and go in and taken them out. There’s a hefty arsenal of weapons to unlock, and incredibly difficult (and completely free) DLC survival missions unlock even more. Whereas most flight sims expect you to be happy with a few guided missiles and a machine gun, by the end of this game you will be firing black holes at your enemies and equipping torpedoes twice the size of your jet. Come the last level, a solid wall of enemy battleships is a mere inconvenience and it’s this completely excessive sense of scale that makes the game stand out. However, unlike the way a FPS would have you watch the awesome things happen then go back to hiding behind crates scared of snipers, in this everything you see happen during a mission is your handiwork.

So while the plot is as hackneyed and melodramatic as can be, and the controls so involved as to make the tutorials almost mandatory, the end result is a very unique spin on the space fighter sim that does one of the best jobs of making the player feel awesome to be found in a current-gen game, up there with Just Cause 2.

Blade Kitten

This is, unfortunately, another good game marred by a poor choice of aesthetic and setting; put up with the “leet-talking” catgirl protagonist and smug cutscenes and there’s an exploration-based platformer waiting to be found that evokes titles like Jet Set Willy, Jazz Jackrabbit, Commander Keen and Crystal Caves. The aim is not as simple as getting from one end of the level to the other; that leads to an unsatisfyingly short experience. The aim is to explore the levels, finding the many secret areas, and get the highest score possible. Exploring is hugely satisfying thanks to the simple wall climbing mechanic, and while the puzzles are rarely as mindbending as Fez and the combat a fairly straightforward light- and heavy-attack affair, there’s a relaxed sense of exploration that makes it a singular experience – the game is about collecting items in quite well-designed levels and occasionally fighting simple boss fights. For all the retro HD remakes and classic gaming homages dotted about, few do as good a job at getting the actual game experience right as Blade Kitten.

While it might seem dated and primitive, and the art style and perpetually perky voice acting can grate, the fact that Blade Kitten does such a good job of evoking the old exploration-based platformer genre means it’s definitely one to recommend.

Lost Odyssey

The list of developers who worked on Lost Odyssey reads like a who’s who of the people who made Final Fantasy the go-to JRPG franchise for many through the SNES, PSX and PS2 eras. The game they created is the perfect homage to the genre; no complicated gimmicks, no flashy battle system that tries to reinvent the wheel, just the base essentials of a good JRPG tied together with some at times spectacular writing and enough small mechanical innovations to remain fresh. The basic storyline is standard stuff executed ably, with comic relief and child characters who don’t grate, but the real treasure is the Thousand Years of Dreams mechanic – at points during the game, the player experiences the protagonist’s suppressed memories in the form of often-moving short stories that play with ideas of immortality and its psychological effects on those around the person who never ages or dies. While this sometimes affects the pacing of the game, throwing the player abruptly out of the action in order to provide a chunk of narration, the quality of these stories is so high that they are often welcome and the player is driven to seek them out.

JRPGs are much-maligned for mawkish writing and awkward gameplay, and Lost Odyssey adroitly avoids both; the inclusion of a system of diminishing returns on experience, combined with fine balancing that ensures a perpetual sense of challenge while still giving a sense of increasing power to the player, means that the player never has to continually fight random encounters to gain levels, but instead through simply playing through each dungeon and exploring to find secrets, the player will always be at the right level for the boss of each area. Similarly, the end-game content is varied, with character-specific sidequests ranging from extra-hard bosses to riddles and puzzles to figure out. The entire package is a polished game experience which at the time of release filled the sadly empty niche of a good 360 JRPG, and still remains a solid choice for someone looking for a lengthy and rewarding game.

That rounds up our look at some of the XBox 360’s most underrated gems – let us know below if you think there are any titles we’ve overlooked….

Virtual ON Oratorio Tangram (XBLA)

This is a game that is fondly remembered by a small subset of gamers – people who enjoy arcade games, and the days of imports, Dreamcasts and so on. However, its reputation is a well-deserved one; it remains one of the tensest, most skill-based and yet easily-understood fighting games around.

Rather than relying on a long move-list and traditional inputs, it is a fully 3D game in which use of terrain to avoid attacks is as important as carefully timed blocks and counters, but the combination of two attack buttons, contextual melee and the ways in which the properties of attacks change when dashing mean fights have a skill and elegance all of their own. The wide range of fighters available to choose from are well-differentiated, with a range of beams, missiles and more exotic weapons each requiring different techniques to dodge while still remaining well-positioned to capitalise on your own strengths. While a 2D fighting game may be based around tentative jabs, well-timed blocks and trapping an opponent in combos to win, Virtual ON is a straight battle of attrition, about trying to force the opponent to make a mistake and wearing them down with salvoes of missiles or machine gun fire.

In single-player, there are the usual staples; a one-life score attack mode and an arcade mode which contains two very tricky boss fights in addition to the usual trip through the roster. It’s fun, and highly rewarding to replay and try to improve on, but the real meat of the game is in the sadly deserted online multiplayer. When you’re up against an unpredictable human player, there’s a whole new level of tension and it goes from knowing how to win against the AI to actually knowing how to master the game.

Wartech: Senko No Ronde (Xbox 360)

If Virtual ON was a fighting game in giant robot form, Wartech is a strong attempt at a bullet-hell fighting game – and it remains one of the most unique and interesting concepts for a game I’ve played. Players control fighter craft on a 2D plane much like a top-down arcade shooter (see Dodonpachi, ESP Galuda et al) and have a mix of beams, bullets, bombs and melee attacks to try and wear their opponent down. At certain points through the fight, players can call in a boss mode, where their fighter is replaced by something the size of an end-of-level enemy with the curtain fire and screen-filling patterns that entails. It’s an interesting balance; a fighting game that’s drawing heavily on the skills needed to prevail at arcade shooters rather than any skill at Street Fighter.

The single-player, much like Virtual ON, is mostly just preparation for the online; and the online is sadly empty. But if you have a friend who’s into bullet hell games and want to try something different, see about tracking a couple of copies of this down and giving it a fair go. It even has same-screen multiplayer, as any good fighting game should.

Sensible World of Soccer (XBLA)

You will not find a better football game than this for your money. Yes an old copy of FIFA or PES is probably 99p by now but SWOS is a classic of a whole different kind, there with Emlyn Hughes Soccer Challenge and Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes. In the momentous anniversary of the venerable ZX Spectrum, relive what for many were the glory days of computing by getting your SWOS on – it’s got a catchy theme tune, bizarrely edited player names and team names to avoid copyright infringement and footballing gameplay so simple anyone can pick it up in seconds. It may not be ground-breakingly realistic, or have pixel-perfect recreations of Camp Nou or Wembley, but there’s a real charm to SWOS that those who grew up on it can attest to – it’s a football game as intuitive and, well, sensible as a kick-around in the park. There’s a surprising amount of depth hidden beneath the dead simple controls, and a healthy amount of single-player content – but really the joy of SWOS is getting some friends round and playing (digital) football.

So there you have it; part one of D+PAD’s Xbox Hidden Gems. Check back soon for Part 2…

In terms of the premise, it was very simple. The right trigger was the throttle, left trigger was the brake, and you adjust your rider’s position by nudging the analogue stick. The reality however, couldn’t have been deeper. After the initial few courses, this game transformed into one of the most difficult and unforgiving experiences available. It was a dark, brooding game almost entirely based within a barely lit warehouse. Your only objective was to get your rider from point A to point B, negotiating obstacles en route. The tutorial was almost non existent, so much relied on your ability to learn from your mistakes and your ability to manipulate your rider with only the deftest of touch. Falls were frequent, with many players giving up at some unreasonable difficulty spikes. Trials indeed.

It appears Red Lynx have been taking notes on these issues. When you fire up the single slayer career mode, you are greeted with a licence test in order to get your first bike. After a short load time, as indeed they all are, you are placed outside on a training course. Trials has never looked better either. It’s bright but not garish… welcoming but not patronising. Most importantly, it’s accessible to everyone. The tutorial is genuinely helpful and stands you in good stead for the first handful of levels. The first bike feels more forgiving than any in Trials HD ever did, but this should not be seen as dumbing down. Whereas in the first there were difficulty spikes which may as well have been walls, Evolution eases you in and ramps up the difficulty gradually, and with expert precision in terms of knowing what to expect (and demand) from the player.

The career mode continues in this vein as well. The levels in each difficulty get progressively more challenging, until you are given your next bike which is invariably quicker and more responsive than the last to allow for more varied levels, and audacious challenges to the laws of physics. The further you go, the more difficult the levels are, yet the more engrossed you become. It’s rare for a game to produce any sort of physical reaction, but here, it’s a regularity. You feel the tension, you struggle with the bike and you will be moving yourself to try and coax the bike over the ledge and away from the precipice.

The levels themselves are frequently outstanding. Yes, there are a few which are average, forgettable at worst, but these are far outweighed by memorable and formidable tracks. Many of them, particularly the later stages, are more akin to a platform game, which is what Trials is at heart. There are numerous charming references to other games as well. Everything from Shadow of the Colossus, to Limbo, via Half Life is covered. Then there are the themes; there’s a war zone to tear through, an oil rig and an almost Inception-like reality defying stage amongst others. See how much things can change when you step outside?

There is a massive amount of single player content in the career mode which, coupled with the pitch perfect difficulty and responsive handling, is a pleasure to play through. It’s essentially a platform/puzzle game which will sometimes leave you wondering how best to make it to the next checkpoint. This isn’t an issue though, and that owes largely to the simple yet deep control system, and the physics engine which accompanies it. With the later bikes and levels, if you’re too heavy with the balance or throttle, you will be on your back before you know it… or on fire, or flying through the air. this is another trait of the Trials series in that it takes pleasure in the way that it dismounts you from your saddle, before instantly respawning you at the last checkpoint. The fact that it is instant is hugely important, as it makes all those falls and errors so much easier to take. This becomes all the more important on the extreme tracks, where for at least your first attempt, you will come extremely close to the 500 fault limit on a regular basis. Veterans need not fear, as accessibility does not always mean dumbing down.

So the single player is deep and well-structured, with plenty of courses and plenty of variety. Contrasting with this is the new and fully fledged multiplayer. That’s right, no more relying on the leaderboards for company as in Trials HD. If you feel like competition, you can race online in what is a surprisingly robust suite. There’s the new Supercross mode, where you race side by side, along with Trials mode, racing on the single track courses where you can see the ghosts of the other three players. Towards the end of each course the tension is tangible, and more mistakes are made. There’s not much more exciting than a scramble to the finish which decides the mini-championship. There’s a full ranking and matchmaking system to compliment the modes as well, so you will never be struggling to maintain your interest.

If all that wasn’t enough, the level editor makes a return. One of the major issues with HD was that you could only play levels made by people on your friends list, but that has completely changed here. The overhaul brings the editor and the content right up to echelons of Little Big Planet, with searches based on level type, community rating and upload date. This turns an already generous package into an endless one. There are countless levels already waiting to be played, plus the community is already huge and dedicated. The editor itself is simple to use and you can create a rideable course in minutes, but with some effort you can make stages on par or better than those in the main game. Red Lynx say that the editor is how they made every level in the game, and it stands to reason.

There are some minor niggles as you would expect. The music is still terrible, but luckily it’s confined to the background, behind the roaring and buzzing of engines. Some of the later levels also border on sadistic, and take more patience to get through than most will have. The gameplay is also very dependant on trial and error, which simply won’t appeal to everyone. Then there are the skill games, which are throwaway fun, but are sometimes lacking in the fun department.

These are just minor issues though, in what is one of the finest downloadable titles created so far. The way it plays is a measure of beautiful precision and patience, and when you couple the community aspect to the near perfect gameplay, it makes for a package which is one of the strongest of 2012 so far, and we have a feeling that in terms of Evolution, the best is yet to come.

This review is based on a copy provided by Ubisoft.

In a word, yes… a thousand times yes. This is a difficult review to write, not because of the game, but because of you, the reader. The trouble is that we don’t want to spoil a single surprise, and this game is absolutely full of them. Sometimes the mechanics will surprise you, at times it’ll be the graphics and, occasionally, you may even surprise yourself. ‘How did I figure that out?’ will be a frequent question that pops into your head whilst playing this and the answer will be a combination, most likely, of your own lateral thinking, the genius of the level design and the subtle hints placed around the world. We’ll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but if you don’t want to know anything at all then you’re best served by picking this up right away.

The most immediately striking aspect of the game is the presentation. Both the graphics and sound harken back to the days where games were much simpler, largely because they had to be. It’s a brave move then, in the age of Call of Duty and chasing realism, to develop a game which is so proud of the fact that it could have been released 20 years ago. At least, this is what you would think from the first 5 minutes. You wake up in your bedroom with no explanation as to who you are or what you’re doing. You’re told some basic controls by a cubic entity through speech bubbles and once you leave your little abode, you are introduced to your home village and tasked with climbing to the top to meet the village elder. On the way, you are introduced to some of the other townsfolk, with the recurring theme being that everyone around you believes the world to be entirely 2D. There is no cube, only square. You can only move left to right and there seems to be (as your townsfolk suggest) no third dimension. So far, so early 90’s adventure right?

Once you reach the elder things become more interesting, and after a brief cut scene you are bestowed with a magical Fez. What does it do? Well, that’s the game changer. It could well be a moment on par with running out on to Hyrule Field for the first time, or emerging from Vault 101 in terms of sheer impact. By a simple squeeze of the trigger, you turn the whole environment 90 degrees on its axis, left or right depending on the trigger. This transforms a 2D platformer into a 3D challenge set to test your logic, spatial awareness and sense of adventure. The game tasks you with finding the scattered pieces of a golden mega-cube, which explodes during the fez adornment ceremony. Why this occurs is just one of the game’s many, many mysteries.

The main mechanic might not sound like much in itself, but it’s in what this allows you to do and reach the places you can that makes things so special; the platforms that were once too far for your little protagonist can now be brought to you. You see, you’re spinning the world around you, but everything you do is still on a 2 dimensional plane, so if a platform looks closer, then for you, it is closer. Yawning chasms between platforms disappear as you change your perspective, and although it can some time to click, once it does you’ll be manipulating the world around you with consummate ease.

The game then restarts in a manner befitting its presentation that we won’t spoil, and it becomes clear that on returning to the town parts of the golden mega-cube have been scattered here. There is also a door which needs a complete cube (8 cube fragments) for it to open, and so begins the adventure. From here, you arrive at the hub and the whole world begins to unfold for you. Every level is akin to the infamous rabbit hole. Just when you think you’ve gone as far as you can go, another level shows itself, or another idea, or perhaps another riddle. So you continue to piece together cubes and open new doors, delving ever deeper into that rabbit hole.

To go into any more detail about the game itself would be doing both the developer and you a disservice. There are so many surprises, puzzles and fourth wall breaking moments that it would be churlish to reveal them and remove the element of discovery – it really is a joy to uncover the game’s more obscure secrets.

The graphics, sound and gameplay together so perfectly that you can tell five years worth of work has been poured into this. One particular area is reminiscent of the classic Gameboy, with its colour scheme and subtle tetris references. Another had shades of Blade Runner. Rarely will you see so much variety and so many ideas packed into a game of this size. That’s not to say it’s small by any means, but there is not a single inch of screen space wasted in this adventure. Also, gladly, there is a New Game+ option, so any unsolved mysteries shouldn’t remain that way for long.

So, it’s abundantly clear that Fez is a high-quality title, probably more so than any other you’ll have played this year, but there must be a few problems right? Well, yes, there are a few niggles. There is some slowdown, but never enough to impact the game in a meaningful way, but it is noticeable. Also, some of the puzzles are just obscure. There’s always a modicum of logic behind them, but some of the solutions are based on the tiniest of details. When you do solve them, it feels incredible, and yet sometimes the journey toward the solution sails a little too close to inducing a rage-quitting level of frustration. This isn’t helped by the fact that the world map so proudly tells you of the rooms where you have failed to discover the secrets with a taunting, riddler-like icon. The world map is also a little obscure; it’s in keeping with the game certainly, but it can be difficult to ascertain the right route to get to where you need to go, particularly if you’re backtracking.

Don’t let any of that put you off though, as this truly is a classic. The aesthetics, the way it plays, the satisfaction of discovery – all are aspects that are missing in too many modern releases. Should you have found your interest in gaming to be waning of late, then this may have the power to restore your faith in the industry’s ability to surprise and innovate. For that alone, Fez deserves your undivided attention.

This review first appeared in screentear.blogspot.co.uk

What makes learning a fighting game hard is the sheer number of variables that must be mastered; interactions between characters, interactions between moves, precise timings of inputs, and most of all consigning to memory the details of how a character works. One only has to go to any competitive fighting game players’ forum to see how in-depth this analysis can become; and Skullgirls ably avoids all of that in its tutorials. Instead it explains the concepts; what the terminology means, how it is done in the simplest form, and why it is useful. The player can then build their own strategies based on this knowledge, in matches against the entirely serviceable AI.

As a single-player experience, it is a game that does little to innovate; one fights the AI. There is not much more that can be done with the 1v1 fighting game genre. As aficionados will say though, it is the multiplayer that counts. Again the offerings are slight; one plays against other players. But at the core of it, fighting games are not about litanies of game modes or gimmickry; they are among the closest there is to real competitive gaming – something players can get their teeth into, learn, master and compete at in genuine tests of skill and chance. One would not complain that tennis did not have enough game modes (real tennis excepted).

The main mechanical innovation in Skullgirls is the asymmetrical team system; one can pick either one, two or three fighters and the game adjusts itself to suit. It’s not the same relentless chaos as Marvel versus Capcom but at the same time it’s not the same staid one-on-one self-expression of Street Fighter. That aside, the main fighting mechanics could be from any game; there is a bar which accumulates and powers up set-piece moves, and there are combos and chain attacks and throw breaks. They’re well done; the controls are responsive (although it rewards the use of an arcade stick) and the inputs will be familiar to anyone who has played a fighting game before.

That is the good. As an arcade-style fighting game, it does nothing wrong and the professional player’s input is clearly evident in how every effort has been made not to alienate new players while not compromising on any of the mechanics that ultimately define the genre. One must learn to master it, for sure, but it will always extend a guiding hand. The bad, however, is yet to come.

Firstly the online mechanics. The menus are largely intuitive but inefficient, as a failed attempt to join a server requires manually pressing cancel with no on-screen prompt to return to the online menu. There is client-set lag compensation which worked all times but once while reviewing this, but the one time it did not the game was unplayable. Server population seemed comparatively low and those who were online were incredibly good at the game (although it is not an actual reason to criticise the game, it is a fair heads-up). Compared to how slick Street Fighter IV’s online is, it seems clunky and irritating.

Secondly, the absolutely inexcusable lack of move lists for the characters. In most fighting games, pausing will allow the player to browse a list of inputs for special moves. Skullgirls instead directs the player to a website where they can do this – which is entirely useless, and a needless complication. For a game which tries so hard to be a rewarding experience for new players, to leave out such a fundamental piece of functionality seems an unforgivable oversight.

Finally, and perhaps the most contentious point – the aesthetics. There has been an impossible-to-avoid debate recently about the inherent sexism of video games and fighting games especially, and Skullgirls, to be absolutely brutal here, is as male-gaze oriented, sexist and puerile as it comes. Normally it is possible to roll one’s eyes at, say, a revealing outfit or poorly presented female character. Sometimes it is evidently a parody, as with Bayonetta. But Skullgirls, if it is a parody, is a poor one. Perhaps it is trying to provide so much teen titillation as to be patently ridiculous – but it does it awkwardly and the end result is quite distasteful in the same way as Soul Calibur’s gradual move towards sex appeal. Bosoms heave, underwear is flashed like you’re at Moulin Rouge and fetishes are pandered to. Buying the game is thus, arguably, tacit approval of this status quo; agreeing that it’s all a bit of fun, games should have hot chicks in miniskirts high-kicking. For a fighting game that does so much to break down barriers of entry to a foreboding genre, this ill-advised attempt at what can only be assumed to be parody of the sexed-up nature of games like Blazblue or Guilty Gear falls flat on its face.

To conclude, were there even the slightest concessions to moderation in Skullgirls’ aesthetics, and a few small but fundamental UI changes, it would be a superb entry-level fighting game which allows a player new to the genre to leap in and through practice become a master. But as it stands, the relentless sexuality on display is ineffective as parody and serves only to reinforce the belief that games are designed for young men who read FHM.

The fruit of Bugbear’s labours doesn’t make itself easy to love and, for the first three or four hours of play, the ‘Ridge Racer’ and ‘Unbounded’ elements of the title seem unrepresentative of the game itself. The series’ signature blue-skies are assigned to the rubbish bin, instead setting the racing in cramped and cluttered metropolitan streets, and the wonderful sense of freedom traditionally provided by the series’ iconic sweeping bends also seems to have been jettisoned, in its stead you find a heavy emphasis on exacting/punishing cornering and chaotic track destruction. It is likely that your first few fumbling hours with the game will largely be spent overshooting corners, slamming into grubbily realised walls and bemoaning the death of the franchise as you knew it.

If you manage to stick with it and ride out the horrifically steep learning curve, it becomes apparent that this isn’t the death of the franchise at all, but is actually a bold, brave and ambitious rebirth. Unbounded has no qualms in making you work for its rewards, but the rewards are there to be found as is the beating heart of Ridge Racer that fans know and love.

Bugbear attempt to instil an air of mystery via a dystopian setting, with races taking part in the ominous metropolitan sprawl of Shatter Bay which (as a brief scene-setting introductory FMV explains) is ruled by an iron fist of homogenisation. Assuming a role in a gang of street racers known as ‘The Unbounded’, your task is to win back the streets while muscling your way up the ranks of this shadowy group of extreme-racing. This backstory distances the game from series’ heritage, but can largely falls by the wayside once you get on the track.

Initially, the racing itself comes across as a fairly uninspired blend of Burnout, Blur and Split/Second and just as those titles each put their own spin on core arcade racing values, so it is with Unbounded, which places heavy emphasis on destructible environments through which your car can slice like a knife through hot butter. This ability forces you to reverse-engineer a deep-rooted understanding that in racing games walls are something to be avoided; here, walls, lamp-posts and parked cars actually offer an opportunity, as smashing other racers into them and powersliding around corners gradually fills a power gauge that, once at its maximum, can be unleashed to boost your speed and turn your car momentarily into a four-wheeled missile. With the right timing, opponents can be taken out (or, ‘Fragged’, as the game puts it) and predetermined short-cuts can be opened up by smashing through walls and billboards.

The goal in any given race varies; Domination features straight-up races with plenty of fragging and smashing through walls, while Shindo races forgo the latter, focusing instead on a purer racing experience. Frag Attack sets a pre-determined target number of racer-takedowns and Drift Attack gives you a set amount of time within which to accrue points by drifting. In Time Attack it’s just you against the clock.

Though this might all sound rather uninspiring on paper, it’s clear that – despite the game’s narrative and thematic pretensions – Bugbear have focussed on making the actual racing thrilling and explosive enough to keep you coming back for more. There is no question that in this respect they have delivered, even if you might not be able to see this until you’ve put in a lot of practice.

Key to the experience is the sheer pace of the racing, a factor that is supported by a graphics engine that effortlessly keeps up with the blistering speed. In this respect, Unbounded can feel curiously reminiscent of Studio Liverpool’s Wipeout series – both in the sense of speed it imbues and in the duality of emotions this instils, as one part of your gaming brain strives for controlled perfection while the other hangs on for dear life.

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Journey’s use of sound in conjunction with camerawork and visual setpieces is undeniably cinematic, evoking Terrence Malick’s films The New World and The Thin Red Line in using extended sequences of landscapes driven and defined by music. The soundtrack replaces the dialogue, defining the response of a viewer or player without the need for narration or speech. Similarly, while the player is given some control over the camera in order to make it easier to progress, it is the removal of control while leaving absolute agency over the game itself which allows Journey to move beyond simple emulation of film. When the camera adjusts the perspective from which the player views the action, it is used to drive progress through a scene by highlighting the goal, altering the perception of the scene and the perception of distance that the player has. This visual aspect is strongly thematic, invested with its own connotative meaning which creates a narrative without a word of explanation; the player can judge their progress through the game purely by visual cues and inherent understanding both of how film and games work as media.

Intuition is central to Journey‘s gamelike aspects; much like in Dark Souls,a small and clearly-defined game state is established which must be solved to proceed in each area. This is communicated entirely by the visual; elements of the game that are introduced in one form are visually linked to new mechanics and work intuitively – a red path will always work the same way no matter which direction or format it is used in. Yet this intuition goes beyond simple understanding of how games work and functions on a more basic level of exploration and understanding; the way in which the challenges evolve is organic and always clear.

There are no moments where knowledge from outside the game is needed to understand what is happening or to progress, simply application of the information that has already been given. This almost creates an attachment to the mechanics themselves; when later in the game one of your two potential actions is removed, its loss is gradual and through seeing it the player is given a self-contained narrative sequence; something that in a film would require expository dialogue or clear visual cues is portrayed over the course of a few minutes in Journey by literally limiting the player’s actions – it is using the expectations of the player to form a silent narrative. This is quite different from a more “cinematic” game which intersperses sequences of absolute agency with sequences of highly curated story; Journey uses a mid-point whereby the player’s agency is varied for narrative effect.

So by using a combination of filmic camerawork and sound design, and gamelike alteration of the game state, Journey transcends film. It uses the visual language of cinema and the challenge-resolution mechanics of games, and then adds on top of this co-operation. It is the “multiplayer” component of Journey that makes it even more exceptional. At points throughout the game, the player is joined by other characters; these remain anonymous and can be communicated with only by signals and movement. It is only at the end of the game, when the narrative is complete, that the player learns who has helped them; each figure encountered is another player. Co-operation is therefore purely anonymous and with no competitive element; by removing the element of communication, and relying only on the intuitive knowledge that each player gains by playing, a sense of shared experience is built up. The song-like method of signalling forms another personal bond between the two players, and again when this is not possible it is invested with a narrative force; it is not simply no longer being able to co-operate as easily, but the loss of a companion with whom a silent relationship has formed

To conclude, Journey is a game which uses the visual language of film not as a mainstay but as a tool to be deployed and altered in line with what the game format offers; rather than emulating cinema, it uses it as a baseline for developing the game medium into something beyond a simple diversion. The inclusion of co-operation without a curated or controlled experience adds an organic and improvised nature to the game which remains quite unlike anything the industry has recently offered.

This featured first appeared on the Ideas Without End Blog.

It’s a simple idea that works well with a touch screen – it’s Pictionary, but on an iPhone or Android, or on a tablet-type device if you want to show off and look like you’re a better artist than those clumsily stabbing their screens with a chubby wotsit-covered finger as a paintbrush. Not that we’re bitter.

You add a friend or pick a random player, if you don’t fear lazy artists writing the word you’re supposed to be guessing or filling your screen with scrawled private parts. You get a choice of three words, each of (apparently) increasing complexity or specificity, and then have to draw it.

The other player gets an image of say, an evil, swivel-headed owl and is given a handful of letters to guess what makes up the word. If they succeed, you both get coins and the volley returns at you, this time perhaps with a drawing of Shakira or a lion, and so your number goes up as you return volleys to and fro.

There are tricks you can pull in this game. When someone has to guess your image, they see it all appear in real-time. Sure, you can skip it, but this crude animation process can work in your favour. Draw a rocket at the bottom of the screen, then rub it out, draw the word BOOM!, rub it out, then make a multi-coloured explosion and you have fireworks. Or go through a few things which might mean “Nail”. You might draw a dour singer and write, “Jimmy”, then realise that your friend is thick and draw a nail getting hammered in. You might even add limitations for yourself, such as sticking to a specific theme (drawing Batman in every picture could be fun for a while).

It’s a perfect game for a phone. It takes minutes at best, and once you get over the horror of how bad an artist you are, there’s the realisation that everyone is a bad artist when it comes to this medium. With enough coins you can afford new colours, and there are bombs which allow you to change your word choice when picking what to draw, or your letter choice when guessing. Of course, you can get more of the in-game currency with money, but with a dozen or so games going back and forth, it won’t take a million years until you can afford a new palette from your pictures alone. In a roundabout way, you’re being paid in-game for your efforts. It won’t take long before you can pick your first palette purchase, allowing you to make the drawings as intricate or weird as you like. Preferably weird.

This is a game which has a free version, so as long as you have a device capable of using it, and at least one friend (or randoms to prey upon with your crude pictures of scrawled genitals) then this game makes for the perfect time-sink. And once you’ve got it and enjoy it, why not pay the 69p, you cheap sod? It’s just over a third of a quid for this much fun!

The first game in the package is the original Devil May Cry, which sees Dante (son of a legendary demon who turned against his master for the sake of humanity) being led to an island by a leather-clad beauty named Trish. What follows is an adventure featuring fixed camera angles, a fair amount of backtracking but also some stellar design work; the stylish, over-the-top action alone was enough to carry the game back then and in this respect the game has aged extremely well, especially when you consider how early it came during the Playstation 2’s lifecycle. Bloody marionettes, gladiatorial lizards and scythe-wielding spirits are but a few of the enemies that lie in wait, but some standout boss encounters make for memorable moments, a few of which you’ll actually be pleased to encounter multiple times.

Everything in the original game has been designed with an impressive amount of flair. The dialogue is cheesy and the characters are anything but fleshed out, but things are always kept entertaining and the story continues at a steady pace. Atmosphere is the order of the day, with a genuinely unsettling score slipping into techno beats when the action kicks in. The decision to keep the menus and certain pre-rendered scenes in their original 4:3 format is questionable (especially as this is how the game starts up), but everything else in the game has been given a high-def makeover and been widened for modern screens. There may be a few tell-tale signs on occasion, but Devil May Cry doesn’t fray at the edges nearly as much as you might think – a testament to what a powerhouse it was back in 2001.

Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition is both the beefiest and most attractive part of the collection. Set a number of years before the first instalment, the prequel tells of the battle between the Sons of Sparda, as Dante’s twin brother Vergil fights to gain power. The number of characters in DMC3 has increased and everyone has a role to play, plus the struggle between brothers is an engaging one despite the dialogue, more often than not crossing the line between cool and corny. This does at least highlight Dante’s initial immaturity, revealing the differences between the hero’s personality and that of his much colder twin.

DMC3 introduced the four combat styles featured in DMC4, with Trickster’s focus on evasion, Swordmaster’s blade techniques, Royal Guard’s defensive stance and the self-explanatory Gunslinger offering advantages depending on your preferred play style. Moves can be purchased and upgraded, with the classic ‘Stinger’ and ‘Air Hike’ once again serving as obvious choices from the start. The content here is deep and rewarding, plus the option of a new Turbo mode lends the outlandish combat an even greater sense of speed. Finishing the game once as Dante allows you to play through as his brother, Vergil, complete with his own techniques – it’s fun, just don’t go expecting a massive change in location and gameplay as this was clearly an afterthought.

If Devil May Cry revolutionised action gaming and Dante’s Awakening marked a stylish evolution, then Devil May Cry 2 was undoubtedly the ugly triplet sandwiched between its superiors. The unremarkable graphics could have been ignored had the gameplay remained true to its predecessor, but DMC2 represented a significant drop in quality overall. These sins are even less forgivable today, having removed the engaging combat system pioneered in the first game in favour of a much more generic hack-and-slash method of play. Even the targeting system seems off, with the thrill of the air-juggling combos very much absent from this instalment.

What follows is a dull and forgettable story with a criminal reduction in fun, a total lack of charisma in the new ‘moody’ Dante, plus a playable female lead who serves as little more than a re-skin with the simple purpose of extending the game. Even the stages lack any kind of artistic quality, looking like a muddy cut-and-paste job that was rushed out the door. The intention was clearly to create larger environments to accommodate the action, but this has removed any intensity that the action might have otherwise had. The sullen hero blasts a path across cobbled streets, industrialised areas and through waterlogged caverns, but it just isn’t enough when the adventure comes with so little polish or character.

Fans of the series will find the definitive versions of all three releases in the Devil May Cry HD Collection. The first and third outings are just as exceptional now as they were on release, plus having all three games on one disc will no doubt please the fans still bemoaning the look of Ninja Theory’s upcoming reboot. It all holds up surprisingly well with not nearly as many ugly textures as you might expect, but only if you take the disappointing Devil May Cry 2 with a pinch of salt or ignore it altogether. Playing the original game alongside the re-release of Dante’s Awakening is reason enough for fans and newcomers alike to pick this up without hesitation and even if the reboot fails to recapture the glory of old, this collection shows that it’s never been a better time to strap on the leather and slay a few demons.

This review is based on a PS3 copy provided by Capcom.