Easy tiger: no promises on volume one way or another. Still the same slacker; just trying a little harder, y’know? Exactly.

Oooo, shiny

Anyhow, I’m tweaking or adding a few site features over the next few days.

So, bear with me, and thanks – both in advance and in retrospect – for your patience with me. This week I shall mercilessly pound my WordPress install with a very large crescent wrench until interesting words fall out and land with a productive THUD in your RSS reader. Fingers crossed.

[Also, “Hi.” I’ve missed you.]

Well, except for the Hitman movie maybe. That’s actually kind of fun in a stupid don’t-have-to-concentrate kind of way, if you ask us.

The failings aren’t just one-way though; common opinion holds that nearly every game that’s ever been based on a movie has been poorly received too. From Sega’s Iron Man game last year to the irredeemably awful Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, it seems that the world of films and games are just destined to never really mesh.

At least, that’s what the developers of the really bad games would have you believe anyway, what with their excuses about deadline pressures and the requirement to stay close to the plot of the movie. Contrary to popular opinion though there are some decent games based on films – they’re just that little bit rarer and harder to find than the bad ones, so we’ve rounded up five of the best below. Check them out and, of course, let us know what you think in the comments section.

Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter

Developer: Totally Games
Platform: PC Exclusive
Year: 1997

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter might not be based around specific Star Wars film, but as an expansion of the Star Wars universe it’s almost unrivalled if you take the Balance of Power expansion into account. While Jedi Knight, KOTOR and Battlefront II were all other competitors for this slot, it’s X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter that really stands out as the game that made you feel like a part of the Star Wars universe.

Designed mainly for multiplayer, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is such an enduring classic that it still has a fairly active community around it today, even though it was scorned for a lack of coherent singleplayer when it was first released. That’s where the Balance of Power expansion steps in, padding things out a bit and adding some Lucas-worthy plot to the mix.

Even judged just on its multiplayer, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is still a fantastic game though and was remarkably sophisticated for the time. Not only was it one of the first flight sims to really push the idea of using a joystick as standard, but it also delved for the first time into pre-flight prep before missions. For the first time you were able to choose what part of a squad you wanted to be in and how exactly you wanted to rig your ship – creating a much deeper, replayable and more unique experience.

True, the graphics have aged badly, but for those truly looking to immerse themselves in the Star Wars mythos X-wing vs. TIE Fighter is a classic.

Die Hard Trilogy

Developer: Probe Entertainment
Platform: PC, PlayStation, Sega Saturn
Year: 1996

Truly a game from another era, back before games were expected to have cohesive plots that tied together every element of the design, Die Hard Trilogy is an all-in-one package that brings all the Die Hard movies together into one place. The result is essentially three games in one, each with a completely different genre and setup.

The first game in the pack, Die Hard is a fairly standard third-person shooter that has John McClane running around killing criminals and saving hostages in a huge skyscraper packed with extra challenges and secrets. The second game, Die Harder shifted the action to first-person and strapped McClane to rails for a light-gun romp through Dulles Airport. The third game, With a Vengence, changed things around again – to a Crazy Taxi clone that had you running around defusing bombs as fast as you could.

Anywhere else the mish-mash of genres and plots would have been a bad thing. This was Die Hard though and, as the fourth film proved, John McClane rarely needs to make sense. All that really mattered was that each of the individual games was fun-filled and action-packed – which they were. Die Hard Trilogy went on to be one of the games which helped make the PlayStation a hit and, while it’s definitely not aged very well, I still have many fond memories of playing it as youngster, even despite the frenzied switching between controllers and play-styles.

Alien versus Predator

Developer: Rebellion Developments
Platform: PC, Mac
Year: 1999

Again, we’re cheating a bit. Alien versus Predator isn’t really based on a single film, though it does share a title with one. Instead, Rebellion’s seminal and super-scary stealth shooter traces it’s lineage back to the Alien versus Predator comic crossover, which in turn is based on the previously separate Alien and Predator films.

So, really we’re not cheating. In fact, because AvP is actually based on two films then we’re being doubly-good. Alright then.

Incorporating three entirely different campaigns, Alien versus Predator gives players a chance to play as both an alien, predator and human marine – which really means that the title is a classic under-sell. Those marketing people are devious.

Though there are a few areas of overlap in the original game, the three campaigns really stand apart as separate adventures with entirely different mechanics. As the alien you’re a stealthy melee warrior who climbs ceilings and noms skulls, while as the predator you’re a juggernaut of technology and gadgets perfectly suited to combat. It’s the marine campaign that most people remember though, for the simple reason that it’s the possibly the single scariest experience you can have with a computer without visiting the demotivational thread in the NeverObey.net forums.

Seriously. The thought of moving down those dimly lit corridors and a limited field of vision, spinning on the spot constantly and listening for the tell-tale blip of your motion tracker telling you that you’re about to be buried in acidic blood…No wonder we still have nightmares!

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Developer: Starbreeze
Platform: PC, Xbox
Year: 2004

Here’s a real exception in the list – a game which actually turned out to be far, far better than the film it was actually spun-off of. While Pitch Black was a decent and sci-fi horror the ego-driven sequel was unapologetically awful. Thankfully, Vin Diesel’s game studio managed to salvage enough from the film to make a decent game.

The plot of Escape from Butcher Bay doesn’t really run that close to either of the films though; it’s actually a prequel that tells the story of Riddick’s most impressive escape ever – from ultra-max prison, Butcher Bay. The sci-fi equivalent of Alcatraz, nobody has ever escaped from Butcher Bay. It’s up to you to change that, which you mainly do by sneaking through airducts and backstabbing or pulverising people whenever you can.

It’s this kinetic melee action that forms the backbone of Riddick’s appeal and, though there are a lot of other things to like in the game, our minds usually circle back to the awesomely delivered sense of power communicated by the fluid first person brawling. It honestly feels like you’ve stepped into the skin of something sleek and predatory and lethal. It’s quite intoxicating.

It’s also worth mentioning that Butcher Bay was so well received by gamers that it eventually bred an expanded remake. Title Assault on Dark Athena, it included an entirely new singleplayer campaign that followed on from the first game and a new multiplayer segment.

GoldenEye 007

Developer: Rare
Platform: Nintendo 64 exclusive
Year: 1997

GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 really is the only game that can sit at the top of this list, claiming the title of the best film-to-game conversion ever. Not only are there few movie inspired games that can match it in quality, but there are few games which can match it at all!

The spiritual predecessor to Perfect Dark, GoldenEye was possibly the biggest single reason to own a Nintendo 64 if you were a youngster at the time. Nowhere else was it possible to feel that much like James Bond in both an expansive singleplayer and thrilling multiplayer mode. In fact, it’s not been possible since then either, with both Activision and Electronic Arts struggling to do the franchise justice after Rare lost the rights.

The singleplayer portion of the game is a fairly faithful to the film, taking full advantage of the fast pace and capturing all of the most memorable scenes perfectly, from the bunker infiltration at the start to the fight above the radar dish at the climax.

(GoldenEye may look dated now, but it was a classic at the time)

What distinguishes GoldenEye from any other James Bond game before or since though is that it was faithful to the mood of the film as well as the set pieces. Players weren’t always forced to just run and gun through hordes of indenti-kit enemies, but were encouraged (nay, forced) to use stealth tactics to defeat the game.

The multiplayer portion of GoldenEye is where the lasting appeal of the game is though, with some fans still going to extraordinary efforts in order to unlock hidden and unfinished content included in the retail release. As recently as 2004 new beta levels were being unlocked, provided you were willing and able to link your Nintendo 64 to a PC and run the 10,000 lines of code that assembled the required file fragments. Few other games have inspired such fanatical loyalty.

Strangely though, the multiplayer game doesn’t sound all that great when you try to explain it. The selection of available modes and tweaks, while incredibly innovative at the time, are fairly commonplace nowadays. Likewise, the way that Rare designed the interface and control system to make the FPS genre accessible on the Nintendo 64 may not sound like much now, but actually laid the foundations for modern console shooters.

(A GoldenEye multiplayer remake in Source is available)

That’s just the start too – GoldenEye 007 introduced so many things to computer games that it’s really hard to overestimate its legacy. It’s often credited as being one of the first games to introduce the concept of a zoomable sniper rifle, for example. It was one of the first games to feature a hit-sensitive damage model for enemies too, with enemies being more vulnerable to head or torso shots. Rudimentary material physics were worked into the game as well, with some weapons capable of penetrating doors and walls – yet there are some games nowadays which don’t have that feature!

GoldenEye’s legacy has caused a number of spiritual successors too, such as Perfect Dark and the Timesplitters franchise, which was developed by a group that separated from Rare to form the ill-fated Free Radical Design. It’s just a shame that the most recent of these doesn’t really have the lasting appeal of GoldenEye. Likewise, it’s a shame that a remake or retro re-release of the game is unlikely to arrive any time soon as the rights are currently shared between original publisher Nintendo and the now Microsoft-owned Rare – each of whom want a release for their own platform.

Still, until Nintendo and Microsoft work out their differences, there’s always the Source Engine-powered GoldenEye: Source to give you a taste of why GoldenEye 007 was such a classic.

It’s almost 8a.m., my brain’s on the verge of shutting down right this moment. I just wanted to make this entry to say hello, and to let you know that we haven’t died. If you follow me on DeviantART then this is really going to sound like a copy of what I said there. Because it really is. Sort of.

Changes to happen at 53tabs.

This site has really changed a lot over the past two years. It started out as a art and games site, then shifted into a tech site as well. Then we started doing some game reviews that had a great turn out. The problem with that was (1. its really expensive to get a $50 game every week and play through it by the end of the week) and (2. its really time consuming. 53tabs isn’t really my full time job so I cant really afford and justify doing it like I was last year.)

I’m not saying goodbye to games, I’m not really sure what I’m saying…actually. – pants!!!

I’m going to be slowing things down while I change up this site. Something that I did back when I first launched the site was a few posts on ‘how to’. I really wanted to explore that more. But rather then showing projects that were a waist of time and money and really useless, I would like to share with everyone things I do to help me out.

I would really like to turn this site more into how to manage your time, and attention. Also ways to help you become creative and help you with your creative work. And really unique ways to use technology to help you and not to distract you. I’m terrible at managing my time and attention but I do feel that everyone could benefit from this.

Will this work? A. I don’t know. Perhaps? I don’t know about you, but the way the site is right now really isn’t original in any real way. If you want tech news, there are millions of sites that does that and better then we do. If you want game news and reviews just do a google search on what ever you want to know.

So rather then pump out the same content that lots of others are doing we are going to change things up. I’m actually going to contribute new ideas that can help you out in life and getting things done.

Anyways: look for new things – If you think this is a terrible idea then post it in the comments of this post.

~William

Whew, another year done and another 365 days of gaming content faithfully represented, critiqued and ripped apart for your reading pleasure. Now, we’re all tuckered out.

5 – Dead Space

In our review we complained that Dead Space felt a little bit clunky on the PC and was undoubtedly designed for consoles first, but while that may have held the game back just a little there’s still no denying that it’s one of the best and scariest third person shooters of this year. Arguably, it’s the game that Doom 3 should have been.

Set on a space station near the end of nowhere, Dead Space is about a rescue and repair team that responds to an emergency broadcast but quickly finds themselves in over their heads. What the team had expected to be a series of purely mechanical failures turns out to be something a lot more sinister.

So, yeah, creepy aliens and lots of dark corridors but nothing that hasn’t been done before, right? Wrong.

Dead Space was one of the major launches in EA’s attempt to reinvent itself as an innovator this year and the title shows off some rather funky in-game effects and mechanics. This isn’t just another over-the-shoulder bullet fest with monsters in closets, this is a lot more clever and subtle. The aliens you’re going up against are surprisingly tough to kill, but can be crippled by blowing off their arms and legs – so a lot of the action is up close and personal. It’s a good thing you have such a big suit of armour on.

The armour is for more than just protection though, giving players a holographic inventory system and the option to move in zero gravity. By giving players cool abilities such as physics guns and slow-motion it would have been easy for Dead Space to become just another mindless shooter, but somehow EA has produced something worth more than the sum of its parts and the game becomes a truly rewarding experience.

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4 – Crysis: Warhead

When the original Crysis was released it was a subject of much debate because, while the game definitely looked good and played OK, the steep hardware requirements meant that the definitive Crysis experience was off-limits for many.

Thankfully though a year later Crytek released Warhead – an optimised expansion pack that came out at a time when the market was just starting to catch up to Crysis’ demands. Crysis: Warhead was perfectly timed and fit into the market perfectly.

Borrowing an idea from other Electronic Arts partner Valve, Crysis: Warhead tells a parallel story to the original game, following the original plot and timeline but from a different viewpoint. Instead of playing through the eyes of Nomad, players take the role of Psycho.

Trapped on the other side of the island to Nomad, Psycho is pursuing objectives of his own as he evades aliens, kills Koreans and tries not to freeze to death in the flash-iced tropical island.

Arguably better than the original game because it focuses on giving player more specifically memorable and explosive sections, Warhead is all about playing dirty with your nanosuit abilities and making big explosions. The original Crysis had its share of cool bits too, but the emphasis was always on trying to play your way. With Warhead though, Crytek showed that it understood how a linear, scripted experience can often be more powerful than an open sandbox one.

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3 – Fallout 3

Set in the future, Fallout 3 tells the story of a young person who grows up in a Vault – a vast underground complex that exists to shield a clutch of people from the nuclear war that has raged above and devastated the world. Safely imprisoned underneath the ruins of Washington DC, all is good for you in your microcosm – until your father goes missing and Vault plunges into chaos. You flee to the surface in pursuit of your dad.

As soon as you get outside though, the entire game changes and the training wheels are taken off. You can go anywhere in the Capital Wasteland, revelling in this 50s view of a post apocalyptic future. There are funny-voiced and impossibly technical cyborgs at the corner of every ruined street, looming super mutants and giant scorpions warring against bandits and settlers.

Comparing Fallout 3 to Oblivion is a natural path to take as the two games seem fairly similar at the start. Both are free-roaming FPS/RPG hybrids, both are developed by Bethesda and both put a heavy focus on raiding dungeons and collecting increasingly powerful weapons.

In reality though Fallout 3 far surpasses Oblivion in exploratory depth, easily eclipsing the former king of the FPS/RPG genre and proving that Bethesda has listened to fans well enough and worked hard to improve the faults of Oblivion. Gone are the annoying persuasion mini-games and the bandits who scale in level as you play.

The game-world has been scaled down and refocused too, with Fallout 3 showcasing a lot more unique dungeons and destroyed office buildings than a lot less of the samey cave systems in Oblivion.

One of the best innovations that’s been bought forward into Fallout 3 though is Random Encounters – that old stalwart from the previous Fallout games which ensures that the game is always going to be slightly different no matter how often or similarly you replay the game. You can never be sure when you might stumble across Uncle Lou or a flock of deathclaws.

The slightly stale and safe world of Oblivion has been traded in for a more gory and splatter-riffic presentation too, with more mushroom clouds than Michael Bay after a strong Vindaloo. Heads explode, limbs fly and gore drips from every surface. It may be sick, but we love it.

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2 – Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 may have got some of you down with some fairly repetitive missions, but it’s hard to deny how much innovation and beauty there is in the game. Ubisoft’s follow-up to the original Far Cry may have no connection to the first game in terms of story or location, but it captures that sense of strategic freedom perfectly.

It casts players as a simple mercenary, one of many operating in the African savannah, all of whom are trying to take down a local gun runner called The Jackal – a man deeply entrenched in the politics of a civil war.

Finding where The Jackal is won’t be easy though – and nor will killing him. At the start of the game you’re already indebted to local factions, pretty much defenceless and coming down with malaria. You need friends, supplies and medicine. You’ll need to wade deep into the local war and earn all these things.

Earning all this is done through a mixture of assaults, assassinations and betrayals as you take on missions from different factions, often with the help of other mercenaries who will give you advice and support as you wade into the sandbox with a gun in hand and murder on your mind.

Far Cry 2 isn’t a perfect game. The missions do get quite samey after a while and the AI will get occasionally flakey, but it doesn’t matter too much. By and large this is one of the most visually stunning and impressive games of the year, offering players options that constantly change and a world that is always evolving. With a smattering of original ideas, such as the cool healing system, and the best flamethrower in the history of gaming, Far Cry 2 definitely deserves to be on this list.

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Game Of The Year – Left4Dead

Damn you, Valve. You’ve done it again – stolen our time, hearts and Game of The Year award for the second year running. Last year you did it with The Orange Box, this year you do it with Left 4 Dead. You talented buggers.

And really, there is a huge amount of talent that’s been poured into Left 4 Dead. We’ve played games with friends, family and people who normally abhor computer games, but the cocktail of violence and teamwork has always gone down smooth and impressed our initially unwilling team mates.

The premise for the game is simple, with the story told more through subtle visual clues than the amazing four minute cutscene that preludes the adventure. An infection has mutated nearly all of the human race, creating a race of savagely fast zombies that are hungry for the flesh of anyone who is left immune. That includes you and your three pals.

Using the same techniques as learned in Team Fortress 2, Valve has created a series of recognisable characters amid the mob of frothing infected. There’s Bill, the war-weary Vietnam veteran, Hell’s Angel Francis, college-girl Zoey and office worker Louis in his red tie and designer shoes. Each of them is armed to the teeth and desperate to get away from the infection.

Opposing them are a series of brilliantly balanced opponents; the huge Tank, the shy Witch, the vicious Hunter and Smoker. Oh, and vile bile-spilling Boomer too.

None of these characters stand out nearly as much as the faceless games master behind it all though, the AI Director that sits on the sidelines of each match and moves around key resources and enemies to match the pace of the game. The AI Director is the main source of frustration, elation and fun in the game and hating or loving it is something that the whole team can get involved in – and will do when it throws two tanks in a row at you!

The game isn’t wholly co-operative though and for those who fancy more of a competitive experience there’s the rather awesome Versus mode, which sees two teams of four take it turns to try and run through a map from Co-op mode. The problem of course is that the special infected are now played by the opposing team, who get full reign to terrorise and grief the humans.

As has been proven typical of Valve’s games, it’s rather easy for us to rattle off superlatives and exclamations, telling you how fantastic the story and pacing and balancing is and so on. With Left 4 Dead though it’s become more obvious than ever that that isn’t fair or true.

The reality is instead that no specific part of Left 4 Dead stands out because the whole game is fantastic. Everything is superbly polished, balanced, designed and made. There’s literally nothing in the game that feels more unfair than it should be. It’s within an inch of gaming perfection.

With a fantastic multiplayer, co-operative and singleplayer experience and so much replayability that you probably won’t need another game for a very long time, Left 4 Dead is undoubtedly our game of the year.

Zombies. Lots of Zombies. Throw in an excellent AI engine to spawn hoards of them, and four player co-op to sweeten the deal and you’d better fetch a change of underwear because you’re going to need them. Left 4 Dead is finally here, and we take a look to see if it lives up to the expectations.

Ever since the pre-order demo dropped onto Steam two weeks ago our lunch times, our evenings and our weekends have been filled with zombie blasting, flash light flailing mayhem, and despite only featuring one and a half levels from the full game, Left 4 Dead has kept us, and many of those on our Steam friends lists, coming back for more time and time again.

It’s easy to see why Left 4 Dead is already so popular because in many ways it’s almost the holy grail of PC gaming. It’s made by one of the best developers around, who are pushing it on one of the best distribution platforms around, it’s playable in singleplayer, multiplayer and co-op and it’s very replayable.

Hell, it’s even built on the popular and constantly improved Source engine. While that does mean that the game can look a bit dated in places, it also means that it’s perfectly playable on nearly all computers from the last five years and that the modding community can quickly latch on.

It’s the replayablity which is the most interesting factor to us though. The game uses a dedicated AI system to track the progress and ability of players, moving items and enemies around to provide a unique experience every time. More than that, the AI Director has a basic understanding of pacing so that the game can have lulls and peaks in all the right places.

That’s one of the most complicated things about Left 4 Dead though and while it is something all players will need to appreciate, it isn’t something many will need to understand.

So here’s what you need to know. The world of Left 4 Dead is set in that most easily explained of fictitious scenarios, the Zombie Apocalypse. The fast-zombie apocalypse to be precise (slow shufflers just wouldn’t be as entertaining would they?), with five more unique boss zombies tossed into the mix such as The Boomer, horribly obese and intent on vomiting on you to attract the zombie horde, or The Hunter, who can pounce long distances and pin you to the ground.

One thing that all the zombies have in common though is that they are between you and the next safe haven and that they’ll drop dead for a second time after a liberal application of lead. Thus the twenty-level stage is set as you and three other survivors, controlled by either AI or other players depending on what you want, begin an epic journey to rescue.

The game is divided into four campaigns split between five levels connected via safe havens, and while all are based upon the same premise of a trek through zombie infested territory each has a unique feel thanks to the surprisingly varied environments. One campaign begins in a green house on the ruins of a small town before climaxing on the tarmac of an airport runway, while another sees the survivors journey to the top of a sky scraper to reach rescue.

The zombies will come in mountains, hordes, swarms and waves all at once and you’ll have to keep a close eye on your team mates and ammo counts as you meet the gibbering menace and try simply to survive another day. Are you up to it? Of course you are, but are your allies? You’d better hope so because it’s going to take coordination and teamwork to win through this particular apocalypse and discover if the ending is a predictably bleak or a predictably hopeful one.

Gameplay:

Those who’ve been playing the demo over the last few weeks will already be familiar with the core gameplay of Left 4 Dead, and unsurprisingly the full game takes the almost universally praised formula and gives you a whole lot more zombie blasting action to get your shotgun into.

Every campaign starts with a brief fly by cut scene that sets the scene, before the four instantly recognisable survivors, Bill, Francis, Louis and Zoey, load up with weapons and ammo and venture out into the zombie infested world beyond, with the destination a far off safe room, or in the finale level of each campaign, rescue.

While we were initially concerned over whether the levels would quickly become too samey, Valve has done brilliantly to make each of the four campaigns look and feel unique and each genuinely offers something different. The large open road and town sections of the second campaign, Death Toll, are a world away from the tight, almost claustrophobic hospital wards of No Mercy or the catastrophic damage caused by the numerous plane crashes that litter Dead Air.

Valve has also absolutely nailed the look and feel of the graphics throughout, with genuinely creepy environments only adding to the tension that’s endemic in the game and grainy quality enforcing the feeling that you’re playing through a movie rather than a game. The frequent graffiti left by previous survivors who have passed through areas is also a constant cause of entertainment, with in jokes and pop culture references littering the walls of safe rooms serving to help lighten that whole depressing “end of the world” thing.

Each campaign also has a number of triggered sequences where the survivors have to remove an obstacle by means of switch or explosion – inevitably alerting the horde and resulting in especially large mobs of screaming zombies rushing your position. Again, while we’d been concerned these too would become samey, each is unique, and the fact that the infected swarm can come from any direction means each set piece is always that little bit different.

The common zombies themselves are also enormously varied throughout and although you might notice a model or two reappearing here and there, the use of infected models unique to a level like infected baggage handlers or hospital patients still wearing hospital gowns (hehe, bare ass zombies) are a great little touch. This only adds to the feeling of progression and individuality each campaign has.

What we’re trying to stress here is that Left 4 Dead utterly succeeds in taking the mechanic of shooting a whole load of zombies and putting it into enough unique environments and with enough variety therein that it never really gets boring.

Conclusions:

When we started playing Left 4 Dead we had almost messianic expectations of a game that was going to genuinely revolutionise multiplayer gaming and have emerged from our blood and Boomer vomit soaked ordeal exhilarated, shaking and thoroughly satisfied. Forgive the cliché, but Valve has done it again.

Left 4 Dead manages to perfectly combine the direction and narrative of the very best single player first person shooters with the enormous fun of four player co-op, all wrapped up in a delightfully gory zombie apocalypse. Despite the limited amount of levels the unique experiences generated by the AI Director every time you play helps to keep the game constantly fresh, exciting and tense.

Valve has also delivered the high level of characterisation and emotive dialogue that its games have become famous for, and it helps to not only lighten the overwhelmingly dark mood of the game, but also draw more than a few laughs along the way. The four survivors have hundreds of lines of dialogue each, and we’re sure some of the one liners will soon become Internet classics, as will some of the excellent graffiti written on safe room walls.

Yet while unquestionably excellent and powerfully addictive, Left 4 Dead never becomes intoxicating to the point that you realise you haven’t eaten all day. A single ninety minute campaign is generally enough to slake your thirst for blasting zombies – for a few hours at least – and should be easy enough to organise between a group of friends.

And friends are what you’re really going to need if you want to get the very best out of Left 4 Dead. Playing with the bots the game is a shadow of its potential greatness and the higher difficulty settings will remain strictly off limits, but get three friends together with microphones and Left 4 Dead is possibly the best multiplayer game ever – not something that we say lightly.

Tactics are hastily arranged, cries for help as boss infected attack are screamed down mics, panic sets in and heart rates rise as wave after wave of zombies appear. The palpable feeling of accomplishment you get after finishing a tough campaign together is something that no other game can offer.

It’s fair to say you can judge a game by how much fun it is. You’re talking to friends about a favourite game, when a memory of a particularly awesome moment you’ve shared pops out and reminds you all just how great that game was. Left 4 Dead is full of such moments. It’s an ever changing, ever challenging and ever tense multiplayer masterpiece which will captivate for as long as you’ve got friends to play it with.

Gameplay: 9
Features: 9
Graphics: 7
Replayability: 9

Overall: 9/10

Normally, we’d start a review of a game like this with an explanation of the story – but today we’re not going to. There are two reasons for that.

Firstly, this is World War II (again) and if you need the plot of that explained to you then you’d probably be better off using your time to learn something useful like how to tie your shoelaces. There’s really no excuse for not knowing the basic structure of World War II – especially at this time of year.

All you really need to know is that the game switches you between an American Marine fighting in the Pacific theatre against the Japanese and a Russian soldier who survives Stalingrad and follows the push into Berlin at the end of the war.

The second reason we’re not going to focus on the plot is that it’s much more interesting to think and critique the level of maturity the plot is handled with, mainly because there are several points where World at War seems to go out of its way to be controversial.

Here’s the weird thing about war games like the Call of Duty series – they set out to make some of the most damning and awful moments in all of human history into an interactive artform that people will actually pay to be part of. Viewed on that level it’s actually quite sick, which is why the games don’t generally get published unless they are handled in a mature way.

In brief; there is a line that these games don’t cross as a matter of taste and politic – especially when they are released on Veterans Day.

Think back. Previous war games, especially those in the Call of Duty series have managed to provide an experience which is suitably gritty, bleak and at least semi-honourable to the sacrifices made by those who fought in the wars – but they never step over “The Line”. There are no concentration camps or Hiroshima bombings because these aren’t really appropriate scenes to put in a game. Basically though games can do Rambo, they can’t do Platoon just yet.

Call of Duty 5 however seeks to cross “The Line” immediately. The game opens up with in-game cutscenes of ever-loyal, American all-star types getting their throats slit and eyes burned out by the consistently demonised Japanese forces and it doesn’t stop there. In the needlessly flashy and fast-moving video cutscenes that punctuate the missions, the game displays real video footage of war time atrocities – smouldering bodies hanging from streetlights, mass graves and executions.

And, as human beings if not critics, we’d be at fault if we didn’t question the worth of these images in this context.

There’s an argument to say that art (if we’re judging games as that in even the lightest regard) should be provocative by nature and while we do think that’s true, there should at least be a reason for being that way. World at War doesn’t have that reason.

These images might be OK if the actual structure of the game in some way made them a relevant or important part of the design. If there was a reason for these images and if the game was trying to say something then we’d understand. But this isn’t Saving Private Ryan and there’s not even a basic lesson to take away from World at War other than ‘Don’t jump on grenades, ok?

It’s an odd way to start a review on, but I think it’s the right one. Despite whatever pleasures the gameplay may hold there’s a definite consensus that World at War is a needlessly gratuitous and gory game and, given the subject matter and actual footage used, that just isn’t as ignorable as it might be with other games. These are real people the game is dealing with after all and, even if it wasn’t the intention of the developers, they come close to demonising the Japanese in a way they never would with the German army.

Gameplay:

Detaching ourselves from the argument about what is and what isn’t acceptable in a game like this (and while this is probably acceptable, it isn’t very appropriate or particularly well done), the gameplay in Call of Duty 5: World at War is exactly what you’d expect from a COD game.

Depending on your outlook that’s either going to be a good or a bad thing, obviously.

You move forwards with your unit, sniping and grenading and pushing forwards slowly to advance the line and so on. The interface, from the compass to the grenade indicator, is as accessible as always and the combat is just as fluid. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the action itself, especially since it is grounded in World War II, feels very much well-trod and done before. It isn’t bad, but it is getting a bit familiar and that modern gloss that worked so well for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare would have done wonders here too.

There have been a few alterations admittedly, such as the ability to actually blow limbs off enemies with a well placed trench gun shot. The major update though is the addition of a flame thrower which, although used in the war for clearing bunkers only, can be carried most anywhere.

Unfortunately though, the flame thrower is a bit of a let down. We’d have thought that the main question any developer would ask when putting a flame thrower in the game would have been ‘Can we make the fire look good?’, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to Treyarch as COD5′s flame sprayer falls well below the bar set by Far Cry 2.

Graphics aside, the flame thrower is still fraught with issues. Not only is it hugely overpowered and prone to insta-killing enemies before they can actually catch fire, but it actually has infinite ammo. You can probably here our dry, tired eyes rolling in their sockets.

Multiplayer:

Then we get to the multiplayer which, depending on who you listen to is either consistently the best bit of the Call of Duty series, or the worst thing. There is no middle ground.

There are actually (and refreshingly) two faces to the multiplayer in Call of Duty 5: World at War though and Treyarch has been extra-super-nice to gamers by including a co-op mode as well as a versus game.

The standard multiplayer is basically a revamp of the multiplayer in Call of Duty 4 and we’re saying that up front because it really is the best way to describe it. The only things that have changed are the weapons and a few of the perks.

This similarity isn’t a bad thing though and, unlike the singleplayer, the multiplayer still feels fresh and interesting. The levels are cannily designed with plenty of back-passages and high-up sniper points, while the actual levels themselves vary tremendously with everything from ruined asylums to Cliffside Buddhist temples being sacrilegiously represented.

There are definitely a few issues, such as there being no option to turn on friendly fire and the confusing fact that by collecting “Death Cards” in the singleplayer segment you can unlock cheats in the co-op campaign but not the singleplayer, but it doesn’t matter too much. The co-op campaign spans across all thirteen of the singleplayer levels and is eminently playable despite a few totally inexplicable framerate drops.

The whole semi-tactical formula of the Call of Duty series is something that lends itself perfectly to a co-op campaign, especially when the players can communicate and work to use smoke grenades and bazookas in tandem. Treyarch hasn’t messed that up at all.

Finally and on top of that, there’s also a final co-op mode that becomes unlockable after the game has been completed. You probably know the one we’re talking about – the one with waves of zombie Nazis.

Conclusions:

We’ve no doubt that World of War will sell very well and impress a lot of people. This is a game that’ll appeal to teenage fanboys a lot too – that’s what the quote-unquote adult material is there for, right? That’s why there’s a zombie Nazi mode too.

World of War isn’t going to hold our attention enough to get a second playthrough, despite how much we enjoyed playing with the co-op modes. The simple fact of the matter is that there are better games this year, some of which also have zombies.

While World at War doesn’t fail in any specific way, it just fails to become the rousing success that its predecessor was. It’s definitely a playable game if you find you have the stomach for more World War II, but it doesn’t quite rise above that level of mediocrity.
Gameplay: 6
Features: 4
Graphics: 7
Replayability: 3

Overall: 5/10

What do our scores mean?

How old are you? If you’re a typical gamer, you are probably much older than the mainstream media thinks you are. PC games used to be amusing little things played by kids while the parents did grown up things. Not any more, as the many web forum debates on how to juggle World of Warcraft guild membership with parenthood prove.

Partly, the average age is rising because us kids who got in on gaming in the eighties have kept at it ever since, but the demographic is expanding elsewhere too. The Wii has introduced gaming to the older generation, and the huge growth in the casual PC games market is aimed squarely at 30+ “soccer moms”. Now have a huge spread of gamers, from young kids fragging their first alien right up to people enjoying Wii Sports in a retirement home.

So why are so many games treating us all like idiots?

I don’t just mean in tutorials where we get treated like war heroes because we managed to “move the mouse to the left”, but in the actual choice of subject matter, and pre-requisite knowledge.

Recently someone tried to make a game out of protein folding. The idea was that if you could make an accessible fun game out of it, you could effectively get lots of people to process real data for free, and contribute towards a worthwhile goal. Great idea, but do we have to assume the game needs to be massively simple in order to catch on? I’m sure a lot of biochemists play computer games, why must we assume they are incapable of learning a complex game?

You can take a lot of great game ideas, and then dumb then down to the lowest common denominator and make them boring and dull, that’s a given. There are some great game ideas though that you just can’t dumb down before they fall apart. Right now that means the game doesn’t even get out of the starting gate.

I’ve heard of games flopping because the marketing sucked, budget problems, piracy and poor design but I haven’t heard about any big games failing because they were too highbrow. Yet nobody is even trying to make those games.

In some ways it’s all the fault of our old nemesis, the rocketing game budget. Rack up a four million dollar bill, and you need to sell a lot of copies to break even. Selling just to biochemists won’t cut it any more, you need to aim at the wider audience. But if you avoid the technology arms race and do a lower budget game, what kind of games could we make?

For starters, how about a serious version of Spore’s creature editor. Not a drag and drop add-a-tentacle game, but a real virtual organism designer. A game where half the battle is to put together something that can outrun predators and seek out prey, whilst surviving its environment. Take into account the creature’s weight, biochemical needs, defensive and offensive capabilities and brain size, metabolism… I don’t care if you need a degree in biology to play the game because there are a lot of people with degrees in biology. Sell just to them, it’s still viable.

Games challenge our reflexes, our puzzle-solving skills, our memories and our endurance but they rarely challenge our knowledge. Why not? We aren’t all drooling idiots.

If you treat your customers like intelligent, educated adults, you get intelligent educated adults as customers. It’s obvious really, after all, a big chunk of the gaming audience is made up of them, so why wouldn’t they flock to one of the few games that treats them as such?

When someone asks you something trivial you know, you don’t feel good about being right. When someone asks you something arcane and specialist that people wouldn’t expect you to know, you get a tiny endorphin rush from having the right answer. People like to be intellectually challenged. Not all of them, but unless you are Nintendo or Sony you don’t have to please absolutely everyone.

So my call to game designers is a simple request. The next time you fear about adding a feature because it seems a bit too “high brow” and requires some knowledge, please leave it in. Don’t apologise for it or panic. A lot of gamers are actually intelligent and educated. We aren’t as stupid as the press thinks…

There’s a credit crunch on, so we’re told, and it’s forcing everyone to be perhaps a little more frugal than they might have otherwise been. So, y’know, it’s OK. Nobody holds it against you that you didn’t just blindly pre-order Left4Dead already, securing early access to the demo.

Really, it’s…well, not exactly fine, but certainly forgiveable.

With the early access demo now available, the servers are overflowing with fans of the new co-op zombie shooter from the makers of the Half-Life series, and that means we’ve finally been able to get serious time clocked up with the game.

Thus, here are our impressions for those of you who still have another week or so before the demo becomes truly public – those wily few who insist on trying before buying. Another little taster before the demo goes utterly free on Tuesday, a week before the official launch.

Story:
The demo itself picks up exactly where the introduction video ends, with the four main characters atop an apartment building in a nameless city. They’ve just heard an emergency broadcast telling them to head for Mercy Hospital where survivors of this 28 Days Later-style outbreak are being evacuated and they’ve chosen to head there through the subways.

As plans go, heading into pitchblack tunnels perhaps isn’t the best approach in the case of a zombie apocalypse, but we doubt that these character have put as much planning into it as we (in the office) clearly have.

It’s here that the players step in, each one choosing which character they want to be. There’s Zoey, the pistol-wielding girl, Bill the gruff old General, Francis the shotgun-happy biker and Louis…who has the red on him.

Unfortunately, there are a few flies in the ointment already and though Valve is reportedly responding to user feedback and improving the server browsing system, the version that’s currently available isn’t great. The Left4Dead server searching system is…unique.

Basically, there is no server browser. How it works is that you choose whether you want to play with your Steam friends or just online with other people and then the game will either show you a friends list or matchmake you straight away. The searching system is actually quite good, prioritising dedicated servers and checking based on player abilities, ping and even what territory the players are in.

Granted, it’d be nice to put more filters into this and tell the system to only connect you to people who do or don’t have microphones for example, but you can’t have everything. Yet.

The main issue with this though is that, if you’re only interested in starting a LAN match then there’s currently no way to stop the game searching for an online, dedicated match – but, again, Valve is supposed to be working on a solution as we speak. The way they test games and listen to gamers is one of the things that have made them such a great developer.

Gameplay:

Once you’re in and playing it though, all of these issues are forgotten. The demo only covers the first level and a half of the first campaign, each of which is made of five levels and of which there are four in total, so it’s over fairly quickly but still…

The in-game experience is polished to a fine, almost blinding finish – both in terms of the actual gameplay and the player connections.

There are all sorts of little things that have been added in to make the game streamlined. For example, if you’re playing a game and leave the PC alone for a minute or two then the AI will step in to stop you slowing everyone else down. You’ll be bumped from Survivor to Spectator and the computer will take over your character.

Normally, that might be annoying – but with just the press of a button you can step back in and resume control again. It’s a great feature. It stops your place from being stolen by a new player, but also stops you slowing down other players.

The actual gameplay itself is as fluid as you could hope. All the players start on the roof where, just like at the start of every level, there’s a cache of weapons and supplies. There are basic weapons here and it’s clear that someone has come through here before – a copy of the US Army Survival Guide is left open on the table. Grab your weapons, first aid and get ready.

There are several routes to the subway though they are stay close to each other. Here in the first level of the game you have to start by getting down to street level, but you can do it by crashing through windows, taking the stairs or just jumping from the roof if you want.

As you move around, you’ll fend off the zombies and collect new supplies at randomly placed caches. You can grab aspirin from medicine cabinets for a temporary health boost, or snag a pipe bomb from the arsenal of a now-deceased militant.

One thing you can’t do is expect to play the same game every time though, as Valve’s AI Director is constantly moving in the background to make the game slightly different. It monitors how you move, your ammo supplies and how fast you are going to create a new fight every time, the zombies disappearing and swarming in waves and crescendos.

To be totally fair, the game isn’t totally different every time you play as no matter what you are doing you are always reacting to a certain type of situation, but it’s thrilling to see how that situation can change. Even with hardened players there are moments of panic and terror when an ally accidentally sets off a car alarm with a stray bullet and the swarm start pushing in on you. It’s then a measure of how quick you lose a friend, as the rest the team start shouting at the unfortunate individual while simultaneously cussing and swearing at the hoard.

A lot of that panic comes from the fact that Valve has built a lot more variation into the difficulty system than ever before. In past Valve games even the Hard setting has been too easy for experienced players, but Left4Dead is a lot more varied. The Expert mode requires a lot of communication and tactical thought from players – and speed too, as waiting just gives the AI Director more time to work.

Unlike other games, like Counterstrike where experienced players tend not to communicate constantly as they already know all the levels and fire-lines, Left4Dead requires a lot of co-operation. When one of your allies gets pinned down by a Hunter zombie then you need to know who is going to knock the beast off and who’ll cover your back. You need to know who has the shotgun, who has the molotov cocktail – and which one of you is going to be stupid enough to leave your torch on when you hear the gentle sobbing of a hiding Witch zombie.

Brrr, Witch zombies give us the willies. Totally passive but utterly spooky, they’ll lie there on their own and cry for the most part – but if you startle one with an errant bullet or by getting too close then they’ll go through your health faster than a pissed ex-girlfriend. Again; brrr.

Conclusions:

Tactical thought isn’t the only thing you’ll need though – you’ll need to know the mechanics of the game as well, which is more important than you’d think.

For example; friendly fire is always on and cannot be turned off, ever. In terms of the game that’s an important thing as it means you’ll have to co-ordinate yourself when you try to hold off against a stream of enemies as they break down the door.

It also means that when your ally gets pinned down by a Hunter, a type of infected that pounces huge distances and pummels allies when it is on top of them, you’ll have to remember to charge at it instead of try and shoot it with your shotgun. The best tactic is to run up and whack it to the floor with a melee attack – not only will it incapacitate the zombie, but melee attacks can’t hurt your allies.

The interface comes in and plays a huge role in the tactics behind each decision, telling you at the bottom of the screen not only how much health each player has, but also what supplies they are carrying. If you’re getting hammered by a swarm of zombies then you’ll know to protect the person carrying the pipe bomb first – the loud beeping they give before exploding will attract all nearby infected, buying you time to reload.

Left4Dead isn’t perfect – we can see that much from the demo already – but it’s a whole ton of fun. Still, if Valve can fix the server browsing and bring the LAN options more in line with gamer expectations and if the community gets behind the game as fast as we expect them too then Left4Dead looks to be an utter stonker of a game.

And now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go play it again. And again. And again.

The public demo for Left4Dead becomes available for those who haven’t pre-ordered the game on November 11th. The full game then gets released on November 18th, at which point the demo is taken offline.

Here’s a quick and easy history lesson.

Once upon a time, there was a company called Interplay that made some of the best computer games ever. One of its most well known franchises was the Fallout series, which was an isometric RPG set in a post apocalypse wasteland inspired by 1950s culture.

The Fallout games were really good, especially the second one. Even the demo for the first game, which was a self-contained adventure that was custom made for the purposes of the demo, was excellent. Not every developer will go to the trouble of making a demo with about five different endings and multiples paths. Plus, there were miniguns and you could shoot people in the crotch.

Unfortunately, owing to some complicated financial mis-planning, Interplay went out of business and it didn’t look like the fans of the game would ever get to see a third game in what is arguably one of the most replayable and enjoyable franchises ever created.

That was, until another developer came along and decided to buy the rights to Fallout so that they could make more and more games in the series.

Some people were a bit upset at this news because while Interplay was a company that had shown the ability to make lots of different games with lots of different themes, the new company had only ever really made one type of game, over and over. The one type of game they had made was very good and they were very good at making it, but some people decided that a first-person sandbox RPG developer wouldn’t fit very well with a tactical, isometric RPG franchise.

Later, those people were unveiled to be idiots and Fallout 3 was celebrated as perhaps one of the best games the new company had ever made. Way, way better than Oblivion for example, which always felt a little bit samey and empty after a little while.

A lot of this was down to the simple fact that the people at the new company aren’t stupid. They know that they were best at making first-person RPGs and they know they have an engine that is good for making those types of games. They also knew that, in order to make Fallout 3 any good, they have to keep a lot of the same stuff from the first two games in it. So, that’s what they did. Major fear allayed: Fallout 3 is still very Fallout-y.

Story:

The setting for the game is pretty much the same as the first one, though with a few more sinister twists in the opening and a more personal goal than “Hey, go get us that circuit board we need and do it quick!” Instead, you’re looking for your father who has left the huge underground vault that has protected you since birth from the radiation-ravaged wasteland on the surface.

In any other Fallout game, leaving the vault wouldn’t be that big a deal as the vaults were pre-programmed to open after a certain amount of time. As through players of Fallout 2 (and beginners in Fallout 3) can find out though, the vaults aren’t all they seem to be. What is masquerading as a safe haven in a time of nuclear war is actually a vast social experiment, with each vault given certain conditions.

Vault 13, which was featured in Fallout 1, found itself low on water supplies sooner than it should have. Vault 12 was never able to seal properly and everyone inside was mutated. Vault 15 was full of political radicals. Vault 27 was deliberately overcrowded. Vault 42 had no light bulbs of more than 40 watts provided. Vault 77 had only one man inside and a crate full of puppets.

And Vault 101, your home and the place where Fallout 3 starts with your rather dramatic birth, was a vault that was designed to never re-open once it had shut. The occupants were trapped inside and caught under the thumb of a particularly over-zealous Overseer and the gang culture he allowed to form among the vault’s youth. Until your father escaped, that is.

Gameplay:

Your father’s escape naturally throws a spanner into the day to day workings of the vault and, in true Bethesda tradition, the introduction sequences to the game are both tutorial and an exercise in interactive storytelling.

It’s like the opening to Oblivion, except not as linear. There are mini-sidequests and choices to make here which can effect the relationships your character will have later, impact your skills and decide who lives and dies for the rest of the game. Unlike in Oblivion where the Emperor and his men are all protected too, you can slaughter a lot of vault dwellers if you want – though certain characters will get knocked out instead of dying.

Escaping the vault will be a very familiar sensation to anyone who’s ever played Oblivion past the tutorial sequence too. It’s that same blinding HDR effect as you step into the sunlight and the same overwhelming feeling of possibility. You gain a level, choose a perk, and have to face the fact that you suddenly have more options than a hot chocolate factory.

There are problems here though in that, unlike Oblivion or Morrowind, you literally have no idea where to begin. Your father has left you a note saying that he’s fine and doesn’t want you to follow him, and since he’s only been on screen for about three minutes there’s no emotional connection to make you disagree with this sentiment. Plus, you don’t really have any clues of where to start.

Honestly, if we’d had a choice we’d have said to hell with chasing down Daddy and we’d have stayed inside to mess with the delicately balanced regime of the vault. It’s a shame you have to discard the terribly interesting microcosm so quickly.

Fortunately, things do start to pick up again and we were happy to find that the world we had to traverse was a lot more exciting than anything we’d seen in Oblivion. There’s no endless, rolling forests – there’s just a believable, collapsed wasteland punctuated by bloatflies, mutants and vagrants. And men with laser miniguns – it’s here that the VATS combat system comes into play.

VATS, or Vault Assisted Targeting System if you prefer, is a power-up mode which attempts to bring the turn-based mechanic of the original games to the new game and which lets you pause the game, target specific parts of your enemies and cue up a series of attacks. It’s the easiest way to score quick take-downs and super-gory kills, though it does feel a bit over-powered at times. Even with only average perception and a 10mm pistol you can still take an enemy’s head clear off in one hit if you don’t mind getting close enough to see the spray mist your monitor. Yum.

The VATS system isn’t free to use though. Using attacks in VATS mode costs you action points, the amount of which you have is directly tied to your agility stat. Of course, if you want to stand a chance of hitting something then you’ll still need to have a decently high perception stat too, so it’s a classic RPG balancing act. Where do you want to focus your abilities?

One thing that helps make the levelling system feel more fun is the addition of a perks system, which lets you choose special perks and abilities as you level up. The perks themselves range from simple bonuses and stat increases to more involved and inventive things too, such as ‘Black Widow’, which lets women do more damage against men as well as unlocking new dialogue options.

The perks system isn’t new though – it was one of the most popular features in the first games too, but Bethesda has chosen to combine it with the traits system from the earlier titles instead of just porting it as-is. The result is that you get perks much more regularly, which is great, and that there’s a lot more perks to choose from too, which is even better. Each perk has a different set of requirements too, so the replayability is really expanded if you fancy playing through again with a different character style.

Disappointingly though this ethic isn’t carried over to the dialogue system too – you can have the lowest intelligence and charisma in the world, but you’ll still get the same dialogue choices for the most part, though special options may change slightly.

Issues:

Unfortunately, it isn’t all smooth sailing for Fallout 3 and though the game as a whole is appealing, accessible and enjoyable there are a few places which are notably unpolished and uncomfortable for the PC platform.

The most noticeable is the interface, which feels very console-ish and unwieldy on the PC. Bethesda has increased the number of voice actors, but you still only have three dialogue options visible at once for no reason. It makes dialogue quickly become irritating as you endlessly scroll through options.

Using the PIP-boy is a bit of a hassle as well a lot of the time. On a console, it makes sense to have one central system to manage your stats, data and items since you have only so many buttons. On a PC though, it’s just annoying forcing the player to cycle through tabs and filters.

The very scale of the interface is annoying too, with the shop screen being particularly uninformative. Rather than make full use of the screen space, all information is maddeningly abbreviated so that it takes a good long while before you can really read info at a glance and recognise what ammo is good for what gun and what damage it’ll do.

Oh, and don’t even get us started on the world and local maps, which prove to be incredibly difficult to navigate precisely with.

The real problem though is that it’s very clear that there’s an excellent PC game here, but a lot of it is unfortunately hidden underneath an interface that makes too many concessions to the console world. It’s just a shame that Bethesda chose the Xbox 360 as the lead platform for the game.

Still, despite these flaws the game does retain a lot of its enjoyability and it’s a testament to the versatility of the Oblivion engine that sniping is so much fun in both real-time and VATS mode.

In fact, all of the gunplay in Fallout 3 is good. Unlike in Oblivion, where you really only had three weapons (melee, ranged or magic), Fallout 3 gives you a wide range of tools to wreak havoc with. You’ve got grenades, mines, big guns, small guns, energy weapons, fists and melee – all of which behave differently and have different effects. It’s just a shame that sneaking is still very difficult and essentially useless for most missions.

Finding other solutions to problems is one of the main joys of Fallout 3 and Bethesda has done its best to make each different route interesting and lengthy, so there are rarely any shortcuts to be found in the game play of Fallout 3 – something we definitely appreciate.

Picking locks, for example, is completed with a new minigame which is bit more realistic than the one in Oblivion, so taking a stealth approach isn’t something you can do without preparation. Bobby pins are a limited resource and you won’t even be able to try and tackle some locks unless you have a suitably high Lockpicking skill.

The same is true of hacking too, which relies on the Science skill and uses a mastermind-like minigame where you have to guess the password from a few different choices. True, it isn’t massively close to the original Fallout, but it’s still a very good thing and it’s good to see that Bethesda has at least opened the gameplay up from how it was in Oblivion so that there are now consequences to your actions.

Conclusion:

Fallout 3 is a tough nut to score because, on the one hand we think it’s utterly enthralling and breathtaking, but on the other we can see that it hasn’t been designed with the PC totally in mind and that really holds back the experience. Yes, mods will probably come out to rectify that – but should we be made to rely on modders to correct poor game design?

It’s a shame. Fallout 3 is a game from a company with a strong heritage on the PC from The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout is a recognised and highly regarded PC franchise – but this latest instalment is clearly made with the consoles as the primary platform. It’s just the way the market seems to be heading unfortunately.

Still, interface issues aside, there are a lot of things that Fallout 3 does excellently.

The overall aesthetic and feel of the game is the best example of this. Bethesda has clearly embraced the background and basis of the Fallout series, really building on the 1950s-era themes that ran through the earlier games as an undercurrent.

The levels are littered with posters and relics from the pre-war time and everything from the radio stations you can tune in to, to the selection of perks as you level up are infused with the same dry, antiquated sense of wit that made the original games so memorable.

That said, though Fallout 3 is wearing a similar outfit to Fallout 1 and 2, it still remains a distinct and separate game in the series. Like Fallout Tactics before it, Fallout 3 talks the talk but walks with a bit of a limp when you really get down to it. Hardcore fans of the first games will undoubtedly find that Fallout 3 just feels a bit at odds with the previous games on occasion.

Oddly though, we don’t count this as a bad thing. The earlier Fallout games were fantastic and all, but we’re quietly glad that Fallout 3 isn’t just a re-hash of what once was. Bethesda has tried to put its own spin on the game by shifting the perspective and updating the various mechanics and while it doesn’t always work (see: interface), enough of it does to make the game enjoyable on the whole.

For everything we don’t like about the game – and there’s a fair bit of stuff we can list in that category, from wooden actors to occasionally flaky graphics – there’s at least two or three things we do like.

We’re especially fond of how vulnerable the player is made to feel, for example. Monitoring your radiation level, staying stocked on ammo and focusing your skill points on necessities before luxuries; these are all aspects of the game which help make this instalment feel more survivalist than the series has ever done before. It’s something we’ve always wanted to see done with the franchise and while Bethesda hasn’t done it perfectly, it’ll more than do.

Fallout 3 is a game that’s going to divide audiences though – that much we’re already certain of. Players will find themselves drawn into two camps, with those who love it going to battle against those who still think it’s just “Oblivion with guns.”

So, is this just Oblivion with guns? Well, to a degree yes. There are still a few flies in the ointment, like the enemies that spot you from miles away and the bloatflies that will chase you endlessly across the game world just when you’ve run out of ammo. At the same time though, it’s also something entirely fresh and unique.

It’s neither totally a Fallout game, nor totally Oblivion. It doesn’t work all the time, but when it does it’s glorious and unbelievably good, so we think it’s well worth looking past the few bugs for. It gets a score of 8/10, though admittedly it’s only just scraping that if we’re going to be totally honest, because it’s fun and significant, if not quite as good as it could and arguably should have been.

Gameplay: 9
Features: 8
Graphics: 8
Replayability: 9

Overall: 8/10 Recommended

What do our scores mean?