Of course, the usual classic mode is still there, and as addicting as ever: match gems of three or more and repeat as much as you can until you run out of moves in order to rack up as high a score as you can. Explosive gems for four take out the gems around it, star gems for L or T shaped matches take out entire rows or columns, five gems gets you the Hypercube (allowing you to remove all the gems of that colour in play) and six gets you the Supernova gem, obliterating nearly half of the board. This mode is also joined with a mode appearing from Blitz – called ‘Lightning mode’ here – in which the same rules apply, only you can’t run out of moves and you have a time limit, which can be extended by matching certain gems.

However, Bejeweled 3 also has a wealth of completely new modes to sweeten the deal. Zen is an endless mode with no time limit with customisable sound and, strangely enough, breathing exercises apparently designed to calm your mind. Poker challenges you to make matches in the style of poker hands, but after so long you must make ‘new’ hands or be prepared to face the coin which has a 50:50 chance of giving you a Game Over. Diamond Mine wants you to uncover artefacts and dig underground using gems near the bottom of the screen to rack up a high score and Butterflies changes several of the gems to butterflies – whom must be saved from the hungry spider at the top of the board by matching them up before they reach him while Ice Storm sees a wall of ice slowly creeping up the board and can only be held back by successful matches, with vertical ones temporarily destroying each ice wall.

The most enjoyable of these though, is Quest mode. A series of challenges incorporating many aspects of the aforementioned game modes as well as some unique ones of it’s own, it’s a very nice way to verse you in the various game modes, as well as providing something to aim for aside from the usual high score chasing. Sure, unlike the rest of the game, it has a limited lifespan but while it lasts it’s certainly the mode with the most variety. That’s not to say the other modes don’t have their charms – each one offers different strategic elements to the others and actually feel different from each other – the quick pace of Ice Storm and Lightning feeling a world away from the more methodical Butterflies and Poker, where you often have to think two or three moves ahead, especially on later stages.

Of course, these new modes would all be for naught if that instant magical feedback wasn’t there. That connection between what’s going on on the screen and the feeling of progression firing off the pleasure receptors in your brain that makes you want to keep going, have just one more go, driving you to beat earlier scores. And Bejweled 3 represents the pinnacle of their ten years of doing this. It’s a shame that there’s no true live multiplayer like in previous XBLA outing Blitz and although leaderboards are all present and correct it’s sad to see few options for that simultaneous competitive style of multiplayer, but it’s far from a deal-breaker. And the addition of badges, while a nice touch, seem mostly superfluous (only one actual achievement is tied into them) but all in all Bejeweled 3 marks the current pinnacle of the series – if you somehow have never played a Bejeweled game before, this should be your first stop – and if you have and are looking for more, this should more than provide.

Verdict: On Target

Platforms available: PC, XBox 360 (XBLA), PS3 (PSN)
Platform Reviewed – Xbox 360 (XBLA)

For more information on our scoring policy please read this page

Which brings us to Mario Kart 7 – actually the eighth game in the series if you include the Pac-Man infused arcade cabinet – which is the series’ newest instalment on Nintendo’s burgeoning new handheld, the 3DS. Mario Kart has appeared on handhelds before in the form of Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Game Boy Advance and Mario Kart DS on the, well… DS… but the latest entry in the franchise trumps them both in almost every conceivable way, sometimes even outdoing its home console counterparts.

The racing itself is classic Mario Kart fare: eight outlandish opponents drive a variety of even more outlandish vehicles, while bombarding each other with a bevy of – yes, you guessed it – outlandish weaponry, racing in one of three speed classes. Green shells that bounce around the track, red homing shells, banana skins, giant bombs, invincibility stars and lightning bolts that shrink your opponents down to handily squashable sizes are joined by a handful of new mischievous tools, although they’re of mixed usefulness and some players will fare better with them than others. The Tanooki Tail – most fondly remembered from Super Mario Bros. 3 and the more recent Super Mario 3D Land – allows players to slyly wallop opponents should they stray within its limited range, while with the Fire Flower you’re able to let loose with fireballs for a brief time. Undoubtedly the most insane of the new additions, however, is the Lucky Seven, which bestows the player with a staggering seven weapons, handy for evening the odds and closing the gap on your opponents should you find yourself bringing up the rear.

Recurring characters – Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toad, Yoshi, Koopa Troopa, Wario, Rosalina, Donkey Kong, Bowser – are not only able to utilise new weaponry, but are also joined by new faces, as Mario Kart 7 marks the series debut of a handful of classic Mario characters: Shy Guy, Metal Mario, Lakitu, Wiggler and Honey Queen. It’s a good enough roster, although admittedly I found some of the choices quite peculiar and some of the omissions even more odd, plus compared to the gargantuan 24 playable characters found in Mario Kart Wii, 16 seems slightly stingy.

Regardless of this, Mario Kart 7 is every bit as enjoyable as its handheld predecessors and then some, thanks to the 3DS’ circle pad. No longer will you need to tentatively tap at a D-pad to steer, movement is instead every bit as smooth and fluid as when playing any of the home console versions. Additionally, should you crave motion control akin to that of Mario Kart Wii, Nintendo’s also got you covered by way of the 3DS’ gyroscope; although if you choose to use this input method you’re limited to viewing the action from a first person perspective, which is at first every bit as jarring as it sounds, plus you’ll be unable to effectively make use of the 3D visuals when playing this way.

Content-wise, Mario Kart 7 doesn’t differ wildly from its predecessors. In single player, you have the option to compete in one of three speed classes: 50cc, 100cc and 150cc, with the opponent AI’s skill getting kicked up a notch the higher you go, along with their aggression and sheer brutality with weapons. In fact, brutality is the correct word, as playing Mario Kart 7 at 150cc can at times be utterly frustrating, as your seven opponents bombard you with a seemingly endless onslaught of red shells, or you find yourself robbed of your first place position right at the finish line as you’re thwarted by a blue shell – the blight of every Mario Kart player, this tool of Satan homes in on the player leading the pack – and end up in last place.

Of course, the real appeal of any Mario Kart game lies in its multiplayer, and Mario Kart 7 certainly doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Up to eight players can compete with each other either locally or online via Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection. Online play is undeniably the jewel in Mario Kart 7’s crown, letting players race against friends and random opponents from all over the world. Although the omission of voice chat is a bit bewildering, races run smoothly; not once have I ever experienced any lag or connection issues. New to the series are the Communities, which allow anyone to create their own custom race conditions. Do you only want to play 100cc races? How about races in which the only available weapons are banana skins? Or perhaps you’d rather race with no weapons at all (helpful hint: don’t do that, it’s absolutely rubbish). These options and almost countless more are present in what is without question the most robust and fully featured multiplayer suite of any Mario Kart game ever.

Further customisation options are available for the karts themselves. A wide variety of different vehicles and attachments can be earned by collecting enough of the coins that litter every circuit, and players can pick and choose any combination of parts they’ve unlocked, all of which affect the kart’s performance in speed, acceleration, handling and off-road. along with how well they cope when being rammed by opponents. Attachments come in the form of wheels and gliders, the latter serving up what is perhaps the most drastic piece of innovation Mario Kart has seen to date. A large chunk of the courses feature huge jumps that see your kart automatically activating its glider attachment, subsequently letting you fly through the air. It’s mostly done for dramatic effect, but there are a fair few shortcuts available for players willing to risk gliding through more perilous routes. Additionally, many courses also feature underwater segments, in which the handling feels more weighted, plus – as with the gliding sections – there are sneaky shortcuts waiting to be utilised.

Speaking of courses, races take place on 32 tracks split across eight separate cups; four comprising new courses and four made up of classic courses from previous games. The new courses that are included are for the most part brilliantly designed and their difficulty is perfectly pitched as they gradually become more difficult to navigate through as you progress through the eight cups. The featured retro courses are also some of the best the series has to offer, with classic circuits from the SNES, N64, GBA, GameCube, DS and even Wii instalments presenting players with a pleasant dose of nostalgia. There are a few duff courses – both old and new – present that aren’t all that enjoyable to race on; for example, both the SNES and 3DS Rainbow Road circuits are borderland sadistic in their design, while the new Bowser’s Castle course is disappointingly humdrum when compared to past iterations.

Mario Kart 7 can often be infuriating. Events can unfold during races that will bring you right to the brink of insanity, ready to curse Nintendo and all that they stand for, or hurl your 3DS at the nearest wall. But then, that’s the charm of Mario Kart. It’s an arena in which everyone is equally matched due to its sheer randomness, and the more sadistic you are, the higher your chances of success. Mario Kart 7 upholds the series’ tradition of being enormous fun while at the same time brutally unforgiving at times, and that – coupled with its fluid controls, (mostly) great course design, brilliant multiplayer component and some of the best visuals the 3DS has to offer – makes this the best Mario Kart game yet. If you’re not a fan, nothing here is going to bring you to your senses (you poor, deluded fool), but if Mario Kart revs your engine, you’re going to love Mario Kart 7 and it’s truly a must-buy for any self-respecting 3DS owner.

Verdict: Red Mist

Platforms Available – 3DS
Platform Reviewed – 3DS

Please read this post for more details on our scoring system.

Kick, punch it's all in (their) minds. And I mean Batman's fist.

And right off the bat (pardon the pun) you’ll notice how the scale is that much bigger with Arkham City. Most of the entire city is open to you from the off, and thankfully Rocksteady have made the decision to let you keep most of your gadgets that Bats ended Asylum with, including his batarangs, Batclaw and all important cape which is now capable of allowing you to glide and pseudo-fly over and through the many rooftops of Arkham City, and if you played Asylum, it’s about as smooth and intuitive to navigate said streets as you’d expect but does take some skill to truly master. However, this is complimented by the ‘AR Training’ missions which will help you learn the more subtle nuances of Batman’s flight mechanics.

Of course, having a massive open area to explore is all well and good but would be rather moot if there was nothing to do in the space. So of course, The Riddler returns with some riddles and trophies to collect, although this time – while remaining a ‘side mission’ – their story arc is a little more fleshed out than a disembodied voice over the airwaves mocking you for being unable to find them, and actually does entwine with the main story to a small degree. The same goes for the many other side missions that now join The Riddler, including crossing paths with many characters from the Bat universe. A downside is that most of these other missions do follow a similar formula – go here, beat up some guys, use a gadget/detective vision, move on – but the cameos are a treat for for fans, and they do fit in well with the overall concept of an entire city of criminals with their own agenda.

Batfans will recognise many iconic locations

Crucially, the returning Freeflow combat and the Predator stealth sections, while perhaps not as numerous as they were in the first game – have been given subtle yet important changes to help the player suit the new challenges that await. New moves in Bats’ arsenal including beat downs, areal attacks and the ability to counter multiple enemies all come in handy against the many new goon types and still flow wonderfully into the existing system – Asylum veterans shouldn’t have too much trouble diving right into Hard mode, but even more new enemy types later in the game such as those with bladed weapons and shields will keep you on your toes and re-evaluating your tactics. During the Predator sections, new gadgets like the Smoke Bomb and the often hilarious Remote Electricity Charge device allow new strategies to compliment those honed in Asylum – and of course the mooks here get upgraded over the course of the game which really encourages you to adjust your tactics on the fly.

There is an issue with Batman: Arkham City though, and for all it’s catering to the fans of every aspect of the Batman franchise – whether that’s TV, films, comics or whatever else – it does have the side effect of feeling like the game is stretching its story a little thin. It’s great that so many villains make an appearance, from Penguin and Two Face to even lesser known folks like Deadshot and Calendar Man, but by incorporating so many of them into the plot, large chunks of the main story feel like their inclusion doesn’t have the same depth as your interactions with the villains in the first game. It almost feels a little spread thin with many villains feeling like they’re making an appearance just because we haven’t seen them yet, and a few dangling plot questions are certainly left at the end of the game aside from the more obvious sequel-hinting ones. There’s also a fair few who are introduced that may baffle those not familiar with the Batman universe as a whole – and though there’s background reading material available, it seems at little off that these are revealed not necessarily through meeting the characters in question, but from collecting Riddler trophies – some that aren’t even available to you because you don’t have the tools available to you at the time you meet said character.

Catwoman, not having access to Bat's range of gadgets, plays more stealthy but can hold her own in a fight.

Batman Arkham Asylum was such a great game because it was a tight, finely tuned experience. It was a largely linear one, but that worked in it’s favour, being highly polished and honed to perfection through sublime pacing and just enough restriction to make it feel like the perfect approximation of being the Batman. Arkham City is no less a great game by any stretch, but it is a subtly different one. There’s so much to do, and a New Game + along with the returning combat and Predator challenge rooms (along with a fun new mode combining them with mutators called “Riddler’s Revenge” with medals to be won) means it’s a very meaty game. Upgrades and improvements are drip-fed along at just the right amount to encourage progression and the main story has some great moments – thankfully it seems Rocksteady have also learned their lesson on the boss battles which spoilt Asylum for the most part, and although a few do appear none are anywhere near the banality of the Poison Ivy or Bane fights from Asylum – in fact one boss battle in particular is an absolute corker and is a great example to all games on how to do a boss fight, but it would be a disservice to you for me to spoil that here.

Arkham Asylum was about being the Batman, Arkham City is about being in Batman’s world. To misquote Mr R. Kelly once again: “We all need it, can’t live without it. An Arkham City, ooh yeah.”

Verdict: Red Mist

Platforms available: PC, XBox 360, PS3
Platform Reviewed – PC

For more information on our scoring policy please read this page

Chris Evans – My god I love this game, this is worthy of a Red Mist, no questions asked. I played a fair bit of Oblivion, and I sure enjoyed that, but Skyrim is on another level entirely. I wasn’t sold on the introduction, but as soon as I had escaped the dragon and was walking along with that chap at the beginning, I was enthralled. Steam tells me I have played it for 19 hours, and in that time I have barely scratched the surface of what the game has to offer. I have completed a tiny proportion of the main quest and only visited three of the main cities.

The most enjoyable aspect of the title isn’t the main quest line, or indeed the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild, the best aspect of Skyrim is the wilderness. After getting to the first small village after the opening sequence I didn’t bother following any quest markers, instead I started to climb a mountain and was soon caught in a blizzard with a small group of bandits attacking me. After despatching those ruffians I came along my first dungeon and explored every nook and cranny I could find in there.

Somehow, I convinced myself that I had to stop playing Skyrim as much as I was, I feared it would completely take over my play time. Sadly that meant I have become entangled once more in Football Manager 2012, but I know that I will soon head back to that frozen world, even if it is only to become a werewolf like Nick.

Seriously, this game is brilliant, I saw one of my cousins recently and he was asking whether he should ask for Skyrim for Christmas, I enthused to him that he definitely should get it. This is a gem of game.

Nick Wheeler – If Skyrim has taught me one thing, it’s that there are few problems in life that can’t be solved by turning into a werewolf and killing everyone.

I am Druss. Wanderer of the snow-fields of Skyrim. Dragon slayer. Vampire hunter. Saviour of that guy chased by bears. In my spare time I enjoy chopping wood for the local lumber-mill, catching fish with my bare hands and transmogrifying into a giant terrifying beast of the night.

Since becoming a werewolf I’ve formed a new outlook on life. First thing I did was rid myself of that damned horse. Slow, lumbering and smelly it was, plus I could never find a space to park it in the stable. But now, ignoring the seconds of agonising bone-snapping trauma involved in transformation, all my travelling needs are taken care of with my own four paws. No matter the distance, miles of snow-covered landscape are devoured by the rhythmic thundering of my paws, as is any poor helpless wildlife that happens to cross my path.

In combat I am devastating. My claws rend both human and animal flesh with equal speed. But in the rare event I do find myself outmatched, I carry one final ace up my sleeve. There are few things in Skyrim that can run away as fast as a werewolf. Call it cowardice, but for me it’s an extension of the simple pleasure of watching the landscape drift by under my feet.

Us wolf-people have a somewhat bad reputation. My appearance at social occasions in wolf-form does seem to be frowned upon by the attending guards, no matter what vintage wine I bring. Perhaps it’s my tendency to dribble on the carpet, shed hairs on the rug and chase horses, I’m not sure. Or maybe it’s the fact that I have a habit of tearing people limb from limb before feeding on their mangled remains. Who knows, I’m no expert on court etiquette.

On the rare occasions where decency or clothing standards dictate a hairy wolf-man is not acceptable, I carry additional protection in the form of an ancient two-handed axe, Wuuthraad. Since coming into my possession, the already legendary axe has never been far from my reach, smashing its way through the faces of those who stand against me. I hear there are people out there able to control the elements with magic and spray fire from their fingers, but I just hit things with my axe until they don’t get up any more.

Part of my brain is screaming in the background saying this isn’t a game, it’s too easy. But the weapon I carry is enormous, heavy and sharp. I’d probably be a little more concerned if it didn’t rend foes in two after only one strike. So fights may be a little one-sided, so what? I just lopped off a bandit’s head with one blow and watched it bounce down a flight of stairs, and now I’m going to turn back into a wolf and eat his family.

Happy days.

Michael Johnson – I feverishly tore open the box, slamming the DVD in my tray and spent 20 minutes fidgeting as the game installed upon my trusty warhorse of a PC. I had done my best to ignore the hype, but it had taken a hold of me nonetheless and I was excited.

You can imagine my disappointment then, when it turned out that ‘Skyrim’ was not the experimental cloud-based Anilingus adventure I had been expecting. I held on to a vain hope that after the wagon based expository intro, we’d get to the real meat of the game. But within five minutes I’d accepted that this was in fact a game about Dragons and Beards. And not even a saucy one like The Witcher 2. In fact, it may even be the least saucy game ever made. Those of you have married in Skyrim, will have presumably snorted out laughter at TES V’s version of courtship, which seems to involve wearing a necklace and entering into a business partnership (in fact the main perk of marriage is that it comes with a shop!).

Skyrim doesn’t really have much time for things like ‘drama’ or ‘relationships’ or ‘good writing’, but it doesn’t really need them. It gives us an astoundingly large world, packed with places to explore, people to help or kill, loot to grab, weapons to craft or enchant and quests to complete. And despite the lack of passable prose, it manages you to draw you in to this beautifully crafted realm, full of snow-covered mountainsides, howling gales and starkly beautiful waterfalls, nestling in the otherwise rugged landscape. It also has INFINITE DRAGONS – the ultimate spectacle and they lend the game a sense of grandeur (the wonderful score by Jeremy Soule doesn’t hurt either).

Skyrim is a place that begs to be explored, The Elder Scrolls games may not give us freedom to change or really even affect the central narrative (or the ancilliary stories that run parallel), but they make up for this by giving us the most impressive world in gaming, filled with treasures and secrets, traps and monsters, friends, foes and dragons. We make our own stories in Skyrim (although I may have to turn to fan-fic after the misleading title gave me false expectations).

Jordan Harling – Until Skyrim I had never really understood the allure of the Elder Scrolls games. I had played Morrowind briefly and Oblivion fairly extensively and wasn’t really impressed. It was clear to me that both were technically extremely good, with massive world maps and deep quest lines but there just wasn’t any emotional weight to the games. The worlds felt strangely hollow and the NPCs lifeless.

This isn’t the case in Skyrim and it’s not easy to quantify why, which is a complement to the subtle changes that have been made to the AI. Thanks to the new radiant AI system NPCs act much more realistic than in previous games. Drop a pile of items in the middle of a town and some characters will pick them up for you, others will take them for themselves and some may even shout at you for littering.

The more realistic NPCs add a much greater sense of emotional weight to each quest, you’re not just completing a fetch quest for a robot, you’re adventuring for a family heirloom for Idolaf Battle-Born. This extra connection makes hacking your way through the interwoven quest trees feel much more satisfying in previous games.

One area where Skyrim hasn’t really improved though is in combat. Melee attacks don’t carry the weight they should and battles frequently turn into tedious bouts of clicking until yourself or everyone else is dead. Had Bethesda implemented a system more similar to the one found in Dark Souls then Skyrim may well have been the closest thing to a perfect game I’ve ever played. However, even with the flawed combat Skyrim is a sublime game, one that no doubt will be competing for many people’s Game of the Year award.

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the nose off your face (if you're not careful.)

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Saints Row 3 feels almost the most RPG-like of the series, in terms of the player character. Although it’s a shame to see the omission of layers from the character clothing options, character customisation is still among the best and most flexible of any game, including many MMOs. If you want to dress up wearing nothing but a giant bunny head while wielding a baseball bat with nails in it, you can. The previous games’ commodity of Respect returns, but tweaked slightly. Earning it allows you to ‘level up’ your character in a way that unlocks the ability to purchase new perks when you’ve got enough cash. You earn Respect through almost everything you do, whether it’s story led missions, destroying random gang operations or the distractions such as the returning fling yourself into oncoming traffic fun of Insurance Fraud or the new Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax – a hilarious pastiche on popular Japanese game shows in which you’re tasked to run through a lethal course, avoiding traps while killing furry mascots in quick succession in order to keep up a combo and earn the most cash. It’s also important to note that most of these distractions are entirely optional – you can do as little or as many as you like, but completionists will certainly have to put effort in to finish every single task on offer.

If criticisms can be levelled, some of these distractions do feel recycled from Saints Row 2 sadly. It would have been great to see more new distractions like Professor Genki. At times, it’s also a shame how much the areas of Steelport feel very similar to each other other than a landmark here and there. It’s a bit of a double edged sword, because on the one hand clearly Volotion don’t want to restrict the player to certain areas by making one gang harder to take out than the others, but on the other hand taking on each gang away from the story feels very similar in terms of how you fight them and the environment in which you do so – for the most part. It’s certainly often hard – and more so when you’ve taken over the majority of the city – to work out exactly where you are without consulting the in-game map frequently. However, these niggles pale into insignificance when you consider the positives that Saints Row: The Third offers up on it’s plate.

There's no such thing as a 'small' explosion in Steelport.

Where this game really shines is in it’s story missions. The second game was famous for going so far over the top it was almost ridiculous, while the third keeps up that same level of crazy, but in such a way during the story that nearly every mission is in a perpetual struggle to be the most memorable. You’ll go from a bank hiest, to a gunfight in freefall in the skies to a car chase while singing along to the radio all in the first fifteen minutes. It’d be downright unfair of me to ruin all the surprises here, but it’s safe to say that the story missions are among the most varied, wacky and crucially fun in any of these types of game – quite a feat when you consider the open world genre can be amongst the most difficult genre to come up with unique missions for. The characters too are impressively memorable for the most part, you won’t necessarily like them all but it’s very rare you’ll see someone and forget who they are and why they sent you on their mission for very long.

Of course, the crassness of it all shouldn’t go without note. Yes, it can come off as lewd, crude and rude at times, but it does so ever so knowingly and so much so it does that very rare thing of being so far over the line to the point of drawing attention to the outright ludicrousness of it all, and throughout Saints Row: The Third there’s less and prevailing wind of fun rather more a full force hurricane. There’s certain aspects that perhaps seem unnecessary, but at the same time you know it wouldn’t feel like a Saints Row game without them. If you’re after a game that offers visceral, almost brainless over the top hilarity. The addition of a co-op wave based “Whored Mode” (as they call it) is a nice touch, but is really more of an afterthought compared to the gormless antics that can be had with the co-op throughout the main game allowing you to revel in the madness with a friend. And that pretty much sums up the playground nature of this offering: it’s certainly not going to be a game that offers high-brow intellectualism by any stretch, but it sure as hell is going to provide a heck of a lot of entertainment.

Cool guys don't look at explosions.

Verdict: Head Shot

Platforms available: PC, XBox 360, PS3
Platform Reviewed – XBox 360

For more information on our scoring policy please read this page

That’s not to say that it’s perfect; far from it. In fact, this review will spend what will undoubtedly be an alarming amount of inches in explaining what Super Mario 3D Land does wrong. This shouldn’t be misinterpreted as me claiming it to be a terrible game – or even an iffy one – but there are flaws nonetheless; some of them minor, some of them so inconsequential as to be almost unworthy of even noting at all. But when you take a character such as Mario, who – despite some minor hiccups – has enjoyed as infallible an existence as any videogame mascot is ever likely to be privy to, such flaws and quirks are immediately going to be picked up on. And that is most certainly the case with Super Mario 3D Land. It starts off well enough, with a plot that’s as bare-bones as that of any Mario game before it, but it serves its purpose. During a storm, a tree that stands within the grounds of Princess Peach’s castle loses all of its leaves. These leaves turn out to be Super Leaves, which bestow Tanooki tails on every living creature that they come into contact with. Unfortunately, this includes Bowser and his minions, who subsequently – shock, horror! – kidnap Peach and so, as always, it’s up to Mario to save her.

It’s as good a setup as any for what follows; eight worlds of classic 3D Mario platforming action, which any long-time Nintendo fans will be instantly familiar with. However, whereas more recent 3D Mario outings have served up levels that are more open and promote exploration, the stages in Super Mario 3D Land mix 3D gameplay with old-school 2D sensibilities. Instead of letting players gallivant around and solve puzzles in a search for stars like they did in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine or the Galaxy games, each level in Super Mario 3D Land is almost entirely linear; the goal always being to reach the flag pole at the end of the stage before the timer reaches zero, with any alternate routes quickly returning to the beaten track. While many players might jump for joy at the thought of 3D platforming that focuses on just that – the platforming – Super Mario 3D Land often feels like it’s treading safe ground; like Nintendo weren’t overly keen on expending too much time or money on developing the next great 3D Mario platformer and instead opted to “go back to Mario’s roots”, with the obvious bonus being a relatively quick development cycle.

Despite this backwards step, Super Mario 3D Land boasts controls and movement that are as tight as those of any Mario game before it and as such is an absolute joy to play, while the level design – although linear – still manages to incorporate modern ideas from more recent Mario games alongside classic design elements and enemies. This goes for the power-ups as well, with old favourites like the Fire Flower and Starman being joined by the Propeller Box (from New Super Mario Bros. Wii) and the all-new Boomerang Suit, which lets Mario hurl boomerangs at enemies from a distance, with the advantage being that boomerangs don’t fall to the ground in the same way that fireballs do. The star of the show in Super Mario 3D Land, however, is undoubtedly the Tanooki Suit; first seen in Super Mario Bros. 3, this cute-as-a-button outfit bestows Mario with the ability to swipe at enemies with his tail as well as hover in the air for limited periods. These abilities are useful not only for dispatching enemies, but also for getting your hands on Star Medals, of which there are three tucked away in every level. Some of them you’ll come across naturally as you progress, while many of them require a specific power-up to be equipped in order to be reached and collected. Either way, you should be attempting to snag as many of these as possible; not only does it add many hours to the game, but you also won’t be able to progress through certain points if you haven’t collected enough of them.

The mish-mash of classic and modern Mario-ness extends into Super Mario 3D Land’s presentation, which is uniformly stellar no matter where it happens to draw inspiration from. This is easily one of the 3DS’ best-looking games, if not from a technical standpoint then most certainly from an artistic one. Every facet of Super Mario 3D Land oozes charm and there are numerous little tit-bits that will bring a smile to the faces of older players. The only gripe to be had with the presentation – whether that be the levels or the music, which remains as jaunty as ever and will probably end up stuck in your head for a good, long while – is that it tends to lean back on Super Mario Bros. 3 too often. This is in a way understandable since Nintendo was trying to bring the best of both 2D and 3D Mario games together into one title, but Mario has a long and rich heritage as far as the 2D platforming scene goes, so it would have been nice to see elements from Super Mario Bros. 2 or Super Mario World make their way into Super Mario 3D Land – although it doesn’t seem to much of a stretch to imagine that a sequel might very well focus on the latter, should Nintendo ever opt to develop one.

Of course, encompassing all of this is the one feature that truly is a first for a Mario game, and that’s stereoscopic 3D. The 3DS’ main selling point is used to great effect here, although it proves to be both a blessing and a curse in equal measures. On the one hand, having the 3D switched on will make it easier for players to judge the height and distance of their jumps and their surroundings. However, the game was blatantly designed around the 3D visuals, so if you do have them switched off, certain sections will prove hair-pullingly tricky to beat. while instances in which you’ll find yourself misjudging the simplest of movements and falling to your doom will be all too common.

In all fairness, the game does always indicate which sections absolutely require the 3D effect if you hope to succeed – and it is nice to see a game that not only benefits from 3D visuals (as was the case with Star Fox 64 3D) but also attempts to structure itself around them – but if you have trouble making out the 3D effect, it gives you headaches or you just prefer to play without it, then prepare to find yourself in trial-and-error situations fairly frequently. Luckily, another modern Mario stalwart reappears in Super Mario 3D Land, in the form of special power-ups that give players that extra leg-up should they find themselves struggling. The Invincibility Leaf grants Mario the combined abilities of the Tanooki Suit and Starman and appears if a player dies five times in the same level, while the P-Wing appears if they die ten times and instantly whisks the player to the end of the level automatically. Be warned though: these power-ups only appear on your first playthrough of each stage, so if you plan on going back and claiming any Star Medals that you’d previously missed, you’ll have to do so without these aids.

Stereoscopic 3D isn’t the only way that Super Mario 3D Land utilises the unique capabilities of the 3DS. Players can use the gyroscope to look around in first person while inside a canon or standing at binocular stands, the latter of which can help suss out the layout of the levels ahead or get stranded Toads to relinquish useful power-ups, extra lives or even Star Medals. Alongside this, Super Mario 3D Land features StreetPass support and allows players to gain access to Mystery Boxes. These mini-levels all require the player to either defeat every enemy or collect every coin within the box before the timer reaches zero; doing so also awarding them with a handy item. This feature goes some way to boosting Super Mario 3D Land’s already lengthy running time. Granted, you can breeze through all eight worlds within four hours, but by doing so you’ll be missing the point, as scouring every level for its three Star Medals adds numerous hours and is arguably the real meat of the game because, while playing through them is enjoyable enough, the initial eight worlds on offer feel almost tame by standards set in previous Mario games. It’s only once you defeat Bowser and rescue Peach that you are rewarded with a wealth of additional content. The eight worlds become sixteen, with the latter ones – while admittedly being re-jigged versions of the first eight – presenting a devilishly tricky challenge in which certain elements such as needing to collect clocks to keep the timer going or having Shadow Mario chasing aping your every move and attempting to halt your progress are added to really spice things up. Additionally, these eight extra levels also house their own Star Medals, plus you’ll get to unlock Luigi as a playable character along with another special power-up, so if you plan to see and do everything in Super Mario 3D Land, those four hours suddenly become twenty; maybe even more.

Super Mario 3D Land was initially a game that I feared would be a difficult game to grade, which is something I never in a million years thought I’d ever write. However, in the end, every little quirk ended up being just that; little, minor and subsequently inconsequential. Yes, Nintendo may have an included over-abundance of Super Mario Bros. 3, or an over-reliance on stereoscopic 3D (instead of endeavouring to make it optional), or some boss fights that aren’t as exciting as they should be and perhaps pay homage to the ones seen in the original Super Mario Bros. a little too much… but at the end of the day, Super Mario 3D Land is still an impeccably designed, aesthetically pleasing, masterfully crafted platformer. In the future, it would be nice if it proved to be an accompaniment to a proper fully-fledged Super Mario 64 style 3D platformer on 3DS rather than the norm, but for now, Super Mario 3D Land is as good a reason as any to pick up Nintendo’s newest handheld and is inarguably a love letter to all things Mario, despite it’s minor flaws.

Verdict: Head-Shot

Platforms Available – 3DS
Platform Reviewed – 3DS

If you read my review of last years game you might not be holding out much hope for WRC 2, and for the most part you shouldn’t, the new title fails to really get to grips with the problems that the first game in the series had. That is namely a lack of ‘feel’ from the cars.

This year I was playing the Xbox 360 version and within moments of starting my first race I had a bad feeling, or rather a lack of feeling. There was no rumble feedback in the controller. A quick look at the options and I noticed that I had to turn vibration on. It is criminal for a racing game these days not to have vibration turned on by default, it adds so much more to the game, especially on a rally game where you are racing across rough gravel and mud for large parts of the game.

More troubling, after turning vibration on, it was woefully lacking in providing feedback. In a game like DiRT you instantly know what road surface you are on based on the level of vibration. In WRC 2 you can complete a stage with the only awareness that you have changed road surface based on what you see. I expect to feel a massive change in grip levels when transferring from gravel to tarmac, but it doesn’t happen.

Ignoring the problems with the vibration and you come across uninspired handling in the cars. I don’t know whether developers Milestone are trying to achieve a realistic feel to the driving model, but simply put, the majority of the cars feel bland and boring to drive. If you take a simulation racer like RACE 07 from SimBin, the cars feel very much alive and challenging to drive. It is a shame that the driving model is so uninspired in WRC 2, the front-wheel drive cars are especially poor with massive amounts of understeer. Handling does improve slightly with the four-wheel drive machines, and these certainly feel much improved over the first WRC title, but compared to the DiRT series even these can be very boring to drive.

If you played last years version, you will find yourself racing along some very familiar stages. I realise that when you have the same events to cover as last year that there will be repetition in the stages, but when you look at each country having six or seven stages, of which half of them are reversed tracks, you quickly find things becoming stale. I wish Milestone had been able to add new stages to the countries that we saw last year.

The new ‘Urban Rally’ along the streets of Berlin is a welcome addition and adds some variety to proceedings, but it stands out like a sore thumb being the only event of its’ type in the game. More Urban stages are promised to appear as DLC, the reality is though that they should be released with the game to add an Urban Championship.

For those of you after some longevity to your game, the Road to the WRC mode has been expanded with some new additions, the categories on offer have been tweaked to match up with the current official events run by the FIA and you are now able to hire staff to bring in sponsorship offers and to research improvements to your cars. They provide amusing side shows to the racing, but don’t expect much depth to them beyond hiring better qualified staff to earn better sponsors and higher level research and development options.

If you are looking for a game which focuses on classic rally driving, then WRC 2 is your only option unless you want to go back to the first DiRT or an earlier Colin McRae Rally title. Sadly, while there have been minor improvements over last years edition, when the driving is still fairly mundane and you routinely come across the same stages to race on, it is hard to recommend this at full price over last years edition.

There is so much potential in the official World Rally Championship licence, I really want to see it being pushed to the limits with more stages and a greater sense of team management in the early days of your career. For now though, unless you are a hardcore rally fan looking for a bit more, I have to recommend you look elsewhere for your action.

Verdict – Off Target

Platforms Available – PC, 360, PS3.
Platform Reviewed – 360

For more details on our scoring system, please read this post.

Tragically, over recent years, the adventure game genre has dwindled from the behemoth it once was to a spattering of overly simplistic titles. Publisher Wadjet Eye Games, however, have taken upon themselves the responsibility for keeping the spirit of the 1990’s adventure game alive. Eschewing such modern ideals as 3D and high definition, their recent successes with the Blackwell series have proven an audience still exists for more cerebral games, where combat and action play second-fiddle to engaging characterisation and plot.

Taking its cues from the Blade Runner school of science fiction, Gemini Rue takes a gleaming image of the future, then covers it in a fine layer of grease and grit. Late in the 23rd century we find two characters both searching for answers. Azriel Odin finds himself on the planet Barracus, digging through garbage for clues in a filthy rain soaked city run by criminals. Delta Six on the other hand is trapped in an Orwellian nightmare, a bright, clinical facility observed at all times by unseen eyes. The contrast between the two locations is both evocative and gripping, and their inevitable collision does much to drive the story forward.

Graphically, Gemini Rue is rooted firmly back in the 90s, with a fixed resolution and limited colour palette. It would be easy for gamers used to the graphical gluttony of Crysis and Skyrim to dismiss it as looking too dated, but to do that would be to miss the entire point. The artistic style is a deliberate homage to the glory days, when adventure games still enthralled. That’s not to say Gemini Rue lacks in innovation. Concessions to modern technology include an impressive particle system providing the rain, which would have proven impossible in the early Lucasarts years.

A main criticism hurled in the direction of adventure games is that so often their puzzles feel artificial and tacked on. Gemini Rue’s creator, Joshua Nuernberger, has done a spectacular job integrating the puzzles into the storyline in an organic manner, without resorting to the cheap tricks of combining items and hunting for errant pixels. The puzzles flow naturally from the story, rather than standing alongside it. As a result, some of the tasks may seem somewhat mundane and simplistic, but given the problems inherent in balancing adventure game difficulty, the game seems quite happy to indulge itself as more an interactive story than a mind-boggling puzzler.

From time to time, the gentle plod through the story is broken up with an arcade shooting segment. It is here that Gemini Rue is at its weakest, with a cumbersome control system and distracting interface that makes gun-fights more tedious than tense. Taking cover and returning fire is purely a lesson in timing, where failure means nothing more than losing a few moments progress. It is a pity that these combat sections do not include solutions more in keeping with the adventure game mechanics than simply ‘use gun on bad-guy’, but Fate of Atlantis demonstrated years ago that combat could have its place in adventure games.

Whilst the conclusion of Gemini Rue may seem somewhat predictable, with the inevitable twist hinted at just slightly too often in the build-up to take anyone by surprise, it is not the destination that ultimately matters. Reaching the closing credits in any adventure game is the culmination of a journey, and the journey of Gemini Rue is both a fascinating and emotional one. For those older gamers who still fondly recall titles like Full Throttle, and those who consider Fate of Atlantis to be the real fourth Indiana Jones movie, Gemini Rue will come as a breath of fresh air. It succeeds in reviving the spirit of the lost era of Lucasarts, where puzzle and plot interweave tightly to provide a experience that will stay with you far longer than any throw-away shooter.

Verdict – Head Shot

Platforms Available – PC
Platform Reviewed – PC

For more details on our review system, please read this post.

Dark Souls is quite a difficult game you see, and people who run in without really knowing what they’re getting themselves into quite simply won’t understand how to play it. Primarily it’s a hack and slash game, backed up with a complex statistics system of percentages, incremental improvements and diminishing returns. But in many ways it doesn’t play like a modern game at all; mechanics are explained in the vaguest of terms, combat is slow and death is frequent and often frustrating. Consequently, you have to learn how to play it – unless you’ve played Demon Souls, to which Dark is the spiritual successor. This means taking your time, inching forward through the grim and dangerous environments, approaching each new enemy with caution. As you play you’ll gather souls; used for levelling up and upgrading your equipment, but equally as important – you as a player level-up. You learn how to deal with enemies and situations, you’ll come to understand that patience is key and as your timing and evasion becomes more precise you’ll grow from a nervous neophyte to grizzled veteran.

Combat is methodical and dangerous (though with plenty of opportunity for flair, with counters and back-stabs). Charging in recklessly with a two-handed sword, might feel heroic and initially might even yield success, but at some point you’ll get hit. That’s the point where you discover being hit is not a good idea – as your health bar is cut in half and you find yourself desperately scrambling backwards to use an Estus flask (healing potion), your undead opponent tries to capitalise on your weakness. You roll backwards, evading the death blow, but your movement attracts the attention of another foe nearby and now you have two vicious skeletons moving toward you ominously, their savage red eyes reflecting their intent. You grab the shield from your back, holding it out in front of you, as you step from left to right, trying to find the angle that favours you. Skeleton number One lets out a roar and slashes at you with his blade, it deflects harmlessly off your raised shield and you consider a quick counter attack. Skeleton Two’s close proximity and your diminished stamina convince you otherwise. Instead you take a step backwards and let your shield down to recover for the next onslaught. Skeleton Two surges forward and attempts to impale you with an attack you recognise – a vicious lunge. You time the parry perfectly, swatting his blade away with your shield and perform the riposte, violently burying your sword in his ribcage, shattering the skeleton. You pull up your shield once more and turn back to Skeleton One. He comes at you with a combination of two slashes, and you roll behind him, slipping your blade between his shoulder-blades as he shatters into a pile of dry bone and dull steel. You take a moment to heal before resuming the standard exploration position. Shield up, you edge forwards toward the white globe on the ground signifying precious loot. You claim your treasure – a new spear – as the pile of bones on the ground just to your left reforms into a skeleton three times the size of those you just slew and with a blade as long as you are. For a brief moment, you consider running. But part of you wonders; ‘Just how many souls can I get from taking this joker out?’. You set your jaw in grim determination, preparing for battle. That is the essence of the Dark Souls experience; risk versus reward, gruelling combat and the knowledge that no matter how many enemies you’ve slain, bigger, tougher ones lie in wait.

Dark Souls’ biggest change from it’s predecessor is that it eschews the hub-level approach, instead giving us a seamless open-world to explore. The world retains a Gothic fantasy feel, while taking you through some remarkable environments. My personal favourite is a hidden area known as Ash Lake. You crawl out of a large hollow tree into this area and a stirring orchestral number, both haunting and ethereal greets you. On the horizon, you are made to bear witness to your tiny insignificance as hundreds of giant trees stretch into the mists all around. Stopping to admire the beauty is however, a perilous choice to make. The lake to your left contains a hungry looking Hydra, it’s eight heads snapping viciously as it launches a flurry of water jets toward you. The amazing environments combined with the enemy design and sparse NPC dialogue tell a tale of a world drained of all life as enroaching chaos and decay consume. It all sounds pretty grim (and it is), but it’s a setting which seems to make your heroism into an act of defiance so unexpected the game itself can scarcely believe it. My favourite NPC of the game is a man you meet just outside the tutorial area, who has forgotten hope. He mocks your chances of survival and with each success he grows more despondent, jealous that you have gained strength, where he gave in to weakness. I think he’s meant to be a metaphor for the people who slam their controller down in frustration and walk away from the game.

The biggest problem in my time with Dark Souls was the multi-player. On the surface it sounds like a unique proposition. You can leave messages for other players on their doomed journey upon the ground, be that a tip on how to beat the next challenge, or a cruel jape sending them to their death. You can also summon the phantoms of other players to your world, for co-op play. Your goal in co-op is to take down the area boss together, but it doesn’t conform to our expectations of integrated voice-chat and chat functionality in modern gaming. Communication is purposefully limited to a few vague gestures and it’s totally in keeping with the setting – these players are echoes of other heroes who tried and perhaps failed in the same quest you now undertake, to have you bantering away with each other would just feel wrong. Finally there are invasions, this is where hostile phantoms are able to invade other players worlds and attempt to slay them for various rewards – usually determined by which ‘Covenant’ you are a member of. Covenants are factional affiliations, some geared towards assisting other players, others to slaying them and harvesting their souls. The online ideas in play here are an admirable attempt to do something different (in keeping with the rest of the game), but at the time of writing I am often unable to connect to other players and it’s a source of frustration that this feature is so hit and miss. Even when you are able to connect to others, the balance of weapons and items for the PvP aspects don’t appear to be finely balanced and there are an abundance of cheesy builds and cheap tactics.

If you can face a sturdy challenge and have the patience to learn from your mistakes, Dark Souls is a game that is outright better than every other release so far this year (Portal 2 is a possible exception). It’s a captivating experience, that grabs you forcefully and drags you into its brooding landscape, daring you to fly in the face of overwhelming odds. In many games you save the world as part of the narrative, but the heroism credited to you feels unearned. Here, every victory is to be savoured, every gigantic boss you fell feels worthy of legend. If you dismiss this game because you’re afraid of failure, you’re missing the point. The victories you truly earn are the sweetest of all and few games come close to the sense of soaring triumph that success in Dark Souls brings.

Verdict – Red Mist

Platforms Available – 360, PS3
Platform Reviewed – 360

Before I get into the meat of the review, I want to clear up how this is going to work. I am going to start out by talking solely about the singleplayer campaign before I get onto the multiplayer. Here we go.

Singleplayer

Warning, spoilers are present.

The singleplayer mode in previous version of the core Battlefield franchise (not Bad Company that means) has always been a simple skirmish mode set on the multiplayer maps with a team of bots of varying difficulties. It was simple, but effective. It allowed you to get to grips with the game without embarrassing yourself online, and it showed where the focus of DICE lay, with the superb multiplayer.

Despite my “fuck you Cole” sentiment in the opening to this review, a large part of me wishes that DICE had kept with their tried and tested formula for the singleplayer aspect of Battlefield 3. It would give players a better introduction to how the game plays online than the campaign does, and it would have prevented all the needless Call of Duty baiting.

You see, the singleplayer story in Battlefield 3 is, for the most part, a rip off of what the Call of Duty series has been doing since we first saw Modern Warfare in action. It is linear, full of set pieces and doesn’t hold back from throwing you into a series of quicktime events.

The story is overblown as you would expect. Some nukes have gone missing, the Russians and Iranians are involved and your character, Sergeant Blackburn is being questioned by his own guys over his entire role in the events that led to him shooting his CO. His CO is that guy Cole by the way.

Blackburn is holed up in a room in New York with two tough agents questioning him, and you take control of the action based on his recall of events. Which is fine until you end up filling the shoes of some other characters. How did Blackburn know everything these guys did when he was, in some cases, thousands of miles away? I’m not too sure on how that is meant to work out if I am honest with you. It feels like DICE are trying to explain the multiple view points approach, but it comes across awkwardly leaving you to ask unanswerable questions.

Regardless, you soon start the game properly with some action that takes place in Iran. The first half of the game really isn’t that enjoyable to play, the action is heavily scripted with a strong emphasis on ‘shoot these men hiding behind these vehicles until we say stop’, in fact that is a recurring theme throughout the game, but fortunately the later levels manage to hide this fact with a bit more variety in the setting and pacing.

In the first mission one of your Marine buddies is wounded in an ambush, after a brief QTE you pull him out of the line of fire so the medics can get to him. Following this you hear a smattering of voice chat from your team and the medics on the status of the casualty as you provide them with covering fire. The unlucky sod is saved successfully, but you don’t feel any sense of pride in what you have done as you have barely learnt the names of your squad mates. This is a set piece which would have worked to greater effect later in the campaign once you have started to develop a kinship with your comrades.

Soon you are put in the boots of a fighter/bomber weapons chief, you aren’t able to fly your lovingly crafted jet, you are simply tasked with targeting the enemy fighter and shooting your missiles or cannon until they are destroyed. This is followed by a mission reminiscent of the haunting level in Modern Warfare where you are part of a bomber crew taking out land based units, sadly this equivalent mission in Battlefield 3 falls flat without matching any of the finesse of Infinity Ward’s title.

Combat picks up a bit when you control Russian operative Dima as he works with his two GRU partners in an attempt to stop a threatened nuclear attack in Paris. Fighting through the Paris Stock Exchange provides a welcome change of pace to the streets of Tehran, blowing up offices is quite a gratifying moment. Of course, if you have started to catch on to the comparisons with Call of Duty you won’t be surprised to know that you fail to find the nuke and you witness the mushroom cloud rise over the Parisian horizon.

I personally got the feeling throughout the campaign that I had done this all before with Modern Warfare, a game with a more refined singleplayer which hid the linear shooting gallery feeling a tad better than in Battlefield.

All is not lost though, as you get to the later stages with Blackburn, and after a fun romp in a tank, the combat picks up as you enter more open areas where you aren’t blocked in by the rubble of ruined Iranian towns and cities. It was after an intense moment in the grassy fields of Iran that I uttered my “fuck you Cole” sentiment. During the majority of Blackburn’s missions, your squad mates reveal a growing lack of respect for their commanding officer, Cole. After he ordered the squad in a suicide mission which results in the death of two of your team I uttered the expletive. Somehow, despite the overblown main story and the weak set pieces, I had been drawn into the game by the actions of one man. As such, when it came to the crunch confrontation between Blackburn and Dima, I had little hesitation in killing Cole for the greater good.

Despite being drawn in by this subplot, the singleplayer is largely forgettable with most of the same things being performed better by other titles. It does little to show off the joys of what makes a Battlefield game what it is, the massive arenas of war, the choice of weapon and vehicle. The blatant attempts at copying the Call of Duty formula are what drag the singleplayer down.

Well that and the numerous bugs. In a ground assault against a heavily armed PLR (the enemy army apparently) unit I was able to swagger on up to an enemy tank without any reaction, simply because I had approached it from the side, not the route which it was programmed to keep oversee. The other stand out bug came right at the very end in the final showdown with the big bad. Blackburn opened his eyes to see a crowd of civilians and nothing else, only the sound of the main bad guy and the firing of a pistol. Only then, just before the QTE was about to start did he jump magically into view.

But of course, if you are going to play Battlefield, then you are going to be interested in the online options.

Multiplayer

There are two aspects to the multiplayer, first is the main online component with Rush and Conquest among others, the other is the co-op mode which I want to tackle first.

I haven’t managed to finish the co-op missions just yet, but they deserve a quick mention. They loosely follow the events of the main game with some similar settings being visited so you think ‘oh, I know that place’ with one or two being totally off the beaten track despite the mission brief linking them into the main story. They are sadly two player only, I was hoping for some four player levels for proper squad play, but you have to make do at times.

The missions themselves can be quite challenging, myself and my clan mate had to turn down the difficulty on one or two so we could progress more readily. I wouldn’t recommend playing with a stranger, or without voice comms, you really need to work together to get the mission completed successfully. They are a good way to pass the time, but they fall into the same problem as the singleplayer game of being very linear and failing to show off the true potential of Battlefield.

To see this game in all its’ glory you really need to open the server browser and get started on some Rush or Conquest. The formula which has worked all through the series is back with some tweaks from Bad Company 2 to keep things working better. The Assault class can now be a full time medic if he chooses to equip the medkit and shock paddles, taking the medic away from the Support class is a wise move as the Support chap is now your go to guy for ammo. The Engineer is repair man and anti-vehicle expert with both anti-tank rockets and Stinger missiles unlockable. Finally you have Recon, the classic sniper or battlefield scout targeting and spotting the enemy with his various tools to aid the other classes.

I have yet to see a team combine the strengths of the all the different class builds, that is partly a problem caused by the limit to 4-men in a squad and the general way in which public servers run.

I have been able to play both on random servers without any friends, and on my clan server using TeamSpeak to communicate, and I have to say that both styles of play are rewarding. Teamwork is encouraged on public servers by the squad system which allows you to spawn on any live squad member or spawn beacon, in this way you are able to return right into the middle of the action with your squad rather than facing a five minute trek across the map to find the action by spawning at the main base.

If you do opt for walking then you at least have a variety of gorgeous maps to look at on your trek, Battlefield 3 is one of the most visually impressive games I have seen, and it makes me glad I upgraded my PC recently so I could enjoy it on high settings. You won’t just be stunned by the graphics, once you get into battle the sounds are mind blowing adding an unparalleled sense of audio immersion to the game.

To witness this game at its’ best, find a server running one of the large conquest maps with 64 players (consoles are limited to 32 players max), the awesome mix of jets, choppers, tanks, transport vehicles and infantry combat is like nothing other and will keep you coming back for more. Flying high over a map knowing that there are probably half a dozen mini-battles raging beneath you as you dog fight with an enemy jet is like nothing else.

If you don’t fancy the vast expanses of Conquest or the strict linear routing of normal Rush then it would be worth trying out Squad Death Match or Squad Rush, as their name implies they follow the same basic rules as their larger cousins, but with squads. Squad Death Match sees four squads of four fighting it out for kills, while Squad Rush creates a four vs four situation with one MCOM station to attack or defend. They are great alternatives to the larger maps and game modes and I highly recommend you take a look at them to see what there is beneath the surface of the game.

Conclusions

Taking the singleplayer campaign by itself and Battlefield 3 is a poor game, the story can be completed in a handful of hours and adds little to the genre that we haven’t seen before. However multiplayer is where this game shines brightest, it isn’t a true sequel to Battlefield 2, but nothing will be. It is its’ own beast and easily stands out amongst the crowd. If Battlefield 3 had been released solely as a multiplayer title, I would have to think long and hard about whether it deserves a Red Mist award. As it is, with the weak singleplayer mode and co-op lacking depth I have to award it a Headshot.

Verdict – Headshot

Platforms Available – PC, 360, PS3
Platform Reviewed – PC

For more information on our scoring system, please read this post.