• 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.

As reported at MCV (and in greater detail at The Hollywood Reporter), the Modern Warfare debacle – which began with a mass exodus of staff from Infinity Ward, and resulted in the creation of Respawn Entertainment – is far from over. Jason West and Vincent Zampella have won the right to take their dispute with Activision to court; but it doesn’t quite end there.

West and Zampella claim that Activision wrongfully terminated their contracts early last year, and that this cost them 125 million dollars in lost royalties; and also that Activision reneged on their promise to allow the pair “the right to creative authority and autonomy and escalating royalty payments on future games”. Not best pleased about this, Activision are attempting to countersue West, Zampella, and their new publisher EA – accusing them all of being frightful rotters who set out to “hijack Activision’s assets”. Part of the counterclaim is that EA attempted to poach West and Zampella while they were still under contract for Activision.

Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle had already ruled in March that Activision had sufficient claims against EA; and last Tuesday, ruled that West and Zampella had sufficient claims against Activision. Barring some kind of out of court settlement (as was eventually the case when EA and Activision had a similar tiff over the rights to Double Fine’s Brutal Legend), the case should reach trial by the beginning of 2012 at the latest.

Grab your Modern Warfare 2 special edition night vision goggles and stalk around your dimly lit living room in excitement, because Modern Warfare 3 gameplay footage has broken from cover and can be seen above.

Urban combat seems to be at the centre of the third outing for this sub series of the Call of Duty games, with the trailer taking us on an explosive tour of France, Germany, America and England. From the brief flashes of action we can see a lot of hectic fighting, including staple elements of the Modern Warfare games so far, such as helicopter crashes and repelling down things.

New York gets bombarded by a submarine, a van is shot to bits in London, a man gets blown up in Paris and a tank shows up in Germany. It looks like the world has become an even less happy place to be. A train derailment, subterranean SCUBA diving experience and speed boat chase also suggest the set pieces the series has been inching towards with all the enthusiasm of a rabid dog chasing sausages will make a dominant return.

As a final reminder that this game will be taking a tour of chaos on a global scale, the M in the MW3 logo starts off inverted to read WW3.

It’s going to be another tense battle this year between EA and Activision, who are both gunning for the end of the year crown for best modern military shooter. We’ve seen footage of both now. Who do you want to win?

Having killed off its musical hero games and the latest entry to True Crime, Activision are now rumoured to be looking at buying Take Two to fill the game shaped holes in its portfolio.

If true, and more importantly if successful, the Call of Duty publisher will have the likes of Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and Bioshock under its branding umbrella.

“There are very strong rumours amongst people at a very senior level within the global business,” a senior executive told MCV this week. “But there’re not much more than that at the moment – they are just rumours. And, of course, given Activision’s news this week, everyone is now looking to see what their next move is.”

This follows the news of Activision’s closure of Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and True Crime: Hong Kong earlier this week because the publisher believed that it was not possible to make the games profitable in the current market.

Spotted on MCV

Violent, expanding bio-mass and angry mutants with psychopathic tendencies look set to return with a trailer for Prototype 2 showing us just that.

This time the game focuses on a new protagonist, returning from one theatre of war before charging into another one in the centre of New York City. The poor old chap then becomes a mutating death harbinger and blames the original game’s lead, Alex Mercer for his case of the grumblies.

Cue mass murder and shape shifting havoc.

• Format: Wii (version reviewed), DS
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Activision
• Developer: Eurocom
• Players: 1 (+Splitscreen & Online Multiplayer)
• Site: http://goldeneyegame.com/canvas/

Daniel Craig replaces Pierce Brosnan in the title role.

The original GoldenEye was the finest multiplayer game of its generation, and is fondly remembered by gamers of that era. EA sullied the name with the release of GoldenEye Rogue Agent in 2004. This re-imagining by developers Eurocom is an attempt to roll back the years and recreate the original’s magic. But does it attain double O standard, or is it left like a henchman floundering in a pool of sharks?

The Wiimote should be the perfect tool for the FPS genre but unfortunately developers have, for the most part, used the control method for simple on-rails shooters. This game redresses the thorny issue and if you aren’t quite happy with the default control scheme, then you have several customisation options to tinker with including the sensitivity of the Wiimote, and even the option to play with the classic controller.

The opening dam level is a loving re-imagining of the N64 original.

The single player campaign has been updated from the original James Bond movie, and you now play as Daniel Craig’s Bond, voiced by the man himself, rather than the original’s Pierce Brosnan. The plot has also been modernised to reflect the current economic climate, but it doesn’t stray too far from the original game’s formula. The opening level in particular is a perfectly pitched homage to the original, with Bond and 006 infiltrating the Dam complex. Your mobile phone takes the place of the N64 version’s watch gadget, and is used to hack computers and send intel back to MI6. Using your phone, you follow a way pointer which leads you to your next objective. In your way are several archetypal henchmen, who you can take down with your silencer equipped pistol, which is handy to avoid head on confrontations with the flood of heavily armed goons that follow. The AI of these enemies is, for the most part, pretty good, and they duck for cover quite realistically. Sometimes though they can be a bit predictable with the bad guy staying in one place and occasionally popping their heads up, which leaves them exposed to a head shot.

The game follows the plot of the film fairly closely, with several set pieces that are pretty faithful to the original movie (although they have been updated for a modern audience) and the action could almost have been taken directly from the Call of Duty series, with the gunplay being particularly similar. It’s obvious that the developers are trying to replicate the seminal shooter’s success on the Wii, and Eurocom should be applauded for their efforts.

Graphics are impressive with lots of nice effects.

There are several stand out levels in the single player including a nightclub shootout, and a brilliantly executed stage set in St. Petersburg – where you take a tank through the city, and cause plenty of destruction and carnage. Another level that impresses is a construction yard, which adds some innovative ways of despatching bad guys including fully destructible scaffolding to bring down on top of a squad of henchmen. A later stage, where you are trying to escape a burning and collapsing building also gets the adrenaline pumping, as you pick off the bad guys while trying to escape before your time runs out. It’s this diversity in the levels that makes the single player campaign such a joy to play through, and even though it’s not the longest game in the world it is perfectly adequate, and better value than some of the Call of Duty single player experiences that are over before you even break sweat.

Jaws is just one of many classic Bond characters that you can play as in multiplayer.

The GoldenEye multiplayer mode unsurprisingly takes its inspiration from the Call of Duty franchise. Players rank up in the usual way, and unlock an ever more impressive arsenal as time goes by. The addition of a split screen mode is a nod to the classic GoldenEye, and is a very welcome addition that other titles sadly neglect. Due to the Wii console’s limitations, there are only eight man online matches, and the lack of headsets is a bit of a problem. But the game is very impressive online, with no lag and plenty of game modes to choose from; including the usual deathmatches and capture the flag. Alternative modes like Golden Gun and GoldenEye are neat little twists on the formula. In Golden Gun all eight players search out the aforesaid weapon to wreak havoc on opposing players, which gives you a one shot kill – although the gun takes a while to reload. GoldenEye splits the 8 players into two teams, and each team has to take over stations on the map, to gain control of the GoldenEye satellite within the time limit. Paintball mode also makes a welcome return from the original game, and is a lot of fun. As you climb the rankings, you unlock additional gadgets and perks that you can use to gain an advantage as well as other game modes, and you can also play as classic Bond characters such as Oddjob and Jaws, which just adds extra value to this superb overall package.

GoldenEye is by far the best shooter on the Wii, which is quite sad considering the console should be the perfect home for the First Person Shooter genre. The pointing skill of the Wiimote is a lot more immersive than simply using a joypad, although you still have that option if you wish. This re-imagining is a loving nod to the classic N64 edition, and nostalgia permeates the levels like a fine Martini, shaken, not stirred obviously. If you can get past the last generation graphics and some AI issues, there’s a great game in here, that finally does justice to the James Bond legacy. Finally the Wii has a shooter that’s worthy of the double O insignia.

The Image Says "This Date Matters to the World"

Have you carried out your duty and bought CoD: Black Ops? I ask as it seems that as gamers, and as consumers, we are now expected by everyone, from Activision Blizzard to the world’s media, to go and automatically purchase the latest game. So I ask again, have you gone, taken out a pre-order or filed into your local supermarket and bought it on impulse with the sense that it’s what is expected of you? Do you feel you won’t be able to look other serious gamers in the eye knowing you don’t have the latest version of the FPS bible?

I’m not here to review the game, not least because I haven’t played it. I’ve seen the reviews and they are all saying that its good, but not a 10/10. Whatever; instead I’m concerned with the power this franchise now has over the entire industry.

Of course, before I get on my high horse (before?!) this isn’t a new situation. Years ago, and still to an extent today, people would automatically go out and buy the latest FIFA like a pack of sheep, resulting in the gameplay becoming stagnant. Eventually consumers started to get wise to the  ‘drug’ they had become addicted to and moved to sticking with the version they had or moving to alternative yearly upgrades. The result of this was a slowing of the FIFA franchise in terms of numbers sold, and a renewed effort by EA to revitalise the game. Recent years have shown a huge return both for publisher and consumer as the title has had a couple of major overhauls, resulting in better core gameplay and many more modes within the traditional FIFA offering.

Despite all the hype around the latest Call of Duty, and despite the sales figure for Black Ops being an almost certain success, it is possible that this version of the game is going to be the franchise’s peak. I have said that I haven’t played the game, but I have watched it on various websites showing the first ‘x’ amount of footage. It looks great, great in the same way MW2 looked great. However I do feel I’ve seen and experienced it all before as its the same performance in slightly different clothing and staging. Perhaps I am the only one, but I’m guessing a number of potential purchasers and those who have already purchased the game will feel the same, resulting in next year’s installment holding steady in terms of sales – if not actually seeing those sales decline.

It's ironic that both 'World at War' and 'Black Ops' have zombie modes, as most of its consumers have acted liked Zombies when it comes to buying it. Is the joke on us?

That is, of course, only if CoD doesn’t get a major overhaul. What improvements could be made? Less scripting, and much better AI is a must. There is a clear split between the way Halo plays and the CoD games. However, now might be the time that they start to come together and cross fertilise each other’s franchise. In fact you could argue that Halo Reach has already started to do this. Halo has excelled with having pretty amazing AI, but less set pieces. Halo Reach improved the AI, added more enemies on screen at once, and increased the number of set pieces. The game also incorporated some of the ‘fighting with your comrades’ experience traditionally experienced in the CoD games.

It is clear that the CoD games need to improve the AI. For those of you who have not played Halo Reach, I am not overstating how great the AI is. It’s not perfect, for sure. But being chased by an enemy who then backs off and then takes stock is thrilling, and when victorious very satisfying. Imagine a CoD set in the ‘real world’ (rather than the world of Halo), with the traditional size and execution of the set pieces alongside well executed AI routines. That would be worth getting.

This cross fertilisation of ideas is ironically what has happened in the football game market, as PES and FIFA have both been forced to drastically change to keep the demand for such games alive. It’s also clear who has ‘got’ the need for this process more, with FIFA winning both the consumer’s mind and the critic’s.

The other problem I have with the rollout of this all consuming franchise is it encourages players to start over in the multiplayer world. I’m only level 33 or thereabouts on MW2, having spent quite a lot of money on the download packs. I’m certainly not going to ‘upgrade’ to the new game which will undoubtedly pull me from the MW2 experience. There is only so much time in a day, week or year, and there are other games to play! Really, there are. Yet, what makes the CoD games great are their multiplayer which is fast, intelligent and imaginative. Black Ops adds some great new features, including wagers on experience points, which I’m all for. However, not enough to make me want to start from scratch, and in effect abandon my investment in MW2.

Remember this game? It was great. Lets play it again, but this time set in the 1800s with muskets....

What is the solution? Well some kind of CoD ‘career mode’ would be great where I can build up an online profile and have a consistent career rank. Basic multiplayer with any CoD title would be free, but a CoD Plus account would allow me to pool my XP; a service with a price that’s worth paying for. Over time that profile could be carried into other possible areas of CoD such as a persistent war type game, like MAG, if they ever make one.

So before the fanboys attack me, let’s go over my position on the CoD franchise. Am I a fan? For sure, I own more than one title in the franchise, and even have the limited edition MW2 console. Do I think the basic gameplay has tired and needs refreshing? You bet. Am I starting to get annoyed with the lack of continuity in the multiplayer, when it’s clear that each version is an upgrade on the previous build? Yes, affirmative.

What would I pay for this CoD Plus? £5-£15 a year along with some other freebies, perhaps. Beta trials, some exclusive weapons and maybe a discount on map packs.

My question to you is this; how much duty do you really have to CoD and would you be willing to make the investment if called upon?

• Format: PS3 (version reviewed), 360, PC, Wii, DS
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Activision
• Developer: Treyarch
• Players: 1-4 (offline), 2-18 (online, including splitscreen)
• Site: http://www.callofduty.com/hub

World at War was a bit of a mess. Offline, grenade spamming; online, the unwise inclusion of tanks and a few unpopular maps – all wrapped up in an over-familiar WWII dressing. Can Treyarch really have done much better with Black Ops?

What must be said before anything else is that, in all fairness, the developers have put some real effort into giving you value for money. The campaign could last you up to twice as long as that of Modern Warfare 2; Zombies make a welcome return; there are two hidden games (twin stick shooter Dead Ops Arcade and text adventure Zork); and joining the CoD classics such as Team Deathmatch, Search & Destroy and Free for All are brand new online modes with some great ideas. Unfortunately, the fresh new ideas seen both online and off are in the clutches of stale old problems.

The solo campaign is presented for the most part as a series of flashbacks. Kudos to Treyarch for capitalising on the opportunity to give the player a decent variety of environments and missions; yes, you’ll be running down streets, through corridors, and across battlefields with a gun in your hand. But you’ll also be piloting various vehicles, taking part in semi-interactive cutscenes, playing stealth sections that are actually fun to play, and more often than not working closely with allies rather than acting as a one man army. There are even a few historical figures thrown into the mix. At its best, the Black Ops campaign gives you a feeling of being in the middle of a big-budget movie (albeit a dumb yet fun one which makes little sense if you stop to examine it). Sadly, the highs are outnumbered by the lows.

In a bid to emphasise this Hollywood atmosphere, your character has been given a voice and a large chunk of the script. However, all the American characters’ voices and personalities instantly meld into one homogeneous blob, making it almost impossible to tell who’s saying what without the (error littered) subtitles. Of more concern is the AI – or rather, lack thereof. Friend and foe alike are completely unable to cope with unscripted behaviour. Allies will often lean into your line of sight, and keeping your distance in the interests of a better shot can lead to comical situations; enemies will sometimes rush forward to get closer to you. On rare occasions an enemy and an ally can be taking cover around the same object, firing their guns in opposite directions without being aware of one another.

Challenge Anneka goes hardcore for the 21st century.

Grenade spamming is not an issue, but the equally undesirable boil of infinite enemy spawning is. Only a handful of such instances exist in the game, but these instances will sometimes force you to run forward into enemy fire. On Veteran difficulty, where two shots or sometimes just one can kill you, this is completely unacceptable. It’s a cheap and lazy way to lengthen the experience that we shouldn’t be seeing in 2010. On a related note, the invisible tripwires that activate finite spawn points are sometimes poorly placed. On three separate occasions, we saw enemies pop into existence before our very eyes – twice just a few feet away. Perhaps there are details of a molecular transporter hidden somewhere in the intel…

Of course the majority of players will spend most of their time with the multiplayer modes and again, it’s a mixed bag. CoD staples, deathmatches et al, don’t make the transition all that smoothly. The gameplay is still recognisably and immediately CoD, but the guns don’t feel as varied as those in both Modern Warfares, nor do any of them feel like they pack the same punch.

Worse still are the graphics. They’re noticeably inferior to MW2 and while this shouldn’t matter, it does. Firstly, the lack of sharpness makes spotting enemies from a distance harder than it should be. Secondly, the dull and limited palette shared amongst player models and environments can often make stationary adversaries (i.e. campers) difficult to see immediately. When you combine that with the fact that each map is crammed full of corners and hidey holes, we can imagine Black Ops deathmatches becoming as much about camping as a Graham Norton simulator would be.

Hope is promised in the overhaul given to the online modes in other areas. The ‘CoD Points’ which you earn alongside, and in a much lower proportion to XP are used to ‘buy’ weapons (as usual, unlocked as you level up), attachments and perks (all immediately available for purchase once you’ve unlocked Create a Class). They also buy ‘Challenges’ which can earn you more if, for example, you get a certain number of kills with a specific attachment within a limited amount of accumulated playtime. These points are also used to buy your way into ‘Wager Matches’, which is where the biggest changes are apparent.

Tag, you're i - er, woops.

The basic premise is: six player deathmatch – the top three players get winnings, the bottom three nothing. The game modes here are completely new, our personal favourites being Sharpshooter and One in the Chamber. Sharpshooter gives everybody the same weapons, which are changed every 45 seconds (weapons in each match are random). In One in the Chamber players are given a pistol, a knife, one–hit kills and just three lives. You only have one bullet per life, but one kill means one more bullet. These brand new modes are more than welcome, and great fun – but just six players? Free for All only?

As for the playercards (customised by spending CoD points) which represent players in lobbies…ugh. Even the best ones look like something a small child cobbled together with a cheap Crayola set from Poundland.

Black Ops is not a bad game by any means. It’s a good game. However, when the inevitable comparisons with Modern Warfare 2 are made, this falls just a little short in almost every way.

Tim Schafer is one of the most famous names in the games industry, and not without reason. He played an important part in the making of the first two Monkey Island games, played a larger part still in Day of the Tentacle, and was the driving force behind Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. Everybody had high hopes for Double Fine Productions, the company he formed in 2000; but has Schafer become his own worst enemy in recent years?

Though most immediately associated with sharp and witty dialogue, it’s worth remembering that the LucasArts games his name is attached to are also fondly remembered because they were great fun to play. This is true even of Grim Fandango, one of the first games to make the transition from ‘point and click’ to ‘walk and click’. Despite the clunky controls that games in the genre suffer from to this day, Grim Fandango was a mesmerising and utterly addictive experience. This was certainly due mostly to the excellent writing; but also thanks to the ineffably gripping and slightly eerie atmosphere provided by the art and overall concept. Here was a game that made an impossible and potentially ridiculous world immersive and believable, in a way that it had seemed only Terry Pratchett was capable of.

Seven years and one new company later, Schafer gave the world Psychonauts in 2005. A third person action platformer that abandoned the point and click genre completely, this was uncharted territory for him. If you’re wondering why this game has achieved cult status, and is afforded the kind of reverence ordinarily reserved for games drowning in nostalgia, you clearly haven’t played it.

Psychonauts most definitely has its problems. There are camera issues present in most platformers of the era, checkpoints are perhaps not quite so frequent as this particular game requires, and there are a few nasty difficulty spikes; for example, the final level features some perversely difficult sections. Nonetheless, it is little short of a masterpiece. The writing was predictably wonderful (it was co-written by Erik Wolpaw, who went on to work on Portal). Not only was the script often hilarious, it was surprisingly deep for those willing to look; issues of psychology had an effect on both the story and the environments. And how on earth could I fail to mention the art design? Hated by those uncomfortable with their own maturity, it was fantastically fresh and original. It impresses to this day, proving that the best visuals are not about processing horsepower, but about talent and vision.

Unfortunately, it all started to go downhill from there.

Double Fine’s next game was Brütal Legend. At first it seemed as though it would never see the light of day, despite having Schafer’s name attached and Jack Black heading the voice cast. When Activision became Activision Blizzard this new publishing behemoth found itself with the publishing rights, and decided to drop the game. It was eventually rescued from publishing hell by EA. Amusingly, when they saw all the positive press Brütal Legend was attracting, Activision Blizzard claimed that they still held the publishing rights; even going so far as to take the issue to court. Everything was at last settled out of court, on terms that remain undisclosed; and EA published.

On a personal level, Brütal Legend seemed like my perfect game. I loved Tim Schafer games, I loved Jack Black, and I loved heavy metal (the soundtrack is made up of dozens of metal songs, and the cast includes cameos from legends such as Lemmy and Ozzy Osbourne). Opinion was split however, and I was surprised to find myself edging toward the negative side of the fence. For a detailed explanation of why, you can check out the somewhat unconventional review I wrote.

There was so much to like. The writing was once again top notch, as was the metal album cover – inspired art; the acting was mostly excellent, too. It’s no exaggeration to say that this game features one of the best performances of Black’s acting career, and even the rock gods did a great job. Driving and combat were simple yet fun, and ordering people around was quick and easy. It started off life as a fully fledged RTS game, but that got whittled down until that element only made up about a third of the experience. Unfortunately, what remains of the RTS battles alienates many people. It’s not close enough to ‘proper’ RTS gameplay to please traditional fans, but close enough to be off putting and frustrating for non–RTS fans. Many people still loved even that part of Brütal Legend; but so many disliked or even hated it, Schafer felt the need to explain how to play his game on the internet. Surely if you come to that point, you’ve failed as a game designer?

Had Schafer dropped the RTS idea completely it would have been a much better game, and would almost certainly have met with a greater number of very positive reviews and better sales. As it was, it seems that the RTS idea was too close to his heart for him to see that it sat awkwardly with the rest of Brütal Legend.

This year, Double Fine released the downloadable title Costume Quest. Speaking for myself, this seems to be even more of a disappointment than Brütal Legend. I must stress immediately that I’ve only played the trial version; but surely it’s not good to find yourself getting bored of the demo?

Though not quite as sharp as that in previous titles, the writing is still great. The art style, again, stands out from that in most of its contemporaries. The concept is fantastic, and as with Psychonauts laughs in the face of hypermachismo; it’s Halloween, and you go out trick or treating with your sibling. Said sibling gets kidnapped by goblins who have invaded your town. You then set out on a rescue quest, hunting down sweets and monsters on your way – with the occasional bit of kid politics thrown in for good measure. On paper, it’s wonderful. In practice, it seems that concept comes first and gameplay second.

With the design in place, I can’t help but think that Schafer directed Double Fine to do their best to force gameplay in without denting the original vision (Costume Quest’s development was led by Tasha Harris). Combat is ludicrously simple turn–based fare, and from what I can tell changes very little from start to finish. I was bored of it and dreading the next battle before even half a dozen such encounters. No amount of Halloween themed characters can act as an ample replacement for engaging gameplay. And then there’s the fact that nothing has been done to spice up the act of walking from door to door trick or treating (which either rewards you with sweets or triggers a battle). Going from house to house and walking around town feels like work.

Could it be that, as head of his own studio with nobody above him to tell him what to do, Schafer now puts concept above all else?

The good news is that Schafer recently hired Monkey Island cohort Ron Gilbert. Two legends are better than one, and hopefully this will result in Double Fine producing the line of finely honed games promised by Psychonauts. Time will tell…

Are you one of the millions of people looking forward to Call of Duty: Black Ops? If so, just how excited are you? Two people were looking forward to it so much, they were prepared to pay over £200 each to get a copy just a few days early – as these pictures prove.

Somehow, one UK gamer managed to get hold of not just one but two copies of Black Ops for the Xbox 360 to sell on ebay. We’ve hidden his/her ebay ID here, but it will be easy enough for anybody – including Activision – to discover it by searching Completed Listings.

Both copies sold for £200 each and, amusingly (to us at least), £2 postage.

Over four times the RRP to get the game just three or four days before the official release date? They must need the practice for multiplayer, n00bs (please note: this n00bs comment is a joke).