Ladies and gentlemen, we have an early frontrunner for my 2008 game of the year.

It wasn’t long ago that I wrote about the poor state of Japanese gaming, with particular mention of how the RPG genre was thriving in Western hands thanks to its splicing with more mainstream genres, and Fable II is an ideal demonstration of this. While JRPG developers are seemingly content to remake their sacred cows until FFXIII comes and shows them what to do next, Lionhead has picked the best tropes of the traditional RPG and discarded the rest, replacing it with cherry-picked elements from straight action games and thereby opening up a staid and traditionally hardcore genre to a new audience.

Its simplicity is one way that it does this. Far from over-simplifying things, the controversial one-button combat - actually more like three buttons, to be fair - takes the battles away from both turn-based menu-digging and the mindless slashing of something like Oblivion. The closest comparison I can think of is a fighting game, thinking ahead as you input a three-hit melee combo followed by a rifle blast to the chops and a quick blast of fire to give yourself some room, all with only three different buttons. There’s no memorising button combos for certain spells provided you take the time to get used to how the spell-charging works, and it means combat never becomes a chore.

There’s now a minimal penalty for death, which is a small hit to your experience, and this coupled with the lack of levelling - although you do get more powerful as you trade experience for enhanced stats and spells - means that you’re never fighting the game to progress and it’s not a game that’s likely to sit unfinished because you got stuck.

But if the measure of an RPG is its towns, which is a theory that I definitely subscribe to, Fable II is right up there with the best. Coming off a spell in the wilderness to find a nice little hamlet to do some shopping and rest up has always been the best part, and good ones will guarantee that an RPG lives long in my memory, whatever flaws it may have - who didn’t love Skies of Arcadia despite the obnoxious random battles? The feeling is the same in Fable II, showing off just how beautiful the game looks. (more…)

Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4. For some reason, Infinity Ward must have decided to be all postmodern and skip a number in its Call of Duty series. I like to pretend that it’s because COD4 was so awesome that it warranted two increments on the sequel scale, but we of course know that it’s because the third was farmed out by Activision to Treyarch in a pretty average attempt to match IW’s faultless FPS credentials.

So it was with trepidation that I once again braved another Eurogamer 403 error beta giveaway to see whether it was third time lucky for Treyarch (the first time being Call of Duty: Big Red One), freed from the pressure of being Call of Duty 5.

So far, probably not. (more…)

Man, you wait ages for a good XBLA game and then two come along at once…

So how do you reconcile the fact that, at first glance, Braid looks like any other quick and dirty XBLA platformer with the frankly daunting 1,200 point (£10.20) price? Obviously the reviews help, as does the fact that this isn’t PSN and so a free demo is a given, but I still think it’s quite a big psychological barrier for people to overcome. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is.

If you’re finding yourself hovering over the download button, biting your lip, I implore you to take the plunge. This is one of the best indie games I’ve played in a while, and although it might still be on the pricey side, it’s a brilliant little game, full of neat touches and homages, as well as some great ideas of its own.

The influences that Braid carries most overtly is certainly Mario, and not just in the way that it’s ‘inspired’ every platform game ever. There are moments like this, which becomes an amusing running gag, a Donkey Kong sequence, and early enemies that are in no way Goombas, but the structure of the game allows it to switch from one idea to another at a moment’s notice, and it’s done in a way that allows you to skip a more challenging puzzle and come back to it when you want, never blocking your A-to-B progress. (more…)

The original Geometry Wars was fantastic back in 2005, ushering in a new age of the twin-stick shooter and really selling pretty much everyone who played it on the potential of Xbox Live Arcade, but it was easy to feel that the genre had already moved far beyond that initial blueprint. Super Stardust HD brought depth and next-gen graphics, and while I didn’t like it, Everyday Shooter proved popular as a bedroom-coded take on the concept.

I must admit that I was wrong about it, though. I downloaded Geometry Wars 2 last week, and while the basics and visual style are the same, this is still the king.

Taking notes from the little jaunt to the DS and Wii as a ‘proper’ standalone game, Geometry Wars 2 brings pretty much everything from the first game, adds five new modes, throws in some achievements that make ‘Pacifism’ - arguably the first creative ‘must-get’ achievement and, incidentally, expanded to a full mode in this game - look derivative, and then makes your eyes melt from the amazing. (more…)

Same format as last year, but with added bitter fanboy tears. In chronological order:

• Microsoft - I wasn’t blown away, to be honest. Seeing live gameplay of Resident Evil 5 was initially my highlight, in the same way that the Call of Duty 4 was a gem in a pile of (mostly) shit last year. Gears 2 and Fable II both look good and are certain purchases that it’s nice to have dates for, but things like avatars do nothing for me and the occasional cool feature and probable gem do not a great conference make. No Alan Wake (the new Duke Nukem Forever?), no big new IP announcements, a new interface that I’m not convinced about. Just the warm feeling from the fact that there was no motion controller announcement… yet.
   
  But then Square dropped the bomb. As last words go, FFXIII on 360 put most of Steve Jobs’ infamous “and one more thing” reveals to shame. Not even a rumbling of this news before the show, which is remarkable in itself, and it dealt a big blow to Sony early on. With the possible exception of Gran Turismo, this has been Sony’s trump card since FFVII in 1997, and it was the one third-party PS3 exclusive that I thought untouchable. Make no mistake; that announcement was huge.
   
  It doesn’t change the fact that the rest of it was relatively lacklustre, but it feels like it was all a ruse to lead up to that. For the biggest E3 megaton - something that I thought was becoming a lost art - since “five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars”, this one gets a…
   
  B 

• Nintendo - If you ever need reason why so many hardcore gamers seem to have abandoned Nintendo to focus on the fight for second place, this is why. Last year’s Wii Fit reveal was a disappointment and in that respect this at least had something that vaguely interests me in Animal Crossing, but it’s still basically the same thing as Nintendo brought out on N64, GameCube, and DS. It might have more online functions, but all I’m going to be thinking about is how much better it could be done on Live and PSN.
   
  Add another mini-game compilation, another peripheral, and, in Wii Music, one of the most pathetic ideas I’ve ever seen (I can’t help but think of the musical chairs game in The Simpsons when Bart was put into the remedial class). Someone summed it up for me on a forum post when they said: “At least now that Nintendo has show that it hates hardcore gamers we won’t have to pretend to like the Wii any more.”
   
  Thanks for the good times back in the day, Nintendo, but I’ll take an insular industry that makes games that I enjoy over this popular tripe.
   
  D- 

• Sony - Sony really didn’t deviate too much from what was largely a successful formula last year. The embarrassing Home jokes were gone, and no baffling cameo from Chewbacca, and we just got games. It deserves credit for making the most entertaining Powerpoint presentation in history. LittleBigPlanet can make anything interesting.
   
  On the games front, Resistance 2 looked good but early, and while stuff like God of War III and MAG sound promising, didn’t Sony learn anything about showing CG trailers a couple of years ago? When your big reveals are CG and your lead game is one that pretty much everyone who cares enough to watch a conference has finished at least once since it came out a month ago, it doesn’t make it look like there’s a lot of content.
   
  C 

This E3 will go down in history for the Final Fantasy XIII announcement, which put the Microsoft conference ahead on entertainment value alone. Other than that, very disappointing in my opinion. No big new game announcements (so far), no proper price drops or anything, and the bitter taste in my mouth that the mainstream press is going to be fawning over Nintendo finding a way to charge you to play air guitar.

Sandwiched between two little morsels known as Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4, Codemasters is either extremely bullish or extremely naive about Race Driver: GRID, a kind of spiritual successor to the good old TOCA series. Based purely on its critical reception - including a 9 from Edge in the same issue that MGS4 received an 8 - it has every reason to be the former, but we all know that things don’t always work that way.

Despite these reviews, I have to admit that I wasn’t blown away with GRID’s demo a couple of weeks ago. On the positive side it ran like butter and was good fun online, but on the negative side I likened the handling to a slot car race, the muted colours and bloom lighting was like every next-gen graphical cliché in one place, and it wasn’t particularly fun to get wiped out on the first bend so that you have to sit out the entire race. Oh, and EBAY the EBAY product EBAY placement EBAY was EBAY a EBAY bit EBAY prominent.

Now that I’ve played with the full game, though, I have to admit that the game’s better than I gave it credit for. This is what you’d get if Michael Bay made a racing game - a fast, fun, loud, slick, very pretty pure racing game. With the product placement down, it might even be made under a pseudonym. (more…)