Vanquish is just a good old-fashioned blast, of the kind that Japanese developers would have been pumping out with some regularity had they not gone to shit this generation. It takes the handful of things that I like from the Devil May Cry and God of War kind of games and mixes them with a dash of Gears-style cover shooter, and it ends up being one of the best of both styles. More accessible than DMC, more varied and deeper than God of War, and faster and more intense than Gears of War.

Although it’s developed by Platinum with Shinji Mikami at the helm, it’s published by Sega and feels like something that would have come out on the Dreamcast in its all-too-brief heyday. In that respect it’s like Bayonetta, not ashamed of the fact that it’s a video game and revelling in its lunacy and heritage. The story is utter shite most of the time, with characters who make cardboard cutouts look deep and some absolutely barking twists and turns that won’t do much to convince gaming’s detractors of its storytelling strengths, but even with these flaws and a slight feeling that it peaks too early, I can’t help but love it.

Platinum’s fast becoming one of my favourite developers, just because it’s proud of its and gaming’s heritage, and the enthusiasm shines through in its games. This and Bayonetta are two superlative examples of games from crowded genres that manage to possess great originality and polish, and they really buck the trend of the downturn in Japanese gaming so far this generation.

As long as Platinum’s fruitful relationship with Sega continues, I’m going to keep playing its games in a little time warp. Dreamcast 2: not just a console but a state of mind.

First and foremost, it played wonderfully, with accessible, balletic combat and movement that flowed hypnotically, whether you were a button-mashing beginner – or a God of War fan, natch – or took the time to learn it. And I loved how the deep combat mechanics avoided a common pitfall by offering a carrot rather than a stick – mastery of the dodging system conferred a benefit, rather than punishing those who failed to use it properly.

Of course, the glorious presentations deserves plenty of credit. Beyond looking gorgeous, it was a love letter to Sega gaming – within minutes you’re driving along to Magical Sound Shower – and never failed to impress when it came to scale. Show me another game that ends with you riding a motorcycle up the side of a rocket into space to fight God, and I’ll thank you because I want to play it.

I wouldn’t have given Bayonetta some of the more excessive scores that it obtained this year, but it stands as certainly the best in breed for this year, and is up there with Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry as one of the few that I might return to without a gun to my head.

Bayonetta was first, and I loved it from the moment it accompanied a drive in a red sports car with Magical Sound Shower on the radio. It’s loaded with references to classic Sega games and revels in the Capcom connection as well – many of the developers worked on Devil May Cry, most notably director Hideki Kamiya – with nods to everything from the obvious Devil May Cry through to Viewtiful Joe and Resident Evil 4. It’s far more entertaining in its homages than something like Matt Hazard, which uses them as an excuse for uninspired design – ironically bad.

It’s also mind-bendingly gorgeous, outrageously silly on occasions, and unashamedly hardcore in its design. Lower difficulty levels make cool-looking combos easy and accessible through button-mashing, but play it on normal or higher and it takes skill without requiring the third hand that certain similar games can do. The combo system in particular is superb, letting you flick between two different weapon loadouts mid-combo and cancel in and out of them as you go, dodging with a tap of the right trigger. It’s less prescriptive and more spectacular than Ninja Gaiden, while also less daunting than Devil May Cry 4.

Essentially, it’s just a lot of fun to play, whether you’re out for a challenge or some classic gameplay of a sort that seems to be in decline. Just don’t play it for the story, because that’s utter bollocks.

I’m not convinced that it’s a 10/10, though. Although there’s nothing that I’d pick out as a glaring flaw, it’s very much standing on the shoulders of giants rather than forging its own path, and I like to think of perfect scores as being reserved for the few games that do the latter.

Demon’s Souls is the other game, and although it’s been out in the US for a few months, I only recently took the opportunity to import it. Its buzz has been hard to ignore and it’s even picked up a few awards along the way, and I’m surprised by how easily it seems to have found an audience considering its difficulty and plain old-fashioned bloody-mindedness. Ganged up on by a couple of basic zombies? Dead. Killed again before you manage to resurrect yourself? Dead. Oh, and you’ve lost all your collected souls as well. Brilliant…

Both games are different sides of the same coin. Bayonetta is brash, loud, and intent on having fun with its audience but also accessible, whereas Demon’s Souls wants to trip you up and is only playable by someone who can play through the frustration. It’s not fun, per se, but it’s a very compelling challenge, and the enjoyment is in getting through it and finally beating that boss who reduced you to a broken pile of bones within seconds of your first meeting.

But regardless of their wildly divergent approaches, I’m just happy to see that games like this – ‘proper’ games, as I’ll hesitantly call them – can still succeed. As much as I love Modern Warfare 2, I like to see games hewn of the bedrock of gaming history still getting out there and doing good business. Hack-and-slash action games and roguelikes – admittedly, Demon’s Souls isn’t quite that bad – were once staples of gaming, and Bayonetta and Demon’s Souls represent their modern equivalents, doing a great job of keeping the old-school flag flying. We should appreciate them for that.

But now, Atlus, how about pulling your finger out and giving Demon’s Souls a European release? This is 2010, not 1995.

It had already sent me on a wild adventure of learning HTML and using it to create the imaginatively named Shenmue Fan Site, and my first couple of trial-and-error playthroughs – I didn’t speak Japanese, and no one else had yet written a guide, which made simple tasks like ‘speak to Yamagishi-san’ very difficult - were followed by my first FAQ, which directly led to freelance work with the precursor to the company where I now work. I’ve wanted to write about games for a living for a long time, but no single game had as much direct influence on my future career path as Shenmue, and that’s a big part of why I still hold it in such high esteem.

To be honest, if I was trying to choose my game of the last ten years, this would probably be it. It was highly influential – not many games had real-time weather and day/night cycles in 1999, and it’s largely responsible, for better or worse, for the continuing popularity of the QTE – and far ahead of its time. Its cult following is formidable and still rapacious, devouring every snippet of ‘news’ that comes out of Sega regarding the future (or not) of the series. My bet is that the inclusion of Ryo will be directly responsible for at least half of the sales of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. Hell, that’s why I’m going to buy it.

Playing it now, parts of it are of its time, and it may have been pushing the Dreamcast hardware further than was wise, but it still has so much atmosphere, even when playing the impenetrable Japanese version, and that’s a big part of why I love it. Yokosuka feels real – I know it is real, but you know what I mean – and, way back when, I had a place where I’d like to live, a favourite Chinese restaurant, the works. How many games do that now? Bethesda’s stuff, maybe.

The lack of Shenmue III is an empty space in gaming to me and is, sadly, likely to remain so. But, until then, we’ll always have Sakuragaoka…

What’s weird is that back when the game was first unveiled I was going around making jokes about this, suggesting that Ryo and his forklift – as well as the currently unconfirmed New Yokosuka Harbor race track – would be a perfect little acknowledgement of the Shenmue series’ not inconsiderable cult following. This would have the dual benefit of also raising the profile of the series again and forcing Sega to update the Ryo Hazuki character model for the current generation, which is surely half the work of Shenmue III done.

And that’s only what’s gone and happened. The people behind it are obviously savvy enough to know that this game has a significant following, as your average character wouldn’t command such fanfare and such a self-referential announcement – “He shall appear from a far eastern land across the sea, a young man who has yet to know his potential… And he’ll be driving a badass motorcycle” – but baby steps, right?

But yeah, it’s not quite what we’re looking for, but I’m almost ashamed to admit that it’s enough to make this a probable purchase on day one, if only to complete the collection.

Even after rubbish like Shadow the Hedgehog and and utter trash of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Unleashed is possibly the most depressing yet. It’s not that it’s worse than Sonic 2006, thankfully, but what’s depressing is how it’s such a case of one step forward and two steps back. The Sonic stages are back to basics, brilliant fun, extremely pretty, and exactly what I want from a 3D Sonic game; put a few hours of these together and I’d happily pay the asking price, regardless of what brainless story had been hung on the bones to justify it. These represent Sonic Unleashed’s step forward.

However…

The were-hog was, let’s face it, a bad idea from the start. Tell me you didn’t hear about it and cringe immediately.

It’s a bizarre attempt to bring in some Devil May Cry-style combat, except it’s just crap. Mash the buttons to destroy some rejects from the ranks of Kingdom Hearts’ Heartless and Twilight Princess’s shadow creatures, occasionally getting into a QTE to kill off the bigger ones, and do this for room after room, unless the game decides that some block-pushing would be better. Yes, that’s block-pushing puzzles. In a Sonic game.

Bearing in mind that the Sonic stages are over in a few minutes and the were-hog ones can be ten minutes or more, they take up a significant proportion of the game – like more than the Sonic stages.

It’s just insane to me that nobody thought during testing, when they’d just finished breaking the sound barrier as the Blue Blur, that being stuck in the same room for five minutes as you dragged a block onto a switch, twiddled some knobs to raise and lower platforms, dragged another block onto them, moved them again, dragged the block to the other one – all so that you could get to a careful, slow walk across a balance beam, which couldn’t be more at odds with the Sonic ethos if it tried – wasn’t any fun whatsoever. Once again, I’m baffled as to what’s happened to the Sega of the Dreamcast days that could seemingly do no wrong.

Throw in boring and largely non-interactive Tornado sequences – you don’t even have control over the plane like you did in Sonic Adventure – and it becomes hard not to play the game without shaking your head. I’m beyond really being disappointed because I just don’t care any more. It’s for the best if we all just forget about Sonic and leave him back in his glory days.

Until the next time Sonic Team promises to take it back to basics…

“FM09 is still easily the most in-depth, enjoyable and addictive way to pretend you manage a football team. When you have a formula as compulsively successful as this, one that guarantees you top the PC best-sellers list year on year, it’s churlish to suggest reckless tinkering for the sake of it.”

9.1 – Outstanding

IGN US’s Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009 review:

“I couldn’t imagine why anybody would prefer Worldwide Soccer Manager to FIFA 09 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2009.”

“Yes, the depth of management in this game is impressive. But, it’s not impressive enough to make up for the fact that you aren’t actually playing soccer.”

2.0 – Terrible

[For those who don't know, Worldwide Soccer Manager is the name of the Football Manager series in the US.]

The above almost doesn’t require any comment, such is its ridiculousness. I admit to being no particularly big fan of the Football Manager series, even as a football fan, but I can still recognise that it’s a great game that fans get a massive amount of enjoyment from. Given my perspective on the series I certainly wouldn’t volunteer myself as a reviewer since it would be impossible for me to give a decent appraisal, but if I found myself forced into it my first task would be to understand the massive popularity of the series and try to review it on that basis.

That US review is just unbelievable, though. You’d think the guy would have twigged during one of the numerous references to how it was for hardcore “soccer” fans that it’s for hardcore “soccer” fans, and yet he still not only reviewed it but went on to give it an incredibly bad score, usually reserved for games that are downright broken. Why would anyone play it over FIFA or PES? Why would anyone play Command & Conquer over Ghost Recon, then? I’m almost tempted to start a campaign for the same guy to review Halo Wars, just to see if he shits out a page of nonsense asking why you’d play it when Halo 3 was on the market.

Seriously, this is reason #264,996 why games ‘journalism’ isn’t taken seriously by anyone except games ‘journalists’. Fuck me…

It wasn’t to be, of course, either that day with the disappointing Japanese launch games, or indeed ever, but I couldn’t let the tenth anniversary of one of the greatest systems ever made pass without a mention. Virtua Fighter 3tb, Godzilla Generations, and Pen Pen TriIcelon might not have done it for me, but at that point we were only six months from the Japanese release of Soul Calibur, which would be the one to break my resistance and buy the little white machine that would outlast the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube in enjoying a dedicated spot among my currently active consoles.

I really think it goes without saying that the Dreamcast is pretty much unparalleled for a library of innovative, technically impressive – for the time, obviously – games. It had a network connection as standard three years before the Xbox and four years before Xbox Live, and used it – some of the time with voice chat, no less – in games like Quake III, Alien Front Online, Unreal Tournament, and, of course, Phantasy Star Online: a game so good that Sega still can’t repeat its magic formula. And with 480p VGA and 60Hz PAL games as standard – how long did it take for all major PS2 games to be full-screen/full-speed over here again? – it’s one of the few retro consoles that will actually look good on an HDTV.

It was the hardcore gamer’s dream system; a haven for arcade-perfect 2D fighters - Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, most of SNK’s library – and scrolling shoot-em-ups, a genre that is still getting commercial homebrew releases today. RPGs were represented with such fine and diverse examples as Skies of Arcadia, Grandia II, and the aforementioned PSO. The only properly good 3D Sonic game. Soul Calibur. Ports of some of Sega’s latter-day arcade classics like Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally 2, The House of the Dead 2, and Ferrari F355 Challenge. Virtua Tennis and the 2K series if you were into sports. Great and innovative games like Rez, Jet Set Radio, Seaman, Chu Chu Rocket, Power Stone, Segagaga, Space Channel 5… Traditional genres represented by the likes of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Metropolis: Street Racer, Sega GT… I could go on reminiscing about the games on that box for hours.

And, of course, my favourite game ever: Shenmue. A moment of silence, please.

…

But we shouldn’t mope. Despite its fate at the hands of that fucking air-conditioning unit lookalike with its jaggy graphics and dearth of good games – not that I’m still bitter – it remains a console that can and should be played. Assuming you still have your Dreamcast, as every self-respecting gamer should, stick it on tonight and have a play at one of your favourites that you might not have touched in a while. I plan to have a crack at finishing Shenmue for the first time in a couple of years over the weekend, and even with these shiny new games coming out on a daily basis at the moment, I’m going to love it all over again.

Yesterday’s download was the first time I’ve played the game in a couple of years – pretty much since I bought a bargain copy in Japan in 2005 – and it’s even more of a trippy assault on the senses than it was then. If you have an HDTV and a 5.1 system I consider it to be a must-buy, in a similar way to how Geometry Wars became an unlikely early poster child for HD gaming. I’m so glad that stuff like this is getting a new lease of life in downloadable form, without the limited print runs that marred its retail performance on release.

Ignoring the inexplicable oversight to make the game default to stereo sound (go into the settings and set it to 5.1 if you haven’t), essentially turning off one of the game’s main selling points, I spent a couple of hours playing the first couple of stages. It’s the ultimate chillout game – even against similar ideas like flOw or Electroplankton – that you can just sit back with and only worry about a stick and a couple of buttons while it plays some great music for you. I love it, and consequently was listening to the Rez soundtrack at work for most of the day today.

Given that Rez HD also supports using controllers as up to three trance vibrators, much to the presumable delight of Jane Pinckard, unless you’re desperate to have the game on your shelf as part of the collection there’s no reason to bother with the disc-based editions. This one costs £6.80 – that’s SIX POUNDS EIGHTY PENCE, or roughly 1/7th of the recent going price for a Dreamcast copy on eBay – and even has the original 4:3 standard definition version in there for the luddites. Just try to make an excuse not to buy it.

I think I’m with most gamers when I say that my biggest question regarding this unusual collaboration is what exactly Mario is doping to enable him to match Sonic in a foot race. After having spent an afternoon with the game at the Wii Flat in London, I’m even more confused. Mario was pretty brisk if you held the run button, but when Bowser, Wario, and Eggman can keep up…well…it’s madness!

Once I was over my apoplectic fit and could put aside my inner fanboy, however, I couldn’t stay angry with it. I was too exhausted to…

So I got to visit the Wii flat, and spend a few hours with some other bloggers and the game. The flat is a weird place, hidden down an alley between a pub and a computer shop, where inside you’ll find a collection of LCD TVs, all with Wiis attached. I won’t divulge the exact location for fear of sending a horde of angry parents who can’t find Wiis for Christmas over there, but it’s like some kind of bizarre yet somewhat tastefully-decorated shrine, complete with Wii-themed art everywhere. It’s where I’d imagine some of the more nutty Nintendo fanboys living if they didn’t still live with their parents.

But we’re here to talk about the game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. It’s a schizophrenic game, with different events ranging dramatically in quality and skill requirements and allowing clear favourites to emerge. Some are good enough to enjoy on your own against the computer, some (or most) won’t be enjoyable without drunken friends, and predictably there are some bad apples there that it’s doubtful that you’ll play more than once.

The running events are fairly perfunctory, consisting of little more than thrashing the controllers as fast as you can – incredibly tiring over 400m, I tell you – which can occasionally commit the cardinal sin of not seeming to reflect your actions in the game. At the other extreme you’ve got events like the pole vault and triple jump which require shifting between two or three waggling disciplines, with mixed success. As above, they range in quality and as with the likes of Athlete Kings or International Track and Field they’re really multiplayer games. Single player is just kind of there, on the off-chance you want to wave around like a loon without other people to see you.

Now this might seem contradictory when I’ve just complained about the muddled mixed-discipline events, but I had a much better time with the events that contained a bit more depth. There are split-screen (how quaint) “dream events”, set away from Beijing in the various gaming universes, which play out like Mario Kart races. It’s a nightmare trying to balance wild waggling with avoiding obstacles and firing shells, but it’s as uproarous and unpredictable in multiplayer as its inspiration. I was shit at the trampolining – which has you moving the remote up and down while inputting on-screen button combinations – since I clearly don’t know my Wii buttons well enough, but it was one of the more inventive and successful games.

My favourite, though, was the fencing. It takes in attacks, parries, and feints, which all work well and create a game that actually has some depth. Play against someone of equal skill and matches are close, back-and-forth affairs that more often than not come down to the final point (first to 15), with a clever player always having a chance to get back into it. I could have spent even longer on this mode.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, like most compilations, seems to range dramatically in quality, but overall it’s one of the best compilations on the Wii and should be fun with friends. You’ll probably want to avoid it if you’re out for a deep single player experience, though.

If you want to see more of the event take a look at the following blogs who were also there:

• The Average Gamer
• Binary Joy
• British Gaming Blog
• Nintendic
• Zath

More photos are available here, and you can see an official video (featuring me :/) here.