Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions

Here's an approach to retro gaming we can really get behind. It's three different eras of Pac-Man and Galaga, beginning with their arcade debuts some 30 years ago, skipping ahead to a pair of relatively recent spin-offs, and finishing up with two brand new games

While a little more generosity would have been appreciated - the cartridge omits numerous sequels that could surely have fitted into the space taken up by an absolutely abysmal 3D Pac-Man video - the concept is sound.

To begin at the beginning, the original arcade versions are emulated as faithfully as they have been since people figured out how to do this stuff on a PC in the '90s. They're ancient games, just a few kilobytes in size, and anyone who's interested has probably played them already on numerous different formats.

Here, though, they're better presented than ever before. You can choose to play on a cocktail cabinet, which is viewed from directly above, or via the oblique angle of an upright cabinet. In either case, the display is slightly curved to simulate the appearance of an old glass monitor, and you can change the bezel artwork to match the US or Japanese version. The cocktail machine even comes with a little pile of coins on the side.

All of these little touches look particularly good in 3D, with the screen appearing to be positioned a little way below the artwork. It's far better than the treatment they've given the Game Boy titles on Virtual Console, although the resolution of the 3DS screen isn't quite high enough to make the score text look crisp where it curves in the corners.

If you want a more accurate pixel-for-pixel display, there's always the option to play the games at their native resolution with no special effects. A bit dull, really, and if you've got the 3D slider turned up then Pac-Man seems to float above the maze in this mode, which looks horrible.

The two recent games are Pac-Man Championship Edition and Galaga Legions, which appeared on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Pac-Man CE is clearly the pick of them. In fact, it's the best thing on the whole cartridge - and were it not for the fact that the superior Pac-Man CE DX came out last year, we'd say it's probably the finest retro reimagining ever.

It plays out in a similar fashion to the original, but instead of having to clear an entire maze, the screen is divided in half. When you've eaten all the dots on one side, a fruit pops up on the other, which you eat to refresh the maze and make more dots appear.

The dots are arranged in patterns, leading you on a non-stop, dot-gobbling route from one side to the other and back again, constantly pursued by ghosts. The more you score, the faster it gets, and you've got five minutes to rack up as many points as possible.

The circle pad is a surprisingly good control method, and despite the tiny screen we managed to score just shy of 250,000 on our first go - only 30,000 less than we managed on Xbox, and good enough for a world ranking of 27 on the sparsely populated leaderboard. Did this game really sell only 300 copies in Japan?

There are five other modes, with different mazes and longer time limits, but these ones don't have leaderboards, which renders them rather pointless. Even if there's hardly anybody playing...

Galaga Legions has also been recently superseded, but we're stuck with the old version on 3DS. It's a kind of memory test, where enemy fighters swarm slowly towards you in impossible numbers. You couldn't take them all out alone, so you have a couple of indestructible satellite ships that can be placed as static turrets.

Waves tend to arrive in pairs, so you position the satellites to take care of them and use your main ship to mop up the rest. Ideally, you'll hit the one special ship in each wave that makes all the rest explode at once. It's incredibly stressful.

than the older ones. Pac-Man Tilt reminds us of Sonic crossed with Sony's PSP platformer Loco Roco. You make Pac-Man roll and zoom through tunnels and loops, with the added twist of environmental hazards that require tilting the 3DS. It's not terrible, but boredom stifled our urge to press on to the end of its 25 main stages.

Galaga 3D Impact, on the other hand, is really quite bad. It's like Face Raiders, except instead of playing against a real-world backdrop you're in a spaceship. The angle of it changes as you float through the void, and because you can turn 360 degrees it's all too easy to get a view of some unidentifiable part of the back of the cockpit while you wave the 3DS around, searching for the window.

Rounding off the compilation is a 3D movie showing the 'story' of Pac-Man (it's set in the future, apparently) that's so embarrassingly terrible it has to be a joke. It only lasts a few minutes, but we'd certainly never watch it again.

And that's all. For this price it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect at least twice as many games, but that's just the way things are. Rich retro fans will enjoy it.

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Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident

You know when you hear the word 'incident' that something grisly has gone down. 'An incident on the line' always means some wandering cattle are under the wheels of the 14.43 from Bristol.

The first thing the police do after finding a corpse is set up 'an incident room'. And of course there was an 'incident' when Matthew visited Cadbury World...

So The Malgrave Incident had us intrigued when it was announced. Our excitement took a nosedive when it appeared the game would be a 'hidden object' puzzler, but it's actually a more traditional point 'n' click adventure than the series' last Nintendo outing, Mystery Case Files: Millionheir on DS.

Where Millionheir was almost exclusively a 'find the item' title, Malgrave only chucks these bits in here and there. They're just as tedious as they were in Millionheir but they are at least well illustrated and use some clever foreground/background shifting to make them more dynamic.

Unlimited hints are available during these bits in case you can't pick out a fan or chess piece in a sea of debris, but it's during the adventure bit of the game that you're more likely to need guidance. Only you won't get any...

The game plonks you on an eerie island, home to the eccentric Winston Malgrave, whose odd activities you must investigate. You'll increasingly find yourself wandering in circles trying to find the one vital item that will let you get closer to discovering what he's up to.

Once you have the things you need it's rarely to hard to work out what to do with them, but the backtracking can be tiresome. Layton-ish puzzles pop up here and there and can be frustratingly oblique.

Hints for these sections would have been useful; instead there's the option to skip them altogether but that feels like a cop-out - we'd rather work out the answer with a little help than simply give up.

Up to three mates can chip in during the hidden object bits to look for missing items, although you could always gather round one remote to play by committee during the other puzzles.

It's a bit of a worry that Nintendo are pushing this as one of their big Wii games of the moment. It's well made for a 'casual' game and fairly enjoyable, if frustrating, but not really A Big Deal.

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Inazuma Eleven

Football these days is all about statistics. As more and more money pours into the game, we've reached a stage where every single event, both major and minor, on and off the pitch is reduced to a mere figure in a gigantic database.

Turn on Sky Sports News at any time of day and your eyes are assaulted by numbers, while Opta records everything from the number of goals scored and fouls committed to the most darts related extra-curricular misdemeanours.

With that in mind, it's no surprise to see someone blend the sport with the stat-loving world of the RPG, even if it's a bit of a shock that it's taken this long.

The biggest eyebrow-raiser, however, is the length of the wait for a UK release. The home of football has been tutting loudly and tapping its watch for three bleddy years since Inazuma Eleven's Japanese debut. Indeed, in the east they're already up to a second sequel, with a Wii spin-off to boot. So what gives?

The anime gives, that's what. It's taken until now for a kids' channel to get around to screening the series in the UK, and thus it's the perfect time for Nintendo to capitalise. Trouble is, we're now left with a game that's three years old and starting to look its age. Inazuma's a great idea in an embryonic state - one destined to benefit from the improvements that hindsight (and sequels) can bring.

Perhaps Nintendo should have skipped the first and brought us number two or three instead, though it could be that Level-5's new western arm will result in a faster turnaround for the follow-ups. Either way, what we're left with is something that our extensive knowledge of sporting parlance suggests footy connoisseurs would describe as a game of two constituent parts of equal size.

As Mark Evans, goalkeeper, captain and professional Luke-from-Professor-Layton-impersonator of the Raimon Junior High football team, your job is to build a team capable of challenging for honours. Some people can be easily convinced into joining, while others need to be cajoled before they step over that white line.

You explore the school and surrounding area (whose borders gradually expand the further you progress) from a top-down view with stumpy characters trotting through fairly bland environments. It's uncommonly unattractive for a Level-5 game, far from the polished presentation we've come to expect from Layton and the like, even if its age is a mitigating factor.

The characters are amiable enough, though the dialogue tends to skew a little younger than you might expect. Level-5 mastered something universally appealing with Layton; Inazuma, by contrast, feels precision-targeted at ten-year-old boys. That won't matter to many of the anime's fans, but it's a slight disappointment to us oldies who miss the wry wit and gentlemanly charm of everyone's favourite professor.

Once you've fulfilled the right conditions, you'll get the opportunity to test out the skills of your new recruits on the pitch. Again, for the most part, you're left to watch chunky sprites amble about, though this time you're in direct control of them all, executing runs, passes and tackles with the stylus.

It's a control scheme more elegant than the game itself - with the pitch confined to a single screen it's easy to feel hemmed in, and unless you're quick enough to guide every off-the-ball runner as well as the man in possession, you can sometimes find yourself crowded out.

With a little practice, you'll learn that a short passing game seems to be the best way to succeed. Passing direct to feet is the safe option, albeit at the loss of momentum; sending players on runs into space before pinging the ball a yard or so ahead of them is the key to unlocking stubborn defences.

Shooting pauses the action, giving you the chance to select the strength and height of the shot, though you can also increase your chances of scoring by spending Technique Points on a potentially net-busting super-strike.

Such incredi-moves aren't only reserved for the forwards, with wingers able to clone themselves to bamboozle opponents, and goalies teleporting from one side of the net to the other to make impossible saves.

Inazuma takes the idea of erecting a defensive wall all too literally - you'd think the concrete constructions featured here would count as cheating, but officials happily turn a blind eye. Fun when you're blocking; less so when you're on the receiving end. Who's the b...[blighter - Ed] in the black, indeed.

Still, in the context of the anime, such Naruto-esque nonsense actually seems to fit. Subtlety isn't really Inazuma's game and it's this explosive drama that ultimately elevates it above its fairly mundane mechanics. The story might be a fairly straightforward rise-of-theunderdog tale, but as your team of loveable losers improve, you'll be rooting for them all the way to the Big Important Must-Win-Or-Else Tournament.

On a console hardly short of RPGs, it's more of a top ten side hoping for a decent cup run than a genuine title contender, but Inazuma isn't without its charms, particularly if you're a fan of the sport - or, indeed, of anime. Younger audiences will certainly get a kick out of taking Raimon Junior High all the way to the top, even if the football they'll play to get there is more Birmingham than Barcelona.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Few games do so much, so well, and for so long as Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

In any other year, we'd have our Game of the Year winner locked down before the end of August, but with the likes of Skyrim hitting shelves in the next few months, Deus Ex is in for a fight, and a sneak, and a bit of a chat, and a punch-up, and whatever else you fancy doing, really.

It begins with conspiracy - a shadowy organisation attacks Sarif Industries, kills nine tenths of their research staff and leaves their security specialist, Adam Jensen, broken and dying. Jensen's body is rebuilt with Sarif's own military-grade augmentation technology and he finds himself on the tail of the men who killed his ex-girlfriend and turned him into a mechanical man.

The pre-credits tutorial sets the stage for almost 30 hours in Human Revolution's take on 2027. It's the most credible videogame world since BioShock's Rapture - every location telling a story about what happened before you arrived and what might happen when you leave.

Over those 30 hours not one minute is wasted; Human Revolution never takes your time for granted and never bogs you down with busy work. In every city hub there are half a dozen side-missions to complete alongside the main missions; you'll be tasked with recovering evidence from a body in a police station's morgue, but find yourself taking down a corrupt cop, investigating your ex-girlfriend's disappearance, stealing weapons from gangland territory, and doing anything but the job at hand. Every mission plays differently, and every mission can be played however you want.

Deus Ex encourages you towards stealth with enemies who can blow Jensen away in just two or three shots, but if you'd rather treat it as a shooter, it's down with that. When you find yourself forced into a firefight every fully upgradeable weapon packs a punch and the enemy AI puts up a tremendous fight, moving a couple of men to flank while the rest suppress as a group.

Augment your armour and electromagnetic shielding, install a rebreather to cope with gas grenades, and improve your arms to takedown two enemies at a time and you'll become an unstoppable killing machine. And who doesn't want that?

If you'd rather go sneaky you can install a cloaking system, look through walls, mark targets, and dampen the sound of footsteps to move through the game like a ghost. In those same levels where you can throw down and shootout, you'll find room to hide, sneak, and use your augmentations to your advantage. You can rack up a bodycount in the hundreds, or collect an Achievement for not killing a single soul.

Human Revolution is a proper RPG where you have a real choice about everything you do. You'll make decisions you'll have to think about for minutes at a time, weighing the possibilities; you'll break your zero-kill streak and murder people because they deserved it rather than because the game forced you; you'll risk your life and the lives of others to save characters you've genuinely come to like.

It's a game filled with branching paths where every decision feels like a decisive moment, and a game where the results are always satisfying no matter what path you take.

But we've seen this before, after a fashion. Back in 2000, the original Deus Ex changed everything. With help from System Shock 2, it forged a template the best developers would crib from for the next decade. That game wasn't a great shooter or a great stealth game, the AI was thick, combat was lightweight, and stealth was often as much about exploitation as skill.

Somehow though, even with those problems, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Human Revolution, however, has no caveats; it is a great shooter, it is a great stealth game, and those parts come together to make it a great RPG.

It's a once-in a-generation kind of game, and the first game in a decade to do everything the original Deus Ex did, and to do almost all of it better.

Want a second or third opinion? Read PSM3's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review and Xbox World's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review for verdicts on the console versions.

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Driver San Francisco

Remember the hazy days of 1998? B*Witched had two UK No.1s. ITV's Airline was pretty much the most popular thing on the goggle box. And Godzilla was the third-highest grossing movie of the year.

Basically, we were all idiots.

Except, that is, for a bunch of smart-thinking types over at Reflections Interactive - who treated us to genre-busting gaming classic Driver.

If you witnessed it, you probably ached for a return to form with each further addition to the dwindling series. And just like us, you were probably perennially disappointed.

And just like us, when you heard about Driver: San Francisco for the first time last year, you probably shared a mini-sick with fellow fans - especially when the whole 'Tanner can float between cars like a ghost because he's in a coma' thing dropped.

If you're really new and this is the first you've heard of the spooky mechanic, swallow those chunks and allow us to explain.

In Driver: San Francisco, everybody's favourite Green Cross Code-curbing cop John Tanner is blasted into a coma by long-time nemesis Charles Jericho. A ballsy move, and ultimately a game-breaking one, you might think: the amount of driving you can do from a hospital bed is limited at best.

Think again. This is John Tanner we're talking about - he can rattle four wheels through a box-heavy alley in his sleep. Literally.

In fact, that's exactly what he does. The majority of Driver: San Francisco takes place inside Tanner's head, in a reality where he can make like Google Earth at a moment's notice and 'Shift' between vehicles.

It's a simple device. As you're tooting around like some road dependent schmuck a press of the X button will lift you out of your body and high above the streets, where you can glide about with the left stick, target another vehicle and possess its driver.

If that premise sounds a bit dumb, that's because it is. But the team at Reflections knows exactly that - which is what allows it to work. Instead of trying force the idea into the bleak, super-serious Driver world we're used to, this is a brighter, funnier game that doesn't try to be anything more than fun.

It means that the opening hour or so bumbles through something close to narrative explanation that, to be honest, could be omitted entirely. Once everything's in place and you're back behind the wheel, you don't really care why you can pull a Casper at will.

On the road the Shift mechanic is smooth, well implemented and actually pretty useful.

If you're chasing a perp, for example, and your fellow road-users aren't doing their bit by risking their life and limb to slam into the high-speed getaway car, you can do the old up and down, whoosh into their head and take matters into your own hands.

Similarly, if you're falling behind your target you can use Shift to hop forward a few cars to get you back in the game.

Side-missions are based on Shift as well. A number of different tasks are triggered by possessing certain citizens. Old favourites to the genre are all accounted for; cops v robbers, stunt runs and races are all but a Shift away and more inventive scenarios such as possessing a kid on his driving lesson in order to make his instructor kack his pants are welcome.

Of course, the glaring problem with having the ability to Shift is that you can go through the game without actually doing all that much driving. It means that the single-player campaign (coming in at around seven or eight hours) can be rattled through pretty quickly because its very easy to give yourself the upper-hand.

The way the game combats the quick-fixers though is, thankfully, by making the driving itself really fun. While Shift allows for some mischievous moments that are certainly very satisfying, to cut down the time you spend actually behind the wheel any more than necessary would be a massive own goal.

There's over 200 miles of San Francisco road out there to barrel down for a start. Again, allow us to hark back to the brilliant original Driver and you'll remember the excitement surrounding massive, detailed open-world replicas of San Francisco, LA, New York and Miami.

San Francisco was by far the most fun to play back in the day with its nice long straights and ridiculously steep inclines perfect for some air time (Remember Nob Hill? Snigger), and so it makes a welcome return.

But this time San Francisco has been tweaked to offer only the most car chase friendly elements. The massive hills and swooping bends have been taken and squished together to form a version of the city that's geared towards fun.

It works as well, with chaotic pursuits constantly taking unexpected turns, narrow misses and the odd mid-air collision.

Of course the intricately detailed city can only be partially credited for the experience. It provides a playground but it's the inhabitants that make the game. While in previous Driver games a target would sometimes reach an area of the map and just start circling the block and police, although relentless tended to choose bunching over well thought out tactics, San Francisco's AI is smart.

You won't outrun the police with a brainless sprint down the nearest and straightest road, you'll need to skim on-coming traffic and take sudden turns to shake them. When you're the chaser, you'll know exactly how it feels as well. With the AI being particularly crafty on the escape, it's a case of anticipating when and how they'll turn and intercepting at the right time.

While Reflections might have gone with the crazy when it comes to premise, the actual handling is as solid, weighty and realistic as ever. Obviously we're not talking simulation racing here, drifts are easily executed, there are enough jump opportunities to warrant a town planning enquiry and cinematic sizzle is at the heart of everything. It's the two elements combined that make Driver: San Francisco great.

And it looks as good as it feels, thanks in part to that Hollywood blockbuster ambition. Taking a leaf out of Burnout's book every totalling crash is slowed right down so that you can see every splinter and shard litter the road. And splinter they do, with paint peeling, glass smashing and tyres ripping like a destructive take on an M&S advert.

It's almost a shame because the line-up of licensed 1970s cars - 100 in total including Tanner's Dodge Challenger - has been lovingly recreated in lush detail. They're a key part to creating that feel of being in a classic roadster film.

Clear inspiration from the likes of Bullit inform every stylistic element right down to the impressive soundtrack. It's made explicit though when you pick up one of the many Movie Sequence tokens scattered about the city.

They're another string to the side-mission bow, unlocking special challenges in the main menu allowing you to recreate iconic Hollywood car chases

That's the power of Driver when it's done well; it makes you feel like you're in Tinseltown's biggest, fastest car chase. But it shouldn't try to recreate the rest of the film - that's the important bit.

So the story will get in the way at first - Reflections is obviously a bit nervous about introducing its zany Shift concept without narrative explanation - but, once you're behind the wheel, you'll realise that San Francisco is definitely a long-overdue return to form for the Driver series.

Oh yes. It's time to party like it's 1998. Stick some B*Witched on, would you dear?

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Few games do so much, so well, and for so long as Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

In any other year, we'd have our Game of the Year winner locked down before the end of August, but with the likes of Skyrim hitting shelves in the next few months, Deus Ex is in for a fight, and a sneak, and a bit of a chat, and a punch-up, and whatever else you fancy doing, really.

It begins with conspiracy - a shadowy organisation attacks Sarif Industries, kills nine tenths of their research staff and leaves their security specialist, Adam Jensen, broken and dying. Jensen's body is rebuilt with Sarif's own military-grade augmentation technology and he finds himself on the tail of the men who killed his ex-girlfriend and turned him into a mechanical man.

The pre-credits tutorial sets the stage for almost 30 hours in Human Revolution's take on 2027. It's the most credible videogame world since BioShock's Rapture - every location telling a story about what happened before you arrived and what might happen when you leave.

Over those 30 hours not one minute is wasted; Human Revolution never takes your time for granted and never bogs you down with busy work. In every city hub there are half a dozen side-missions to complete alongside the main missions; you'll be tasked with recovering evidence from a body in a police station's morgue, but find yourself taking down a corrupt cop, investigating your ex-girlfriend's disappearance, stealing weapons from gangland territory, and doing anything but the job at hand. Every mission plays differently, and every mission can be played however you want.

Deus Ex encourages you towards stealth with enemies who can blow Jensen away in just two or three shots, but if you'd rather treat it as a shooter, it's down with that. When you find yourself forced into a firefight every fully upgradeable weapon packs a punch and the enemy AI puts up a tremendous fight, moving a couple of men to flank while the rest suppress as a group.

Augment your armour and electromagnetic shielding, install a rebreather to cope with gas grenades, and improve your arms to takedown two enemies at a time and you'll become an unstoppable killing machine. And who doesn't want that?

If you'd rather go sneaky you can install a cloaking system, look through walls, mark targets, and dampen the sound of footsteps to move through the game like a ghost. In those same levels where you can throw down and shootout, you'll find room to hide, sneak, and use your augmentations to your advantage. You can rack up a bodycount in the hundreds, or collect an Achievement for not killing a single soul.

Human Revolution is a proper RPG where you have a real choice about everything you do. You'll make decisions you'll have to think about for minutes at a time, weighing the possibilities; you'll break your zero-kill streak and murder people because they deserved it rather than because the game forced you; you'll risk your life and the lives of others to save characters you've genuinely come to like.

It's a game filled with branching paths where every decision feels like a decisive moment, and a game where the results are always satisfying no matter what path you take.

But we've seen this before, after a fashion. Back in 2000, the original Deus Ex changed everything. With help from System Shock 2, it forged a template the best developers would crib from for the next decade. That game wasn't a great shooter or a great stealth game, the AI was thick, combat was lightweight, and stealth was often as much about exploitation as skill.

Somehow though, even with those problems, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Human Revolution, however, has no caveats; it is a great shooter, it is a great stealth game, and those parts come together to make it a great RPG.

It's a once-in a-generation kind of game, and the first game in a decade to do everything the original Deus Ex did, and to do almost all of it better.

Want a second or third opinion? Read PSM3's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review and Xbox World's Deus Ex: Human Revolution review for verdicts on the console versions.

Order Games Master here and have it delivered straight to your door

View the original article here