Over the past months, I've played a number of these pre-christmas titles, and here I will attempt to briefly review four of them.
Gears of War 3 was the first game bought this Winter season. I can start by saying it's the best entry in the Gears franchise by a substantial margin, and although I was initially hesitant to pick up a 3rd game in the same series (as with movies, one would like to indulge in something more original once in a while) it was still worth the asking price. Despite its reluctance to stray too far from the formula laid out in the previous two games, a solid campaign wraps up the narrative in a satisfying way, and the frantic and violent multiplayer returns with some new features and an enhanced levelling and unlock system. Horde mode has been given a fresh breath of life with a set of constructible fortifications and upgrades that allow you to defend strategically alongside your teammates, and a range of additional competetive multiplayer modes increase the carnage to epic proportions. Not only that, it's one of the best looking games to run on my Xbox 360, and it's a riot in both local splitscreen modes, across the web with friends and with random opponents. The local multiplayer option for both Horde and Campaign definitely adds to the value of the package for me, making this game a viable contender for party game of choice. But all in all, it is just more Gears, and I'd be lying to you if I said there was anything groundbreaking here. If you're happy with a sequel that regurgitates the same idea, but refines it into a package which is the most focused and enjoyable in the series so far, then this is highly recommended. 7/10
Batman: Arkham City is a vast improvement over its predecessor. Rather than restrict the player to the confines of Arham Asylum as in the first game, this time the playground is a run-down area of Gotham City consisting of abandoned police department buildings, dark streets, gothic churches, crumbling subways and towering city blocks. Many have claimed that with this sequel, developer Rocksteady have made the game a free-roaming experience, but infact they've just taken the construct of Asylum and expanded it over a larger area. The game still consists of Batman villains occupying certain locales across the map, randomly generated gang members populating areas inbetween, and invisible boundaries keeping the player within a smaller-than-expected wedge of Gotham (try gliding down from the wonder tower without hitting an invisible barrier and you'll see what I mean). The 'free roaming' element of the game was a minor disappointment in that respect, however there is much enjoyment to be found stepping into the shoes of the Dark Knight in the Gotham City environment, and there is plenty to do within that space. The true star of the show is the game's refined fighting mechanic, and swooping down from a rooftop to dispatch a band of thugs with a puff of concealing smoke and a flurry of fists is an experience that is almost entirely unique to this game, mainly because it makes you feel like Batman. The game also looks great in terms of both graphical quality and artistic interpretation of characters and Gotham scenery, and although the gameplay here is purely designed for the single player, there is plenty to do even when the gripping main story missions are completed. For me though, the longevity of a game like this is questionable, as even an abundance of side-quests and trophies can't prevent me from seeking some multiplayer violence and online progression. To conclude, Arkham City is a great game, but it could have been better with a more living and populated world as the setting for Batman's crime fighting antics. I'm not saying in the next installment of the series I expect to be driving the Batmobile around the city with Joker's thugs plastered to the bonnet. This is no GTA clone and I never want it to be, but I would also never be naive enough to say Arkham City was the definitive Batman game, as there's cleary still room for improvement. 7/10
Battlefield 3 hasn't been done any favours by the big talkers at EA, who have been very busy telling everyone how much they want to knock Call of Duty off the top of the sales charts, and thus building an expectation that BF3 is the new and valid alternative to Call of Duty when infact it's a different type of first person shooter entirely. Not only that, but this competitive mentality has caused the game developers to create the weakest and most derivative portion of the game - the short campaign, which tries too hard to be like Call of Duty, but fails in almost every way to be entertaining at all.
Now that Call of Duty has been released, it's clear that Activision's title will most definitely be holding onto that top sales slot for yet another year. But I strongly believe that, although Battlefield 3 may not demand to be played with the immediacy of MW3, it almost certainly has a longer life expectancy in terms of replayability and the durability of its new game engine.
Battlefield's strength has always been in its multiplayer modes, and it's here that the game succeeds undeniably. Featured are huge matches with sprawling maps and high player counts, the inclusion of ground sea and air vehicles, a sandbox style physics destruction engine that forces players to change tactics on the fly, and a squad based mechanic that encourages teamwork and support based actions. A huge array of weapons and upgrades are here, perhaps managing to top the vast arsenal presented to players in Call of Duty. But in Battlefield, weapons handle more uniquely, with no limitation of which attachment can be assigned to which weapon. If you wish, you can put a red dot sight and tactical flashlight on a sniper rifle and try your luck blinding people and hitting them with a close range one shot kill. Unlocking the next weapon or upgrade is genuinely satisfying and leads to lots of weapon experimentation, and there's plenty to keep the most committed players focused for quite some time.
BF3 can hardly be called realistic, but it distances itself from the simulation genre and injects just enough action game design to convince the player they're involved in an factual depiction of warfare, without the mundane accuracy sometimes employed in games like Operation Flashpoint. But while steering away from ultra realism, Swedish developer DICE also know not to indulge themselves too much and create an almost arcade-type experience in the vein of Call of Duty, reducing the formula to a simple question of 'who should I shoot next?'
Battlefield can be played any number of ways, allowing you to become the top scoring player in a match by sniping accurately from afar, by jumping into the fray with close range weapons, by booby trapping buildings and roads for the next unsuspecting passer-by, by aerial bombardment, by support actions such as medication and repair, by armoured assault and so on and so forth.
Before you assume that I'm an entirely biased reviewer who's going to take every opportunity to throw dirt in the direction of Call of Duty, I can tell you that Battlefield 3 isn't a perfect game. To get the negative points out of the way, the game has some irritating bugs, and release week saw a number of server related issues that probably lost the game a lot of potential fans. In addition to that, BF3 has been promoted entirely using footage taken from the PC version, which looks incredible. The current generation of consoles are nearing the end of their lifespan now, and this is clearly demonstrated by the need to install HD textures to the gaming platform's hard drive to see the game in highest quality. I can tell you the game doesn't look quite as good on an Xbox 360. This is fair enough, as Battlefield was bred for the PC platform and it's only fitting that the game gets a PC version that breaks new ground in the visual department, but the resulting console release receives graphics which vary from 'stunning in terms of console capability' to 'downright ugly.' This doesn't mean it looks awful. It could more than hold its own against the likes of Call of Duty on the console. The dynamic lighting from flashlights and explosions, the visual presentation of flaming wreckage and the finite detail on weapon models is very impressive, and all generated in real time by an engine that seems to put the Xbox 360 hardware to the test. The overall presentation is polished and detailed, and special mention must go to the sound design which is possibly the best I've heard in a video game to date. But in terms of graphical draw distance, slow buffering of high resolution textures and the obvious compression of distant objects, the console version suffers considerably. Anyone expecting to see visuals as represented in the trailers should go for the PC version, but those interested in playing on that platform will have made that decision already. (NOTE: Subsequent patches and expansion packs have improved the visuals of the Xbox version of Battlefield 3 significantly, but the consequence of the existing HD texture pack and all these updates is now a mandatory hard drive install of nearly 13 Gigabytes.)
This Winter season, I bought Battlefield 3 and not Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. I intend to get MW3 at a later date, but for now, I'm entirely happy with my decision. Battlefield is a unique experience in that it allows a personal approach to every single battle. If you want to take a fighter jet and ram it facefirst into someone's battle tank at full throttle, your mastery of piloting that aircraft might come into question, but you've still been permitted to approach that situation as you saw fit. And the game encourages you to make these decisions, rather than force limitations upon you that funnel you into a narrow and repetetive pattern of run and gun gameplay. Its a game that doesn't assume you just want to kill things in vanilla fashion, but that you want to kill things in the most artistic way possible, and in between killing actually have time to consider that all important and drastically overlooked word in the FPS arena: strategy!
BF3 provides you with the battleground and the tools with which to ensure your team victory, and then it lets you go about your business. 9/10
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is difficult to sum up in one short article. That's partly because it's a rich open world game with numerous approaches to the gameplay, and a customisation system that ensures that no two people's game experiences are the same. It's also partly because I'd much rather be playing it than writing about it.
Skyrim has received universal praise across the board from both critics and gamers alike, and while I think it's an incredible game, I can't admit to believing it's perfect in every way. And i'm not saying that just for the sake of opposing popular opinion - I genuinely do love Skyrim, but for all the times I'm telling people how incredible the game is, there's an equal measure of time that I'm cursing the clunky combat system and the supposed 'quick' inventory system that isn't quick at all. There are bugs in the game which break missions and force you to reload previous save games, and minor visual flaws which involve mammoths falling from the sky. I'm well aware that technologically, this game is a giant leap forward from the likes of Fallout 3, and even moreso from the last Elder Scrolls entry, but if this were any other game, you'd be disgusted at such immersion breaking problems.
Yet despite this, these bugs and annoyances aren't at the forefront of my mind. What I keep thinking about is the open world of Skyrim - the beautiful open landscapes, the unique locations and characters inhabiting them, and the thought of what I havn't explored yet and what might be round the next corner. Skyrim presents a world in its entirety - places, people, myths, beliefs and a rich history. There are hundreds of books scattered throughout the map, each providing a fresh insight into the world you're exploring and a slice of game enriching detail, and reading some will earn you skill enhancing knowledge. They are but one example of the care and attention invested in this world, but I could name so many others. You don't play Skyrim, you become part of its world until the minute you cease to play. It's escapism in its purest digital form.
And that is the reason for Skyrim's success. It offers one of the most detailed fantasy worlds in any contemporary medium - perhaps even rivalling Tolkien's Middle-Earth for unbelievable attention to detail. When taking all that into consideration, the bugs seem like minor flaws in a much broader picture, and aren't the part of the game that will leave a lasting impression.
I bought Skyrim with the intention of working my way through the quests slowly, at my own pace, leisurely exploring the world and levelling my character to a point where I could tackle enemies with ease. Unfortunately, my partner - who rarely plays video games at all - has developed quite a liking for Skyrim, created her own character and outlevelled me in a matter of days. While this is quite upsetting, it's also shown me how different another player's experience of the game can be, with her character sharing almost nothing in common with mine, having tackled an entirely different range of side missions and NPC encounters. And it demonstrates how wide reaching the appeal of Bethesda's new creation really is, with the most non-typical gamers enthusiastic to play. Although the experience is hardly flawless, it's more than enough to keep us all occupied until the studio releases more content, or their next overwhelmingly immersive open-world RPG title.
9/10
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