Catherine is somewhat of a strange game, not just because it features copious amounts of sheep and sheep references, but also because it is unlike anything else you’ve ever really played. The story centres around a 32 year old man by the name of Vincent who feels content within the confines of his relationship with long term girlfriend Katherine, who conversely  is ready to move things forward. Things take a turn when blonde bombshell, and slightly psychotic, Catherine enters the scene and wraps Vincent into a downward spiral of adultery, debauchery and a complete mental breakdown. To make everything worse his recurring nightmares don’t aid him in tackling his dilemma, or do they?

The nightmares that plague Vincent every night actually make the meat of this game. Forming as block pulling puzzles, Vincent has to save his hide from the pits of doom by pulling and climbing blocks to escape from the growing horror. It must be said that these puzzles are both incredibly enjoyable, but are mindbogglingly hard and frustrating; although once you surmount them you’ll feel like a god, especially when you’re facing off against one of the boss monstrosities that chase you from the depths. To ensure that these block sections don’t dull, new styles of blocks are brought in which really mix up the gameplay, and a constant stream of new techniques to learn and master mean that what once looked like a very basic gameplay idea, becomes a very deep thought process that needs to be done quickly and efficiently to get the best score.

For us though, the real highlight of the game came outside of the block solving. The small sections in between stages where you could talk to your fellow wall climbers, all of who appear as sheep, proved to be a wonderful respite from the block pushing chaos. The individual stories each sheep had, the tips they could offer, and the hope you could give them from talking really gave you the sense of gratification in seeing them making it through the trials along with you on each stage. After every night of stair climbing action you can relax with an alcoholic beverage at Vincent’s watering hole of choice, the Stray Sheep. Here you can chat to fellow patrons, drink alcohol -which helps improve Vincent’s reaction time in his nightmares (not the greatest advert for drinking responsibly)- and play an arcade machine to take part in some more block pushing madness. It’s these moments of quiet where the story really takes hold. Idle conversations allude to the private lives and issues of other ‘stray sheep’ who populate the bar, and you slowly realise the nature of their problems. Here you also get to read and reply to texts from both of the games temptresses, and all of your actions have a response on how the game will continue on. It’s very subtle in how it does it, but every text ignored, or indeed replied to in one of many multiple ways, changes how your relationship will progress within the story.

Ultimately though it is the story that will keep you gripped. Usually a game that revolves around a relationship would turn us off, it’d sound like some damn rom com stapled onto the side of a puzzle game, but here it takes a very dark tone to the relationship paradigm. Peppered with such bleak humour and the more than occasional swear, this game’s content really isn’t for the young, after all it is all about sleeping around  behind your long term lovers back. Its mature themes however only add to the game’s self awareness of just how crass it can be, and many times erring on just the right side of tasteful. It’s scriptwriting is excellently done and despite the multiple endings that can come out from the game, it isn’t obvious at all whats going to happen, nor when the story changes to tailor the decisions you’ve made. And of course this is all sweetened by the visual package that wraps the entire thing together.

We’d be surprised if you saw another game this year that pulled of the moving comic look as good as this does; it’s just stylistically beautiful. Taking its artistic influences from anime, with cut-scenes being anime in their own right, the character models and environments look stunning in motion, and picture perfect when still. The general lighter tone that anime seems to bring to a production makes the darker moments all the more sinister. The ‘boss’ levels of the nightmare sections of gameplay contain some of the most disturbed creations you’ll see in a video game. Few things can creep you out, or create a sense of urgency, than a giant rotting baby with a mini-gun for an eye and a chainsaw for a hand, clambering up after you so it can kill you. And if it isn’t that, then it could be a crazed zombie bride with blade like nails waiting to squish you like the helpless bug you are. It’s crazy stuff, but its also some of the best design we’ve seen in a long time.

Catherine isn’t perfect. It’s puzzles are unbelievably hard, so hard in fact the Japanese version came with a patch for ‘super easy’ mode, and it can be confusing to figure out exactly what you ‘should’ be doing to get the desired story outcome, but those are about its only faults. It has tonnes of replay value, with nine alternate, and amusing, endings, as well as a two player co-op and competitive modes to enjoy and a super difficult extra block puzzle mode known as Babel for those seeking an even greater challenge. If we’re honest, this title was completely worth the obscene wait that it took to get it across the Atlantic from North America, and we’re incredibly grateful that Deep Silver took the chance to publish it. It may only be February, but Catherine is easily the greatest game we’ve played this year, and  unless something truly spectacular comes along, it’ll stay at our number one. It seems that Atlus’ Persona Team can create an incredible and engrossing game, even outside the Persona series.

Final Score: 4.5/5

The first game,  A Reckless Disregard for Gravity took the popular Missile flash game of maneuvering around obstacles while building up speed and took it to a commercial level. Its sequel doesn’t do much radically different. But perhaps that’s a good thing.

AaaaaAAaaaAA’s simple objective of racking up scores through small stages makes it the perfect candidate for quick burst gameplay and a cheap price tag to boot. Set across a collection of odd little boxes, the game’s stages are unlocked by purchasing those adjacent to the last effectively allowing you to buy straight into the more tricky stages or concentrate on perfected the easier ones as you get used to the feeling of rubbing up against a building and shaving your skin off in the process.

Ever felt like hurtling toward the sun? Well now you can!

In AaaaaAAaaaAA!!! you control yourself in a first person view, starting off on a platform, you pull up the courage to walk off the edge and free-fall through the stage as building, platforms and bladed fans whiz by you. Paying close attention to each of the games dozens of stages, you should determine the most valuable route before you plunge down. Getting close to the buildings earns you “kisses” while staying close to them as you try not to drag your ass against them earns you a steady stream of  “hugs”. Hit as many buildings as you can and risk your survival by drifting toward the point signs littered around the fall and, assuming you don’t faceplant into the ground, you’ll get a nice score and hefty collection of knee caps (yes, that is the currency) to unlock more stages.

The odd little humour of the game comes from the sly comments and descriptions accompanying the stages and the brief radio style newsflashes piped through as you browse the stage select screen. Sometimes they poke fun at you, and sometimes they just blurt out silly headlines. Either way we like thoughtfulness of the developers to record them, and while we think the dull/slow voice was intentional, it actually sounds as if the voice-actor was yawning through the entire recording. Never the less, the comments did a good job and make us chuckle a little between stages.

This is just a glimpse of the game's many stages

The games stage selection system makes sure you gain a reasonable amount of experience with the game’s few in-flight features, introducing you to the art of hugging and kissing, flipping off on-lookers and eventual inclusion of bonus targets makes sure are not thrown into the deep end straight away. Though players of the last game can opt to skip the tutorials by integrating their old save within the new one, those who have played the demo of either will need to crawl through the initial training stages again before any real challenges arrive.

Dejobaan have done a fantastic job of dishing out stages for the game. Our screenshot only shows a portion of the stage selection screen with another, just as big waiting just above it. The stages are well crafted and offer a lot of potential routes open for you should you be brave enough. If you manage to horde the point targets and buildings available by straying from your comfortable path, you’ll easily reap the rewards. The more extreme stages will all leave you slamming into blades and platforms so your precise camera control and non-jerky actions are all key to your successful…downfall.

Those guys? They hate you. Show em' some love!

Looking at the surroundings as you make your decent, you’ll probably come to realize AaaaaAAaaaAA is something a little different. It has character. Once you ponder the reason why there are buildings suspended in, what can only be assumed as space, with cars driving vertically and coloured blobs ready to hurl abuse at you, you’ll start to wonder what exactly the guys at Dejobaan were doing when they created the stages. The visuals may look a little dated, but you won’t really have time to focus on them. Flipping off protesters and encouraging your fans, collecting teeth and knee caps, landing safely in the middle of nowhere and sitting through the hypnotic little “relaxation” bonus stages will defiantly give you that “What the…” vibe but ultimately leave you with an odd little grin on your face.

AaaaaAAaaaAA!!! is defiantly not short of content. Unlocking all of the stages will take some time to accomplish assuming you play it in the burst sessions to seems designed for, even then you’ll find yourself reattempting earlier levels to better your score or just to collect a few extra knee caps. It never fails to induce that fear of dying horribly should you take your eyes off the screen at any moment and feels incredibly satisfying to flip off the angry protesters as you plummet. If you ever have a free moment, load up AaAaaaAa and throw yourself off of a cliff. You won’t regret the decision.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome is available now on PC and Mac via Steam – A demo is also available!

Final Score: 3.5/5

Taking control of an exiled ruler of a Kingdom you set out to work your way back up to regain the trust of your former home by working with your allied towns and your troops to run errands during the 13th century. Thrown into the playing field with very little in the way of gameplay tutorial, you can quickly see that the  “State-of-the-art graphics” proposed by the titles product listing was a huge overstatement unless 1C Company meant unique. The visuals of anything from the grass, trees, water and towns are something you could expect on older smartphones. Everything looks flat and lifeless and often times blurry, a look that can only be explained as if 3D vision was turned on without you wearing the glasses. 1C promised to “depict the 13th century in great detail” and if this is their best attempt, they should probably move onto a different time period.

The flare may be pretty but everything else is as bland as it comes

Developer, Unicorn Games Studio, used a Dual Core, nVidia 8800GT setup as their recommended specs while our own 4gb Quad Core Radeon 6870 setup had difficulty keeping the game running above 30 frames per second no matter what scenario we found ourselves in. Even with the bland visuals and lack of heavy overworld activity.

The playing field simply consists of little characters going about their lives with 1 model usually represents a boat load more; single buildings depicting towns and equally more boring, yet slightly bigger model structures representing cities. Hovering over each of these displays their relationship towards you along with their army’s difficulty, allowing you to pick your battles a little easier and not go strolling into towns that would like nothing better than to feed your head to their plague-ridden mice – for reasons we don’t know. Real Warfare 2 is as much of an RPG as it is RTS. You stand as the leader of an army that is awarded experience points after each successful battle. Army EXP then acts as currency used to upgrade the troops various stats. Your commanding general figure works in a slightly different manor as his own own experience accumulates to increase his level and allowing you to add a point to a choice of perks like permanent EXP bonuses to increased tax money from your allied towns along with increasing the amount of troops you can bring into battle. While the system certainly offers depth to the possible play styles available, it didn’t really serve as an incentive to continue like other experience based character progression systems do, the fact that most, if not all of the in-game enemies over power you with easy means grinding them for experience and troop money isn’t a viable option leaving the game extremely linear as you just click a town, accept a quest, click the quest enemy and fight them one after another.

Go to town - Get Quest - Defeat Quest Enemy - Restock Army - Repeat

Starting off with a merry band of men, we simply watched all of the other mounted characters run about the map as we seriously didn’t have much of an idea of what to do. The game does nothing to explain its inner workings leaving you to just experiment and hope you don’t get ambushed by the dozens of robber gangs riding around. Though even that doesn’t mean anything as you can simply close a bandit’s chat window after they bad mouth your medieval mother and be on your way without any consequence. The 13th century wasn’t nearly this forgiving.

Yes, Real Warfare 2 may be more suited to a medieval combat strategy game than it is an RPG. The character progression is boring and the story is no better, but in all honesty the combat isn’t anything special. Battles are initiated through the playing field by clicking on an enemy figure where you then choose from two lines of abuse to yell at them and organising your men before you reach a ridiculously lengthy loading screen just to be thrown into an up-scaled version of the playing field minus any of the knick-knacks that made it even remotely interesting to look at. A simple large patch of grass and trees is all you’ll see between you and your enemy. Their forces may look a little daunting at first, but rest assured, in the end you’ll just feel bored. From here the battles play out in a standard RTS fashion, albeit slower. You select your troops an issue movement, formation and attack commands while though the game does little in a way to explain the interface and procedure, leaving you to figure it out while the enemy walks toward you.

Real Warfare’s fighting mechanics seem to focus on the general rule of formation. Most of the UI and mouse commands are used to shift your troops into long lines, balls or wedges to counter your opponent. This is where a major issue arose. While troop selection worked as well as you would expect, commands had a noticeable lag between being issued and actually being carried out. Using the mouse to send troops toward a target worked fine but gesturing it to set the troops up in a certain formation was erratic and less than precise. Issues which make a whole lot of different when an army of thousands are heading your way. Camera movement fell victim to the same issues and just didn’t feel fluid making the switch between army control and actually enjoying the battle near impossible.

Zooming into the action would usually spell doom but was fun while it lasted

In the end we found the game to be more comical than fun. Losing a battle simply meant reloading a previous save, meaning you had to put up with the more annoying loading times after each botched attempt as you attempt to come to grips with the games controls. In the early battles we simply sped up the combat and ran our troops to their death and laughing hysterically as the last remaining few decided to throw in the towel and sprint over the mountains faster than the camera could pan across. Even attacking peasants who would surprise us with bigger armies than our own provided more fun than the game itself.

Real Warfare 2 suffers from a host of issues ranging from a large learning curve, disappointing visuals and typically boring gameplay. Surprising is the fact the game is a sequel, if this game has taken it’s predecessor and improved it’s formula like any sequel is meant to do, we shudder at the quality of the last. Real Warfare 2 is probably just as painful to play as the 13th century was for Soldiers to live in.

Final Score:  2/5

Developed by DigitalArrow – a new development studio, InMomentum slaps players into a completely story-less world reminiscent of virtual reality scenes of old sci-fi movies. Based around 12 stages, all varying in design and colour, players are simply tasked with racing against each another to the end of a map by utilizing – you guessed it – Momentum.

Each map employs countless walls and platforms to propel yourself ahead of your rivals

Each stage is comprised of hundreds of walls and platform blocks. Charging ahead, you use the standard WASD keys to move while using your mouse buttons to jump across platforms and bounce along walls. The idea of the game is to keep a steady stream of jumps and bounces enough to build your speed up to the maximum of 299Kmph, which if sustainable, will usually allow you to leap across huge sections of the stage at a time.

The beauty of InMomentum is easily the amount of paths available to complete a course. Players can generally opt to ride the stage on it’s lower levels across the platforms or they can decide to be adventurous, bouncing from one wall to another to eventually scale their way up to the top of the map to use the lack of walls as their advantage to gain more speed with less risk of collision along with the obvious birds-eye view. Currently two game-play modes are open to players – “Time Trial” and “Sphere Hunt” – one involves collecting orbs scattered around the stage – limiting players to a specific path, while the second gives runners more freedom with a small number of checkpoint gates to pass through before reaching the end of the level.

Players can either brave the platforms solo or race with players online. Solo play allows for uninterrupted attempts to gain a spot on the high-score board as you try to beat the times of other players while multi-player races allow you to give chase against your very rivals with the added chance to shoot them off the side of the map. The space-bar shoot button is something every player will sadly need to learn in order to have any chance of bragging rights. By launching a projectile, you can hope the force of the blast will be enough to push the rival at the receiving end of your laser will be enough to send them hurtling to their death, else you run the risk of your blast giving them a huge boost in speed and seeing your chances of winning disappear in the distance. Still, you can use a well timed laser shot-jump combo to propel yourself a little further and reap the benefits of a steady speed increase. The combo shot isn’t really hard to learn, yet I dislike the idea of such a heavy advantage meaning people who can’t quite get to grips with it have very little chance of success with the game, much like when you learn how to snake on Mario Kart while your friends watch as they are lapped in each race.

Each stage offers dozens of routes that can drastically alter your final times

Each map has 4 different difficulty settings to choose from, altering the selected map to less real estate to make traversing the stage that little bit more puzzling while certain levels employ barricades to stop you in your tracks. Most of these walls can be turned off by shooting nearby switches or can be avoided altogether by bouncing around them with the help of the surrounding obstacles. The switches can effectively allow you to close the walls in the faces of other racers should you become that confident in your skills.

While the slow-motion button of the single-player can help you to fine-tune a jump and perfect a time, such an option only comes into the multiplayer in the form of a pick-up. One of numerous pick-ups to be exact. Throughout a multiplayer race, obtainable pick-ups can be collected with a maximum of two at a time. These can range from an immediate speed boost, heightened acceleration, fixed distance teleport, single super jump, time freeze and again, periodic slow motion. All of these will affect just the user with the exception being the slow motion which generally helps the lead runner to maintain that speed more easily whilst leaving everyone else in no better or worse position.       

In terms of bugs or glitches, it is hard for such a simple game to really have a serious issue. It has been confirmed by the developers that certain AMD cards do have some trouble with the lighting effects used to create the game world, with my own card falling victim to the bug. A fix was promised but the blocky light reflections hardly deter away from the experience.  The game’s visuals are simple enough to allow most modern, store-bought laptops or desktops to run it with ease, with the system requirements reflecting my words. Because of the simplicity of this game’s style, don’t expect many graphical options aside from screen-resolution and Post Processed Anti Aliasing.  

Players can alter certain visuals of their on-screen runner (no hats here folks)

While InMomentum does share a few similarities to Mirror’s Edge – such as the relatively solid colour pallet to the fine-tuned task of time trial speed runs, it really isn’t going to make that wait for a Mirror’s Edge 2 any easier. The ability to scale a tower without having to jump to another doesn’t leave much room to think about how to approach certain map sections, and, due to the game not having any sort of story whatsoever, you will be hard pressed to get more than a few hours out of it, but for the asking price it is a solid purchase for speed freaks and leader board junkies with 40 Steam achievements offering replay value to some.  Just be prepared for that vertigo feeling from classic platformers to return and make your hoping that much more of a challenge. InMomentum is available now on Steam (PC)

Final Score:  3/5

MX Offroad is the next entry into the MX series of racers for iOS and Android devices. From 2XL Games, MX Offroad gives you the chance to not strap yourself into a classic dirt or quad bike and charge your way through the competitive gran prix events as you bounce around the narrow corners of dirt track courses. The game’s main menu has a knack for being decisive. On first look, it doesn’t seem like a whole lot content is there for the picking until you figure out it’s all-slide control scheme. Then you’ll find a surprisingly wealthy set of contests to win over and then perhaps some more. Just be sure to put your device’s music feature to go use. Unless you like the slow rock played during the opening and closing credits of American documentaries.

Running over your opponents isn't possible. Or is it? Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't

Jumping into the 3 difficulty choice career mode, you’ll cycle through multi-race grand prix competitions and Tony Hawk-esque trick challenges – Albeit those are watered down. For the most part you’ll be hoping to get back to the grand-prix events as soon they force you into the laborious trick contests. The untrustworthy accelerometer controls and simple “tap” stunts suck out all of the fun and creative skill chaining from the system. The only noteworthy joy from this mode comes from firing your driver over a cliff to see how much distance he can clear in the fetal position. Ragdoll is always a plus but not an option.

Racing in the other hand is, while not perfect, pretty enjoyable. The huge range in track lengths and curvy designs from FMX, MX and SX make eventually getting used to a track layout almost impossible leaving you to nail the suspension button timings on the bumps and hills to give you an edge over your opponents, it’s a strategy that effectively keeps you on the edge too. It’s a simple system, one that will really show a big difference between the pros and the novices in competitive play, something the social networking features of MX Offroad really seems to hint at. After each race you’ll be shown your results along with the recent achievements of other players connected to the OpenFeint network with the chance to challenge their accomplishments. But with the ease of exploiting the many corners of the tracks, it seems like a whole lot of foul play will eventually make it’s way onto the score boards.

If you could ride like that, the first-person camera would be a must

If track memorisation isn’t the game plan here, then you’d think choosing the right vehicle would be key, right? Well that isn’t the case either. Colour chances aside, even with the paid version we couldn’t find any additional vehicles or even any noticeable differences into the two given- a quad bike and a dirt bike (150cc or 300cc); two different types of vehicles. How the cornering on a machine with 2 extra wheels can feel the same as a bike, we’ll never know. And that’s another thing worth pointing out. If you came into MX expecting a realistic offroad racer, you’ll leave within the first 5 minutes. You won’t have to master the tight cornering mechanics or even any use of the brakes. You can effectively turn a sharp 180 degree U-bend with ease if you are willing to sharply twist your arms around to do it – and you should, it’s a race saver.

The crisp graphics are a highlight of the game, but questions were raised over the ability to distinguish corners as you turn out of another.

While if you were considering MX Offroad as your out-of-house racer you may be disappointed with the near non-existent handling and the mess of a score attack feature being nothing like what you’d expect at a real event. The core racing side of MX Offroad isn’t all that bad, however. Mistakes will see you fighting for a decent finish and mastering the suspension timings is the only sure-fire way to improve your lap times later on, but it’s potential exploits and unrealistic controls will raise some serious issues with scoreboards online play – If it had any. If you are looking for a burst of offroad fun on the go, then this is it, but those looking for a more full realistic racer should probably hold off on this one.

Final Score 2.5/5

In short, yes. You’ll be sucked in and love every moment you’re playing this game, at first it seems that there is nothing to fault with the title, however after a few hours of play you’ll begin to see the holes as your rose tinted glasses fall from your face. The faults it does have however aren’t anything that will ruin the game, or even sully your enjoyment of it, they are in fact just minor niggles that seem to stem from  Namco Bandai reigning in their creativity. The first culprit is the lack of modes and instead a larger focus to online multiplayer. There is a singleplayer story, and an arcade mode, but no Vs. Team Battle, no mission based modes (like those seen in Weapon Master Mode) and so any type of longevity comes from the Quick Battle mode where you can win numerous titles from fighting custom made characters.

The story mode – 1607 A.D. – places you in the shoes of Sophitia’s son Pratroklus and his search for his sister Pyrrha. It does a very good job of bringing in these two new characters and entwining them around the blades of Soulcalibur and Souledge, it also has some gorgeous cutscenes and rather nicely done hand drawn segues between episodes. Its only real downsides come from the fact it is obscenely short and has zero replay value as the story isn’t overly fantastic and there are no episode modifiers or missions. Another weak point, in comparison to the original’s Mission Mode or SoulCalibur II’s Weapon Master Mode, is how you’re fixed to characters, meaning that if you’re not strong with a certain person, or don’t prefer their style, you have little hope of winning spectacularly.

Moving onto the offline modes you’ll notice some changes in the games formula, most notably that matches now last 3 rounds minimum. Arcade mode has also been shortened down to just 6 combatants  and the inclusion of character stories, for each of rather impressive roster of new faces and old, has been removed. Whilst this may not seem like the biggest deal in the world, it means that those new faces have zero backstory and their inclusion in the game might as well be pointless as their motivations aren’t clear at all. Primarily Ezio’s inclusion seems to be given no explanation; he fits in extremely well though, but we would have liked to know exactly why he’s on the trail of Soulcalibur, or indeed maybe Soulblade.

Bad points aside though we can now talk about everything that makes this game great, and when we do those rather negative points will melt away. Soul Calibur V is awesome, there is just no other way to really describe it. As you would expect from a Soul Calibur game, this is visually an absolute beauty. Ditching the sweaty sheen that every character seemed to have in Soul Calibur IV, and ditching the anime styled looks, now characters seem more realistic in their appearance. The stages themselves are glorious to fight on too, and in many of the stages if you cause a Ring Out, or a battle lasts beyond three rounds the stage will move along onto a new phase for you to fight on. It’s a nice touch that really makes some of the longer conflicts quite interesting.

Gameplay wise combat is as fluid as ever, and allows newcomers to the series to put up a good fight, as well as letting old stalwarts flex their muscles with some incredible combos. Interestingly a few of the new characters on offer have completely different play styles to what the series has seen before, and so requires even old players to learn the basics all over again. It really brings back the joy of discovering new ways to play and enjoy the game. An interesting addition is the Critical Edge system, replacing the fussy Critical Finishers of SCIV, these little numbers can be utilised whenever you like once a gauge is full enough. It works similarly to Street Fighter IVs Ultra Moves, even down to the point of activation through two quarter circles and all attack buttons being needed to activate them. You can also implement Brave Edge moves which can deal more devastating blows to some of the standard attacks. It’s a great addition that will bring fans of other fighters into the game because of the sheer familiarity of it, plus the incredibly cool action scenes that play out on the screen when performing one. Other gameplay additions include a ‘Just Guard’ move that rewards players who guard at just the right time, it works in a similar way to the previous ‘Guard Impact’ manoeuvre. And in addition to the series’ trademark 8-way run a quick sidestep manoeuvre has been implemented to make dodging at the last minute a breeze.

The largest meat to the game is the vastly improved character creation mode, now allowing players to either start a new creation from scratch, or instead modify one of the series characters. This means you could create new costume variants for each of the combatants, or change the weapon you want them to wield. It’s a nice feature to include, but the majority of people will opt to create their own character from scratch which gives them a huge amount of choice. Now you can alter character height and build, as well as individual muscle attributes and skin tones, facial features, it really is quite an extensive list. You’ll unlock new items to use from playing through the game and ranking your player level up to new heights. Already though there are an obscene amount of options available, and you can even unlock a fighting style for Tekken’s Devil Jin to create! It seems that DLC could easily be added so you could create brand new fighters with templates from other fighting games, it’s genius and something we hope Namco Bandai expand upon after the games release.

Where the online mode is concerned there is quite a lot on offer. Containing a Ranked Mode so you can square off against combatants who are of a similar skill to you, and a mode called ‘Global Colosseo’ lets you select a lobby for text chat and fighting with players from all around the world, including tournaments. One look at the extensive Trophy/Achievements list will show you just how much of a focus Namco Bandai have placed on the online component of the game. Of course the main interest for the online is just how well it works, and with our experiences there was a little slowdown, but no lag to speak of. Fights were fluid and fast, and we got our backsides handed to us rather easily, but as mentioned, there was zero lag in any of the matches we participated in, which is something very fresh for a fighting game.

Soul Calibur V may not be the 100 percent perfect package that old fans of the series had hoped would arrive, however it seems that Namco Bandai are keen to move away from what made the first two entries utterly perfect, as it is pretty hard to improve upon perfection. This isn’t to say that SoulCalibur V is a poor entry into the series, quite the contrary. No game could be more fitting a celebration of 10 years since the last great entry than this. It blows away it’s fighting game peers, and dispels the awful stench of the series low point SCIV and stands triumphantly over the PS2 exclusive SCIII. It might not be the best of the series, but by god its damn close.

Final Score: 4.5/5

The story puts players in the role of Lana, who is responsible for an eight year old autistic girl named Amy. Whilst on a train, it’s revealed that Amy was in a hospital for quite a long time to treat her autism, and after drawing some disturbing pictures, the train takes a turn for the worst.  A nearby explosion causes a derailment, and soon Lana and Amy are fighting for their lives as they encounter monsters and the military to escape the town.

During the course of the game, you’ll uncover secrets that Amy holds. Sadly, these secrets, or even the story for that matter, are told rather dismally. No matter whom you are, AMY is poorly told from both the cut scenes and dialogue; from beginning to the very end, you’ll find it painful to finish this terrible story.

The gameplay itself mimics the abysmal story with its numerous terrifying woes. AMY is a third-person survival horror title consisting of your more traditional survival horror elements of combat, puzzles, and stealth. The combat sees you facing off against both humans and monsters alike, and your only means of defense is an iron pipe and Amy’s psychic abilities. Puzzles on the other hand have you finding DNA to unlock doors, poorly explained trigger puzzles, or just sending Amy through dangerous territory to push button. Finally the stealth sections are nothing but hiding in the shadows and waiting for the enemies to just pass by, pretty dull really. Other gameplay elements include an infection indictor and the protection of Amy;  the infection indictor tracks the progress of Lana’s infection by changing colours. Lana’s infection increases depending on various factors like running, using Amy’s powers, getting hit by enemies, etc.  On top of that, Amy is a defenceless girl, whereby Lana is the only protector, meaning that if a monster captures Amy, that monster will start to drain her vitality and kill her.

These gameplay elements could have worked, but ultimately fail in the end. Combat is simple, but has poor detection and repetitive, puzzles are quite boring and not as creative as other survival horror titles.  The stealth sections failed to see the meaning of stealth; by giving the enemies super human sight and hearing. The infection indictor even fails at its sole purpose  to indicate the infection and do not work at all. Finally, Amy can get stuck quite easily, and becomes quite a hassle babysit. The overall gameplay is quite frustrating and poorly executed. Those who are looking for a survival horror experience will just find more frustration then horror.

Presentation wise AMY is surprisingly actually ok for a downloadable title. That being said, it does suffer from frame rate drops and some screen tearing. The voicing acting is decent, but has no emotion to connect the player and Amy together. Even the soundtrack suffers from a poor score and the ambient noise fails to put the player in an immersive experience.

To put it bluntly, AMY is a terrible train wreck. The story is deplorable, and poorly explained from beginning to end. The gameplay is frustrating with its poor combat, uninspiring puzzles, and unnecessary stealth sections as well as other lacklustre gameplay mechanics. Its graphics suffer from frame rate drops and screen tearing, and the voice acting conveys no emotion and the sounds of AMY are the opposite of an immersive experience. Overall, AMY fails at being a survival horror game. This is probably the worst downloadable game of 2012 so far.

Final Score: 1/5

The first thing Blitz veterans will notice is that the layout in the menus has been re-imagined into a futuristic sport, as if Blitz is the next evolution of NFL Football. There is the ‘Play Now’ option where you can go against the AI, or up to three other friends can locally take on Blitz. The single player season or franchise mode that players have come accustomed to in Blitz has been taken over in favor of a Mortal Kombat like game mode called Blitz Gauntlet. The mode has players choose a team and face off against others in random order and every three or so matches there is a boss battle which features a mascot or other humorous type of team. They are usually faster and more agile than the regular teams you have come across. Once you beat them you unlock the code to play with them, however you have to input this code in the twenty/thirty second window you get before every game which is a pain in the ass – to put it bluntly. There’s a total of ten bosses, and only 3-4 per Gauntlet tree, so you will have to play multiple times to unlock them all. The mode itself is the core single-player mode and features three main difficulties but no unlocks other than the bosses.

The online options are plenty in Blitz, from Head To Head (1v1 matches), to Online Co-op, Blitz Battles and Elite Leagues, fans of Blitz will have plenty to keep them busy. Blitz Battles has head to head, and Blitz Teams which is you and a co-op partner (online or off) battle with your selected team to the top of the leaderboards. Elite League revolves around cards and players creating their own team. Throughout all the online modes players are rewarded with Blitz Bucks and can use them to spend online in Elite Leagues on new card packs as well as in the Blitz Store for SuperStars, card packs, logos, cheats and even concept art. It adds more replay to the overall online which is already fairly deep.

The gameplay of NFL Blitz still hasn’t changed over the years, except in a few minor areas that some fans may find disappointing. In the older versions of NFL Blitz 2000 and 2001 you could just beat seven shades of sunday out of the other team post play and just start a five-man pileup, well you can’t anymore. Due to the legalities that now come with the NFL license, EA Sports had to do away with the harmful treatment of their players. Does this make for a worse off game? Of course not, but it does disappoint the hardcore fans slightly. Other than that, no major changes have been made. There’s still the same plays we have come to remember, the same animations with a sleek new look that we have all come to love. NFL Blitz is the game that many fans wanted for so long and truly follows in the footsteps of the reinvigoration of NBA JAM. The Blitz is back and hopefully here to stay.

Final Score: 4/5

Visually this is one beautiful title, compared to other side scrolling platformers available via XBLA or PSN it stands out as one of the best. The lighting on character models and and the environments is impressive, and the visual flair of Jurevivius’ illustrations come to life beautifully on the screen. The creature designs vary wildly, but be it a simple hedgehog, a ram, owl or one of the more annoying blue men-things, they all ooze character and bring each of the lush worlds to life. The issues with the game do begin to stack up once you look past the pretty pastel colours and get down to the gameplay at heart.

Scarygirl is littered with nice ideas, a climbing mechanic, gliding via Scarygirl’s arm as a helicopter, changing weapons for different effects, using light to avoid enemies, the list goes on; however not a single one of these feels well implemented or overly interesting to take part in bar the first couple of times you do it. The weapons and purchasable combos seem wholly pointless, bar maybe squeezing enemies to death for some health, as every situation can be overcome by mindlessly bashing away on the two combat buttons. The helicopter glide rarely has its uses bar reaching some gems here and there as Scarygirls’ jump feels so detached from the environment you can literally make most of the jumps with that alone.

Whilst the enemies my look beautiful, the are in actual fact a complete pain in the world to fight, not a single enemy (including bosses) is memorable in a good way, nor are any of them wonderful pieces of game design. It seems that they are created for the single factor of irritating the hell out of you. The hedgehogs always arrive when you least want them to, and always in numbers that make them tedious to deal with rather than a challenge. A particular peeve comes in the form of some annoying blue folk with swords, who come in droves at one point in the game providing perhaps the most annoying section of any platformer we’ve ever played. Don’t take what we’re saying as the game being too difficult though as it is in fact painfully easy to whip your way through the game rather quickly, in fact the only difficulty is self imposed having to trudge through paint by numbers levels.

This is indeed the main problem with Scarygirl, it’s just so damn basic. The fact that it had the lofty heights of an excellently styled comic to live up to, along with a rather swish flash game, it is a pain to see a full downloadable game being so excruciatingly dull. Every level feels the same but with another backdrop behind it, the multiple branching paths are entirely pointless, and the trudging back through a level to collect something seems like a needless stalling mechanic. The gameplay is made all the worse by some awful dynamic camera that does nothing but obscure or warp your view, except for when it’s providing a 2D view of the world. The story itself is incomprehensible when delivered via a series of annoying narrations over loading screens between levels. It’s a real shame to see a title that starts off with potential beginning to grow stale by the second level.

Overall Scarygirl provides Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network with one thing, a cheap and beautifully looking game. Beyond that it’s a shallow platforming game that provides you with little to no reason to re-enter its world. You’ll be continually praying for the ‘rage’ meter to fill up so you can unleash terror on your foes and gobble them up in one move instead of having to tirelessly batter the attack buttons. If you’re looking for a title to pick up and finish in a day or so, and you just want it as a stop gap until something better comes along, then this is worth picking up; however if you’d rather play a game that fresh and really draws you into it’s world you can do a lot better than this, personally we’d recommend picking up Rayman Origins for a bit of 2D platforming fun.

Final Score: 1.5/5

Choplifter HD is a side scroller in which you take control of a pilot, who’s main objective is to rescue civilians who are stranded in dangerous places, such as in cities, during a war, or on top of a burning building. The games location changes quite a bit, sometimes you can be in a desert area, then move into a city, then to a swamp. In each mission you start out at your base, from here you must fly to the first set of civilians and pick them up in your chopper, while avoiding being taking down by enemies.

At the top of the screen it shows you exactly where your chopper is, and how far away from the civilians you are, there are usually a couple of groups of civilians for you to rescue, however your chopper can only support a certain amount, so once full you must fly the civilians back to your base. Your chopper runs on fuel, which is indicated up in the corner, along with your choppers health. Running out of fuel means you’ll crash, and then it’s game over. You can refill your fuel at your base, or somewhere in the level there will be a fuel spot, which is indicated at the top of the map. By pressing X you can boost to help you get places quicker but this also uses up fuel quicker so you must be careful.

One new thing added to the game, which affects the gameplay quite a bit, is the ability the to turn your chopper towards the screen, the reason behind this being because some buildings have enemies on them, which can not be destroyed unless you are in this position. Usually when you are landing to save civilians you have to do this, as there are many enemies on buildings who will kill you. other new features include, online leader boards, and achievements/Trophies. Each mission you play, is rated out of five starts on how you performed. If you save every civilian, and do it quickly, you can be sure your going to get five stars, but if you don’t then you may lose out on some stars. The more stars you get, the more missions, new choppers, and more. Graphically InXile, did quite a good job updating the game, to make it look modern. The game is graphically as good as most XBLA games.

Overall Choplifter HD is quite a fun downloadable game, there’s plenty of missions available, the locations vary quite often to keep the game fresh, it’s fun trying to get as many stars as possible to unlock new choppers, and this also adds replay value. Despite the game being quite fun, I found the price point to be a bit steep, $14.99 is quite high, as other XBLA games, such as Trine are the same price, and even better games, with more content can be found cheaper then this. If you’re a fan of the series I recommend picking it up, if not, maybe wait until a price drop.

Final Score 3.5/5