• Format: XBLA
  
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: UTV Ignition
• Developer: Denki
• Players: 1 (offline), 2-4 (online)
• Site: http://www.denki.co.uk/games/quarrel/

This game sees pirates fighting ninjas, and cavemen fighting robots. Oh, still here? Most people rushed off to buy the game before the end of the first sentence. Well for the rest of you, here’s a review of the actual game – a turn-based strategy word ‘em up. Where innocent people are killed.

In effect, it’s an electronic board game for 2-4 players. Each themed ‘board’ is split up into several parts, with each player allocated an equal number of sections at the beginning of the match. Each section houses a number of little people (or robots. Or Scotsmen), and each of these little people represents a space for a letter (up to a maximum of eight). If you ‘quarrel’ with another player whilst using a piece of land containing four little people, you can make a word up to a maximum of four letters. With us so far?

Two players at a time ‘quarrel’, both using the same eight letters. Each set of letters is always an anagram. Each letter carries a number, as in Scrabble; the highest scoring word, which isn’t necessarily the longest, wins. If both players produce a word of equal value, victory is awarded to whoever submitted their word first. The little chaps on the winning team throw letters at the losing team until they burn and die; and the losers have always led pure, innocent, blameless lives. We know this because, without fail, we see their souls ascending to heaven.

Let’s back up a bit. While it’s clear you can still win if you pit three mini murderers against five, facing an opponent with seven when you have just two doesn’t bode well for victory. This is where tic tacs come in. No, sorry, tactics. During your turn, you can select one of your pieces of land to attack an opponent’s section and initiate a quarrel; or you can bolster your defences by transferring little people from one of your adjoining sections to the other. Two pieces of land with four little people may well be a better choice than one with seven and the other with just one.

Scotsmen vs robots vs cavemen! Sadly, you don't get to pick your characters (we'd all go for ninjas, right?).

If you fight an opponent using a larger team than yours and win, you take ‘prisoners’ equal to the number of extra letter spaces your foe had. More generally speaking, lose while attacking and you lose all but one of your current team; lose while defending, you lose everybody on that section and the land itself. ‘Reinforcements’ are scattered for you at the end of your turn (which lasts until you end it or until you’ve done all you can do), and you can call in one extra wordperson at the start of one quarrel if you’ve accrued enough points (though you can hoard them). Finally, bonus points are awarded for taking the same little team through multiple enemy territories (and winning).

Whew. Got all that?

So: it’s a word game that makes you think in more ways than one and, for a little extra pressure, you’re working against the clock while composing a word when playing online. It’s much simpler and easier to learn than we’ve probably made it appear – and it’s also very, very addictive. Offline game modes aren’t huge but, countering that, AI opponents get agonisingly clever very quickly. Even when you’ve finally conquered the smarmy avatars of your computerised nemeses, there’s always the option of a Quick Match to just jump in and play to scratch that violent word game itch.

Of course, the real pleasure to be had in any word game comes from human opponents; and this is where Quarrel features its most baffling, daftest omissions. There is, for example, no offline multiplayer. Go back and read that as many times as you like, we’re afraid the ‘no’ really is supposed to be there. Okay, so splitscreen Quarrel would be open to cheating but come on; not even some kind of mode incorporating taking turns?

There currently aren’t many people playing online, and virtually all those who are only seem to want to play two player matches; neither of which is the game’s fault. However, why oh why is it only unranked matches (which make it easy to find members of a Party) that offer a lobby list? There isn’t even a rematch option for ranked matches (either that, or every opponent we played was so terrified of our brainpower that they quit the second the match ended). Brownie points are won, however, for anticipating the infamous Rage Quit. When this happened to us in a ranked match, we were automatically handed the victory; during an unranked match, an AI opponent jumped in.

The anagram here is clearly, er, foseflus.

As for the words themselves, well… almost anything goes. Swearing is forbidden (one we tried was rejected as “undesirable!”), though plurals and slang (and letters of the Greek alphabet, and even a type of Armenian folk music – yes, really) are acceptable. The slang seems to be American-centric however, with “ho” and “crappers” being two delightful examples we came across. The potato/potato situation is unclear as, though we never saw any British English used, we saw American English wielded successfully a few times. Also Denki, please note; it’s commendable that you don’t allow hyphenated or apostrophised words but bearing that in mind, costar is not a word!!! That cost us a game. Bitter, us?

The 400MP price is surprisingly low, until you discover that the game started out on iTunes last year – where there’s a free version, and even the ‘Deluxe’ release is only £1.99. Nonetheless, this still represents great value for money, as it does have multiplayer options – unlike the iTunes release. If you can encourage a few online friends to buy it, it becomes an essential purchase. Either way, this is a great way to spend those Microsoft Points burning a hole in your avatar’s pocket.

In an uncomfortable reminder of exactly how and why manufacturers of complicated electronic products enjoy such huge profit margins, here is a story which brings the word ‘suicide’ into the world of console manufacturing – again. If the word ‘Foxconn’ means anything to you at all, it will almost certainly be due to reports of workers on the Chinese company’s manufacturing lines committing suicide. This latest story, thankfully, did not result in any deaths.

On January 2nd, as reported at Kotaku, three hundred employees stood on the roof of the Foxconn Xbox 360 manufacturing plant in Wuhan, threatening to jump to their deaths. The workers had asked for a raise; the factory’s response was to tell them to keep their jobs at the same pay rate, or leave with compensation. The majority chose to leave; but when their bosses reneged on the deal and refused to hand out compensation of any kind, the rooftop protest began. After intervention from the mayor of Wuhan, the group finally came down, unharmed, the evening of the following day. Microsoft issued this statement to Kotaku regarding the latest incident:

“Microsoft takes working conditions in the factories that manufacture its products very seriously, and we are currently investigating this issue. We have a stringent Vendor Code of Conduct that spells out our expectations, and we monitor working conditions closely on an ongoing basis and address issues as they emerge. Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors, and to ensuring conformance with Microsoft policy.”

Foxconn’s Wikipedia entry includes a fairly brief but fully supported list of the best known criticisms and fatal incidents. Foxconn  (which has been forced to install anti-suicide nets at multiple sites) also manufactures the Wii, the PlayStation 3, the iPhone, the Kindle, motherboards, and much more.

• Format: Wii (version reviewed), PS3, 360
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
• Players: 1-4 (offline only)
• Site: http://raymanorigins.uk.ubi.com/#

If you owned a SNES and/or Mega Drive (AKA Genesis) way back when, your gaming life would have been spent riding a surfboard of pleasure over a stormy sea of side-scrolling platformers. Many were terrible. Many were not; many were carefully crafted adventures that considered fun and wonder rights rather than privileges where gamers are concerned. Do you remember these games? Rayman Origins certainly does.

The first thing to hit you about this game, long before you even get to take control, is the amount of time and love that has clearly been poured into the graphics. Hand-drawn, sumptuously animated and relentlessly detailed, it looks like no other commercial release of the last ten years or more. Though the shamelessly bright colours and bloodless violence invite comparisons to a cartoon, in truth it looks more like what it truly is; an inventive, aggressively non-aggressive videogame.

The sound too stands out for all the right reasons, with the nonsense language (including split-second snatches of real words) refusing to ever make you cringe, with the moments of unintelligible sing-song delightful rather than twee. The music too is wonderful. Rather than a looping soundtrack that could be slapped onto the end of any cutesy-looking game, this is a title that has been scored. Two orchestras, a wealth of instruments, and a range of styles ensure that you’re presented with a perfectly happy audio-visual marriage.

Despite running at a lower resolution than this, the Wii version still looks wonderful.

Children of the eighties will remember the best of the 16-bit platformers, and to say that Rayman Origins plays like one of these goes a long way to making any review redundant. For the benefit of the uninitiated, the basic premise runs thus: each level starts at the left of the screen, and the exit is somewhere (very) far to the right. A combination of enemies and tricky jumps – often resulting in instant death – stand between you and success. To get through you’ll be jumping on heads (and here, punching faces) and using a range of abilities, most of which are unlocked as you progress through the game. Many moments require very precise manoeuvres and lightning reflexes. You will die often, and be thankful for checkpoints. Above all, you will have an enormous amount of fun during the ride.

To an extent, difficulty is dictated by how much content you want to experience in your first run through the game. Like any platformer worth its proverbial salt, there are collectibles; ‘Lums’, vaguely fairy-like creatures which hang in mid-air (sometime stationery, sometimes not). Grab a king Lum and, for a brief period, all other Lums turn red – doubling their value. Do you go for the highest Lum total you can manage in the level – usually meaning close encounters with invincible enemies and bottomless pits – or just grab what you can while making your way safely to the exit as soon as possible?

Lums, in turn, unlock Electoons (think Super Mario’s stars/shines). There are 246 of these in total, though only a relatively small number are required to unlock each world; and collecting a total of 200 will allow access to an extra eleven levels. Almost all levels have three Lum target numbers to achieve; the first two will give you one Electoon each, while the third will award you with a medal to look at. Each level is ended by freeing an Electoon from its cage, and there are hidden areas sprinkled throughout the game hiding extra Lums or cages; and once completed, each level has one last Electoon to surrender as a reward for a speedrun.

Ah, underwater sections. You were never allowed to make a platformer without them.

Though it works superbly as a singleplayer game, up to four of you can run, jump, glide, wallrun, and walljump your way through simultaneously; and, of course, stop to slap each other about should you feel the need. Extra players can certainly help during the side-scrolling shooter sections (which, incidentally, somehow fit in perfectly). There are extra characters to unlock but, as many are too similar and there is no coherent story within the game at all, it doesn’t act as much of an incentive.

You won’t much care who you’re playing as. Partly because you’ll be having too much fun and/or concentrating too hard on a particularly tricky section, but also because you’ll want to see how many industry references you can spot. There are subtle, never-intrusive nods in the level designs to Mario, Sonic, Angry Birds, Snake, Super Meat Boy, and doubtless many more we’ve missed. These tasteful homages go hand-in-hand with the intricacy of the graphical detail and the power of the soundtrack to create levels that look, sound, and feel alive. It’s so much more than idiot smiles and squeaky voices. Every single level is bursting with character, energy, and an utterly unique sense of self.

It is, sadly, not an endless parade of positives. Though it took us a respectable ten hours or so to run through the story, collecting roughly 60% of the Electoons along the way, it was mostly fairly easy to get through. That’s not necessarily a problem; the fact that the game occasionally leans too heavily on trial and error – particularly for the bosses and the final leg of the story – is. There’s nothing wrong with the time-honoured balancing act of quick reflexes and unexpected circumstances, but the ball is now and again dropped here.

Replay value is a thorny issue. Many (though not all) will happily work for and play the ten exhilarating, peril-laden chase levels that must be completed for the final hidden area; but only the most hardcore platformer freaks (or trophy/achievement addicts) will go through the same levels again and again until they have every last Electoon, medal and speed trophy.

Considering the tidal wave of price cuts due to lack of sales, this last is perhaps not an issue. If you loved the platformers of the nineties you’ll love this; and if you weren’t there for that era, perhaps Rayman Origins will make you regret the fact that you missed out.

• Format: XBLA
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Hello Games
• Developer: Hello Games
• Players: 1-2 (offline only)
• Site: http://www.hellogames.org/

The modern gamer’s Pavlovian response to bright colours and relentless smiles is a sneer and a derogatory comment. Should such a young whipper-snapper pluck up the courage to give this game a go, however – which they really, really should – within five minutes they’ll be wearing a grin goofier than that of Joe himself.

As has been declared before, Critical Gamer’s official genre for Joe Danger games is ‘raplunter’ (racer/platformer/stunter). Though Joe is a stuntman, he acts more like the illegitimate offspring of Mario and Sonic. The racing element is clear; he’s on a motorbike after all, and a handful of levels feature other racers who must be beaten to the finish line. Many of the levels without opponents have optional time limits to beat. What will likely surprise those unfamiliar with this game is that it’s much closer to a traditional side-scrolling platformer than it is to a side-scrolling racer.

There is a jump button. You will use this a lot. Not only are there hazards on the track, there are extra long/high jumps to be made; sometimes in conjunction with – yes – your double-jump, or one of the many springs dotted throughout the game. Another element taken from old-school platformers is collectibles; yet another element pickups that, once activated, only stay in the level for a limited time.

That’s not to say that Joe’s stuntman status is ignored. Far from it. His boost bar, essential for certain jumps and all races, can only be used when full – and can only be replenished by performing stunts. You will therefore find yourself pulling wheelies on the ground and performing various tricks in the air, desperate to fill your boost bar in time for the next boost-demanding section. Some stars require you to constantly stunt your way through the level from start to finish.

Ah, the stars. While getting from start to finish in each level is usually quite simple, meeting the requirements for all the stars – used as currency to buy access to most of the levels – is much less so. Some events have just one or two stars to win, while others have half a dozen or more. You can earn stars by picking up all collectibles, hitting every target in a level, beating the time limit, beating the time limit and picking up all the collectibles, finding hidden stars within the track, and more. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It is – and this is why you’ll play this game again and again and again.

The controls are little more than forward, reverse, boost and duck (hold to crouch, release to jump), with mid-air steering possible. This game is old-school in all the ways it should be. With no convoluted plot, expensive cutscenes, gun-porn weapons roster or celebrity involvement, it relies on good ol’ gameplay. In fact, it relies heavily on trial and error; like Dark Souls, only much more fun and infinitely more fair. The first time you play a track, you’ll come across a hazard and/or relentlessly demanding course of duck/jump/boost/switch lanes that you’ll almost certainly fluff and crash (this is an instant death game). Certain events will see you fail time after time, yet you’ll carry on and love every second.

Why? Because you can see it’s doable, if only you can be good enough (and you can instantly restart at any time). Because you want to grab every star the game has to offer, even if you’re the only one who’ll ever know. Because you want to earn five stars in one run because it’ll look cool. And when you still haven’t managed to get the star for collecting all the coins and beating the time limit after the 53rd attempt, you’ll finally leave it for later because you can’t wait any longer to see the next beautifully designed level. Because you’re having so much damn fun.

What does the Special Edition bring to the table? Well most significantly there’s a generous dollop of new levels, a big chunk of which are immediately accessible in ‘The Laboratory’ (which is also a new background for the excellent level editor). While brilliant fun, most are perhaps a little too easy for Joe Danger veterans. That final assault course in The Lab though… evil incarnate. In an unstoppably addictive way.

Of equal interest are the ‘Pro Medals’. A total of twenty five of the game’s events have one of these to hand out to those who can earn all of the level’s stars in one run. The more of these medals you earn the more you unlock, such as extra characters (including the ones available as paid DLC for the PSN release) and, teasingly, content in “future Hello Games titles” (that’ll be Joe Danger: The Movie then). Want a complete Joe Danger outfit for your avatar? You need only collect a complete set of D-A-N-G-E-R pickups a few times. Result! Loading times are also shorter, and mumblemumble anti-aliasing mumblemumble.

Unfortunately, the few improvements the game needs are, it seems, being held back for the sequel. Joe Danger is ideally suited to splitscreen play, but online modes would have been more than welcome. There’s still no LittleBigPlanet style community of user content, either; you can swap levels you’ve made with people on your friends list, and that’s it. At time of writing, it’s actually missing the PS3 version’s ability to save replays and upload them to YouTube.

If you have a 360 connected to the internet and you’ve never played Joe Danger, download this game immediately lest we lose all respect for you. Is it worth buying for those who own the PSN release? Tough call; if you played through once and never went back, then probably not. If you fell in love with it the way we did however, this is the perfect excuse to do it all over again – with Pro Medals and some brand new levels to fight with being the sort of bonuses that make grown men say “squeeee!”.

NOTE: Previously published and subsequently lost to an evil electronic gremlin, it only recently came to my attention that this had not been republished. The day of our Joe Danger: Special Edition review seemed as good a time as any to put it back up again.

If you’ve already played Joe Danger, you’re almost certainly excited for Joe Danger: The Movie. If you missed that game for whatever reason, check out our Hello Games interview and Joe Danger review (oh go on then, the preview as well) to find out why that title is so darned loved. Done it? Everybody ready? Okay.

No longer restricted to his motorbike, stunt rider Joe now laughs in the face of death and twiddles the nose of peril using a variety of vehicles. Yes, there’s a police motorbike in there; but in the demo levels I played there were also a minecart, a snowmobile, a pair of skis (“not sure if skis count as a vehicle!” admits Hello Gamer Sean Murray) and… wait for it… a jetpack! That got the last of you on board, I think.

The ground-based transportation used the same control method as the first game; hence you’ll still be performing tricks to fill your boost meter, wiggling about in mid-air in a vain attempt to collect all those stars first time around, ducking then jumping with painful precision, and so on. It’s still very much a racing/platforming/stunting (henceforth known as ‘raplunting’ at Critical Gamer) game, and will be instantly familiar to Joe Danger fans – yet it’s oh so different.

Firstly there’s the ‘scripting’, hence the word Movie in the subtitle. Murray was keen to stress that there won’t be any lengthy cutscenes or anything like that; but there will be what I feel the need to pretentiously describe as ‘dynamic context’ (forgive me) for what Joe’s doing and why he’s doing it. For example, one level saw Joe punching other riders in the face, knocking them off their bikes. This isn’t because indiscriminate violence is fun (well, not entirely), but because these are the baddies of the movie scene.

Another, snowy level sees Joe zooming down a mountain with targets to land on. Said targets are actually rockets slowly rising from silos; fail to land on and disable them (blow them up), and they launch. And then, one presumes, Bad Things Happen. Once you’re past the rockets the bad guys, none too pleased at your do-gooding antics, chase after you and lob grenades in your way. Red grenades you need to duck under and green you need to jump over (or was it the other way around?). You have what I estimate to be 0.3 milliseconds each time to identify what type of grenade it is and take appropriate action. Funstrating!

You’re also now able to change lanes at any point on the magic green line (as I found when I repeatedly smashed into oncoming traffic), but the biggest dollop of new was smothered over the aforementioned jetpack. Although I was assured (twice) that the controls for this were considered fiddlier than they should be and were in for some tweaking, I found it fun and easy to use. Especially surprising considering my bloody awful performance for the first five minutes or so of play using the easier vehicles.

It’s perhaps best described as like riding your bike in zero gravity. Accelerate pushes you forward in the direction you’re facing, holding brake sends you backwards; but you can go in all directions rather than just left and right, and boost works both forwards and backwards. This has a lot of potential for the risk and reward Joe thrives on, hinted at in the demo. Do you want to bypass hazards wherever possible and finish the level as quickly as you can, or brave the route full of instakill to scoop up all the collectables? There will be many more vehicles in the final game, and some – such as a promised parachute and hang-glider – will use a similar control method.

The half dozen or so levels on offer were tightly designed, sometimes bordering on evil (would fans have it any other way?), and above all fantastic fun. I was surprised, therefore, to find that they’d all been made in just three weeks; a mad rush with fantastic results to get something playable together for the game’s first public outing at GamesCom. Nonetheless, it’s not necessarily representative of the final game. It sounds like the newer elements will be pushed much further to the fore in the finished product, and certain features were of course missing at the expo. The plan, it seems, is also to assign certain types of level to certain types of vehicle. So for example, skis might be used primarily for stunt levels, bikes for race levels, jetpacks for score attack levels (I must stress here that these examples are pulled from my own fevered mind). Brilliantly, vehicles you unlock as you play can then be used in previous levels to play them in a completely different way.

Although I was at the Eurogamer Expo for nine hours, I didn’t actually have time to play very many games. Joe Danger: The Movie is the only title I went back to for a second go. It’s going to be the best raplunter you ever play. I do have one, huge criticism however; I can’t buy it yet.

What’s better than Joe Danger? Not an awful lot, as you’ll know if you have the game and/or if you’ve read our review of the original PSN release. Well, how about Joe Danger on a quadbike? Still not good enough? Then how about Santa Claus on a quadbike performing death-defying stunts? And how about if this is DLC that costs, oh… nothing at all?

As you may know, Joe Danger: Special Edition (which was very nearly mistyped here as ‘Ho Danger’, a different game entirely) launched on XBLA last week, and we’ll have a review in a few days explaining why you should buy it immediately. For those of you already enjoying the game, you should be aware that as of today the Special Edition exclusive Santa DLC is available to download – for free. Go get it, it’s certain to jingle your bells.

• Format: 360
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Microsoft Studios
• Developer: Epic Games
• Players: 1 – 5
• Site: http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/en-GB/

Chainsaw bayonets have been a secure staple in the Gears of War series ever since the first game and they still haven’t changed. And why should they? Viciously ripping your opponent in half, reducing them to a puddle of chunky horror is the ultimate way to ensure an enemy isn’t playing dead. You can say a similar thing about the cover based shooting mechanics. They haven’t changed since the first game. Why fix what isn’t broken? Right?

Gears of War 3 is undeniably Gears of War. You take control of Marcus Fenix and carve your way through hordes of enemies with your rifle chainsaw multi-tool. The bare bones are the same, with cover hugging and peep-out shooting being the dominant feature for a third time. It feels so identical you could drop into Gears of War 2 and not feel any difference in terms of control or character movement. You could argue that this means it all feels natural and instinctive as soon as you enter the game, but at the same time it doesn’t feel new.

Locust burst out the ground, a bit like dangerously insane rabbits with trigger fingers.

One of the biggest differences this time around is the dramatic shift in environment. Taking place eighteen months after the events of Gears 2, the story begins with Mr Fenix and chums on an aircraft carrier. The interior looks like your typical industrial environment, but as soon as you get topside the sun-kissed deck looks distinctly different from the brown and grey slurry pallet the previous games have smeared on our screens. These brighter environments are common throughout Gears 3, and are shuffled into the deck of familiar, darker environments similar to what we’ve seen already. It’s a refreshing change and definitely improves the atmosphere and sense that you are treading on new ground.

The campaign is well paced and feels a lot more dynamic than Gears 2, with enemy encounters switching frequently between the Lambent and Locust. Objectives begin rather mundane, with most of your jollies centring on gathering supplies for survival; although things focus a lot more towards the end of the game. We won’t spoil anything, but this does neatly tie up the saga of Marcus Fenix and Delta squad. There are some things that are either gaping plot holes or material left out for the inevitable follow-up book, but the ending is satisfying.

Backtracking to things that haven’t changed, the AI is still without hope. With up to three bots following you around at all times, AI on AI battles frequently happen. On one hand, your pretend friends can be quite useful. It is possible to sit in the corner not participating and to let your teammates do all the work. Whilst they can get incapacitated, we never saw one of them die, even on hardcore difficulty. They are at least competent at ranged combat. Problems emerge when you want their help in any other situation.

Stuffing that thing's eye with bullets might be a good idea in this situation.

We’ve seen AI teammates circle enemies with their backs to each other, as if they are both chasing the same tail and never meeting in the middle. There’s also the frustrating bug that occurs when you get incapacitated. Your fellow gears often mistake your character’s screams of “Revive me” for “Stand still”. On too many occasions have we managed to shuffle our bleeding body to a friendly AI only for them to stand there, doing nothing to help. This gets really frustrating, especially if there are only one or two enemies left.

Multiplayer is probably the area that has seen the most love. The entire campaign is now playable in four player co-op, and is definitely the best way to enjoy the main game. Not having to rely on dopey AI is very handy, although it does mean you have to find not so dopey humans. You can also run through the campaign in Arcade mode with other people, bringing some score driven competition to the co-op experience.

Beast mode is the newest addition which lets players take control of the Locust horde and rush against AI COG defenders. This is brilliant fun, and a great change from the standard cover shooter monotony. You can play as tickers, drones, corpsers, berserkers and many other enemy types. Each game pits you against 12 waves of increasingly difficult resistance and it can be completed in about 30 minutes. As fantastic as it is, it feels very similar each time, with no randomisation of your opponents other than their starting position. We would love to see this fleshed out in future DLC.

I think she likes you. Just be sure to take out life insurance before hugging.

Horde mode also returns and allows you to build fortifications against waves of enemies, such as fences and turrets. This mode is great fun when you have a good team, but be prepared for a long game. Getting to wave 30 took us two hours, and there are 50 waves in total if you can see it through to the end. Every tenth wave drops a boss on you, from berserkers to brumaks, and these can get tense. Another great mode though.

Also on offer is the standard deathmatch affair. This is the least imaginative of the online modes, but you know if you like online competitive shooters or not. You earn experience in all game modes (including the campaign) and this can be used to unlock new characters and weapon skins. It’s all cosmetic unlocks, so veterans don’t have an equipment advantage over new players.

If you’ve played previous games then you already know if you will like Gears of War 3. It’s more of the same and great as ever. The multiplayer is a huge improvement and the campaign is stronger than Gears 2. If you’re into third person cover shooters then this ticks all of the boxes. The unchanged formula is starting to feel a bit repetitive now, but works for a third outing. However, if we are to see anymore Gears of War games it would be wise to mix things up a bit, as the copy and paste gameplay might not sit well for a fourth game.

• Format: PS3 (version reviewed), 360, PC, Wii
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Activision
• Developer: Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games
• Players: 1-18
• Site: http://www.callofduty.com/mw3

Call of Duty is a peculiar series. Each year it shifts millions of copies and is greeted with near unanimous critical praise, yet it also attracts a special kind of hatred from a vocal segment of the gaming community that consider it a microcosm of everything that is wrong with modern gaming.  If Call of Duty is to be an acquired taste, then with Modern Warfare 3 it’s one that is more refined than ever.

The singleplayer campaign is exactly what we have come to expect from Modern Warfare: a relatively short rollercoaster ride, punctuated by memorable set pieces. The narrative doesn’t quite reach the heights of the original Modern Warfare, but it succeeds in telling an engaging story which revisits familiar characters like Captain Price, Soap and villain extraordinaire Makarov. It’s fun controlling these violent men, but war is never glorified in a dark tale that focuses on a bleak near-future, where life is cheap and atrocities par for the course.

There is a lot of jumping around between various playable characters, especially in the early stages; but the narrative is far more coherent than Modern Warfare 2, though no less outrageous. Characters are better linked and relationships more clearly defined, though those new to the series may struggle to keep abreast of who’s killing who, and why exactly they are at each other’s throats.

The supporting cast is still full of generic characters who spout the kind of hoo-ra gibberish that might have you eyeing the mute button, but the perfectly paced plot and tight combat makes you more forgiving of these caricatures, as does an outstanding final third where every loose end is tied up. Aside from the ludicrous and ill-fitting death quotes that do their best to kill the atmosphere, it is otherwise an immersive experience throughout.

The campaign clocks in at a lean five hours, though it feels about right, as the spectacle would be in danger of losing some of its lustre were it a more prolonged experience. A great deal is packed into those hours, as you find yourself speeding through the streets of Paris in an old fashioned car chase and even storming a skyscraper fortress dressed like Robocop. With moments like these, Infinity Ward have proven yet again that they know exactly how to create the most polished and exciting kind of singleplayer, FPS experience.

Once you have finished with the campaign, MW3 nudges you towards the Special Ops mode; a welcome return from Modern Warfare 2 that significantly extends the game’s shelf life. This collection of 16 short-burst missions may be enjoyed alone or in co-op, and are great to dip in and out of. In answer to Treyarch’s popular Nazi Zombies, a survival mode has been introduced where you must outlast countless waves of enemies spread across surprisingly spacious maps, either on your lonesome or with a friend. Despite offering 100% less rotting fascists, it’s still fairly entertaining, though in comparison to the riches found elsewhere on the disc it will probably be of limited appeal.

Competitive multiplayer is better than ever before, thanks to a number of new editions that tweak the existing formula, as well as the new Elite service. An impressive sixteen levels are on offer, some better than others, from tight corridors to more cavernous settings that play host to the bigger matches on the playlist. All the standard deathmatch and objective based modes are present, alongside the welcome edition of Kill Confirmed – a brilliant team deathmatch variant where you must collect dog tags from your vanquished foes to score, an objective that discourages camping and rewards exciting and risky dashes for precious shinies.

Pointstreaks replace the killstreaks of old and offer a more nuanced set of rewards to support every kind of player. Completing objectives as well as racking up kills will contribute to any one of three streak types. The Assault package is most like the killstreaks of old; the Support set awards bonuses that benefit your team more directly, and your kill count does not reset when you die; and finally the Specialist option is best suited to more advanced players who are able to string together murderous rampages without croaking, offering stackable perks that make you more powerful the longer you survive. This restructuring makes a huge difference and rewards players who don’t only play for kill counts, as well as opening up more impressive perks to players of all abilities.

With the notable exception of a much desired mute-all button, Modern Warfare 3 is arguably the most feature rich and well-rounded FPS multiplayer around. Alongside the excellent campaign and the addition of Special Ops and Survival mode, it is an exhaustive package that will keep the fanbase more than happy and the naysayers spitting venom until next November rolls around. Sounds like business as usual then.

Catherine is a quirky and unique game (dating sim/horror/platform puzzler/morality test) that’s garnered almost universally glowing reviews. Reviews that were all written months ago now, because this is a title which was released in America and Japan earlier this year; while those of us living in PAL territories have had no choice but to sulk (or import). While it was announced a while ago that Deep Silver would be publishing the game for its Atlus PALs (see what we did there?), a date was set and then wiped from the radar. Boo.

Now however, we’ve been given the almost-specific release date of “February 2012”. It’s a great looking game with a branching storyline, but the fact that it’s difficult to pin it down to a genre – one minute you’ll be clambering a block puzzle tower, the next you’ll be reading and replying to text messages on your mobile – may put people off. Other territories had a playable demo to try out however, and hopefully we’ll get the same opportunity to try before we buy. While we’ve been promised a “flip cover” for the packaging, there’s currently no word on if PAL gamers will see the superduper edition which included, amongst other things, heart-laden boxer shorts as worn by the main character.

Yes, really.

Criticalgamer.co.uk was recently invited down to London to experience Codemasters’ up and coming shooter Bodycount. For those of you who have not been following the development of Bodycount, let us have a small reminder of events so far.

The game has unofficially been tagged the spiritual successor to the PS2 and Xbox hit Black, not least due to Black’s lead designer being involved. However, he left the development of Bodycount some time back and so that link is a little tenuous and overused. What does link the two games is the focus on arcade style, explosive gun battles where the star of the game is the gun.

Unlike, say, Borderlands where the stars are the many guns, Bodycount only has ten firearms and they are not customisable. However, they are full of character, and by limiting the player to two at a time getting to know their strengths and weaknesses will be crucial for efficient gameplay.

The gameplay itself is very ‘throw away’, but in a good way. A great deal of the environment can be destroyed, and this is best highlighted when the player takes cover. There is no ‘cover button’ per se, but instead the ‘ironsights’ button is no longer an ‘on or off’ toggle but instead recognises the analogue nature of the controller, similar to how modern racing games allow you to control the gas pedal.

Hence if you hold the left shoulder button all the way down you will have a traditional, accurate iron sight but you cannot strafe or move. You look, and you can lean. Yes, you can lean left, right and over objects allowing you to use anything for cover, however it best suits you. However, the cover you hide behind rarely lasts long as either your own bullets or enemy ammunition will soon destroy it. If you only hold the left shoulder button halfway down you will have traditional ironsights with movement; but it is less accurate. This system works very well and is refreshing. Leaning has been in FPS games before, but this is one of the best implementations of the technique.

The game forces you to run – keep moving and keep shooting. The storyline is intentionally non-existent as the game is all about the action, similar to a nonsense 1980s Hollywood action film. You are an unnamed character, working for a vague organisation fighting the enemy. That’s about it. The levels have mission targets within them, but you can carry them out as you choose as each level is a small sandbox, rather than a linear scripted experience. Additionally the game will offer traditional deathmatch shooting and a co-op survival mode, which could be terrific. As the rounds progress there would be less and less scenario to hide behind!

The build we saw was not the latest and the graphics were still rough at times, but the game moved fast (it’s a 30 frames per second game, techie nerds), and the outside level we saw looked bright and inviting. We also saw an inside level which, while clearly inspired by Tron, felt very narrow; full of ‘corridors’ and a strange coming together of Halo 1’s opening level and the Wii’s Conduit (not a good thing that).

Overall this could be a great antidote to the serious nature of MW3 and BF3. Other games have tried to give players a lighter, more humorous shooter in recent times such as Bulletstorm and Duke Nukem Forever, but many have failed as they got too bogged down in narrative or were not ‘pure enough’ in terms of simple shooting and running action. Our playthrough was limited and as with all AAA titles, we are still to find out if the game can keep our interest for a number of hours.

If the level design can be kept varied, and if a range of gameplay modes such as destroy and fetch missions along with survival (with respawning enemy sections against the clock) and possibly more can be implemented, then Bodycount could be a high quality, over the top diversion from the serious nature of the other 2011 shooters. A game like this really needs interesting locations and maps, along with enemies with a good AI. Even though the build we experienced was not up to date, the enemy AI already seemed ferocious and adaptive, which bodes well.

Bodycount could be a very addictive, play for 30 minutes and get a high score shooter. It’s out in a few months and with any luck we will do a full review to see if the final package hangs together and delivers on its promise to entertain with explosions and adrenaline.