It had to be, didn’t it?

It’s not often that a game is this clearly my game of the year, and it’s usually not this obvious as soon as I play it, but Uncharted 2 is just so far ahead of everything else that any attempt to be controversial and give the nod to something else becomes impossible. Obviously there’s the visuals, which are simply staggering, but then there’s the seemingly never-ending list of the voice acting, the performances, the animation, the much-improved gunplay, the massive scale, the set pieces…

Naughty Dog moved the goalposts, showing how to make a game cinematic without trying to be a film. People who think that Metal Gear Solid 4 did that need to take a long look at this, because Uncharted 2 tells a story and renders some truly epic action scenes while letting you, you know, play them.

Take something like the train sequence, the helicopter attack in Nepal, the tank attack, the Pursuit Force-style truck chase – you get the idea – and it would fit in as a finale or banner set piece in any other game, but Uncharted 2 has almost one per level, and it still finds time to slow things down for the walk through a Tibetan village or fairly straightforward puzzle sequence. Lessons had clearly been learnt from the original’s shortcomings because this one neatly sidesteps most of them. The tightened-up shooting and lack of zombies is enough to more or less wipe out my complaints.

Uncharted 2 was absolutely incredible and a huge step beyond what any other company did this year. Bow down to Naughty Dog, because the ball’s firmly back in everyone else’s court. Good luck with that.

Graphics aren’t everything, but they are something, and when they look as spectacular as Killzone 2, they’re really something. Even if it wasn’t quite what was promised, Guerrilla got closer than anyone thought it had any right to, creating what is arguably the best-looking game on consoles today. It’s an advert for just how important animation and effects are to visuals and is certainly the closest thing to photorealism we have right now.

The best part of a year on from its release, the forgettable story has almost completely passed from my mind and I’m left with the game itself, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the hotly debated issues with laggy controls. I think it gives the game a sense of weight that complements the gritty style. It wouldn’t be Killzone 2 if it had the tight, twitch controls of a Call of Duty.

It also deserves credit for one of the year’s best multiplayer modes, shorn of some of the deliberately obtuse control elements in the name of competitive play, and I enjoyed that enough to put it up there with Warhawk as one of my favourite PS3 multiplayer experiences.

It’s too flawed to be a bona fide classic, I think, but Killzone 2 does enough right to justify its plaudits and firmly establishes the series as a contender rather than the also-ran that it was in the PS2 days.

I’ve spoken before on how shallow and brainless I think the God of War series to be, and I’d still much rather play something like Bayonetta, but I like them enough to justify £25 for both of them redone in high definition. Given that the first one managed to impress even after the 360 and PS3′s releases, I was keen to see how they held up with a spit and polish, and the answer is pretty damn well.

They’re not going to fool anyone into thinking that they’re new releases or anything, and some of the perspective tricks are shown up in HD like ropey special effects on a Blu-ray movie, but a few added pixels, some v-sync and a mostly locked 60fps – I’ve seen drops in areas with lots of particle effects, like the first game’s Desert of Lost Souls – do them a world of good. The spell is broken somewhat when you see Athenian soldiers who look like troop models from a 1998 RTS and the unchanged FMV looks horrific – rendered from the PS2 engine for standard definition and badly compressed to boot – but this is a retro compilation at the end of the day. I’m not going to dock a retro compilation point for not looking completely shiny and new.

I’m disappointed that the remastering on both of them couldn’t have extended to proper surround sound, though, with only PS2-era Dolby Pro Logic II present and some glitches in that to boot. Remixing the whole thing might have been a lot to ask, but Sony’s been excellent this generation in terms of pushing next-generation sound as hard as visuals and I think it would have made a world of difference.

Given the PS3′s current situation surrounding backwards compatibility, maybe this is testing the water for the approach to come. I’d have no problem rebuying some of my favourite PS2 titles given this kind of treatment.

The obvious one to ask for and one that’s probably likely is a Team Ico compilation in advance of The Last Guardian, but I could reel off a list of PS2 favourites that would be excellent candidates for this kind of treatment: Kingdom Hearts, Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy… Stick them on a disc or release them individually as à la carte downloads from PSN. Hell, why limit this idea to the PlayStation? Splinter Cell and Hitman both have sequels in the works and I’d relish the opportunity to play through the earlier iterations again. If universal backwards compatibility isn’t possible, this is the next best thing and has plenty of benefits of its own.

The God of War games remain a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, and this is definitely the way to play them. They’re two of the best action games of the last decade and the low price for them looking and playing this smoothly is a steal.

The screenshot in this post was borrowed from Bitmob’s comparison feature here.

Uncharted 2 does a lot of impressive things, but what gets me more than anything is quite how old it makes something as beautiful as the original game. If you have both I encourage you to compare, say, the first game’s forest sequences to the sequel’s Borneo rainforest, and then bear in mind that this is just a short sequence, and within a few hours you’ll hit the mountains of Tibet, Istanbul, Kathmandu… and some that it would spoil it to tell about. Even in that short sequence it wipes the floor with the first game, let alone the competition, and still manages far more variety in its environments.

In short, I’ll be very surprised if we see many – or any, in fact – console games this generation that look better than this. The gloriously animated and acted cut-scenes are up to the standard of Heavenly Sword, and unlike that, this has a good story and a good game to back it up.

Aurally, as well, it’s a masterpiece. This is really the first game that I’ve bought since my new sound system that can output uncompressed PCM sound, and it’s done everything from shake the walls to making me think that a knock on the door from the rear speaker was real. Little things like rain, and big things like debris from explosions landing all around you just all sound crystal clear and so well defined. It manages subtlety and giving the sub a workout with equal aplomb.

Don’t think it’s also just an AV upgrade, though, because Naughty Dog’s done a fabulous job of tightening up the few rough edges that the first had, gameplay-wise. Uncharted fell victim to that early PS3 problem of having to somehow justify the Sixaxis’ motion control through superfluous and gimmicky use, from the annoying but fairly sensible use of it when balancing across logs, undermined somewhat by the baffling use of motion control to aim grenades, and both are thankfully excised here. Hand-to-hand combat is less of an uphill struggle, too, as I can actually now perform combos.

If I have a complaint, it’s that a lot of the environment is simply window-dressing and completely non-interactive, and as a result you can frequently find ledges and platforms that look climbable but actually aren’t. After a couple of hours, once you learn the game’s visual vocabulary, you can tell at a glance, but as it’s neither as obvious as, say, Mirror’s Edge’s red highlights – not saying that’s a bad thing, obviously – nor as organically clear as the best Prince of Persia games. It might have been a bit less subtle about the highlighting of interactive objects early on, as I’m not the only one who’s been overlooking things in the opening stages, and late on, in the mountains, there were more than a couple of moments where I fell a couple of feet to my death because that platform wasn’t meant to be jumped on.

But regardless, is this an early contender for game of the year? Certainly. I’m struggling to see anything that can come close at the moment.

Hard to believe that it’s been the best part of a year since Final Fantasy XIII went multiplatform and Nintendo stunned the world by reaching new levels of mediocrity, but E3 has been restored to its former glory and with it came three conferences from the console manufacturers infused with announcements and yes, bitter tears. Same format as 2007 and 2008, in chronological order:

The first was Microsoft, which started us off with a strong showing. We knew some of what was going to be there, but there were no complete leaks like last year’s NXE unveiling, and most of what we knew was in name only. It’s fairly normal at this point to go into E3 without much knowledge of what we’ll be playing on our 360s at the end of the year, and we can now see a strong line-up taking shape: Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, and the re-emergence of a fantastic-looking Splinter Cell: Conviction, which has got me all hot and bothered for the series again. Modern Warfare 2′s footage wasn’t as mind-blowing as COD4′s from two years ago, but my preorder’s in.

The headlines will undoubtedly be grabbed by two unveilings, though. The first is Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which is a huge PR coup for Microsoft but isn’t a mainline Metal Gear and so isn’t quite the shock of last year’s FFXIII reveal; still, I like MGS4′s Raiden, so colour me interested. Secondly, we’ve got Project Natal, which I don’t expect to work nearly as well as the video suggested, but if it does it’s certainly an incredible technical achievement. Expect much talk about that over the coming months.

Plus Microsoft got the fucking Beatles to show up. God knows how much that cost…

Criticisms? As a closet fan of the Halo novels I’d like to have seen more than a teaser of Halo: Reach, but I understand that ODST is the one that they want you to care about for now. But mainly, where was Rare? The token Killer Instinct and Blast Corps rumours of course didn’t come true, but no new Perfect Dark? Not even another Viva Piñata? Hello?

But that aside, Microsoft did what it had to do with aplomb. The 360 has a great selection of games for this year and we now know that stuff like Alan Wake is finally coming in 2010, and MS is even showing signs of making a serious attempt at coming out from the bald space marine niche where it’s been happy to exist. This one gets a solid A.

Nintendo had simultaneously the most and the least to prove going into E3, sitting comfortably at the top of the sales charts but also leaving much of its traditional audience – or at least the ones who can’t convince themselves that Smash Bros is a good game – underwhelmed, exemplified by last year’s showing.

Super Mario Galaxy 2, Team Ninja’s Metroid, and Golden Sun DS. That pretty much summed up what we got that I’m interested in, and I really am gagging for a go on Metroid. It’s better than last year’s and the first two are undoubtedly AAA titles, although it still had a depressing emphasis on games that our demographic probably doesn’t care about. No great DSiWare content? No Virtual Console for DSi? Nothing entirely new for the hardcore audience? Instead, we get something to monitor your pulse and more Wii Fit.

I can’t in good conscience slate a conference that unveiled both a proper new Mario and Metroid, so I’m going to give this one a B-.

Sony‘s was a show of two halves for me. It started off with Uncharted 2, which looks spectacular, and if it’s nearly as good as the first game – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be – it’ll be a certain purchase. MAG didn’t demonstrate particularly well because it’s a bit slow and complicated for this context, and I’m not convinced that the headset-free PSN is the best place for such a co-op game, but I love my multiplayer shooters and I’m intrigued.

It’s good to see renewed support for the PSP, even if I won’t be buying a PSP Go, and maybe this commitment from Sony coupled with reduced development costs will see a renaissance in the system. I hope so, because I’m a fan.

Final Fantasy XIV was a surprise, to say the least, but I’d love to hear the difference in cheers between when it was announced and when everyone saw the little ‘Online’ under the title. Not the megaton announcement that XIII was last year, and the slight disappointment was compounded by what came next. The tech demo for the Wii Remote waggle wand lost some of its impact coming after Microsoft’s controller-free controls and a further demonstration of Wii Motion Plus and just went on for far too long, particularly when there wasn’t actually a game to come with it. The same goes for ModNation Racers, which wasn’t even that impressive and seemed to last for an eternity – I wanted to kill myself when he promised to create a track “in less than five minutes”. I was reminded of the endless demonstration of Gran Turismo HD from the infamous E3 2005 showing.

It ended very strongly with Gran Turismo 5, which I don’t really care about as I’m not exactly a fan of realistic racers, and the holy duo of The Last Guardian and God of War III. It goes without saying that both of those are must-haves, and I’m just disappointed that it looks like we’ll have to wait until 2010 for both of them.

Much like the Microsoft one it showed a host of great games, and it only really suffered from the slack middle section. That doesn’t stop it getting an A as well, though.

Overall, then, a far better show than last year’s, and fans of all platforms will have come away with something worthwhile even if this year’s show has pretty much confirmed motion controls as the way of the future. And hey, no sales graphs either. Gaming needs to make a song and dance about itself like this once in a while, so let’s enjoy the rest of the show.

Until next year…

The above post title pretty much sums up how I feel when playing through inFamous.

I loved the feeling of freedom that Crackdown cultivated. I loved its comic book style. I loved how the story didn’t matter and was simply an excuse to move forwards. I loved how you could do it in any order you liked. I loved how it didn’t take itself too seriously and so ended up being quite charming.

None of the above statements apply to inFamous – or at least not to the same extent – and when you’re as blatantly in love with Realtime Worlds’ adventure as I am, it’s immediately on the back foot. But despite this, I still really enjoy it. Is it something the game does right or is it just that the free-roaming city-’em-up is a genre that can’t fail to be brilliant and addictive in my eyes?

It’s probably a bit of both. inFamous also goes for a comic style, but it’s far more gritty and tries to do it more literally with story scenes presented as animated comic book panels. The story is complete nonsense, and I challenge anyone to recall the details. It takes itself kind of seriously here, trying to tell a forgettable conspiracy story with another gruff-voiced protagonist, and it does sometimes get in the way when you take time out from collecting agility orbs blast shards to spend some time wondering around in a daze because you got hit by mind-controlling tar – yes, really – again. The developers of Crackdown realised that running around with super powers, exploring the rooftops and mowing down largely helpless, dumb enemies was where the fun was coming from, whereas Sucker Punch has made enemies who are actually capable of fighting back against a powered-up Cole.

Fair enough, this isn’t an attempt to remake Crackdown, but that game’s a clear inspiration. Crackdown’s sense of humour was exemplified by its achievements, which went a long way to convincing a lot of the system’s doubters that well-designed rewards that often came out of cool stuff that you wanted to do anyway – climbing the Agency Tower and jumping off is the most obvious example – could become an important part in of the game in themselves. inFamous’s trophies, similarly, are indicative of the way you go through the game: beat this boss, clear this area, unlock some powers…

Even the trumpeted morality system is incredibly binary, not really forcing difficult decisions on the player or bringing about any real consequences. It’s mostly quite heavy-handed, and the only ones that actually offer a morality option are the designated ones: on the second island a side quest tasks you with saving a guy’s brother who has been dressed up as an enemy, and the only way to complete it is to save him. Where’s the evil option to execute him for collaborating? That’s just one example.

I’m sounding incredibly down on the game, I know, and I’ve got my work cut out to make this sound positive because I really do like the game a lot. The fact is that when you’re not bogged down in story the fun of charging around a city without limitation is still there, and when a mission doesn’t take you underground, away from the best part, and instead has you climbing some of the tallest buildings in the game, which are usually far more complex than Crackdown’s fairly basic geometry – although generally less impressive in scale and with a far more limited draw distance (check out this video to remind yourself just how far you could see in Realtime Worlds’ game), as each of the islands is more firmly segregated - it’s got the same feeling of barely constrained freedom.

Sucker Punch has also leveraged its experience from the Sly Cooper series to make the precision jumps very intuitive, as the game will make slight corrections to your trajectory if you’re heading, say, a little to the left of that climbable drain pipe or are going to overshoot the power line. Cole isn’t as agile as a powered-up agent from Crackdown, but this is done just right to keep the platforming effortless and allow you to feel unencumbered even despite the arguably smaller scale and certainly smaller jumps.

I know I should let it speak for itself and I know that it’s not Crackdown, but it’s such a clear inspiration here. Rest assured that inFamous is an excellent game in its own right and is thoroughly recommended. Just think of it as a way to keep you going until Crackdown 2, which must surely be announced at E3. This has to mean something, right?