First however, let me rewind to the beginning. I came to Guitar Hero a little late. I never quite understood the appeal of looking foolish while flailing at a plastic guitar until I happened upon a demo unit of the franchise’s third instalment in a shop, discovered it had Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson, and was sold then and there. Since then I have obtained both Rock Band and Guitar Hero: World Tour, but aside from a small handful of songs was rather disappointed with both of them. The expansion to a full band format has diluted the focus, and I find the guitar parts - which are my main interest - less enjoyable as a result.

My interest was piqued, therefore, but Greatest Hits - a game which would contain the best tracks from the guitar-only versions of Guitar Hero, updated with the latest engine and playable as a 4-piece. At last, a band game where all the guitar tracks would be interesting - just what I was looking for. The tracks aren’t just replicas of the originals either - for a start, all 48 songs are master recordings - a far cry from the sometimes dubious cover versions found in the earlier games. The note charts have also been tweaked to include features from World Tour - the slider bar sections, holding one note while playing others, and open strums for the base.

Greatest Hits also includes a number of features from Guitar Hero: Metallica, most notably an Expert+ mode for some drum tracks, and the availability of all the songs via the quickplay menu without the need to unlock them through the career - a particularly smart decision, as I suspect a lot of players will want to try out their old favourites immediately. Career progression also works like Metallica, with new stages being unlocked after a number of stars have been obtained, rather than through completing all the previous songs, which greatly reduces the likelihood of hitting a wall and being unable to continue.

GHTunes and custom character creation also make an appearance, and it’s here that the cracks begin to show. Some time ago I spent a quiet afternoon making a few characters for World Tour, and while it’s totally unimportant to the gaming experience it would be nice to have some way to import them into Greatest Hits. Much more troubling, however, is GHTunes - once again, songs downloaded in World Tour cannot be played in Greatest Hits, despite the two sharing the application and featuring exactly the same song list. As a result there are now two copies of an electro/synth mangling of Pachabel’s Canon sitting on my Xbox’s hard drive - a situation which would have been completely avoidable with just a little thought and effort.

It doesn’t end there. Greatest Hits features neither DLC, nor the ability to import its tracks into World Tour. While this might make sense for a band-specific spin-off in order to keep the experience intact, it seems incredibly blinkered here. Harmonix has shown the way with Rock Band 2 and the musical juggernaut it can become by importing the tracks from Rock Band, but Activision seems unwilling to follow suite. I now have four different music game discs, and the hassle of having to switch both the physical media and the software to play a desired song is often enough to put me off completely. For that matter, there’s no reason why the songs from Greatest Hits couldn’t have been released purely as DLC for World Tour, except that creating a boxed product force people to pay for songs they might not if buying individually, and thus squeezes a little extra milk from the great cash cow that Guitar Hero has become.

For the final death knell I will return to that promised study of the track list. When the game was first announced there were three songs in particular which I was certain would be included - Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce, and Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses. While the first two both made it, Sweet Child, unbelievably, is missing. I can only assume (and I hasten to add that this is pure conjecture) that there were some licensing issues because not only does it have everything required to be a great band song, it would also have provided some much needed variety. This is perhaps the biggest problem with Greatest Hits – the track list features far too many songs of the power chord or thrash metal variety, particularly in the later stages of the campaign. There are numerous songs which could have been used to alleviate this - the likes of Ziggy Stardust, Texas Flood or Black Magic Woman to name but three, but none of them feature.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits can be epitomised by the song I disliked the most from Guitar Hero 3 - Raining Blood by Slayer. This was one of the prestige tracks - so difficult that if you could 5-star it on expert you should be worshipped as a plastic-guitar-playing deity, and for that reason I can understand its inclusion, even though I despise it for actively trying to break my hand. Greatest Hits’ version however is considerably more forgiving on the Hard difficulty, but harder on Expert, ending with a sustain on all 5 fret buttons which I’m not convinced is physically possible. This expanded gap between the Hard and Expert tiers is not limited to Raining Blood - it seems like an attempt to appeal more to hardcore fans worried about their favourite songs being dumbed down. The process however has led to a number of tracks becoming an over-charted, incoherent mess on Expert, definitely not fulfilling the marketing promise of being the “most fun Guitar Hero songs”.

Certainly there is some fun to be had here - mostly in brief stints as a party game - but the track list is not what it could have been. When combined with the lack of DLC or interoperability with World Tour, I find it difficult to wholeheartedly recommend Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, particularly when good sales figures will encourage Activision to maintain this approach, rather than making something that’s actually worthwhile.

Allow me to take a step back for a moment, before I explain what I mean. HAWX places you in the role of David Crenshaw, an ace fighter pilot with a name straight out of the All American Hero’s Manly Man’s Name Generator (picture the chiselled jaw), who is released by the air-force and joins up with a private military company called Artemis. A few years later, in a twist that should surprise approximately nobody, Artemis decides that the US government is interfering with its ability to make money, and launches an attack. Crenshaw and his team quickly switch sides, and fight to bring about the downfall of their former employee.

The campaign takes place over 19 missions with a wide variety of objectives (although they all boil down to blowing stuff up, obviously), with supporting ground troops or flying escort to other planes being the most reoccurring themes, and on the whole are thoroughly enjoyable, even though the forces you are supporting occasionally have the survival instincts of a pack of lemmings. In addition to this there are co-op and team deathmatch multiplayer modes – although only via system link or Xbox Live, with all modes of play providing experience points for a levelling-up system, unlocking more of the fifty-plus planes and their load-outs in the process.

The missions can be flown from one of three viewpoints – HUD, cockpit or 3rd person, with the addition of a forth after the first few are complete. This forth view is the Assistance OFF mode, and is one of HAWX’s unique features. The premise is that by entering this mode, with a double tap on either trigger, you are disabling the onboard flight computers in order to perform manoeuvres which would not otherwise be possible. The effect in the game is that it allows you to power-slide the plane, executing extremely tight turns in the process. The downside that it becomes possible to stall, at which point frantic adjustments must be made to level the plane out and restart the engines before making an untimely impact with the ground. The major problem with OFF mode, however, is that the camera pulls back to a more cinematic angle, with your plane about a third of the way up the screen, and locks in place focussed on your current target. This can make for some confusing control issues, as you sometimes fly like a side-scroller or even towards to camera. Used appropriately however – entering OFF mode to pull off a quick turn, then returning to normal view for instance – it can be a powerful tool.

HAWX’s other back-of-the-box feature is the Enhanced Reality System, or ERS. This equates to a magical path-finding button – pressing X when prompted creates a series of triangular gates which will lead you to your goal, whether it’s dodging an incoming missile, plotting a course to hit a partially concealed ground target, or an intercept course to take you behind an enemy fighter. It often feels a bit like cheating however – or at least diluting the experience – and early in the game can amplify the feeling that you aren’t totally in total command of the situation, which is brought about by the learning curve for the slightly clunky control scheme. As you progress, however, this feeling fades. The game was clearly designed to be comfortable to play with a pad, although I’m sure it would work at least as well with a joystick.

The problems with HAWX, then, are generally not with the experience of flying the missions, particularly as the most likely complaint – that of the camera in OFF mode – can be overlooked as it is (with one training mission aside) totally optional. No, the problems are the small but numerous design flaws hovering around the peripheral. The background music is just a bit too loud during mission briefings, making them difficult to hear. The landscapes and ground structures the missions take place over are generally poorly lit and textured, particularly when compared to the excellent plane models. The frame rate drops noticeably on occasions – usually when there are a fire effects and explosions in the field of view. The addition of voice commands is a nice touch, but poorly implemented – the commands are not intuitive and are often misinterpreted, meaning any use of the feature will be extremely brief. There is no way to sort planes into similar groups, or make quick comparisons when deciding what to fly during the mission briefings. On their own, any one of these could be overlooked, but added together they suggest a lack of polish and make a definite impact on the overall quality of the game.

This is what I meant at the start of the review – HAWX provides an enjoyable action/arcade fighter pilot experience (I refuse to use the phrase “flight-sim” because to imply simulation would be grossly inaccurate), marred by strange design choices and sloppy implementation on the periphery. It should be noted, however, that these issues troubled me much more when I started the game than by the time I had finished the campaign, and that now that this review is done, my plan is to turn on my Xbox and play a few rounds of deathmatch. I guess that’s all the recommendation that’s really needed.

But there are always exceptions, and in 2005, Darwinia proved to be just that. Lured in by glowing reviews and screenshots showing a beautiful low-fi aesthetic, I discovered humour, whimsy and a simpler style of play – direct control over units in a manner reminiscent of Syndicate, and a much more limited number of events happening at any one time than has become the norm in this genre. I came to care about the Darwinians – the inhabitants of the virtual world of Darwinia – dreading the piteous cries which indicated the death of these small, flat, green, and mostly defenceless stickmen.

So I approached Darwinia’s sequel – Multiwinia, with both anticipation and trepidation. This time around, the Darwinians (or rather, Multiwinians now) are anything but defenceless. Armed with lasers and grenades, and split into coloured factions, they are constantly at war with one another. And with this change in the nature of the protagonists comes a shift in gameplay style too. Previously, squad units did the fighting under your control, while the Darwinians could only be set a direction to move in by promoting one to be an officer. Now it is the Multiwinians themselves who are involved in all the action, and can be controlled by promoting officers to give destinations, create powerful but slow-moving formations (ranks of Multiwinians sticking together), or by direct selection. Added to this are a faster pace and a more aggressive approach, making Multiwinia feel a lot more like a traditional RTS than its predecessor.

This classification is somewhat belied, however, by the six game modes. While Domination is a straightforward wipe-out-the-enemies game, the other modes would usually be more at home in a multiplayer FPS. King of the Hill and Capture the Statute certainly fit this description, as does Blitzkrieg, in which you must capture strategic points around the map, each point unlocking the next until the enemy’s base is vulnerable – exactly like onslaught in Unreal Tournament. The final two modes are Assault, where one team defends a WMD which is counting down to detonation (and the other, obviously, tries to stop it), and Rocket Riot, in which teams race be the first to fuel, man, and launch a rocket, all the while attempting to interfere with the plans of their opponents. Equally, all game modes except Rocket Riot have set time limits, ranging from 5 to 20 minutes, creating a much more arcade-like experience than is normally seen in this genre.

The unusual approach is also reflected in the game’s most contentious feature – crate drops. Just like in Worms crates fall from the sky, and sending your lovable stickmen to surround them will unlock their contents. This can either be time limited power-ups, such as shield or speed, extra units such as armoured transports or Darwinia’s controllable squads, virus-based creatures – the enemies from the original game – to fight on your side, forests to use as barricades, or air strikes of varying potency. Occasionally a crate contain something detrimental – particularly annoying if you used lots of Darwinians to unlock it faster, just to see them die instantly. It is this random nature – both in contents and drop location – which makes the crates unusual for an RTS – any game in which luck plays such a big part probably requires less skill in order to win.

Whether that assertion is true or not is open to debate, but the crates do serve to level to playing field a bit, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Multiwinia is, as the name suggests, a multiplayer game. All the maps and game modes are available offline as well, against AI opposition, but this is never as enjoyable and often downright unfair, as the computer has a tendency to overwhelm you even on the easier difficulties (at least, if you are somewhat rubbish at RTS, like me). Equally, with no story mode and little sense of reward, the only real reason to play in single player is for training purposes. So the crates become important, because without them many people would never stand a chance of winning, and would probably give up on the game altogether.

And this is a crucial point, because at the moment there just aren’t enough people playing. During the review period, I never saw more than 10 hosted games at one time, and only a couple with open spaces. Regardless of whether most people are unwilling to host or there really are so few players, this is incredibly disappointing to see, just one month after launch.

This disappointment is compounded when you consider just how accessible Multiwinia is – it is controlled by the WASD or arrow keys to move the viewpoint, left mouse click to select a unit, right to move it or issue an officer command, tab to toggle through additional reinforcements and crate bonuses, and space it deselect. The simplicity of the controls and objectives, and the limited amount of unit and bonus types should make this game more appealing to the masses, and while Introversion are undoubtedly indie developers, they have a strong and devoted following on PC, and are rightly known for making games of high quality. The nagging doubt about Multiwinia is that it is possibly too simple and short term – fun to drop into in the odd quiet half-hour, but with no visible form of progression, nothing that you will stick with in the long term. Maybe people feel the same way about it as I do – that it is a good enough game to entertain in small doses, but while I completely adored Darwinia, I cannot quite say the same for its more aggressive evolution.

For those of you who don’t know, Geometry Wars is a game in which you control a ship fighting off waves of enemies in the form of squares, diamonds, circles and so on. Each enemy has its own colour and behaviour, as well as an individual sound when it spawns. The success of the game is down to this simple concept, the pinpoint accuracy of the control system, and the aneurysm-inducing frenzy of dazzling colour and pumping music. This formula has remained almost unchanged, with Bizarre Creations instead choosing to expand the game through different styles of play.

Retro Evolved 2 contains six modes, with each mode unlocking the next after a short period of play – a clever device which forces the player to try every mode. The first mode is Deadline – a three minute scoring frenzy with infinite lives, with both the enemy spawns and the music building frantically towards the finish. Next up is King, a single life king-of-the-hill mode where you can only fire inside designated circles on the screen. The enemies cannot enter the circles, but the moment you move inside one it starts to shrink, leaving you a short space of time to clear a hole and relocate to the next firing zone. After that, Evolved is unlocked – the mode from the original XBLA game, and then Pacifism, an expansion of the achievement in that game, awarded for surviving a minute without firing. As a mode of its own, Pacifism features a single life and a new type of enemy (or rather, obstacle) in the form of gates which explode when passed through, taking nearby enemies with them. The final two modes are Waves (the last single-life mode), which featured in PGR4, where orange triangles will pour horizontally and vertically across the screen, and Sequence. Sequence is Geometry Wars’ puzzle mode – 20 levels which always spawn in the same way, with 30 seconds to complete each level. Running out of time or losing a life moves you on to the next level, but don’t think that this is a cop out – Sequence is hard, and due to the way lives are accumulated, any early deaths will really come back to haunt you later on.

This is a point worth making because it is one of the two biggest changes to Geometry Wars’ core mechanics. Previously extra lives were gained every 75,000 points, and level-clearing bombs every 100,000. Now bombs and lives are awarded together, first at 100,000, then at 1 million, 10 million and so on. Meanwhile your points multiplier now increases through the collection of geoms – little green blobs left by exterminated enemies, and is not reset when you die. This means that over the course of a game you can achieve an insanely large multiplier, but in order to collect the geoms you must keep doubling back – a significant strategy change from the original game. Other changes are fairly minor in comparison, such as the addition of new or slightly altered enemies such as the aforementioned gates and waves, the use of a single weapon type instead of the previous three, and the gravity wells now destroying surrounding enemies when they explode.

Retro Evolved 2 also features multiplayer for up to four players – either as co-op with separate ships or co-piloting (one flying, one gunning) or competitive – for every game mode. Unfortunately multiplayer is only available offline, a decision which while somewhat understandable for a game in which speed and accuracy are so essential and a split-second of lag will probably result in death, is extremely disappointing nonetheless.

This is the only aspect of the game which can be cause for dissatisfaction however. The core gameplay is as good as it ever was, and the addition of the extra variety means that there is even more reason to keep coming back to it. Even the achievements are well thought-out – what began with Pacifism in Retro Evolved has expanded to the point where eight out of the twelve achievements require you to play in a non-standard manner, for example Wax On and Wax Off – gained for completing one and two complete circuits of the arena walls in Pacifism mode – or Phobia – scoring 1,000 points in Waves mode without collecting any geoms (much harder than it sounds). I would go so far as to say that it’s the most interesting and worthwhile use of achievements I’ve seen in any Xbox game to date, and adds the finishing touch to a game which was already brilliantly designed and executed. Now if anyone needs me, I’ll be teetering along the edge of the catastrophe curve, making a noise that sounds rather like “Ooooooooooooooooh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhi…!”

And so we come to Crysis, the poster-child for DirectX 10, and therefore responsible for causing PC gamers to spend horrific amounts of money on hardware upgrades, and for forcing them to adopt Windows Vista at the same time. When looked at this way, Crysis is arguably to the PC what Halo was to the Xbox, and desperately in need of a place on that list.

An important starting place for such consideration is whether the game is actually fun to play. Games which focussed on pushing graphical boundaries in the past turned out to be little more than tech demos – beautifully realised environments with shoddy game play – Unreal II particularly springs to mind. Thankfully Crysis doesn’t fall into this category – it’s a lot more than just a pretty face.

But the graphics are the obvious place to start, as developer Crytek has delivered the most realistic looking game to date. There are times when the only response is to stop and stare – to marvel at the way the jungle canopy sways in the wind, shadows dance on the ground, or to watch the spray from a waterfall forming a rainbow. This is often a reaction to realising that for the last 15 minutes you haven’t been appreciating it in this way, because it just feels so natural. This is a remarkable achievement because the closer game developers push to photo-realism, the more obvious the flaws become, but somehow Crysis manages to be either real enough or enjoyable enough (or both) to allow these flaws to be overlooked entirely.

In fact, for once I’d say it is well worth spending some time in the graphics menus, tweaking the settings to get the best balance of visuals versus performance. If, like me, you have a less than cutting edge PC, you will probably still find that you can achieve a solid frame rate with most of the options set above those selected as optimal by the game. Shaders, however, are not your friend, and will cause massive performance drops if set too high. Sadly, anti-aliasing cannot be enabled without shaders set at least to high, so many of you will have to do without.

As previously noted though, Crysis is thankfully about more than just the graphics. As you probably know the game takes place on a tropical island, where bad people (Korea, I choose you!) are doing what bad people do, and you have to stop them, along with your special forces buddies. Of course, something goes badly wrong and suddenly there are aliens everywhere. In fact, substitute aliens for mutants, and with only minor tweaking it’s basically the plot of Far Cry, but with one important difference.

That difference is the nanosuit – a futuristic piece or armour which turns its wearing into something approaching a superhero, with the added bonus of providing much better jungle camouflage than Jack Carver’s ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. The nanosuit has four modes – strength, speed, armour and cloak – and through their use and the massive, open environments, Crysis’ levels become individual sandboxes, with the freedom to complete each in more than one way. And unlike many games, Crysis provides all these modes from the first second, an excellent decision by the designers as it is these abilities which elevate the game above many of its contemporaries.

Strength and armour modes allow you to tackle Crysis like a standard shooter (to a certain extent). Armour mode provides more resistance to damage, while strength allows higher jumping, more powerful melee attacks and reduced weapon recoil. It is the epitome of the brute force approach – at full power you will even be able to punch through certain buildings. However, as the enemies are pretty intelligent and well armoured themselves, stealth is a useful tool as well. Cloak mode makes you invisible to enemies (unless they’re standing right in front of you) for a limited period of time, and can be used incredibly effectively to take them out while never being detected.

In fact, the AI is rather too easy to fool with the use of cloak mode. On seeing a corpse, other soldiers will come and stand directly over it, demanding loudly that you show yourself, You Yankee Coward. This means that if you find a decent spot to hide in while your suit recharges, you can take out every enemy in the vicinity without ever being spotted. Of course, shooting in cloak mode instantly discharges the suit, making you visible again, so cover, timing and accuracy are still important, but the tactic still seems a lot more effective than it should be.

Cloak is also useful if the enemies ever do locate you – duck behind a tree, enable it and head off in a different direction, and you can shake your pursuers if you get to new cover before the suit discharges. Speed mode is also handy in tight corners, providing the boost to outrun anyone. It’s even faster than vehicles over short distances, and provides a viable and much stealthier alternative when traversing the vast swathes of jungle that make up Crysis’ levels.

These suit powers are also available in the game’s multiplayer modes, which come in two flavours – deathmatch and power struggle. Deathmatch is as you would suspect, albeit with a few more people going for melee kills with the help of strength mode, but power struggle is rather more interesting. It’s a bit like Onslaught in Unreal Tournament 2004 – two teams compete to hold a number of control points, which then provide access to more powerful weapons and vehicles to help with the eventual destruction of the opposition’s base. There’s also a prestige points scheme, where you start with just enough to purchase the most basic weapons, and have to gain more through kills and objective taking. Unfortunately as the games are usually very long, entering a server in the middle of one is a receipt for dying over and over at the hands of better-equipped foes. It’s still well worth a try though, if vast online tactical battles sound more interesting than twitch-fest killing sprees.

However despite all the positives, Crysis still falls foul of the same problem which plagued Far Cry. When fighting against humans, Crysis is enjoyable and well balanced, but once the aliens appear the difficulty ramps up to the point of frustration, although thankfully never reaching the ridiculousness of the last level of Far Cry.

There is also the issue of bugs. For some reason it appears to be standard practice to release PC titles with game-breaking bugs, and patch them later. I encountered a number of bugs on my play through, to varying degrees of seriousness. The worst was a point fairly early in the game when the mission objectives failed to update when they should have, and I had to resort to a walkthrough to figure out what I had to do next. Other than that there were occasional graphical glitches with cut-scenes and the scope on the precision rifle, objects hanging in midair or spinning constantly due to problems with the physics engine, and a level during which I could not switch to one of my guns, and the enemies appeared to have no weapons at all. In a game where so much attention has been paid to the graphics, it really isn’t acceptable to have these kinds of problems with the released code.

In the end, only time will tell whether Crysis ends up on that list of paradigm-shifting games. If it does, I suspect it will be for a seemingly minor detail – the first widespread use of an environment which behaves properly. Tree branches snap and fall under heavy gunfire, undergrowth moves underfoot, even a fair amount of buildings can be completely destroyed. Sadly sales figures to date have been incredibly poor, probably due to a combination of the high number and quality of alternative PC first person shooters on the market, piracy, and the required specs being so high as to put many people off. And this is a shame, because Crysis is definitely a game worth taking a look at.

This seems to happen quite a lot. If one was to examine all existing works of science fiction, the galaxy (or at least it’s human or human-friendly inhabitants) being in danger would probably form basis for the vast majority of the genre’s stories. It’s amazing we survive long enough to make it out of bed each morning. But if dramatic space operas are your thing then Bioware has delivered a galaxy well worth saving, in the form of Mass Effect.

It’s incredibly difficult to tell a sci-fi story which seems completely original, and indeed the background and history of Mass Effect’s galaxy is quite derivative in places. In fact it borrows many concepts from classic sci-fi stories, most noticeably the TV series Battlestar Galactica and Orson Scott Card’s novel, Ender’s Game, with the latter case treading dangerously close to plagiarism. It is therefore impressive that, despite these obvious influences, the story that plays out through the game feels both compelling and unique.

Enter the protagonist, Commander Shepard. This being an RPG, character creation is rather important. Mass Effect allows you to choose your avatar’s sex, appearance, class and back-story. Character classes come in six flavours: three specialist classes of soldier, engineer and adept, and three more interestingly named hybrids called vanguard, sentinel and infiltrator. Your choice of class will greatly affect your style of play – soldiers are obviously more about the guns-blazing approach, engineers have abilities to disable enemy’s shields or disrupt their weapons, while adepts can use biotic “it’s not the Force, honest” powers. The hybrid classes each combine two of these, so they might seem the natural choice for a first play through. Your character’s back-story, meanwhile, will not have much impact on the game, but references to it are made during numerous conversations, increasing the feeling that Shepard is a real person.

This feeling of realism is something that Bioware strives for throughout Mass Effect, and achieves with stunning grace. This is most noticeable during conversations, which is especially important as there are so many of them to be had – the amount of dialogue that has been recorded for the game is staggering.

The dialogue system meanwhile, is equally impressive. It provides you with the ability to choose next dialogue option before current speaker has finished talking, thus eliminating the long pauses in conversation which have plagued Bioware games in the past. These options appear on a wheel at the bottom of the screen, and supply the context of your character’s dialogue rather than the entire text. Additionally, the options always appear in the same place on the wheel – top right for paragon (good) dialogue, bottom right for renegade (evil), centre right for the middle of the road, with the left hand side providing further investigation options, along with charm and intimidation, dependant on your skills. This means that if you are playing a consistent role you don’t even have to pay attention to the text – you can just flick the stick to the relevant position when the wheel pops up, and thus keep listening to the conversation without a break in concentration. This system is backed up by superb voice acting throughout, and does much to create and maintain the impressive cinematic style of the game.

Away from the dialogue, Mass Effect offers much to appreciate in terms of action. There’s a galaxy to explore, missions to complete and, of course, a lot of combat. The combat system has been somewhat unjustly maligned. Mass Effect is not a pure shooter, and expecting a game to play like Gears of War just because it uses the same over the shoulder camera angle is rather unfair.

This is an RPG, so instead of relying on twitchy reflexes, it examines stats for each shot – those of your enemy, your character, weapons and mods – and calculates how much damage has been done. This all takes place behind the scenes, but it is important to understand the difference in concept if you are expecting a “straight” shooter experience.

As with many of Bioware’s previous games, success in combat relies on a good tactical use of the pause menus. In Mass Effect these are accessed via the bumpers – holding the left bumper brings up a wheel which allows you to select each squad member’s active weapon, and the right gives access to abilities and biotic powers. These take a while to recharge, so it is important to choose the right moment to use them. The weapons meanwhile have an infinite supply of ammunition, but will overheat if used for an extended length of time. It is important to keep a close eye on your weapon’s heat gauge and make good use of cover so you do not find yourself overexposed with no way to attack the enemy.

Additionally there are basic squad commands available on the d-pad: hold position, attack a specific enemy, form up on Shepard or move to a specific location. Somewhat annoyingly these commands cannot be given to your squad members individually however, and the ability to take active control of Shepard’s companions which was seen during previews didn’t make the final build.

There is one undeniable weakness of the combat system though. If members of your squad lose all their health, they become incapacitated until all the enemies are defeated, or you use Shepard’s Unity power to revive them. If this happens to Shepard however, the game is over, even if both your companions still have full health. It’s a cheap kill which, after Bioware did away with it in KotOR, makes an unexpected and unwelcome return.

So back to the galaxy then. Bioware has created a vast array of star systems and planets to explore, along with the beautiful hub of galactic civilization, the mysterious Citadel. Most of the game’s missions will be obtained while exploring its many areas, but many will take you on journeys away from the station, to the numerous uncharted worlds that Mass Effect contains. This is where the realism breaks down somewhat, as there is some noticeable repeating of environments on the uncharted worlds – building interiors and exteriors will be revisited in many different locations. Your activities on these worlds will also be rather repetitive. You land in the Mako – an all terrain vehicle which feels a bit Warthog-lite – and drive between places of interest marked on your map. The worlds themselves are usually desolate and mountainous, but there are occasional reprieves from this theme.

The planets on which the main missions occur, thankfully, provide a stark contrast. These are much more detailed, and obviously contain an abundance of things to do. Unfortunately with this increase in visual delights comes one of the game’s biggest problems – that of frame rate slowdown. It doesn’t happen too often, but along with the large amount of texture popup after loading, it mars a game whose production values are otherwise very high.

If you can overlook this though (and you should), Mass Effect is clearly one of the best games in a year of many high quality releases. It represents a sizeable investment of time – around 30 hours to complete with the majority of side quests – but is well worth the effort. The game could probably be completed in about a third of that time, but to do so would be to do a disservice to it. Mass Effect is a game which gives back what the player puts in. The more time you spend interacting with the characters and the world around you, the more you will enjoy the wonderful experience it has to offer. This is a galaxy truly worth saving.

The Witcher, then, is the story of Geralt, a professional monster-slayer, and his quest for revenge against the mysterious mage who attacks his fellow witchers’ stronghold in the first few minutes of the game. This is set against the backdrop of a dark and dangerous world, but whose inhabitants’ problems are often mundane enough to create a healthy sense of realism.

There is also a feeling of moral ambiguity about your actions. Geralt is, if anything, an antihero – only partially human and therefore an outcast from the world’s mainly racist human populace – and in many of the choices you have to make throughout the game the path of good or evil is unclear. It doesn’t help that many of the characters you meet along the way are corrupt, devious or outright vile, but this all adds to the game’s well crafted atmosphere.
This is enhanced by the depth of the game’s lore. The journal is overflowing with information about monsters, places, people (character bios update as you interact with them more) and alchemical ingredients and formulae. Alchemy is an incredibly important part of the game – particularly on the higher difficulty settings – as it allows the brewing of potions to help you survive the many battles you will face. Ingredients can be harvested from plants and taken from the corpses of slain monsters, and can be brewed into potions while in meditation mode. Meditating also allows you to level up by spending talent points on a vast progression tree spanning physical attributes, spell casting and combat styles.

The combat itself is the product of an interesting, if slightly frustrating design choice. While most games of this type follow a simple click to hit formula, The Witcher takes a different approach. Clicking on an enemy initiates an attack, but as this attack ends the cursor lights up. Clicking again will chain attacks together in a deadly combo, with enemies unable to respond. If your click is mistimed however, Geralt falters, giving the opponent a chance to strike back. As blocking is built into this system as well as attack, missing your click can often have dire consequences, and the seeming lack of direct control can cause great frustration, particularly at the beginning of the game when the system is new and somewhat unexpected. In addition to the mechanics, Geralt has three combat styles – strong, fast and group. These are pretty self explanatory, as they refer to the type of enemy you are facing – for every foe there is a style which will give you the greatest advantage, which if you can’t work it out yourself can be found by through the monster entries in the journal.

The combat system, while a bit strange, is fairly easy to adjust to. The real problems with The Witcher lie elsewhere, and are twofold. Firstly there is a decided lack of freedom, particularly in the early chapters of the game. For a long time, events are centred in and around the city of Vizima, and feel incredibly plot driven. The Witcher is certainly no Oblivion - there are Bad Guys out there, and you must find them, now. You will not be spending 80 hours riding around on a horse in order to find the best mountain from which to view the sunset. While this focussed approach is not a necessarily a bad idea – particularly when backed up by the quality of writing The Witcher exhibits – the length of time you are forced to spend in each area becomes frustrating, as there is often little in the way of a feeling of progress.

The other issue lies with one of the cornerstones of the RPG experience – the quest for stuff. Loot is integral to practically all RPGs – weapons, armour, magic items – the constant search for something better than you already have. In the Witcher however there’s a pretty basic set of equipment which barely changes throughout the game. Geralt uses two swords – a steel one for fighting humans and a silver one for monsters – and some armour, and that’s about it. There is no longsword+5, no Boots of Speed. Instead you will mainly be collecting ingredients in order to brew potions which will help in the slaying of tougher monsters. It’s strangely circular – Geralt’s motivation for taking jobs is to get paid, but as there’s hardly anything worth spending the money on, it leaves you with a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right.

These issues are quite subtle however, and neither really break the image of Geralt’s world. One could even pose arguments for their existence, for instance that with so much oppression and poverty around, there wouldn’t be much valuable equipment to obtain, or that Geralt is clearly a single-minded individual and would stop at nothing to complete his quest. Besides, you get the feeling that sunsets aren’t really his thing.

The one aspect that does feel out of place though is the game’s approach to sex. Geralt can basically one-night-stand his way through many of the world’s female NPCs, with the game issuing incredibly tacky “sex cards” of the women in each encounter. I mention this here for completeness – it seems to have been thrown in to ensure a mature rating, and is inconsequential to everything else that takes place.

Aside from this, The Witcher is a solid game and a commendable first solo project, but its release comes at an unfortunate time. With so many high profile titles around at the moment it’s hard to recommend it whole-heartedly, but if you have a PC which can handle it – and the requirements aren’t all that arduous – it is one to strongly consider picking up once the holiday madness has died down.

This is the point, at a mere minute in, that Bioshock sells itself to you. A warm glow descends as you comprehend that it really does look this good, and will do for every minute that you play it.

There was another moment, a few hours of play later, when I realised that some of the magic had gone. It dawned on me that I could actually write a 500 word review of Bioshock that was completely negative. I won’t, but it had become clear that the game’s genius is flawed in a number of small ways, and the closer we get to perfection – something Bioshock strives admirably for – the more obvious these flaws become.

But I’ll start with the positives. The art direction is stunning – literally in some cases, in a jaw-slackening way. The underwater city of Rapture in which the game takes place is beautifully realised, both as the 50’s utopia it was created to be, and the hell hole it became. The garden of Arcadia is probably the stand-out area – a lush paradise, completely and perfectly at odds with the more industrial feel of the rest of the city.

The story of Rapture’s downfall – and the part you have to play – is also well told, with solid voice acting throughout. The history is provided via a series of tape recordings made by some of the main players in Rapture’s society, scattered about the city. It’s a clever storytelling device, feeding you information one morsel at a time in such a way that to miss out on a few recordings will not have a detrimental effect. It also encourages exploration, as the more you know about these characters, the more satisfaction you will derive from discovering or deciding their fate (although this “decision” is generally between, say, a shotgun and a machine gun). Current events meanwhile are filled in by radio transmissions from Atlas, your mysterious guide, with Rapture’s founding father – Andrew Ryan – occasionally chipping in.

Then there are the plasmids – genetic modifications achieved through the use of substances known as ADAM and EVE, whose biblical references are very much in keeping with the frequent devout mutterings of Rapture’s inhabitants. These plasmids are akin to magical powers, and are invaluable when facing the splicers populating Rapture, none of whom will be pleased to see you. Telekinesis will be a favourite of anyone who enjoyed Half Life 2’s gravity gun (and who didn’t?), as it performs a very similar function, but each plasmid has its uses. The choice of which to purchase and equip will decide to a certain amount how you approach your battles, but with frequent opportunities to switch them around, you will never feel completely tied down.

Effective use of these plasmids is essential when facing the Big Daddies – the hulking and extremely powerful protectors of the Little Sisters – the collectors of ADAM who roam the halls of Rapture. These battles form the core of Bioshock, as the Big Daddies must be overcome to get at the Little Sisters, and procure more ADAM for yourself. How you do this – either by harvesting – killing the Little Sisters and taking all their ADAM, or by rescuing them for a lesser reward – decides your fate and the path you will take towards the end of the game. But before this you must kill a Big Daddy, a feat which can be knuckle-whiteningly difficult even with large amount of planning, and certainly makes up for the often lack-lustre attempts by the splicers to end your existence.

However, as these battles are the most important element of Bioshock’s gameplay, they are responsible for its slight downfall. There are certain tricks which can be employed that will allow you to kill the Big Daddies without ever taking any damage yourself. These are not exploits or cheats in any way, and they remove almost all challenges from what was already a fairly easy game.

And without that challenge, the other little flaws become more apparent. The way plasmids don’t stay in order when upgraded, or that strange quirk of the Unreal Engine (as was also apparent in Oblivion) whereby, for example, a chair will rise slightly out of the ground when a packed of cigarettes is picked up from its seat. There are a number of other small things, none of which are particularly bothersome by themselves, but cumulatively become much more noticeable.

The major issues, however, are twofold. First is the existence of Vital chambers – respawn points throughout Rapture. In the event of death, you will be transported to the nearest of these chambers and allowed to continue, while your enemies’ health remains as it was when you died. This means that even if you are totally hopeless at the game, you can still progress by the process of sheer attrition, and thus the game becomes even easier. Incidentally, an explanation of the existence of Vital chambers - or of why you appear to be the only person in Rapture capable of using these devices - is never forthcoming, unlike most of the other apparently bizarre design choices, which are validated as the story progresses.

The second major issue is exclusive to the PC version of the game, and concerns the control system. While the ability to rebind keys in PC games has existed for a very long time, Bioshock does not let you do so for all keys. R, for example (the key I traditionally use for forwards) is locked to the reload function. A quick hack around in the configuration file can override this, but that is not something which everyone will be able to achieve successfully. This is the worst of Bioshock’s flaws, as it implies sloppiness in the implementation of the PC version, particularly as the locked bindings seem completely unnecessary.

Regardless of these flaws, large or small, Bioshock remains a wonderful game in so many ways. The graphics and art direction, the slow unveiling of the story of Rapture’s fall, the sheer creepiness of it all, and the gameplay which, quite often, makes almost every shooter until now seem rather dull in comparison.

Enter French developers Monte Cristo, who have clearly decided that what PC gamers really want to accompany their tooth-fur removal medicine is yet another adventure in orc-bashing, and have thus bestowed upon us their suspiciously devil-shaped brainchild, Silverfall.

The premise is simple – Bad Things have happened (as is generally the case) to the city of Silverfall, and it’s up to you to put them right. How you will achieve this is unclear, except that it will involve hacking, slashing, and indeed the occasional incineration of anything which threatens to impede your progress. Such attacks are achieved by repeatedly clicking on an enemy until they die or your fingers fall off. Left clicks activate weapon attacks and right clicks perform magic, with quick changes between attack styles and spells available via the number keys.

As with many RPGs, Silverfall provides companions to aid in your pursuit of wanton slaughter and pillaging, and quickly become essential for progression. As you gain experience and level up, so do the world’s other inhabitants, and any battles attempted alone after about an hour of play will quickly result in death, or at least a rapid tactical retreat followed by a quiet spot of wound-nursing. Once you complete the necessary quests to obtain your cohorts however, progress becomes rather easier. While the only direct control you have over your companions is to equip them as you see fit, their behaviour in battle is controlled by issuing commands through dialogue options, and it is a simple matter to create an effective attack squad.

None if this is, you will notice, is particularly new or interesting, and I’ve held off describing what is until now to emphasize this point, because while Silverfall does indeed have some features which are interesting, they don’t work nearly as well as they should. The first and most important of these is the graphics. Monte Cristo decided to use cel-shading, creating a rather pretty world with cartoon styling, particularly emphasised by emboldening every creature with a black outline. While the effect is definitely pleasing to look at, it adds nothing to the game.

Games which use a distinctive graphic style to good effect always have some reason for its existence – a way in which the style links to the gameplay or the world it creates, enhancing the experience. Okami’s brush strokes, conjuring constant images of a Japanese legend. The warm hand-drawn textures of Beyond Good & Evil, creating a beautiful and homely planet which you really want to protect. Or to pick another example of cel-shading, Jet Set Radio Future’s world of graffiti-come-to-life. In Silverfall the graphics are used purely as a selling point, with no underlying philosophy to explain why such a technique should be used.

Another problem is caused by another potentially interesting idea. Rather than the traditional RPG alignments of good and evil, Silverfall provides you with the choice of science versus nature. Supporting one allows you access to new abilities and enhancements as you level up, along with the use of equipment specific to that alignment. Bizarrely however, the actions required in fulfilling an alignment quest are often morally dubious, for example killing a druid so that a protected grove can be mined for resources. Thus the of choice of good or evil is frequently replaced by that of inactivity or evil, and so the mechanism falls apart for anyone trying to follow a path of righteousness, or even what would pass for it in a dim light.

There is also a major problem with the saving and loading system. When starting the game you are presented with a picture of your character, equipped as he or she was when you last quit the game, and an option menu including a start button, which is the only time you can load the game. By contrast you can save at any point, but this just retains your state – equipment, experience, skills and quests, and not your position in the world. A subsequent load (by restarting the game) will transport you to the location where you received the latest quest in the main story, regardless of whether you were even in that part of the world. While you can jump instantly to places of importance at any time through the map interface, this relocation is extremely annoying if you were exploring the areas in between, and didn’t realise the consequences of quitting the game.

Strangely, the same thing happens if you die – you are transported back to the main hub, minus all your current equipment. A gravestone then appears where you fell, and returning to it allows for the recovery of the lost items. Thankfully there is an early side quest whose completion grants the opportunity to purchase of life insurance, allowing you to keep all your possessions, and turning death into a mere annoyance of unexplained respawning.

This is indicative of the main problem that Silverfall suffers. It supplements being a painted-by-numbers Diablo clone with some interesting ideas, but they are either not fully thought through or overshadowed by poor implementation and lack of explanations elsewhere. The overall impression is of a game which was created in pieces like a puzzle, and then put together by someone who didn’t quite have the full picture on the front of the box.

But two years is a very long time for those PC gamers to wait, as other titles received ports much more swiftly. Bioware’s own Knights of the Old Republic and Obsidian’s sequel to it. Lionhead’s Fable. And that’s just the some big hitters in the same genre. We saw it with Halo – it had already been surpassed by the time it came out on PC, and nobody was all that interested. So the main question one has to ask about Jade Empire on the PC is “should I care?”

Jade Empire’s strength lies in its writing – enjoyable if slightly clichéd storytelling supported by sparklingly witty dialogue and an impressive array of voice talent including cameos from John Cleese and Nathan Fillion. As no amount of time will change this, a major source of enjoyment, and all the amusement – of which there is much – remains in tact.

The graphics, surprisingly, have held up almost as well as the writing, albeit with a few tweaks during the porting process. While it would have been nice to see some HDR lighting, the use of bloom is for once a worthy substitute, often giving the already rich environments a mystical glow. The town of Tien’s Landing – the central hub for most of the early part of the game – provides a particularly fine example, basking in a permanent vermillion sunset of which even Oblivion would be proud. And while the textures and polygon counts are obviously lower than games developed since, the art direction is good enough, and the world so believable that it’s easy not to care (or even notice). In other words, Bioware have created a game which stands the test of time impressively well.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and Jade Empire’s flaws are still rather evident. The main problem is the combat system, and how much better it could have been. Your character in Jade Empire has three basic stats – health, chi and focus. Chi is used for magic, healing and dealing extra damage, focus slows down time during combat, and is also required for the use of weapons, and health, obviously, keeps you alive. The combination of these stats with a multitude of fighting styles promised an incredibly deep combat system, but sadly Bioware stopped short of this, probably in fear of alienating their RPG fan-base. The result is a system where button-mashing will get you out of most tight spots, and you will probably only rely on a handful of the styles available as you level up.

Bizarrely, the other problems are the RPG elements themselves. As already mentioned, your character relies on health, chi and focus in combat. These stats are determined by the attributes of body, spirit and mind respectively, with combinations of these attributes controlling your ability to use charm, intuition and intimidation options in dialogue. The process of levelling up merely consists of increasing these three attributes and improving your proficiency with the combat styles of your choice which, compared to other games in the genre, feels rather shallow. Interaction with your followers is also a bit muted. While there are romances to pursue and amusing anecdotes to hear, there are no follower-driven side quests, and therefore not much incentive to spend equal time with each of them. In fact, as only one follower accompanies you at a time and the each support you in different ways, it is not unlikely that you will spend the whole game with just one of them, who best compliments your style of play.

Finally, fresh from their success in a galaxy far, far away, Bioware decided to implement a Light/Dark Side system for Jade Empire. It is referred to as the Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist, and is meant to reflect not good and evil, but a philosophical approach to people – either aiding them in their struggles at the risk of causing them to become dependant on others, or forcing them to become strong and solve their own problems. However, as these choices are often between obvious extremes, and the in-game meter looks so much like that of KotOR that it might as well be treated as the same thing.

Thankfully, while Jade Empire is neither a great combat based action game, nor a deep RPG, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Maybe it’s so easy to pick these holes because the game fell short of attaining the legendary status it could have had, and settled for mere excellence instead. The fact is that the elements that both made it great and held it back two years ago are still present, and remain more or less unchanged. The process of porting it to the PC has actually improved things a little – the control system works perfectly, and mapping combat styles to all ten number keys instead of the four directions of the d-pad encourages greater variation in play. The AI has also been given a pep talk, so fights are a bit harder, although still not much of a challenge on the standard difficulty setting.

So should you care? Yes. While two years is a long time and the genre has surpassed Jade Empire’s achievements (in the form of Oblivion, if nothing else), no one makes RPGs quite like Bioware. It is arguable that no game that is directly comparable to Jade Empire in the past two years has been better than it, and that in all probability none will be until Mass Effect is released later this year. The only reason the score has slipped over the period is that it is impossible for a game not to age at all, but for those who didn’t play it on the Xbox, Jade Empire is still a must-have.