With Dead Space 3 on my mind having just finished it, I thought I would lay out my thoughts on its immediate predecessor: Dead Space 2. Dead Space was a new IP from EA and what would become Visceral Games, and it was one of the most enchanting and intense survival horror games I has played in years, probably since Resident Evil 4. As a result of my love of that first entry, my expectations were high for Dead Space 2 in 2011, and I was not disappointed. I was worried when EA were talking up the introduction of multiplayer and of making the game action orientated. Having been a huge fan of the isolation and dread filled atmosphere of the first game, I feared that it would become an action game lacking in horror and atmosphere. Admittedly Dead Space 2 is much more action orientated than Dead Space, and it has lost some of its sense of dread, but it has also gained hugely in production values, scale, and has a more tense and personal story.

Story

Set 2 years after the events of the first Dead Space, Isaac is now in a mental ward on-board a vast space installation called the Sprawl. A mining city with a large number of inhabitants, the Sprawl is also a nerve centre for the powerful Earth Government as well as the nefarious and mysterious Church of Unitology. Isaac is suffering the emotional and mental aftermath of the horrors he faced on the Ishimura, but against all expectations a necromorph outbreak suddenly, and Isaac is quickly looking for a way to escape the return of this nightmare and the dreaded undead. Mysteries involving the Government and the involvement of the Unitologists quickly arise, and the whole mythos of the Dead Space universe is greatly enriched by the events of Dead Space 2.

A lot of the story is told through voice logs, but there are a lot more cinematic moments in this game and the cast of characters has been expanded. Isaac is now fully voiced and voiced well at that. Overall the story is superior to the first Dead Space, and the game leaves plenty of questions about the lore and about what murky forces are at work in the background while also providing a satisfying ending to this self contained adventure. You get a real sense of Isaac's mental state, and the characterisation is done very well. The interactions with other characters and survivors really flesh out the story and make for an interesting narrative.

Artistic

The graphics of Dead Space 2 are fantastic, with haunting visuals and an incredible level of art and architecture detail in the environments, the ornate Church of Unitology being the high point in my opinion. The game also takes a fantastic location twist which greatly adds to the atmosphere and increases the environmental variety. Its really surprising to see how many different areas Visceral managed to put into a game set on a space station. Fires, debris and particles all look great in the fabulous lighting of the game.

As the Sprawl has a civilian population, you will occasionally see people fleeing from awful situations and dark twists on every day locations as the necromorphs spread. Speaking of the necromorphs, the visual design of the enemies in Dead Space 2 is excellent. The enemies are truly disgusting and terrible to face to the point where you do not want to get too close to them. They really do look like twisted reanimated corpses, and there claws, tendrils and other physical attributes all look fantastic.

The sound is, like the first game, incredible. The music is perfect at creating tension and dread at the right points, the sounds of the necromorphs are suitably horrible and the atmospheric and environmental sounds really make you feel like titan station is a place that is lived in and in-use. The voice acting is also done really well, with Isaac being done especially suitably considering his previous status as a mute character. The weapons all sound good, especially the ones that involve interaction with the environment. The grinding of metal and sounds of escaping gases in certain rooms all add to the ambiance of the game, and the quality of the sound design is astounding. Everything is done so carefully that the game feels like a small group of individuals really took care of this aspect of it and made a genuine effort to make it the best they could, and to have this quality of sound is a special thing.

Gameplay

The combat still revolves around dismembering enemies limbs, but the variety of weapons and new enemies, as well as the ability to move while reloading [take note resident evil] makes it brilliant and tense. Even the zero gravity bits have been improved, with the ability to play around via thruster boots being a fantastic addition.

The core game is still the same third person action that the first Dead Space was, but the minor enhancements to the controls really help to smooth out the experience and endear themselves to the new focus on action that the game has taken. Rarely will you be able to flee from enemies, so some survival horror conventions have been lost here, but as an action experience Dead Space 2 controls a hell of a lot better than its counterparts such as Resident Evil 5 and Alan Wake.

There is multiplayer in the game as well though it is not very good and I did not play it for long as it adds nothing to the game and the single player is where its at in this game. The game has a proper new game plus mode this time, making multiple playthroughs an easy and enticing option, and with a game this good I would imagine a necessity.

Design

Dead Space 2 is an outstandingly polished game, with so many mechanics and themes integrating harmoniously. There are no technical issues that I experienced, and Visceral continued their policy of immersion through gameplay. Doors and lifts serve as the load screens, and the UI and inventory merge into Isaac's suit along with the mini-map in a throughout excellent system that more games should imitate and learn from.

There is a greater orientation towards action in Dead Space 2, but the horror elements are still present and are genuinely frightening at times, though it does lack the sheer dread that flowed from the first Dead Space. The player will traverse residential areas, schools, and a frozen morgue among others, and multiple new enemy types increase the tactical nature of the game. There are also some truly brilliant scripted situations and a great pacing to the progression of the game. There are 15 chapters, meaning a long campaign with replay value thanks to the excellent new game plus option.

Conclusion

In the end, Dead Space 2 is not as scary as Dead Space, but it is longer, has more enemies and weapons, better environments and better production values. It is intense, gorgeous and atmospheric that improves on everything that the first game did while also ramping up the scale and enriching the lore. It is a faster and more satisfying game to play, has a strong narrative with interesting characters and great replayability. In short, Dead Space 2 is a fantastic product that represents the pinnacle of modern survival horror in ways that Resident Evil can only dream of, and is one of the finest games of its time as a result.

Final Score

Pros:

• Great visuals
• Immersive sound design and wonderful music
• Dismemberment is gory and satisfying
• Great action with improved controls
• Presentation is impressive in quality and focus
• Long and exciting campaign with top production values

Cons:

• Disappointing lack of bosses
• Multiplayer is weak
• Disc swapping

Wtf:

• The needle

Score:

• 9/10 - Amazing

Dead Space is among the bright lights of game series originating in this current generation for me, with its first entry providing a chilling and highly polished horror game while its sequel increased the action and maintained the personalised story. That said I was concerned about Dead Space 3 during its development. Increased focus on action, microtransactions, co-op campaigns and the supposed need to sell 5 million copies for “success” all indicated a damaging attitude from EA, and I was worried about how this would impact on Visceral’s work. There was a clear danger that Dead Space would fall down the same hole that Capcom lead the Resident Evil series into with 6, and submit to the call of “streamlining” the finale of the Dead Space trilogy at the expense of the series roots. Well, I would call the final released result a compromise, but I am glad to say that Dead Space 3 retains what makes this series so great, mostly...

Story

The story of Dead Space 3 picks up some time after the thrilling ending of the sublime Dead Space 2, though not before giving players a truly fantastic prologue sequence to play through that really sets the scene for the rest of the game. As things begin in full, we find Isaac is living in a rundown apartment, drinking heavily and disconnected from the world. He had been romantically involved with Ellie Langford in the time between Dead Space 2 and 3, but that relationship has fallen apart and Isaac along with it. Suddenly a couple of Earth Gov marines arrive and demand Isaac accompanies them in a rescue mission to the far away planet of Tau Volantis to find a lost expedition which Ellie was part of. It is from here that the greatest narrative failing of Dead Space 3 becomes apparent: the speed at which it closes the story threads which have been dangling since the first game. We are briskly informed that Earth Gov is in tatters and that the Unitologists are taking control and this is reinforced when a Unitologist attack on the facility occurs. Events after this opening chapter become more traditional Dead Space in tone, but I am surprised at just how badly the story of Dead Space 3 is told. Everything has a hasty and somewhat rushed feel to it, lacks the subtlety or mystery that the series got so damn right in previous entries, and overall Dead Space 3 is a far inferior story than its predecessors.

To illustrate this point you need look no further than the Church of Unitologies role in the game, and that of its leader Danik. This elusive and shadowy organisation have always lingered in the background of the Dead Space lore with an influence the extent of which is kept hidden from the player. However, in Dead Space 3 they are reduced to gun totting madmen without any mystique or anything particularly interesting about them at all. Similarly Earth Gov were built up as a major antagonist organisation, and the ending of Dead Space 2 heavily implied a further role for them in opposition to both Isaac and the Unitologists, but they are dispatched in a single sentence at the opening chapter of the game. The explanations for the Necromorphs themselves and the origins of the Markers are not delivered with the care that they deserved, and the ending is rather atrocious.

It is also sad that the character interactions and personal drama of Dead Space 3 have greatly declined from the heights of the first two games. Isaac is no longer subject to the dementia scenes that formed the highlight of his story in the past, Ellie is heavily sexualised since her introduction, and the awkward unnecessary love triangle between them and one of the marines on the team is just out of place. The rest of the squad lack any really development of significance, and the co-op buddy is rather boring all things told. The whole story just lacks the sheer tension and drama, sense of mystery and need for discovery that the first two games possessed, and its poor pacing really hurts the narrative for me.

Artistic

No one can take away from how good Dead Space 3 looks visually. The sheer graphical fidelity is just gorgeous, with fantastic use of lighting, even in grim area like the blood stained darkened corridors of ruined vessels. Unfortunately, Dead Space 3 lacks the variety of locations as Dead Space 2 contained. The lavish and ornate architecture of the Church of Unitology, the neon lights of the shopping districts, the twisted school and the Earth Gov administration offices among others, Dead Space 2 had it all. Dead Space 3 on the other hand is limited to a set of industrial ship corridors, and the icy wastes of Tau Volantis. The game does do a strong job with making something of the snow environments on the planet’s surface, but nothing can hide the lack of visual diversity.

It is good then that the character models still look great, with nice animations and facial features, as well as some juicy new necromorph designs, even if the actual monsters themselves are not all that fresh in terms of their actual abilities.

The voice acting is solid, though the haphazard dialogue takes its toll, and the music is far less memorable than previous games in the series. However, the sound design is still a masterclass, retaining the greatest strength of the series: atmosphere. From the howling winds on the planet’s surface to the screaming of incoming monstrosities, the ambient sounds of Dead Space are tension setting at its finest.

Gameplay

The shooting mechanics of Dead Space 3 work the same way as players have come to expect, with the same responsive yet weighty feel to Isaac. You now carry 2 weapons instead of four, but there is a robust crafting system to make up for this and allow customisation to a large extent. The AI is also greatly improved, as necromorphs will now pull back and await reinforcements at points instead of mindlessly charging at the player to their own demise. There are also human enemies introduced in the first chapter, and the cover based tactics for these are very weak, making Dead Space 3 dive into a bargain bin third person action shooter for a short period of time instead of being what it is great at.

The crafting system is also integrated with microtransactions, and though I have to say that I did not find their inclusion intrusive and ignored them throughout my playthrough I strongly object to their presence. Visceral pride themselves on their presentation, including having the UI as part of Isaac’s suit, yes this immersion breaking microtransaction option is rammed into an otherwise masterful atmosphere, and it’s ridiculous. The co-op is non-intrusive, and is actually a decent way to play the game and take full advantage of the selection of strong side missions, but it is far from essential, and I enjoyed my experience of Dead Space 3 in singleplayer without any issues in that regard.

Design

I experienced no technical problems with Dead Space 3, it is a highly polished game with a fantastic core combat system and satisfying upgrade system, as well as a complete and new game plus mode and chapter select. Unfortunately, there are issues with the design of the game itself that I found annoying. Firstly, there is far too much backtracking through the same areas again and again, more so than the first game. While the story necessitates this, I found it tedious and in opposition to propelling me through the campaign. There are also a lot of fetch quests, get three of this to fix the broken machi9ne, and Isaac generally being used as a mule for my liking. These kinds of objectives feel like chores, and Dead Space has done better than this in the past. I could also do with less wall climbing/walking, as Dead Space 3 overuses this tedious mechanic. The space walks on the other hand are still fantastic, which cannot be said for for extremely underwhelming boss fights.

The co-op element was handled with the most care possible to ensure it didn’t interfere with a single player experience, unlike say Resident Evil 5 where players were saddled with an AI partner if they played alone, and I appreciate this. However, it is impossible to escape the fact that Dead Space 3 is the most action orientated game in the series, far more so than 2, and as a result is not scary at all really. It is tense, and has some jump scares, but it lacks true horror.

Dead Space 3’s greatest design victory is the attention to atmosphere through the feeling that this is a real inhabited place through the spread of logs and self contained mini stories spread throughout the games environs, and the brilliant balance of time and resource management that is at the heart of the combat. It is still thrilling to take on an undead wave and escape alive, and some poor pacing which would ruin many games fails to bring down the core brilliance of the Dead Space formula.

Conclusion

Dead Space 3 could have been the best game in a stellar series, but design flaws, marketing decisions and a weak narrative prevented this from happening. Despite these flaws, Dead Space 3 is a sequel that followers of the series should play to see things to their conclusion. The core combat is still superb and running at 14 hours in my first playthrough I can safely say that you get a lot of time out of this product. It has thrilling and climatic moments that are not easily forgettable. It may lack the charm and focus of its predecessors, and represent a series running out of steam on its present track, meaning that Dead Space 3 is not a great game, but it is absolutely a good game. I had a lot of fun playing through it and reaching the end of my time with the Dead Space universe, despite my disappointments with some of the changes made. Don’t be afraid of the co-op or microtransactions because they don’t really get in the way of a strong single player experience.

Final Score

Pros:

• Outstanding atmosphere
• Loads of content and replay value
• Side missions that flesh out the setting
• Great core gameplay
• Fantastic prologue

Cons:

• Narrative is weak and rushed
• Lacks strong score
• Repetitive backtracking and tedious objectives
• Poor boss fights
• The presence of microtransactions

Wtf:

• Lunacy

Score:

• 7/10 - Good

Assassin’s Creed is among the darlings of this generation of games for me, with the first title in the series breaking completely new ground and really bringing a feeling of “newness” way back in 2007. AC 2 and Brotherhood have undoubtedly been the high point of the series, but with the announcement of Assassin’s Creed 3 Ubisoft looked set to stem the feeling of annualised stagnation with the biggest entry yet. A new setting and protagonist, new gameplay mechanics and a break with the Ezio storyline looked set to completely reinvigorate a series that already had a shocking amount of lore under its belt, and Ubisoft looked ready to fulfil the potential of one of the most ambitious and exciting trilogies in gaming history.

Story

The story of Assassin’s Creed 3 follows directly on from the ending of Revelations, and if you have not played all the games in the console series then you will certainly be missing story beats, despite the effort 3 makes to fill players in on what has happened up till this point. Desmond and the modern day assassin’s are still on the run from Abstergo and locked in a race to save humanity from a deadly apocalypse, using the animus to find the locations of the treasures they need to access the ancient vault. To do this Desmond taps into the memories and experiences of a new ancestor: Connor. A native American and son of an English nobleman, Connor certainly had the makings of one of the most compelling protagonists in the series, but unfortunately this is not the case. Connor is a dry and relatively uninteresting character, lacking the sheer charisma of Ezio or even the doctrinal devotion of Altair, and as a result he just falls flat. He has one emotionally impactful scene in the entire game, but beyond this I felt little attachment to the motives or plight of Connor as a character, and as he is the lead role for the game this is a serious problem in a series that had 3 games driven to success by the strength of Ezio as a lead role. The game also puts platers in the role of Haytham Kenway, a predecessor of Connor and a far better character, but we only control him for the opening chapters of the game.

Outside of the animus Desmond is as plain and uninteresting as ever, with that story floundering ever since it failed to make good on the demise of Lucy. Answers are finally provided regarding much of the mythos of the series but frankly I found them all unsatisfying and the ending of Desmonds story in particular to be grievously insulting. Many people were in uproar at the Mass Effect 3 ending, but I feel that the conclusion to Assassin’s Creed 3 is far worse as it not only leaves players without any kind of satisfying ending to their interaction with this series but it also fails to draw the events that have taken place up to this point to a conclusion. It is pathetic and poorly placed, feeling extremely abrupt and pretty much exemplifies the lack of harmony between the modern setting story and the historical drama that has wracked the series since Brotherhood. It feels as that the relationships that the characters rely upon to develop are never fleshed out, and interactions never hit the notes they are clearly meant to as a result. Connor and his mentor Achilles get a lot of attention, but I never got a sense of a significant connection between them in contrast to Ezio and Mario, a real shame.

The dialogue of Assassin’s Creed 3 is generally ok, though certainly events and the overall narrative flounder and fail to meet the standards of older entries. Lack of compelling characters really hurts this game, with Connor having no truly involving motives, lack of a love interest or hateful antagonist, and a historical setting that I felt was simply not done justice.

Artistic

The visuals of the game are strong at a glance, with great scenery, a faithfulness to the setting and a crisp appearance to everything in typical Ubisoft style. Animations for characters are still among the best in gaming, and the colonial setting is fantastically mixed between urban areas and a wild frontier that reminded me of Red Dead Redemption. The seasonal changes bring snow to rural settings in a beautiful way, and the water of the game is stunning, which is fitting for the visual highlight that is the naval battles.

However, there are a host of small yet niggling graphical glitches that interfere with the beauty of the whole thing. Janky animation locks interrupt the near flawless on foot characters for the first time in my experience of this series, the horses are especially affected by this as they often get stuck on terrain in the environment, and pop-in is rife. Lip synching is also all over the place, which is very disappointing for a game of this calibre and profile. Finally, the colonial America setting is inherently less interesting or impressive than Renaissance Italy and Constantinople. Wooden buildings and manors are lovely, but they pale in comparison to the edifices, castles and cathedrals of past Assassin’s Creed games, and though this is an inherent part of the setting I still found it disappointing.

As for the audio, the voice acting is generally fine. Connor is uninspiring but Haytham and Charles Lee are fantastic, and the supporting cast all do their jobs admirably. Unfortunately the music is lacking in Assassin’s Creed 3, and the absence of Jesper Kyd has left a gaping wound in my view. The soundtrack is serious and grim constantly in Assassin’s Creed 3, completely lacking the exciting, haunting and often chilling work of Kyd. To put it simply, the soundtrack of Assassin’s Creed 3 is just background noise while the work of Kyd in the previous Assassin’s Creed games was nothing short of iconic, and Assassin’s Creed 3 doesn’t even approach its brilliance. This was a huge letdown for me personally as the music is a huge part of this series for me.

Gameplay

The game plays the same as Assassin’s Creed has always played, with the same combat fundamentals, use of projectiles and mix of stealth with straight out combat. Some of the additional stuff from Revelations has been eliminated, but I have to say that I did not enjoy actually playing most of the sections that Assassin’s Creed 3 throws the players way for a number of reasons. Firstly, the combat has been so overshadowed by the likes of Arkham Asylum and City at this point that I find it unbelievable that Ubisoft are content to leave it in its current state. Its stodgy, lacks weight and just doesn’t work all that well with its lack of tactical depth and plainness. Kill-cam animations are added for flash, but combat is still too hectic and lacks the enjoyment that I get out of games that are just better for their combat.

The free running and exploration is also falling behind, with its plethora of control issues and frustrating busywork. Infamous, Sleeping Dogs, Arkham and other games have all surpassed Assassin’s Creed when it comes to making it fun to run and jump over things, and something needs to be done about this badly. Similarly, the series has always alluded to have stealth elements, but Assassin’s Creed 3 easily has the worst stealth segments of all the AC games. Its broken thanks to the strict mission parameters that result in instant desynchronised if failed in any way. Bad camera angles, unclear enemy line of sight and poor controls all contribute to this, but in my view a game that is incapable of implementing decent stealth should not force stealth missions onto the players.

AC3 has far too many linear and scripted segments, including a painfully long 6-8 hour tutorial before the game really gets going. The early missions are boring and the pacing is a mess, and without spoiling anything the chase sequence towards the end of the game is a perfect example of what not to do in a game. All that said, the naval battles are spectacular with great controls, and exhilarating sense of power and excitement, and overall are by far the best addition to the gameplay in AC3.

The multiplayer is back and seems to be more refined and fun than ever before, with a lot of value to be gotten from it. However, I have never been interested in the multiplayer segments of AC, and so I have not played much of it and can’t really comment too much on its overall quality.

Design

Design wise Assassin’s Creed 3 has numerous problems, but they all boil down to one clear source: the game does too much. It feels like 3 games in one: The prologue, the rise of Connor and the modern day setting. There are simply too many mechanics running alongside each other and making the game a lumbering mess. The interface is sluggish and poorly designed, with a horrific weapon selection system and a pathetic mini-map. The fast travel system is a welcome addition but is implemented inconsistently, and the way items are selected is just bizarre.

There are also a lot of technical problems besides the ones I mentioned already. Loading screens are rampant, with abrupt transitions from the end of a fight to a cutscene, music cutting out and long pauses in the middle of dialogue. The game also does not look all that good in motion, with some poor lighting and artificing effects that are plain shoddy for a top level game. There are also scripted sequences like chases and infiltration missions that keep players on far too tight a leash, desynchronising them if they take a single wrong step. It goes against intuitive gameplay and is my single biggest gripe with the AC series at this point. There is a huge amount of side activity to do, but none of it is fun or interesting and as a result I avoided it as much as possible.

Finally, it feels to me that nothing in Assassin’s Creed 3 works all that well. Running is laggy, climbing obstacles clunky, fighting is hectic, shooting takes too long and lacks impact, targeting your movements while scaling trees/buildings is a disaster, the list goes on. It really feels like the game lacks a single core mechanic that it does well, and this is a serious issue what resulted in a lack of engagement for me personally.

Conclusion

Assassin’s Creed 3 is jaw dropping in its scope, but it tries to do too much at once, and as a result manages to do nothing to the extent that it deserved. The fundamental “assassinations” are still great, and I love the short conversations that Connor has with each of his targets after mortally wounding them, and the naval battles are nothing short of truly fantastic. The design flaws with Assassin’s Creed are the real problem here, and they are more apparent because of the sheer amount of things that AC 3 tries to do and the lack of cohesion between them. There is a lot of unnecessary clunk that gives me the feeling that the series is floundering with a lack of vision. The narrative of the game is also deeply disappointing overall. Though still worth experiencing for followers of the series to see the conclusion. Assassin’s Creed 3 could, and should, have been a powerhouse gaming experience, but because of a lack of direction it is merely a decent game. It has a huge amount of content, but I think that Ubisoft should think about the creative direction of the series and refine the mechanics before farting out another annualised release to further diminish what I considered a gold standard brand. It worries be that before I even managed to finish the singleplayer campaign after getting the game at Christmas the next game, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag had already been announced. In conclusion, Assassin’s Creed 3 is good but its potential is spoiled with poor design and weak story elements.

Final Score

Pros:

• Loads of content
• Incredible attention to historical details
• Multiplayer
• Sea battles are nothing short of stunning

Cons:

• Loads of bugs and glitches
• Lacking music
• Weak and unsatisfying story with an awful ending
• Inconsistent design

Wtf:

• Actually managed to balance the British-American viewpoints in a Revolutionary War setting

Score:

• 6/10 - Decent

With Aliens Colonial Marines still fresh in my mind I thought I would take a look at the most recent Alien series entry before Gearbox's bad 2013 product. Rebellion were the developer behind the 2010 Aliens vs Predator, and this is a franchise that has had huge potential, yet always underachieved grossly. The films have been awful and the older games are fondly remembered, but are well aged now. Rebellion's reboot of the franchise should have been a great game, taking full advantage of the potential of the races and the lore. However, the final product is far from fulfilling this potential for a series of reasons.

Story

There are 3 distinct campaigns in Aliens vs Predator, one for each of the races involved in this universe. The human campaign starts out in a promising fashion, leaving the player separated from his squad in an alien infested building. This quickly ends and the player is thrust into a run of the mill fps experience indistinguishable from most other shooters. It has no consequential characters or narrative beyond the usual Weyland-Yutani seeking power beyond their control story, and this is far from interesting to me. The Predator and Xenomorph campaigns fare even worse in terms of the story, though I do appreciate the Xenomorph intro of giving the player control over a prison breakout, slaughtering helpless scientists in fun fashion.

Overall there is not a lot of narrative interconnection between the three campaigns, and the story is a bare bones excuse for an action game.There are some boss fights but none of them are particularly good or inspired. There is also no exploration of the expanded universe or lore of the series. There are no new alien types in this game, no new robots or war machines that could have been created for the game, nothing new. The marines are here to kill the aliens, the aliens are hungry, the predators are here to kill everyone. The story does manage to characterise the Xenomorphs and Predators in line with the setting, and this is a positive point in its favour despite the lack of any attempt at a narrative.

Artistic

Graphically the game is not up to modern standards. While its not outright bad, the levels are completely uninspired and difficult to differentiate areas form each other. The character models are generally good, but lighting is poor and environments monotone. Its just a visually bland set of environments that was needless considering the lore. Rebellion could have done anything regarding the setting but they picked the same old industrial corridors, a real shame.

The sound fares a bit better, with some good atmospheric effects like screeches in the distance, but voice work is really under used. To make this worse, the dialogue is very weak, though the Aliens and Predators are both voiced really well and in fitting fashion.

Gameplay

The three campaigns feel very different in terms of the gameplay mechanics. The marine campaign plays like a typical first person shooter with light horror elements, or rather attempts at them. You have an assault rifle, shotgun, pistol ect and progress through a set of linear and unremarkable levels against a series of enemy types. It is not awful but it is definitely the least engaging of the three campaigns in my experience. The Xenomorph campaign begins with a really interesting level cataloguing their escape from captivity, but despite them playing with a focus on melee and crawling on walls and other surfaces the campaign is not properly utilised. The Predators are stealthy thanks to their focus on cloaking devices, but these unfortunately tend to break down to shooting at the end of the day aswell, though with greatly different weapons to the human levels.

The multiplayer is better than the singleplayer experience, but unfortunately it boils down to a rock-paper-scissors situation. It is difficult to find a game on the deserted servers at this stage, and the maps available to play on are just ripped from the campaign and are not particularly well laid out at all.

Design

The single biggest design flaw with Aliens vs Predator are the poor controls. The weapons feel clunky and cumbersome, and responsiveness for them leaves a lot to be desired. Even worse, the melee combat controls are barely functionable a lot of the time, which is disastrous during the Xenomorph and to a lesser extent Predator campaigns due to their heavy reliance on close combat. When an alien uses their ability to climb ceilings the camera spins uncontrollably leaving the player not knowing where they are, which is not helped by the poor level asthetic resulting in confusion and frustration.

It is simply not a satisfying game to play in terms of the design, and while is is certainly serviceable it is far from ideal and constantly places small obstacles in the players way to a smooth experience.

Conclusion

Aliens vs Predator is a game of failed potential. It takes a concept that could be crazy in scope and is perfect for a large scale campaign and deep mutiplayer. What Rebellion produced is a merely adequate, towing the line shooter that fails to distinguish itself in any meaningful way from the shooter crowed. It is not a terrible game, and there and there are certainly some laughs to be had, but it was certainly not worth full price at releaser, and is barely worth a rental now compared to the best games that are releasing. Its ok, but easily missible. This franchise is just having no luck, but it is a better product than the more recent Colonial Marines...yay.

Final Score

Pros:

• Good portrayal of the Xenomorphs and Predators
• Strong atmosphere when it gets levels right
• Good looking character models
• Races do play differently

Cons:

• Bad level design
• Poor balance between races
• Too short and creatively bankrupt
• Bad controls
• The campaigns thread the same levels

Wtf:

• The marines are still shocked to run into these situations

Score:

• 4/10 - Poor

The Alien franchise and name are venerable, having been the inspiration for numerous other series and concepts throughout the years. Unfortunately it has been a very long time since this grand-sire of science fiction got a quality game of its own, with the most recent Aliens vs Predator in 2010 just falling below expectations and what it should have been. Now Gearbox ha released Aliens Colonial Marines, and have been talking a good game with their passion and respect for the franchise, and early signs certainly looked positive for what this game could be.So how did Gearbox's guidance turn out in the end for the final release? Well fortunately for myself I was not personally expecting a whole lot from the title due to its troubled development cycle and my general lack of enthusiasm for the series gaming past. I say fortunate because Aliens Colonial Marines is a bit of a mess and disappoints in multiple areas.

Story

Aliens Colonial Marines is supposedly a direct sequel to the events of Aliens, and is set in the immediate aftermath of that film, but its events are so paltry and out of place that it amounts to nothing more than fan fiction with a stage. The game opens with the player in the role of a Marine named Winters as he and his crewmates are sent to investigate the Sulaco and its disappeared crew. You are quickly brought into the orbit of the planer LV-426 and the plot devolves into the same old formula of meeting Xenomorphs, get scattered, fight Weyland Yutani forces and so on. Its predictable, disengaging and above all boring, but the worst part of the story is not the actual plot itself but the characters that plague it.

All of the titular Colonial Marines are archetypal gung-ho assholes with no redeemable qualities to speak of. They constantly shout "hoorah" and their motto of "no marine left behind", but it all gets tiring really fast. The dialogue is completely flaccid, and the entire narrative is focused on characters drowning in their testosterone, rendering them almost indistinguishable from each other. You won't learn anything about any of them and you won't want to, and this lack of investment in the cast completely kills any kind of player investment in the game and its events before it leaves its crib. The whole thing is only made worse by characters who make inexplicable bad decisions and actions that make no sense, from a marine setting off a grenade that kills some of his friends in a space vacuum to a commanding officer with no tactical sense whatsoever, its an astonishingly poorly written game. Worst of all, Colonial Marines retconns an element of the films in a forced way that shows a lack of either understanding or care for the source material, and perhaps even both. It is a plot twist that makes no sense, and the game even acknowledges it as such but dismisses it as "that's another story", never to be addressed again. Utterly ridiculous.

Artistic

The pathetic storyline is not where the missteps of Colonial Marines end. The visuals of the game are a complete disgrace both artistically and technically. The Sulaco and other environments that you travel through are certainly authentic for the franchise, and they initially look the part with dark corridors and destroyed living quarters, but once things come into motion and you start interacting with this environment you realise how ugly this game really is. There is a lack of colour, with most everything being dark and lifeless, but the lack of life and immersion is pitiful when you look at what the likes of Visceral achieved with the first Dead Space way back in 2008.

Animations are jerky and look incomplete somehow, with the Aliens themselves awkwardly climbing ceilings and grates, and disappearing into pools of badly rendered acid when they die. Friends and foes alike get stuck in terrain and fall through floors and walls, or randomly throw themselves into glitchy spasms on a regular basis, making them unable to participate in any kind of combat. Screen tearing, awful texture quality, blocky environmental details and broken animations are all abundant in this game. Friendly characters will teleport in front of the player in a flash of blue light when you get to a checkpoint, and it is the most out of place and ridiculous animation I have seen in a modern game for a long time, systematic of the sheer laziness that went into the development of this game. The whole thing is just visually shoddy, with an aesthetic design that is bankrupt and far below the standards of many PS2 era games, and a host of graphical technical issues.

The soundtrack is weak, with a couple of pieces lifted from the films but nothing original of note, and voice acting from the bottom of the acting barrel for the most part. Even the Xenomorphs themselves fail to make an audio impact, and only the blip of the motion tracker has any longevity in my memory of this game, for all of its uselessness in actual gameplay terms.

Gameplay

Speaking of the gameplay, things wouldn't be so bad if the game played well despite its failings in story and art, but even here it is a failure. Things start promisingly, with an opening level that builds up an atmosphere of expectation and tension as you enter the infested Sulaco. The atmosphere continues to build before you meet the first Alien, and the player is eventually ambushed by the deadly creature, but as you are prompted to enter a quick time event that "pushes" the lethal Xenomorph off you things completely fall apart and the game never really manages or even attempts to make the Aliens a foe to be feared again. From here gameplay settles into a formulaic and familiarly boring shooter that involves only the most basic tactics. Xenomorphs are easy to kill, face-huggers are a joke and far too much time is spent fighting Weylanfd Yutani human soldiers, devolving affairs into a first person cover shooter without a cover system.

The enemy AI is laughable, with Aliens charging mindlessly at the player to be gunned down, and allies are miserably useless for the most part. The one section where the game comes into the territory of reaching an actual level of atmosphere is a sewer section with an unarmed player facing zombiesque Xenomorphs, but even this is botched due to them being almost no threat whatsoever. The promised walker fight is a joke, and the encounters with boss enemies are all terrible and worse than normal gameplay. Weapons are not fun to use, the players movement feels out of synch with the game itself, and there is no kickback or impact when yo actually shoot a Xenomorph. It all feels fake, with no gravitas or energy about it, and this is probably the single worst thing about Colonial Marines. It also doesn't help that the game is 5 hours long.

Design

I have already talked about the litany of technical problems on display in Colonial Marines, and it is inexcusable that a major release in 2013 should have such a long list of fundamental failures. Beyond these flaws, the level design is counter-intuitive to a smooth shooter and is more of a problem for the player than the Xenomorphs are. Corridors are tight and prevent proper movement. The co-op is completely un-viable because if one player has difficulty manoeuvring in the claustrophobic and narrow levels then what are four players going to do. The load times are long, and when you die it takes 40 seconds and more to get back to the last checkpoint, which is often badly placed. Mission objectives are unclear, navigation across the clunky interface is difficult and lip synching seems to have been forgotten about ny the developers.

The motion tracker is iconic in Aliens, and it is something that Gearbox made a lot of noise about going into the release of Colonial Marines, but the unfortunate truth is that the motion tracker is nearly useless as enemies don't try to surprise you but rather come head on, and as a result it has no significant role or place in the game. Colonial Marines was always going to have difficulty reconciling horror elements with being a shooter, but its sheer scale of failure to do well at either is astonishing, and shows that 2010's Alien vs Predator by Rebellion was not that bad an attempt. I want to give a special shout out to the final boss fight in the game as one of the worst in recent times and an absolute letdown that embodies the problems with Colonial Marines as a whole. As for the multiplayer, well it is certainly superior to the pathetic campaign, but the lack of balance between the Xenomorphs and the Humans is difficult to bridge as the Alien players will be smashed at a distance every time. I also found the multiplayer to bot be very much fun at all, and well below what I would want from a game like this.

Conclusion

Aliens Colonial Marines is nothing short of a disaster. It has an awful plot and narrative, a boring campaign that barely runs 5 hours, though I won't hole the length against it because any monger would be torture, and a list of bugs and issues that render it near broken. Its multiplayer is only alright, and the lack of balance is completely off-putting, and really the only positive thing I can say about the game is that it has an ok ranking system, but after 7 years of Call of Duty getting that so right why should it not be able to replicate something along the same lines. Colonial Marines utterly fails to live up to the franchise it purports to respect, and while I have certainly played worse games than this I have not played many that are more insulting to their vision and source material. Colonial Marines should be avoided, and its shocking to me that Gearbox would put something this unpolished on store shelves, and at full price too.

Final Score

Pros:

• The multiplayer has a good ranking system
• Interesting stealth level
• Finally I got to go to Hadley's Hope

Cons:

• Ugly graphics
• Terrible AI and poor weapons
• Boring campaign filled with crap
• Lacks tension
• Stupid story

Wtf:

• "That's another story"

Final Score:

• 3/10 - Bad

With the end of year rush over the holiday period I tried to get as many games played as I could, but with work and life in general getting in the way I have only now been able to get through enough of the 2012 backlog to do a proper list for Game of the Year. Better late than never thought right, so without further ado here is my list of top games for 2012, and since it is now 2013 I thought it would be fitting to have a top 13!

13: Starhawk

Starhawk was one of the most fun multiplayer experiences I had all year. It marries a slick and responsive third person shooter with fantastic rts elements to create a game that is different from anything else I played in 2012. LightBox managed to get the kind if polish that I expect from a top level PS3 exclusive into Starhawk, and it also manages to have attractive and crisp visuals with a good soundtrack that really brings the space wild west to life. The singleplayer is short and basically serves as a tutorial for the multiplayer, but it is still fun. This is a criminally under appreciated game and deserved to do a lot better than it did in the end. It is just a downright fun game.

12: Silent Hill Downpour

Downpour does a great job of taking the struggling horror series back to its roots with its atmospheric and haunting opening section. It draws clear inspiration from Silent Hill 2 and 3 while also managing to be very much its own thing in a way that Homecoming never achieved. The combat is still clunky and there are some annoying technical issues, including a rough as hell save system, but Downpour surpasses these problems by having a great new take on the nightmare setting. The story begins in a really interesting way, the music is great and the energy that the whole game has is just fun to experience. Downpour is a good Silent Hill game and is one of the most deceptively fun games I played in 2012.

11: Pokemon White 2

After all these years Pokemon has had its first direct sequel in the series history. White 2 is extremely similar to White, but it is still an addictive, gripping and engaging rpg experience that retains the charm of the series. Pokemon White 2 also has a great mix of the pocket monsters, with the creatures introduced in the original White/Black mixing with previous generations from the start. Combat is the same turn based affair that players will be familiar with, but everything is refined and sped up just enough to make it probably the best gameplay experience in the Pokemon series. White 2 is a long and fun game that kept me going on my commutes and gave me a great reason to take out my 3DS.

10: Call of Duty Black Ops 2

Call of Duty has been increasingly losing me over recent iterations, especially Modern Warfare 3. Despite my like of the roller coaster single player campaigns, the lack of player agency, the linearity of the experience and the increasingly disinteresting multiplayer have been combining to make me lose interest. Black Ops 2 changed that by having what I found to be the best campaign since Call of Duty 4 in 2007. The story is ridiculous but interesting, the villain is genuinely fantastic and the moments and environments that you find yourself in are just great. The futuristic segments feel really fresh and the overall design and feel of the game just make it so fun to play. It is also a great example of how to do player decisions in a shooter experience. The multiplayer is not nearly as changed as the singleplayer, but its still fun to play with friends from time to time.

9: Dishonored

Dishonored picks up from where Deus Ex Human Revolution left off and shows exactly how first person stealth games should be done. A new IP with a great Victorian-esque setting filled with grim circumstance and political intrigue was right up my street. It also didn't hurt that Dishonored is so interesting to play. The player is free to approach any given situation however they want, from stealth to open attack and anything in between. The level design is open and immersive, emphasising player choice through direct gameplay. The story is not all that great, but Dishonored is successful in crafting a compelling gameplay experience with an interesting world. Also, man eating rat swarms.

8: Halo 4

I love Halo, and I was delighted to see that 343 did not destroy the series with Halo 4. Now it is not the fresh break for Halo that I would have liked to see, but is certainly a familiar and satisfying shooter experience with the same freedom of combat that I come to this series to experience. The story does a few new tricks, and the campaign is solid without reaching the heights that Halo 3 reached, but it is the multiplayer where Halo 4 really excels. The pacing has been increased and there is now an almost COD like class creation system, but it suits the Halo mechanics so well and everything just clicks together in a cohesive and complete way that compliments each other. The maps are also nice and I cannot fault free dlc in the form of the spartan ops missions.

7: Crusader Kings II

Paradox have been making super specialised strategy games for a long time now, and I have loved playing there many historical based products, especially the Europa Universalis series. Crusader Kings II is not only their most intense and personal game so far, but it is also their most polished and refined. Instead of being the manifest will of a nation you play as a specific character, and it is the plotting and intrigue, the little personal stories that crop up as you play that makes Crusader Kings II such an engaging and addictive game. No other game grabbed me in that "just one more turn" syndrome in 2012, and the deep layers of mechanics and strategy that covers and interacts with everything you do in it is a major part of that.

6: Darksiders II

Darksiders was a fun game but it didn't grab me in a significant way back in 2010, but Darksiders II changed that. I realise that I am going against the majority opinion here, but I thought that Darksiders II was one of the most interesting and engaging experiences of the year. The art direction is gorgeous, the music is truly fantastic and enchanting, and the combat is so satisfying, especially when you consider the increased speed of Death over War and the new loot drops that are just so good to pick up. Darksiders II felt to me like the HD Soul Reaver that I have been hungering for, and despite the padding at points I really appreciated the lack of chore heavy dungeons like the Black Throne from the first game. It is criminal that Darksiders seems to have no future after the dissolution of THQ in the last few days, but Darksiders II is one of my favourite games of 2012.

5: XCOM Enemy Unknown

I love strategy games, but XCOM Enemy Unknown brings a level of tension to its turn by turn gameplay that few of its peers can boast. It is becoming rare to see a bug budget strategy experience, but XCOM manages to be exactly that, with all the trappings of a top level game. It is easy to learn to play but difficult to be good at, with some chilling alien foes to take on and a heavy emotional impact when a team member you have had for dozens of hours gets disembodied in a single capricious shot from some monstrous enemy. Firaxis made an amazing game in this deep strategy reboot, and the lavish amount of love and detail that went into crafting this intense experience is impressive,

4: Mass Effect 3

It may not have been the final chapter that this incredible trilogy deserved, but Mass Effect 3 is still one of the most rewarding and powerful story driven experiences of 2012. It was the culmination of my Shepard, of my decisions in this immersive and magical universe, and the level of emotional involvement I had in this series had enough weight to guarantee it a place on this list. The combat is the best so far, with more refined shooting and new enemy types, and the multiplayer is not half bad either. However, the real brilliance of Mass Effect 3 is the way the different character and story arcs are resolved, resulting in some extremely powerful moments. The genophage, the Quarian-Geth conflict, the Reaper arrival on Earth and more are all dealt with in extremely effective and powerful ways that just make this a must play for any fan of the series. The ending of the game and the dlc policy are bad, but Mass Effect 3 is a great game even taking these into account.

3: Journey

I am not one for what I consider pretentious art games, with only Bastion hitting a sweet spot with me in the past thanks to its excellent gameplay. Journey had all the appearances of something that I would not enjoy, but after I finished it in a single sitting I knew I had just played something very special. It is a visually stunning experience, with haunting music and a level of polish that is far beyond what I would expect from a game of this size. The gameplay is simplistic yet intriguing, and the level of vision and concept that Journey makes good on is just jaw-dropping. I love Journey and was shocked at the sheer level of quality that it has in all aspects, and it is easily one of the finest games of 2012, being superior to many full retail releases.

2: The Walking Dead

Along with Journey, The Walking Dead manages to be the embodiment of the increasing quality in downloadable titles. Telltale managed to not only make their best game of all time, but also the most emotional and powerful narrative of the year for me. The Walking Dead admittedly has shallow gameplay, boiling down to a point and click adventure with some serious technical issues, but the character interactions, the decisions and the level of engagement with the player just make this one of the most engrossing games I have experienced in a long time. The Walking Dead also manages to have what I consider the best child character in gaming in the form of Clementine, and it is the relationship between her and Lee that makes this such a damn powerful game. The moments, split decisions and grim setting of the Walking Dead is a combination that makes it a must play.

1: Far Cry 3

I never expected to like Far Cry 3 nearly as much as I do, especially as I never enjoyed the first 2 and I do not enjoy Crysis either. However, Far Cry 3 is a game that just spoke to me in a meaningful way, matching almost all of what I love in a game like this. There is true free roaming, but the game manages to retain tight shooting mechanics in a harmonious way with the jank that comes with an open world setting worthy of Bethesda. Far Cry 3 also has gorgeous visuals, with incredible animations that I can only hope gives us a glimpse at that games will be like in the next few years as new platforms release. Vaas is an incredible villain, and I am a sucker for good dream sequences, and the way Far Cry 3 sets up its story is just magical for the first two-thirds of the game. It may not make good on this story potential by the end, but Far Cry 3 is the most fun I had playing a game in 2012, and it reminded me of why I loved Turok back on the Nintendo 64: animals killing each other and your enemies in an organic yet hilarious way. Far Cry 3 is mu GOTY 2012, much to my own shock.

Honourable Mentions:

Borderlands 2

Mark of the Ninja

Torchlight II

Fall of the Samurai

Asura's Wrath

Spec ops the Line

Sleeping Dogs

September was a busy time for me outside of gaming with a lot of other time commitments, but I still managed to play as many games as possible in between all the annoyances of life. I am also looking forward to a bunch of games coming in October, most notably Dishonoured, Pokemon and Assassins Creed III. However I still have to finish up some titles before I get stuck into the fresh October releases and with that in mind here is what I played during September 2012:

Darksiders II (Xbox 360)

While I bought this on release day I didn't get properly engaged with Darksiders II until the start of September, and what a time I had with it. The first Darksiders was a really interesting Zelda like game but with a great focus on intense combat and puzzles. Darksiders II on the other hand was basically the HD Soul Reaver that I have been waiting for. Death is extremely similar to Raziel and the entire game plays in a more fluent way than its predecessor. The game does not make good on the exciting ending of its predecessor but it greatly expands on the lore and setting of the Darksiders universe and really makes it a franchise I care about.

The decreased enemy variety was noticible, and the game does feel very padded and stretched out for parts of its campaign, but the loot and RPG elements combined with the great world and fantastic music compelled me to complete Darksides 2 twice, which is something I rarely do. I went through my feelings on Darksiders II in great detail in my review, but in summary its a larger and more fluent game than its predecessor which lacks the focus of the first game. I am intrigued to see what Vigil can do with a sequel, and I really hope that they get to make one.

Pokemon White (Nintendo DS)

Pokemon is my favourite Nintendo series, above even Mario and Zelda for me. Diamond and Pearl were a little bit stale for my tastes but Heartgold was a masterpiece. I never quite managed to play the latest release, Pokemon White, when it released in 2011 but with the sequel coming in October I decided I had better catch up and see what I missed.

I have just reached the third gym of the game but so far its a real breath of fresh air to a series that is often pointed out as failing to change or innovate. The new Pokemon designs are hit and miss, but I have never seen any of these creatures or locations before and that alone makes Pokemon White the closest thing to recapturing the feeling of the original Pokemon Red/Blue. There is a lot to do, the visual style is significantly different from its predecessors and so far I am loving Pokemon White.

The Walking Dead Episode 3 (Xbox 360)

Telltale have been making an incredible game with The Walking Dead, and Episode 2 was a terrifyingly amazing piece of entertainment. I was wondering how they could possibly follow that but dammit Episode 3 A Long Road Ahead is one of the most emotionally loaded and shocking gaming experiences I have ever played. I am not going to go into spoiler details but suffice to say I was horrified by the events that unravelled my journey thus far in this post apocalyptic world.

This episode was very different from the second one in that the player has no control over how things turn out, You are not a party to the events, you can only react to them as they occur in a fast succession. Its also not afraid to go into extremely dark territory in a more personal way than episode 2 did, showing the bravery and quality of the team at Telltale. I cannot wait to get episode 4 after the insanity of Long Road Ahead.

Borderlands 2 (Xbox 360)

Borderlands 2 is the big new game of September that I bought on its release day, and after loving my time with the original game back in 2009 as well as its quality DLC releases. Borderlands 2 promised to be bigger, hotter and better but after recently finishing it I found it to be an extremely safe and conservative sequel. Now don't get me wrong, Borderlands 2 is a great game, as I discussed in my review. However, considering the strength of its personality as a series and how off the wall and crazy the first Borderlands was when it released it was a bit shocking for me to see how similar and iterative Borderlands 2 is.

It has loads of subtle but important improvements over its predecessor but the spirit of the game is just not the same. The campaign has a slow start and the bosses feel lesser in stature. It lacks the same impact and actually feels dated in a lot of gameplay ways. Its still a really fun game and one that I had a great time playing with friends but Borderlands 2 is a by the numbers sequel that lacks any changes of the kind that Darksiders II made to the formula of its predecessor.