Bodycount Review

There was a time when arcade games were one of the most successful genres on consoles. Epitomised by the likes of Daytona USA for the SEGA Saturn and Time Crisis for the original PlayStation, the arcade cabinet to table-top console port effortlessly drew hard-earned cash from wilful gamers' pockets all over again as they set out to discover just how close their home system could get to the industry-leading visuals of a cabinet machine. Limited content and the lack of a half-decent story were of little concern in those days – it was all about recreating the buzz of an arcade emporium in the comfort of your own home with the aid of a much flimsier light gun or racing wheel and minus the compulsive injection of 20 pence pieces. It's hardly shocking, then, that in an era where arcade cabinets near extinction in the UK (they cling on in the seedy backwaters of motorway service stations and seaside piers) and console games like Call of Duty pack tens of hours-worth of blockbusting content onto a single disc, the arcade gaming experience is struggling to compete.

Activision would have you believe that the reason Bizarre Creations' Blur (a game we gave 9/10) was so commercially unsuccessful is because gamers aren't interested in arcade racing games anymore, while classic arcade shooter series like Time Crisis (3 & 4 were released on PS3) have been critically ripped apart this generation. Perhaps the best example of an arcade shooter in recent times was Bizarre Creations' The Club, which met a lukewarm reception from critics in 2008 (again, despite a high score from TVG). You see, we love arcade games here at TVG and we love a good arcade-style combo system, which is exactly the kind of experience Codemasters' Bodycount is aiming for. The whole game is based around a combo multiplier that builds in number as you headshot and frag enemies. With little room for a notable storyline or punctuating set-pieces, this score multiplier effectively becomes the centrepiece to Bodycount's gameplay.

Contrary to our initial impressions during the last preview, it's not the lineage of Bodycount's destructible environments from Criterion's 2006 shooter, Black that form the game's primary focus. Sure, blowing up an explosive canister will take out a few foes nearby, and arcking a grenade into the top floor of a wooden guard tower can bring it to a satisfyingly splintered heap, but it's not the propellant of Bodycount; it's more a supporting member of the cast. Drop a trio of mines at the feet of some enemies on patrol, however, and watch as one gets stepped on and detonated, combusting all nearby fuel cans into a x5 multiplier flurry of kills, and you begin to get a picture of where the appeal ultimately lies. Again, as we pointed out during a recent hands-on, the destruction is actually very formulaic and abundantly predictable, which is arguably as it's supposed to be in an arcade shooter of this type – Battlefield: Bad Company 2, however, it is not.

But while there is an

 

obvious tiering of destructability to the levels – with their red oil drums, fuel cans, and gas canisters – which is semi-excusable in all its arcade trashiness, that doesn't make basic oversights like shoddy AI and lazy level design acceptable just because it's an arcade game. And we're not talking about dull, jack-in-the-box AI that's shoddy just because it's so one dimensional; we're talking about schizophrenic AI that fails to make any consistent sense throughout the entirety of the game. Enemies will land grenades on a 50 pence piece right next to you on every throw, and whole platoons will know your precise location at all times (no matter how much cover you hide behind), constantly showering you with bullets leaving little room for respite. And yet, at other times, they'll fail to notice you standing a few metres in front of them, or they'll get stuck in a feedback loop as they attempt to negotiate a wall by repeatedly walking into it.

But if the AI is glitchy, then the level design is just downright cheap. Most levels resemble a mediocre multiplayer map more than they do a precisely orchestrated single-player layout, while the objectives are as colourful and stimulating as sawdust. Many of the 18 levels are so small, in fact, that the developers often resort to making you retrace your steps and activate a beacon or some such in the same general area that you blew up a command console five minutes earlier. The recycling of assets leads to repetitive colour schemes and environments, and Codies even has the cheek to reuse the same maps on multiple levels. We certainly felt a bit ripped off by all of this by the end of the game – even though the single-player campaign may take towards 10 hours to beat, the actual content on show seems to be more fitting of around half that game time.

Perhaps the score multiplier could appease our frustrations over all of these shortcomings though; perhaps it could resurrect a poor example of a dying genre. Regrettably not. It isn't as if there's anything overtly offensive about the score multiplier, or that it's broken in any way; it's just that it doesn't quite fit together particularly well. It's a bit like Orlando Bloom really: he seems like a nice enough guy and we don't have anything against him, but he just doesn't play the role of a hero convincingly – you get the feeling that he just wants to pop down the street and buy some organic pesto from the deli. Similarly, Bodycount's multiplier should be about freneticism and chained kills but it just hasn't been balanced enough to achieve this. There's no time limit on the multiplier, which encourages an overly methodical approach, and this is then made worse by the fact that any regular gun kill breaks the chain. So, rather than risk an attempt at a headshot, you'll end up darting around the levels dropping copious grenades and mines (which are dispatched plentifully from downed enemies) to keep the multiplier up. At times you'll end up using explosives more than guns, which comes across a bit backward to be honest – the resulting gameplay just doesn't quite ring true. When you compare Bodycount's system to the variation, scope, and balance of Bulletstorm's 'Skillshots', for example, it really does pale in comaprison.

We haven't been able to sample Bodycount's multiplayer on the review code provided, but the details are fairly straight forward: competitive multiplayer comes with deathma

tch and team deatchmatch modes for up to 12 players, while a co-op mode that has you fighting off waves of enemies across an enclosed map in the now standard Horde/co-op Zombies style helps to bolster long-term appeal. A further Bodycount Mode, which grades your scoring performance in each single-player level and sets it against ranked leaderboards, adds a touch of replayability. All in all though, none of this helps to save Bodycount from being one of the poorer FPS titles so far this year. It's not the worst – that achievement goes to Duke Nukem Forever so far – but it's uncomfortably close nonetheless.

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Shadows of the Damned Review

 

There are some things in life which you know you shouldn't like. Michael Bay films, Elton John's back catalogue, and Jersey Shore, to name a few. And yet, every now and again something comes along which leaves you conflicted. It may well go against the strongest of your principles but, somewhere within it, you see hope. And, infuriatingly, that hope plants a seed in your mind which grows into a type of dysfunctional affection. And that's exactly how I came to like Shadows of the Damned, against all my better judgement.  

The bone of contention here (and the word "bone" is especially appropriate) is the tone of the game. This collaboration between No More Heroes' Suda 51 and Resi 4's Shinji Mikami somehow manages to be both intensely, controller-bitingly annoying and yet wonderfully puerile, often at the same time. It's absolutely bizarre. You shouldn't like it. It's the kind of tits, gore and curse-fest that traditionally gets the anti-gaming lobby all worked up like a drunk Mel Gibson in a synagogue. It's the kind of game the doubters will turn to when trying to convince the nation that games can never compete on an aesthetic level with films and television. And so, at least initially, I felt a little snobby about it. But, by the time I got a few hours into the game, something strange happened. I became anaesthetised to all of Shadows' irritating foibles (and there are many) and began to enjoy it for what it is; a solid, if basic, third-person action title which demands that you jettison your brain for the duration.

The premise of Shadows of the Damned is a gaming classic: rescue the damsel from the demon. We've seen it many, many times. Only Paula is not your average damsel - the game's Latin hero, Garcia Hotspur (yeah, I know) found her in a bin, she dresses like she's auditioning for a sluttier version of The Only Way is Essex and she apparently likes to indulge in the occasional domestic knife attack. The game's triple foreheaded villain, Fleming - king of the demons, has kidnapped Paula and dragged her into the Underworld where he intends to have his mucky way with her for all eternity. Which leaves Garcia and his trusty floating skull sidekick Johnson to follow them to Hell and battle their way to Fleming.

The dialogue between Hotspur and his rehabilitated demon pal, Johnson, tries hard to keep the mood light throughout. I mean, it tries really hard. You'll hear more dick jokes than a Kevin Smith convention and, for the most part, they fall flat with the writing frequently leaping head first over the taste line and into toilet cubicle graffiti territory. But then, just as you're about to indignantly switch it off and read some Oscar Wilde instead, the game spits out a line like "warn me if I have to f*** a horse to open a door" and you find yourself giving it just a few more minutes. It undoubtedly lacks the satire and wit of Suda 51's previous efforts and at times seems to go out of its way to irritate you, but it's hard to argue that it's not in keeping with the game; the game which at one point has you jump through a tastefully-placed portal between a billboard model's legs; the game which features a gun called the Boner. Which later becomes the Hot Boner. It's overwhelmingly silly, frequently ridiculous, but also self-aware. At least I hope it is.

But, of course, Shadows is a collaboration and while the dialogue and storyline have a distinctly OTT Suda feel to them, the gameplay, or rather the gunplay, unsurprisingly recalls Mikami's Resident Evil 4. The over-the-shoulder, laser targeting will be instantly familiar to fans of Capcom's survival-horror classic, although Shadows plays like a juiced-up version. Aiming feels a little smoother, and movement a little quicker which is handy because, once you've made it beyond the rather forgiving earlier sections of the game, you'll frequently be faced with multiple types of enemies, each with different strengths and attack speeds. Aiming for the head is pretty essential for many of the enemies and, thanks to the fluid aiming and nice headshot animations, it feels pretty satisfying to dispatch a series of nasties with successive shots to the noggin. Other foes will sport armour which you can chip away at, while some will require you to think about another of Shadows' core game mechanics, the light/dark system.

Demons, it would seem, are not fond of light and so, throughout the game, you'll find yourself shrouded in the darkness, which causes your health to deplete. So, you'll need to find a way out of it quickly, lest you use up all your booze (yes, booze means health) trying to stay alive. Luckily, each of your weapons has a secondary "light shot" function which, if you fire it at the wall-mounted goat's head nearby, will light up the area. Look, I never promised this was going to make sense. The light shot can also be used to get rid of the darkness that shrouds some enemies, making them invincible to regular ammo. The light/dark mechanic generally works pretty well, adding a puzzle dimension to the balls-out shooter action, but it's hard not to feel like the developer could have made more of it. All too often, you'll find yourself wading into to the darkness simply to shoot a switch that isn't visible in the light, or to find a new enemy's weak spot.

That said, the level design in Shadows isn't bad. Sure, the environments aren't exactly pretty to look at (it's Hell after all), but they are generally well laid-out. Most are smallish, self-contained dungeons with a couple of locked door puzzles and an array of nasties waiting to pop out and rip you to bits. It never feels particularly demanding to find your way out of a level and their modest size makes it feel like you're progressing satisfyingly through the game. The gun upgrade system has a similar effect. Collect red gems and you can upgrade aspects of each gun such as damage, reload speed and capacity, and the game gives you complete freedom to pick and choose. So if you want to completely soup-up the Boner pistol (yeah, I know) early on in the game you can, or you might prefer to spread out your upgrade gems between all other weapons (you also have a shotgun and a machine gun at your disposal).

Bigger weapon upgrades can also be gained by collecting blue gems, which can add new functions to your existing shooters, like a sticky bomb fired from the Hot Boner (still laughing?). These blue gems are generally found once you've taken down one of the game's small roster of bosses. While there aren't a huge amount of major bosses, each is provided a decent back-story through fairy tale books dotted around the levels and boss battles themselves are predictably multi-stage affairs. And you won't have any problem working out what to do, as the conveniently glowing red sections on the bosses means you always know what you're aiming at. Sure, it's a hackneyed game mechanic, but the boss battles are pretty enjoyable if a little undemanding.

And this is probably an appropriate judgement on the game in general: enjoyable if a little undemanding. Seasoned gamers will tear through the regular difficulty level with relative ease and there's not much to compel you into a second play-through. By the end of the somewhat modest campaign, you'll have seen everything Shadows has to offer. And, if you're like me, you'll have had enough of the dick jokes.There are some things in life which you know you shouldn't like.

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Driver San Francisco Review

If we’re being honest, we probably weren’t expecting much from the Driver franchise. With Driv3r sporting more bugs than your average rainforest and the follow-up, Parallel Lines, failing to deliver much more than an economy class GTA experience, no-one was really giving it much thought. When we made the leap to the current generation of consoles, we weren’t anxiously anticipating another instalment in a series already running on empty. And so, when the Driver San Francisco press releases began circulating, they were met with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for the announcement of a new National Lampoon’s film.

But then, something odd happened. Following press events, there were whispers of something a bit different. A bit clever. And more than a bit good. And you know what? The whispers were right.

Taking place only a few months after the events of the much-criticised Driv3r, this latest instalment begins with Tanner’s nemesis Jericho imprisoned in San Francisco. Ever the fiendish master criminal, Jericho engineers his escape as he’s being transported through the streets of SF. Tanner, one of those 80s style cops who relies almost entirely on hunches, predicts trouble and luckily is nearby when the shizzle hits the sizzle. A car chase ensues and Tanner is involved in a serious collision which leaves him comatose with a nasty looking bruise on his nose. The majority of the game then takes place in Tanner’s unconscious mind in what is quite a hefty nod to policeman-in-a-coma TV serial, Life on Mars.

And, surprisingly, Reflections has handled the story pretty damn well. While you shouldn’t expect BAFTA material - there’s a lot of the wise-cracking hit and miss humour we’re so accustomed to seeing in games - there are also a number of nice narrative touches that make the game’s storyline pretty interesting. For one, it’s presented as a kind of action TV serial, complete with “previously on Driver San Francisco…” recaps when you start new story missions and a voiceover/evidence board at the end as Tanner attempts to piece together the puzzle and discover what Jericho’s up to. Sure, these are simple, subtle little devices but they all contribute to a decent single-player game that you’ll want to see through to its conclusion. But, of course, the most impressive aspect of the narrative is that it sets up the game’s primary new feature: shifting.

See, because Tanner’s all unconscious and that - and this whole tale is taking place in his noggin - he can break the rules of physics a little. What this means is that at almost any point in the game, you can leave Tanner’s body behind, float up into the sky of the game’s open world and choose to inhabit the body of another driver. This not only allows Tanner a significant advantage in investigating Jericho, but it also opens up a variety of City Missions to complete. City Missions are basically your side missions in Driver San Francisco and you’ll need to complete a couple to unlock the next episode in Tanner’s story.

And Reflections has cleverly made sure that there’s a fair amount of variety on offer in the City Missions. With races, police chases, stunts and more, the City Missions rarely feel like a chore, but the nicest touch is that, throughout the single-player game, you’ll encounter the same characters at different parts of their own stories. There are the street-racing brothers, for example, attempting to earn enough money to pay their way through college; or the beleaguered TV stunt show camera crew, constantly under pressure to find (or engineer) some good footage for their show; or the two cops who take it upon themselves to rid the city of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. It’s a smart way to keep the side missions interesting in an open world structure and they’re often as engaging, both in terms of narrative and gameplay, as the story missions.

But the impact of the shifting mechanic doesn’t stop there. Because you can do it at almost any time (a few missions prevent you from shifting) it opens up a whole world of options to the player that allow them to get a little creative with their driving. In a race for instance, rather than simply concentrating on your driving, why not make things a little difficult for your competitors? Perhaps you could take control of some oncoming traffic and try to take them out of the race, or maybe you could find yourself a whopping great truck and park it across the road, hit the rearview button and watch the carnage?

It’s a wonderfully subtle and inventive system and you sometimes forget that you have it at your disposal, only to think things through for a second and have a “Eureka!” moment. Reflections is clearly quite proud of the mechanic too, showcasing it in a number of shift-crucial missions. While some may bemoan the game’s lack of on-foot sections, I’d argue that the shift mechanic offers so much more to the player and is a genuinely impressive addition to the series. And, let’s face it, it’s not as if the on-foot sections in previous Driver games were any good, is it?

But, of course, all of this praise for the shifting would be for nought if the driving gameplay wasn’t up to scratch. Luckily, Reflections has managed to craft a driving model that is both solid and will feel distinctly familiar to fans of the series. Car handling in driving games tends to be the boniest of contentions and, gauging response to recently-released demos, opinion seems to be divided. Some may argue that the cars are too geared towards oversteer and drifting, and that it’s all a little forgiving (allowing you to pull off some ridiculous manoeuvres), but this is a Driver game after all. This isn’t about hitting apexes and shaving milliseconds off lap times – this is about weaving through oncoming traffic at 100+ mph, sliding sideways through corners and enacting your 70s cop show fantasies. And Reflections has done a bang-up job with the handling in this writer’s opinion. When you consider that this is all happening at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, you have an adrenaline-fuelled driving experience to deal with.

If this is all sounding a little too positive for you fans of disappointment (read “British gamers”) there are some annoyances to be found in the game. Some of the mission checkpointing seems a little inconsistent and you’ll frequently have to replay sections of missions so many times that you can memorise the dialogue. Also, while it’s nice to see licensed vehicles in a Driver game for the first time, you get the feeling that a little more work could have gone into making their respective handling models unique. You might also find yourself thinking that San Francisco ought to look a little prettier than the soft focus, hazy offering that Reflections has crafted (well, I suppose it could be the famous SF fog). But it’s safe to say that the good dramatically outweighs the bad in this latest Driver and perhaps the most impressive aspect of the game is its longevity. In the single-player game, as well as the story and city missions, the game map is also littered with driving challenges (or Dares) which will test your skills even further. And there are the collectibles which unlock a series of film-inspired challenges like the Mustang chase in Bullitt, for instance. And, of course, Director Mode returns allowing you to craft some tasty replays of your driving prowess. Or, in my case, lack thereof.

But it’s the game’s multiplayer modes that will keep you coming back to San Francisco and it’s all credit to the developer that it has ensured the game’s USP – the shift mechanic – remains central to the fun in multiplayer. With a wide variety of game modes on offer (we were sadly only able to try Tag and Trailblazer) there’s a lot to appeal to the online driving fan and shifting adds a new dimension of chaos to the standard competitive driving experience. Creativity is the name of the game and, from just a few minutes online with the game, you’ll witness some fiendish attempts to ruin your race and an awful lot of crunching metal.

Somehow, it seems as if Reflections has managed to achieve the impossible with San Francisco – it has taken the Driver franchise back to its roots whilst also pushing it forward into new territory and the result is undoubtedly the most complete, polished offering in the series to date. Tearing through the streets of San Francisco, forcing your car into manoeuvres that it probably shouldn’t be able to do with the knowledge that you can hit X and take control of another car at any time is just as fun as it sounds.

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Call Of Juarez: The Cartel Review

The announcement of Call of Juarez: The Cartel came as quite a surprise to many in the industry. The traditionally Western shooter franchise, we discovered, has jettisoned its once-unique selling point (perhaps following the release of Red Dead Redemption) and moved the action into modern times; the New West, we’re told on the box. It seems like an odd decision – if the Juarez brand of Old-West shooter was no longer viable, why transport the franchise to a new setting rather than starting anew? And, one entire game later, I still can’t answer that question. If anything, it raises another question: at what point in the game’s development was the decision made? Because, sadly, The Cartel has a distinctly unfinished feel about it.

Set in modern day California and Mexico, The Cartel tells the story of an inter-agency task force formed in response to the bombing of the DEA office by the infamous Mendoza drugs cartel. Players are given the option of playing as one of three main protagonists: dirty DEA agent Eddie Guerra, FBI agent Kimberly Evans (whose brother is a gangland player) and gruff LAPD detective Ben McCall, one of the game’s few nods to its Old West predecessors (Reverend Ray McCall was a central character in both of The Cartel’s predecessors). This motley trio are tasked with smoking out the Mendoza Cartel by pitting LA’s gangs against each other and soon become embroiled in a *sigh* grand conspiracy that, you guessed it, goes all the way to the top of California’s law enforcement agencies.   

The narrative is clearly designed as an homage to gritty cop dramas like The Shield, where the line between cops and bad guys is pretty blurred. However, Techland seems to have assumed that grittiness can only be achieved by excessive, bone-headed profanity and so you’re faced with a deluge of naughty words, none of which are used in a remotely creative context. Initially it’s pretty funny but it soon starts to grate as you realise you’re listening to (lots and lots of) dialogue that even adolescent boys would balk at. Big and/or clever, Techland? No. The story – minus the profanity – isn’t too bad, however, and at least provides reasonable context to the action although it’s hard not to argue that The Cartel has lost some of what made the Juarez series so popular. Techland has never been famed for story telling subtlety, but there were some stylish elements to the first two games (shooting people while quoting scripture, for instance, was pretty cool) which are largely absent from The Cartel.

In fact, for much of the game, The Cartel doesn’t feel much like a Juarez experience, at least not until later on when we venture across the border into Mexico and ultimately towards the familiar sprawling vistas of Juarez, now nothing more than a “ghost town”. A ghost town populated by many, many bad guys constantly trying to make your life a misery. So, a lot like Hull, you could argue.

This confused sense of identity could perhaps be overcome if the game had tight, exciting gameplay to fall back on. Well… do you really need me to finish? Ironically, by shifting the game to present times, the developer has highlighted just how dilapidated and creaky its proprietary Chrome Engine has become. The first two games in the series offered up some impressive, atmospheric panoramas of The Old West but it seems that the game engine struggles to replicate the achievement in The Cartel. The visuals are washed-out, blurry and pretty flat. It seems there’s just too much…well… ‘stuff’ in modern times, and the Chrome Engine doesn’t do ‘stuff’ particularly well. Perhaps if Techland had seen fit to base the action in some more creative venues, the visuals wouldn’t seem quite so lacking. But sadly, we get the standard warehouses, docks, and nightclubs that are so mystifyingly popular in mid-level shooters.

Unfortunately the gameplay doesn’t fare much better, either. The game engine feels a little sluggish, especially in comparison to other successful present day shooters. You’ll also have to deal with an inconsistent framerate (on the 360 version at least) and dodgy hitboxes, two things which combine to make The Cartel a pretty irksome experience at times. Strangely, however, you soon become accustomed to it and you can almost predict when and where the game is going to start chugging, You’ll also get used to the gameplay pretty quickly too as, it turns out, there’s not much in the way of variety.

On the surface it seems as if Techland has tried to mix things up a little by interspersing the shooting gameplay with driving sections and the occasional boss fight. “A boss fight in a shooter, you say? Oh, you mean a helicopter.” Yes. Yes I do. The problem is that these non-shooty sections play out in almost identical fashion each time and so you realise that the developer has made efforts to break up the repetition with… repetitive gameplay. An admirably homeopathic approach to gameplay, no doubt. But one that really doesn’t work.

As if the sub-par visuals and gameplay weren’t enough to keep The Cartel from bothering the upper echelons of the scoring scale, you then have the game’s wealth of glitches to consider. It seems as if level layout and scripting were created in different area codes as they often bear little relation to each other. All too often in The Cartel, you’ll wander off the beaten track and confuse the game into playing a line of dialogue you heard five minutes ago. Or, you’ll clear out all of the bad guys and wait (and wait and wait) for a checkpoint that never materialises, forcing you to reload the last one.

It’s amateurish stuff that smacks of a game being pushed for release before it has been adequately tested. The breaking point for this reviewer came when, in a gunfight in a Juarez saloon, supposed super-agent Eddie Guerra – scourge of drug lords everywhere – became irretrievably stuck behind a bar stool. Makes you wonder why the Cartel bothers to arm its guys with guns when apparently small items of furniture will suffice. In these times of economic strife, it’s surely something worth considering.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of The Cartel, however, is that it has some good ideas. The co-op system being one example. With three main characters on offer, The Cartel offers you the chance to play the entire game in co-op which, in itself, is nothing new. However, as well as the overall objective of shooting baddies, each player also has secret secondary objectives that they must complete without being spotted by their team-mates, lest they lose the XP reward to whoever spotted them. It’s an intriguing idea and adds a welcome level of intrigue and suspicion to the co-op experience. Or at least it would if it had been developed further – the secret objectives almost exclusively involve collecting an item from somewhere in the level. Which, it turns out, isn’t that thrilling. With more interesting objectives (silencing witnesses, hampering your team-mates efforts etc.) the competitive co-op concept could have been something special. However, this might seem like a churlish criticism when you compare the co-op to the competitive online game which, at the time of reviewing, was so crippled by lag that this reviewer was unable to join more than one functional game in two hour long sessions.

And so, with The Cartel proving to be the lowest point in a pretty decent franchise, it’s hard to see where Ubi and Techland can take Call of Juarez from here. Especially considering they’ve abandoned the one aspect of the series that stood it apart from the FPS competition: the Old West. With its new modern setting, the franchise now finds itself in a much more crowded marketplace and, despite threatening to explore some interesting new ideas, it struggles to compete.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review

Deus Ex's re-entry into the gaming scene couldn't be more timely. In an era when the world's two biggest publishers trash talk each other's impending blockbuster shooters like adolescent schoolboys – games that will once again have us headshotting, fragging, and ducking for cover in a feedback loop of mind-numbing muscle memory - the last stand of the Eidos brand name in an unassuming Montreal studio reminds us all why first-person shooters were once the future. A future, much like that of Deus Ex's own fictional universe, that hasn't panned out quite as bountifully as initial discoveries and innovations had once promised. The dawn of the FPSRPG at the start of the last decade has resulted in very few followers over the last eleven years and only one major disciple in Ken Levine's Irrational Games studio. For such a critically acclaimed genre then, it remains a mystery why so few publishers have managed to wean themselves off the teat of lowest-common-denominator FPS gaming.

You see, Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually makes you think about what you're doing, and the resulting sensation is kind of like the end scene to Ninja Theory's Enslaved. It's as if you've suddenly been emancipated  and realise that you were a wilful participant in your own servitude all along. You could almost kick yourself, couldn't you? Here's what you've been missing: first-person shooters that allow you to approach a problem in a way of your choosing, and not in the dual-pillar 'Assault or Stealth' approach favoured by the likes of Far Cry 2 either. Instead, it's crawling through air vents, hacking computers, modding guns, talking your way out of a tight spot (or into one), smashing through weakened walls to find a hidden weapons stash, jumping from a five-storey building and stealth-killing two guards upon landing, or unleashing hell with a gun turret that you've turned upon its owners.

It's all of the above, and then a whole lot more. The real icing on the cake, though, is that none of it is prescribed. You don't have to do any of those things; on almost any given objective facing you, you can choose a multitude of ways in which to complete your task – it's a bit like pick 'n' mix sweets, or bespoke tailoring. Fans of the series' two predecessors will of course know that this makes Human Revolution its father's son, and it's a testament to the brilliance of the original Deus Ex games that almost all of their ideas are loyally updated into Human Revolution's formula. This latest instalment doesn't so much reinvent the framework of what Deus Ex is as refine and contemporise what it was (another piece of music to the ears of hardcore fans, no doubt) but it's the ways in which it's all brought up-to-date that are so impressive.

Take the hacking, for example. Of the multitude of options by which protagonist, Adam Jensen can add 'Augmentations' to his cybernetic make-up, this one is perhaps the most in-depth of the lot with 16 different choices for augmentation in total. The hacking interface itself is incredibly detailed, so much so that you'll be totally confused by it for the first hour or so of gaming. Where the likes of BioShock and Timesplitters opted for a Pipe Mania blueprint in their hacking mini-games, Human Revolution instead uses a system that convincingly depicts the actual process of hacking (who'd have thought it could be conceivably possible?!). There are nodes to capture and fortify, tracers to avoid detection from, uni- and bi-directional ports, nuke viruses to unleash, stop worms to slow down or halt detection, and even spam folders to negotiate. Not since Introversion's Uplink has there been this kind of detailed hacking in a video game, and that game was based entirely around hacking!

This kind of added depth and complexity to the upgrade tree can be seen across the board of augmentations. In fact, the full list is so all-encompassing that a few of them almost seem to take away from the gameplay in its naked form at times. Take, for example, the 'Social Enhancer' augmentation, which allows Jensen to sense what a character is thinking and predict which dialogue choice they'll respond most favourably to. The upshot is that you can reliably persuade other people around to your way of thinking. Without the perk though, key paths of dialogue become an engrossing challenge as you attempt to read the reactions of NPCs and select responses on a hunch. It's a credit to the dialogue system that the game is more enjoyable without the 'Social Enhancer' perk, even if your gift of the gab fails and the quest is made harder as a result. The same can be said for some of the stealth augmentations, which include the standard vision cones, sound sensors, and last known location indicators. Yes, they're all very helpful, but the stealth gameplay is so good that it just feels more palpable; more exciting when you play without using all the trinkets.

But it's not all enhancements and refinements to the classic Deus Ex formula. Seventh-generation gaming comes with a much higher bar in terms of production, and Human Revolution doesn't disappoint here either. Whether it's the slick cover system that moves between third and first-person perspectives seamlessly – offering semi-automated commando roles between objects – or the bronzed colour-palette of the game world, everything wreaks of high production values. What really hits home about Human Revolution is just how immersive it manages to be - we've never had so much fun reading capillaries of back-story in strewn e-books, or piecing together a minor character's life by hacking their e-mails. Beyond all of the superb gameplay, it's just damn good sci-fi at the end of the day. There's a genuinely engaging storyline that rarely falters throughout what can be a plentiful 20-hour playthrough (if you're particularly diligent), and it's all wrapped together through a variety of city hubs that reach up towards the Blade Runner echelon of vivid imaginings. Technically, the graphics won't be setting any new benchmarks, but in terms of how they depict the setting, few games manage to do a better job.

Deus Ex didn't come all of this way only to forget where it hailed from in the first place though. Touches of classic PC gaming pepper the experience (such as an old-school grid system for the inventory), ensuring that this is one legendary PC series that's managed to keep its head while all around it others are losing theirs. Truly, it's a hard game to fault... but inevitably it's not perfect. The AI is, well, astonishingly good actually for the type of game that Deus Ex is, but it's not faultless due to the odd glitch. Likewise, it being such an open-ended game, there are minor exploits to be taken advantage of here and there. Criticisms have also been made of the bosses (specifically that it's impossible to beat them without using violence) and we'll concede that some shots do need to be fired in anger. Nonetheless, there are stealthy way-rounds (very long and sometimes arduous ones, we'll admit) that allow you to defeat each boss with minimal violent actions. Loading screens also take some flak because they happen often and for long periods. All things considered then, why are we giving it a 10 if it's not perfect? Because it's the best FPS we've played in years, and that's enough.

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From Dust Review

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best console games of this generation aren't found in your local retailer at £50 a pop – they're on XBLA and PSN for a tenner each. We can debate the reasons why until Eric Chahi returns in another 13 years to make his next game, but the simple fact of the matter is that there's less financial risk involved in making a digi-download title. Less financial risk = more innovation, originality and gameplaying whimsy. If you tell a publisher's executives that you want $50 million of their money to make a game about intergalactic space monkeys, they'll laugh you out of the room and, if you're lucky, advise you to come back when you've got a good concept for an arcade racing game with power-ups. Tell them that you want a tiny fraction of that amount for your wacky project, though, and they might just listen for more than a few seconds.

You might have already guessed, then, that From Dust is the latest XBLA title (coming to Steam and PSN in the coming weeks) to join the likes of Braid, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, Castle Crashers, Costume Quest, Stacking, ilomilo – we could go on all day – as not only one of the best original games available for £10 or under on a digital download platform, but one of the best games available period. After a sabbatical from the game industry that's lasted over a decade, Eric Chahi (the visionary that brought us the likes of Another World and Heart of Darkness in the 90s) has returned from his trips to active volcanoes and general wanderings in the wilderness to bring these experiences and influences directly into his new game.

Unlike Another World and Heart of Darkness though, which attracted cult appeal and critical reverence for their manipulation of genre, From Dust revisits a classic genre that's somehow fallen by the wayside so far this century and, as a result, is more a contemporary revamp of old ideas than it is a plethora of new ones. Originally popularised by Peter Molyneux's Populous, the god game genre and its derivatives were all the rage back in the 90s before PC sales slumped, DRMs became a divisive issue, and developers even started to worry about transferring cursor-based interfaces to consoles. Perhaps that's the most surprising thing about From Dust actually: despite the fact that it uses what's effectively a strategy game UI (albeit a simplistic one), the lack of a mouse rarely holds the game back. On the contrary in fact, in some elements of the gameplay a thumbstick seems to lend itself well to the layout.

Featuring a bunch of wandering nomads who look a bit like some of the folks from Bruce Parry's superb documentaries on the BBC, From Dust is an exploration of ancient, tribal understandings of the geological world; the mythical belief systems that are built-up to explain why volcanoes, tsunamis, and sediment erosion happen. There really is an incredibly robust and complex game engine underpinning all of this, too. Beyond you or I having fun with it in a purpose-built video game, the engine has potential applications as an educational tool much like the Creature Creator does in Maxis and Will Wright's Spore. Prolonged exposure to From Dust will genuinely teach any 12 year-old the basic tenets of geology. It seems that even finer points of the science such as water tables and soil fertility have been factored into the whole system – put that in your pipe and smoke it, anti-video game brigade!

The game never gets so boring as to explain any of these technicalities to you, though. Instead, it's all passed down by a process of subconscious osmosis – mystical talk of 'Breath' powers and ancestral knowledge depose all of the grey, geography textbook matter, but the learning and understanding process is just as clear even if it's not quite as explicit. Every game needs an objective though, and From Dust's is simple: construct villages (built around 'Totems') and keep your villagers alive. Each stage presents a new geological challenge to wrestle with, whether it's a volcano on one side of the alley and a river that consistently bursts its banks on the other, or a series of tiny archipelagos that you have to link-up for your tribal people to spread across. Whether you're depositing huge heaps of sand to re-route the drainage basin of a river, desperately trying to suck up lava and dump it elsewhere as it creeps towards a village, or attempting to spread plant life as far across a territory as possible to unlock a 'Memory', From Dust actually remains relatively simple and that's perhaps its greatest achievement.

The control mechanisms and various 'Breath' powers are all pretty self-explanatory and have been kept to a streamlined minimum, thereby making some potentially complex gameplay pretty straightforward. There's a fascinating open-endedness to all of the various stages as well. Such is the power granted to you by the 'Breaths' that there are multiple solutions to most of the problems presented in each stage. Ubisoft Montpellier hasn't relied on prescribed design here, instead presenting some very difficult obstacles to overcome but leaving you with a wide range of options as to how you might solve them. It's a brave move and one that's incredibly difficult to nail without leaving gaping exploits in the game, but you'll never feel as if there's a straightforward path of least resistance in any given stage. Instead of giving you a paint-by-numbers canvas, it feels as if the game is instead making that canvas blank and giving you a range of utensils with which to draw up a solution.

From Dust's story mode comes in at around 5-7 hours, which is already plenty of content for a £10 XBLA game, but there's also a Challenge Mode with loads of bite-sized, 'scenario' style stages to play through and unlock once the main event is bested. Each challenge comes with its own limitations or handicaps, such as taking away all 'Breath' powers or only allowing you to manipulate earth, while the tasks are more specific too (e.g. keep all your villagers alive for a certain time, or reach a precarious or difficulty positioned 'Totem' etc.). Some are insanely difficult and will require many attempts but most are designed around stages that take under 5-10 minutes to run through, making the mode easy to dip in and out of – online rankings and leaderboards keep them addictive as well. All things considered, From Dust offers a similar number of gameplay hours to many full-price, triple-A games and it's more entertaining than most of them as well.

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