The execution, for me, was overcomplicated and boring. So when it was announced that the franchise was being reinvented as first-person shooter Syndicate by Starbreeze Studios (of The Darkness fame), I was intrigued rather than outraged. Much of the old guard may be staunchly against this switch from strategy to gunplay, but I can see how the move was necessary in these modern times of CoDs and Battlefields.

All that aside, the Syndicate demo has recently graced the interwebs and I gave it a go.

The demo is, surprisingly, 4-player co-op only. If you’re an anti-social weasel or just don’t have any mates that are interested, fear not as there appears to be a thriving community already bubbling away for you to jump right into. Putting out a co-op demo is a bold move, and shows just how much confidence Starbreeze have in the mode and how little they wont to give away of the main plot. As this is the only multiplayer the game will ship with, it’s nice to get an idea of what you’ll be letting yourself in for if lonesome gaming doesn’t do it for you.

Before you jump into a match there’s a plethora of stats, upgrades, loadouts and abilities to tinker with. As is now standard, you can customise up to three loadouts with a primary and secondary weapon and two Chip abilities, which range from squad-wide shields to a damaging personal shockwave. As there are no classes as such, the way you combine these elements dictates your role in battle and finding the right balance for you is essential. There’s also a skill tree-type upgrade system, allowing you to spend points received for ranking up on new abilities, physical improvements and hacking prowess.

Instead of unlocking new weapons and attachments as you level up, Syndicate uses a research system. You spend Research points to unlock specific blueprints for each weapon, then use that weapon in combat to research the upgrade. It’s a great way to make sure you get the upgrades you need and it’s reassuring to know that all that XP isn’t going towards unlocking something you won’t use. So, after tinkering with your template and choosing a generic character, it’s match time!

The demo offers only one mission, an assassination assignment against a Colonel at Caymen Global. As the experience differs depending on loadout and team-mates, I’m going to take you through one of my runs.

Lush and hectic. Just how I like it!

Beginning the assault in the back of an APC with my three comrades sitting around me really builds the atmosphere before I’m turfed out the door into a face-full of hot lead. The action starts immediately and barely lets up, making for a breathless, hectic and exciting game.

Each person has to act according to their loadout; shotgun-toting allies need to get in close while snipers need to hang back in cover and pick enemies off at a distance. As we round the first corner, an automated turret starts pounding our position. I sprint and slide to cover behind a convenient chest-high wall, popping up to blast holes in the enemy soldiers now rounding the turret. A shotgun-wielding ally makes a run for the turret and, as she hacks into it, the rest of us pound away at its shield and keep its attention.

Hacking is a major part of Syndicate and takes numerous forms, the most basic of which is ‘breaching’ various objects, terminals and even enemy grenades. The turret’s down but its killer is low on health, so I use my Breach to heal them quickly, another use for the handy ability. With the area clear, we all pile into a dual-gate system.

These ‘Staging Areas’ are present throughout the mission and allow us to replenish ammo, take stock and prepare for the next section. As the doors open we’re met with more enemy fire and I quickly get into cover. While Syndicate has no proper cover system my gun seems to aim around objects, similar to The Darkness, to allow me to fire without exposing myself. Bringing down guard after guard as they pour from overhead gantries, I hear an ally warn us there’s a Reactive on the field; the automatic squad speech adding an extra layer of immersion to an already absorbing experience.

Reactive enemies have impenetrable armour that must be hacked from close range to make them vulnerable. Their presence makes for a tense firefight as one of us tries to get behind while the others draw the fire. Again the shotgunner makes it up close and drops the Reactive’s armour, leaving him wide open. I pop a few shots into him but focus on keeping the troops from reaching ground level, leaving it to my two assault-rifle-bearing team-mates to pound away at the helpless Reactive.

Once he’s dealt with, the shotgunner jabs him in the neck and tears out his Chip. It’s these tiny microchips that make all this ‘remote hacking’ business possible, and leaving his intact gives Caymen goons a chance to revive him, so ripping it out is a necessity.

The next area is locked up tight, but our friendly A.I. helper tells us that we should use the skylights. Climbing ladders, we make it to the roof and reign hellfire down through the large, open gaps. Before long we lose the advantage, however, as troops file into the room and a ceiling-mounted turret is activated, peppering the area below with gunfire. I stay put, using my scope to take out enemies as my allies make do on the ground. It’s a perfect example of playing to your strengths when part of a team and it works fantastically.

There’s no order or marking system yet it’s very easy to see your place in each engagement and in my experience everyone seems keen to do their bit. Finally dropping to the ground, my HUD tells me there’s a hackable panel that deactivates the turret… behind the turret! It’s occupied with my team-mates on the other side of the room and I take my chance, sprinting underneath it and sliding into the tiny room where the panel sits.

Staying crouched, I breach it and the turret goes down. All the Breaching is done with a simple hold of LB and it’s immensely satisfying when you manage to bring down a turret or a Reactive’s armour. Room clear, we rush onward but my ammo is low. In fact, I only have one clip left for my sniper rifle. I decide to switch my sidearm for an enemy assault rifle and in the next area I’m shown I made the right choice.

As we run in we’re met by more guards, who are easily cut down in a hail of assault rifle fire. The tables quickly turn, though, as the roof opens up and troops with rocket launchers take positions on the far rim! Switching to my sniper rifle I know it’s all on me. As I drop the first goon I hear a rocket boom in front of me and two of my team cry out for a Reboot. When you take too much damage you shut down and need to be rebooted by a team-mate.

It’s Syndicate’s version of the archetypal ‘downed’ mechanic and it works fine, nicely woven into the world. I quickly bring down the other soldiers and rush to help my allies. We work the rest of the room, wiping out another few squads of Caymen guards before pushing on to the final area. It’s here our quarry waits, and where the experience goes one of two ways.

Seems one of the CEOs hired an Industrial Goth band...

The Colonel has Reactive armour, which makes close hacking a priority but he also carries a deadly mini-gun that can cut us down in seconds. Add to that the constant stream of goons and you’ve got one tricky fight. Half the time, the guards seem to be softer and less driven, preferring to hang back rather than charge in. In this case it’s easy to focus on the Colonel, working as a team to distract and disable him while dodging his lethal firearm.

My team’s most successful run had the shotgunner hiding out of sight while another team-mate distracted the Colonel and the third hacked his armour. Then the shotgunner emerged and pounded into him while I kept the troops off their backs from a distance. When it works, it’s glorious. It’s also amazing that there’s no actual communication going on; everyone is simply reacting to the situation and using their loadout as they see fit.

On the other hand, if you’re unlucky he’s impossible to bring down. Caymen soldiers immediately swarm the little room you start in, giving you no chance to focus on the Colonel. Before you know it he’s crossed the courtyard and is redecorating said room with your entrails. Trying to leave the room is foolish; the sheer amount of guards and their new-found aggressiveness makes it a suicide move. The only way I found to break this cycle is to keep losing until you get lucky. Not fun.

Overall I’m very impressed with Syndicate. What could have been a by-the-numbers, Deathmatch-based competitive multiplayer is instead an exciting and instantly playable co-op action romp. Some may think doing away with the usual online modes is a bad move but in fact it’s quite the opposite. By focussing solely on co-op, Syndicate has dodged the almost certain fatal bullet of going up against Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 for the attentions of the tea-bagging brigade. It stands out as a bold statement against leaderboards and K/D ratios and reminds us that first-person shooters don’t always have to be about maps and killstreaks.

Best of all, it does it brilliantly. The smooth and engaging combat is instantly familiar yet refreshingly original, the hacking mechanic opening up a wealth of new tactical options. The focus on loadouts rather than set classes allows you to customise your own play-style while maintaining a role in the team; something that’s very difficult to achieve. The game looks lush and futuristic, equal parts Deus Ex, Mass Effect and Blade Runner.

I for one am very excited about Syndicate. Whatever the old fans say, it’s showing itself to be a unique, tight and enthralling shooter that stands out from the crowd in todays sea of CoD-shaped cookies. What the single-player campaign will entail remains to be seen and for me it all hinges on that. If the solo experience can match, or surpass, the breathless co-op, then people might just start reaching for the credit card come February 24th. Give it a download and see for yourself; you won’t be disappointed.

Games allow us to do crazy things, and the more immersive and real they become, the more choices we’re given, the more our actions are truly defined by us within that game. When the player is actually put on the spot and asked to think about what they’re about to do, assessing the consequences of these decisions,  and they choose to kill virtual avatars in compromising positions, what does that say about their genetic makeup?

Perhaps the tabloids are right. Perhaps games do encourage us in ways they shouldn’t.

Multi-choice, open world experiences are getting more and more popular all the time. Skyrim continues to sell extremely well in the UK Charts, and Mass Effect 3 is one of this years most anticipated games. These games challenge players in ways the likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty never will. They thrust numerous immeasurable tasks on the player’s shoulders, have you interact with the type of people you’d never rub shoulders with in real life and get involved with cults, gangs and syndicates of a shady nature.

Essentially, games give us a chance to lead a new kind of double life.

Of course, this is all happening in the virtual realm, and while the game makes us deal with consequence and we do have to make decisions, the only thing that is impacted is the game in front of you. Not your next-door neighbour, not your cousin or Jeffrey Mills from the other side of the world. Just the game.

Still, tabloids, medical practitioners and psychologists think it runs deeper than that. They say that in order for a person to reach such macabre decisions there must be a hidden desire within them to do such a thing. When playing these games, they are releasing a part of themselves which is repressed, concealed behind layers of what a person perceives to be right, and the way they should act in everyday society. They claim that when playing games, the real person is exposed, much in the same way as it can be when you take a blot test, and the hidden traits are exposed for all to see.

So, if that is the case, just because I enjoy throwing a hood over my head in Skyrim, talking and taunting my victim before I stab them in cold blood by tapping a button on my gamepad, and then running away from town in the hopes of not being locked away, that I’m just as likely, if pushed, to do the same in real life. That I have repressed the desire to commit these acts in my everyday working life, because I’m scared of a consequence, or being judged by the law and those close to me.

What these people don’t understand is that no matter how immersive these experiences are. No matter what a game pitches to us, no matter what scenario we’re thrust into, it will never be real. I’m never going to live in Skyrim, I’m never going to soar the galaxy with Commander Shepard, nor am I ever going to get to 1498 Italy, and assassinate world leaders.

Games present radical, fictional scenarios that will forever be a distant dream and never synchronise with the reality you and I face in our everyday lives. These situations will never happen to us, therefore we’ll never need to make these decisions, therefore when we’re supplied with three or four choices (where it’s entirely possible none of them would be applicable to our real reaction anyway) then it cannot be compared to what happens in our everyday lives.

Reality isn’t as black and white as to class you as a paragon or renegade when you make one sole decision, but Mass Effect is. If you kill someone in Skyrim, you can pay off your debt to the guards, and they’ll forget all about it. Unless you’re Rupert Murdoch, or a star in the Premier League, that’s not an out for you.

I wouldn't do this even if I could. Even though it'd be immensely cool. Am I right?

Surely, if people think it’s affecting our lives so much, that says more for the amazing writing within games, and how these tests and challenges set before us, are engaging our brains in ways psychologists never thought was possible. Surely that says more about the gripping, compelling fiction we have at our fingertips today, and how amazingly detailed, and wondrous these other-worlds are. Surely that’s the largest possible compliment you can pay these ingenious writers who give whole background stories to new races, and breathe life into alien-looking worlds.

My plea? Stop badgering games. Stop trying to pick holes and find faults. Stop trying to blame all the world’s problems on the back of an industry which is still in its infancy, still expanding, and still trying to keep a head above water in this difficult economic climate. Perhaps sometimes developers take things too far, perhaps some content within games should be moderated and observed more closely before release. That’s an arguable point, and one for another time, but the fact is, they do more right than wrong.

They keep kids off the streets, stop them from committing real crimes. They encourage us to look at the good things in life as much as the bad. They weave amazing stories that don’t fall for the same telegraphed twists most movies have adopted over the last few years. The world is a dark place, turning on the daily news every morning is indicative of that. It’s also a much more violent place because of war, because of dictatorship, because of mental illnesses which cause people to do unspeakable acts which could never be expressed or dreamed up in any fictional world.

Besides, not every decision in our games is a bad one. For every occasion a person has to decide to kill someone, they are also faced with the decision to help a young boy who has lost his parents, or prevent someone from being overwhelmed by a life-threatening illness. Yes, the world is a dark place, and games have to virtually recreate that in order to make their narrative arcs even slightly identifiable. In order to keep people hooked, they can’t expect them to get connected with pasty white unicorns and pretty rainbows.

I may be a murder in Skyrim, I may Hail Sithis and as Listener, take my orders from the Night Mother, but the moment I turn off that game, I don’t draw a ring of fire in my living room and pray to fictional demi-gods for a sign. I don’t roam the streets looking for the first person I can find so I can kill them. I don’t drink a cup of blood in order to settle my stomach before bed. I wash the dishes, I brush my teeth, I lock the door and then go to sleep.

Tabloids, psychologists and doctors can judge me all they want, but I’m not under any of your categories, nor do I mould into any of your stereotypes. I play games for fun and I experience them as I please. There’s no more to it than that.

Stop digging.

I got to sample the final instalment of Shepard’s adventures at this year’s Eurogamer Expo, and I can certainly tell you one thing. The future, is quite different..

Cerberus are the enemy. That’s the first major detail I learned from the demo. Shepard and his crew have been ambushed by sentinels and centurions, and are in a race against time to protect Mordin, who is about to get flame-grilled and deep-fried by the materializing threat. It was my duty to protect him.

From the get-go, I can tell that Mass Effect 3 is going to be a much more interactive and action-packed cinematic experience. Small subtle details have been added, such as cinematic hotspots. If something important is happening on the screen at any one time, by holding in Y, you will instantly focus on that event.

In the demo, the scenery surrounding my character was completely devastated. It’s clear that Shepard is in the middle of a war and the fight of his life, so who better to enlist than those who have supported him in the past. Previous series favourites that made an appearance in this demo included Mordin, Garrus, Liara and Wrex.

However, this demo wasn’t designed to give major story points, but to demonstrate the important combat changes Bioware have made to their showcase title. This brings me to a point that may upset or excite Mass Effect fans, but will almost certainly divide them. Mass Effect’s combat has now taken more from the Gears of War experience than ever before. In fact, its damn near carbon-copied it.

Big Ben's last chime...

For starters, Shepard can now roll around the map to evade enemy fire, or dive into cover. Personally, I became very comfortable very quickly using this method of manoeuvring due to my experience with the COGs. On a technical level, it does work well within Mass Effect, although it doesn’t feel quite as fluid as Gears of War. In fact, it feels a little stunted due to Shepard’s lengthy pause after each roll. On the whole though, I think this is a good addition to the series.

Also, Roadie-running is no longer hindered by a stamina bar. Shepard can just keep running as if he’s just drunk seven cans of Monster on the head. Again, this suits me much better than Mass Effect 2′s efforts, and, to my way of thinking, is a positive improvement for the series.

The cover system has also been revamped, and it is much easier for Shepard to go from one point of cover to another. If pressed up against one side of a wall, with a quick button press and a flick of the analog, Shepard can alternate his position very quickly and responsively. Yet again, another important improvement.

Aiming and firing also seems like it has been brushed up as Auto-aim now appears in-game. Every time you zoom in with LT and there is an enemy on the screen, Shepard immediately faces that direction, pointing his pistol in their face. This certainly makes battle a much easier endeavour. Shepard also has his own close-range melee attack, stabbing enemies with a knife-like weapon on his forearm.

Another first for the series are workbenches. On these benches, you can change your weapon load-out at any time, allowing you to alternate your strategy if things are getting a bit hairy. However, you can also upgrade your weaponry, giving your assault rifle higher burst damage, or less recoil, or increasing the clip size of your pistol, amidst other things. This time in Mass Effect, it’s not just your characters that improve in ability.

Fire when ready!

Of course, it wouldn’t be Mass Effect without power-ups. Familiar favourites like Unity and Warp act the same as before, and remain just as important now as they were in previous instalments. Nothing seems to have been omitted, so don’t worry.

It’s not just your capabilities in combat that are improved, however. The enemies are also more tenacious than ever. Just because Shepard’s in cover, doesn’t mean he’s safe. Just like in Gears 3, enemies will come right up to your location, and attempt to knock you back, leaving you exposed and vulnerable. There are also enemies called Guardians who are covered entirely by a massive riot-like shield. Much like Maulers in Gears of War, you will need to find a small, slightly exposed weak-spot and unload on them.

Oh, and did I mention that some enemies can now teleport.

As you can tell, Mass Effect 3 will have a stronger combat focus than its predecessors, and to support that, Bioware have implemented significant alterations to the game’s combat formula.

Of course, Mass Effect was primarily designed as a role-playing game experience, and while I didn’t get to sample much of that in my hands-on, I’ve still reached a simple conclusion. If Bioware can deliver an epic story like they’ve been known to, and really bring this trilogy to the close we’re all hoping for, there’s absolutely no reason why this couldn’t, and shouldn’t surpass Mass Effect 2. While I appreciate many aren’t fond of the Gears of War formula of combat, for me, this feels well suited and appropriate in the Mass Effect world, and it is a vast improvement on anything we’ve seen in the series so far.

It also sets me thinking. If there is going to be a multi-player element to the game (as has been rumoured several gazillion times), then this would definitely be the place for Bioware to start.

Just thinking out loud…

Hollywood has come under similar criticism over the last few years, remaking classic films and adding more installments to established series. For example, this year, the cinema box office includes Transformers 3, The Hangover 2, Sherlock Holmes 2, Cars 2, Pirates 4, Scream 4 and remakes of Conan and Footloose.

Unfortunately, this does beg the question; is the industry showing early apprehension of trying new things because they feel their games need to be branded with something already established? Are developers becoming gun-shy in exploring new intellectual property? Is this another Hollywood in the making?

Before we go any further, let’s take a look at the list of some of the most anticipated games scheduled for 2011.

• Deus Ex Human Revolution
• Portal 2
• Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception
• X-COM
• Mass Effect 3
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Saints Row The Third
• Resistance 3
• Twisted Metal
• Child of Eden
• Crysis 2
• Mortal Kombat
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Alice Madness Returns
• Batman: Arkham City
• Lego Star Wars 3
• Gears of War 3
• Unannounced Assassin’s Creed project
• Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword
• Unannounced Call of Duty Project

Will Modern Warfare return in 2011 and dominate the market all over again?

While I’m certain there are more, this just gives you some indication of what’s on the horizon. Meanwhile, let’s then look at what has already arrived this year.

• Dead Space 2
• Marvel vs Capcom 3
• Killzone 3
• Little Big Planet 2

A stacked line-up, to be sure, but one that is also filled with familiar products. Of course, you can take this even further and start looking at the development behind some games that are branded differently. For example, you can argue that ‘Child of Eden’ is a new intellectual property from Ubisoft, you can also argue that it is based on the World depicted in Rez HD and the game developers are not shy in admitting that. You can also argue that the return of Deus Ex and X-Com may as well be new games as they’re re-imaginings of the old school PC games.

It’s not all ‘more of the same’, though. We do have new IP due out this year. The likes of L.A Noire, RAGE, Homefront, The Last Guardian, Brink and Bulletstorm will be appearing or have already materialised, all of which are considered high-profile releases. In fact, there is a strong buzz for all of these titles based on pedigree, playability and look. In many cases, word of mouth has already spread for these games based on journalists getting hands-on experiences and those who attend expos getting the chance to sample the latest games. However, will it be enough?

Both Bulletstorm and Homefront have now launched, so we can certainly put that theory to the test.

Does Kill with Skill mean lots of money?

From its launch on February 25th to today, Bulletstorm has still failed to sell 1m copies across 3 formats. Bulletstorm suffered immensely on PS3 due to launching alongside Killzone 3 and the PC version has gone practically ignored. As one might expect, the version which has sold the best is the Xbox 360 version, due to the game launching with an entry key into the Gears of War 3 beta, however, between that and a massive marketing push by Epic, Bulletstorm still hasn’t even come close to achieving its projected sales, despite getting solid reviews across the board and ending up with an 83/84 average on Metacritic.

On the other hand, THQ’s Homefront has already passed 1m units sold since its launch on March 11th and so far, has enjoyed the most profitable day one release for a game in the UK this year. To make things even more interesting, Homefront only managed a 69/70 average on Metacritic, making it lower than Bulletstorm’s average and, according to vgchartz.com, has sold more on the Xbox 360 than Bulletstorm, despite Bulletstorm offering the player an opportunity to experience the Gears 3 beta. What makes this even stranger is that no demo of Homefront has been made available for people to play.

It seems that sales of new IP in 2011 is a mixed bag, with Homefront being a run-away success story and Bulletstorm barely able to make a return profit.

Not even early access to a Gears 3 beta can topple Homefront's sales

Looking back to 2010, the success of original IP’s was also a mixed bag. In terms of major retail releases, Alan Wake, Bayonetta, Darksiders & Vanquish managed to hit at least 1m sold over time, whereas, Enslaved and Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom didn’t fare so well, with Enslaved not even cracking the 500k barrier. Some say sales of these games suffered because 2010 was filled with so many quality releases and there was too much vying for people’s attention and finances. That’s definitely one factor that would stand in the way of the success of these games, but when you consider mass marketing machines SEGA and Microsoft were behind Bayonetta and Alan Wake respectively, and the games only managed to barely scrape 1m sales each, it makes you wonder what chance there is for other, smaller developing houses to try something different.

Need further proof ? Get your head around this little statistic: Enslaved has sold just over 460,000 units in total, Worldwide. Call of Duty Black Ops sold 7 million units on day one and over 20 million units in total.

Mind blowing when put into context, isn’t it? It also shows you where the money is to be made in the games industry and goes a long way to explain why we’re seeing a bare minimum of new intellectual properties at retail.

That being said, Dance Central was a new IP designed exclusively for Microsoft Kinect and has shifted almost 2m units since the launch of the peripheral, with continued steady sales since November.

Fortunately, however, it’s not just retail that births new ideas. Many new intellectual properties can be sourced back to PSN, WiiWare and XBLA. Last year saw the release of Limbo, Monday Night Combat, Super Meat-Boy, Comic Jumper, Deathspank, Shank, Costume Quest and more. In fact, original intellectual properties have begun to flourish through the arcade because of the cheaper price.

For example, Super Meat-Boy has achieved 600,000 sales up to the present day across all formats. Limbo was even nominated as a Game of the Year candidate by BAFTA. That trend of new IP on the marketplace also seems to have rolled into 2011, with many new games appearing including Torchlight, Stacking and Swarm. Perhaps this is the best suited place for smaller companies to advertise their new ideas, if you look at companies such as Twisted Pixel, Hothead Games and Double Fine, you’ll see how well off they’ve become from using the online model to their advantage.

It seems, that for the time being, they’ve found a new, home and are making themselves comfortable in these new surroundings. For now, it seems, the place to find most new IP is through the medium of downloads and that doesn’t seem set to change for some time.

BAFTA Nominated Brilliance

Many can argue its different having sequels and remakes of games than movies as more can be done, but how long can we keep saying that before the argument starts to run thin? Just because they’re sequels to games, developers try to stay as much within the same guidelines that made the original so successful as they can. Gears 2 received some combat tweaks over the original, but it uses the same engine, it has the same gameplay mechanics. The Halo games are basically the same with enhanced visual tweaks and some new weapons, and lets not even talk about Call of Duty, shall we?

What about games that have started to become so successful that now they may be expanded further and further? For example , with EA acquiring Bioware and Mass Effect 2 having such considerably brilliant sales in comparison to the original and obviously more advertising behind it, what was originally only going to be a trilogy may now change. Bioware are already talking about potential spin-offs and have gone a long way to expanding the world with comics, literature and now anime. Will the demand from the publishers be so high that Mass Effect 4 or 5 will become a reality where it wouldn’t have been before? Are we likely to see more spin-offs for the series? Will they continue to churn out sequels, just as Hollywood have done, until the quality ultimately diminishes?

This may be a tough pill to swallow, I, like everyone else, love some of these gaming series’ and am excited by all the new features being introduced into my favourite games, and seeing new stories created in compelling Worlds I’m already invested in, ultimately, that’s what matters. Yet, I’m becoming increasingly mindful that much of the current catalogue of games we appreciate and look forward to are rarely new intellectual escapades.

Having too much Shephard can't be a bad thing, can it?

Looking to 2012, the landscape doesn’t seem to be changing much either, with Bioshock Infinite, Ninja Gaiden 3, Diablo 3 and Prototype 2 already announced to be in development. I know that Bioshock Infinite is almost a completely different game from its predecessors as the game takes place in the air as opposed to underwater and the concept of Big Daddies is completely different, but the fact is, they’ve still branded it Bioshock. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s not all down to financial reasons and another reason it has been branded Bioshock is because it will have some direct affiliation with the previous games. However, it does make one wonder.

Are we, the gaming industry, running the same risks as Hollywood of becoming over-saturated with sequels and remakes? Are we running out of ideas? Do we have to resort to old games, stories and characters in order to make the best use of current technology? What do you think?

After sampling several games over the years that allow you to do this, I’m starting to wonder if developer’s can ever get this right. It’s not that I don’t get what they’re doing or why they add the systems in, but very few games seem to give me what I want. Critically acclaimed games that are on the market now that have moral choices included, don’t really show the potential of what could be. Let me explain.

The Mass Effect series are games that everyone who I know have loved and played. Within the game they allow you to choose how to react to some of the characters. Depending on your actions, it can alter the way your character interacts with who you are talking to. Overall this does give you a moral choice but towards the end of the game I was disappointed with the eventual outcome. Everything I said or did within the game always came to the same conclusion at the end of each encounter. The only thing it really did was to alter the responses and the options. Being good or bad didn’t actually change anything; I got the same information both ways, and neither way altered the game in the slightest aside from in the dialogue. I’ve come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a real moral choice at all, just a system that posed as one.

It was a clever way to mask linearity by providing two ways of getting to the same result. The only real moral choice in the game was at the end, how you react will then alter the next game, pretty lacking if you really think about it. Some characters will live and die but all the way throughout the storyline nothing actually affects this until the end. A character may reply to your abruptness by being a little disgruntled but in the end you always get the same answer. Occasionally, something does affect the gameplay marginally but nothing major that would make a big impact on the overall game itself. Just in case you are wondering, I wasn’t meaning both games played as a series, just each on their own. I know killing one or two characters in one game means they aren’t in the other, but that’s beside the point.

Fallout with its explicitness

The second game I want to look at is Fallout 3. Again if you have played it you will get what I’m on about. At certain times in the game you have to pick one of two sides, by doing this you directly alter the game. Take, for example, the beginning when you have to go to Megaton. When you enter a bar you are approached by a man asking you to blow up the city. You have three choices, you can agree and blow up the town, you can tell him where to get off and never bring the subject up again, or you can choose to tell him to get lost and inform the local law. I played this scenario several times over, just to see what happens if I did different things.

The first time I did it, I told the guy yes and set the nuke ready to blow. I wandered over to Tenpenny Tower and pushed the plunger resulting in destroying the whole town. That’s right, everyone that was in that town was gone forever. The second time I did it, I told him to step off and refused, then I did nothing. All the characters survived and nothing else happened. The third time I did it; I said no and then informed the law. I followed the lawman up to the bar and he confronted the man, a fight broke out and he was shot dead, I killed the assailant and then became a hero, given a place to live by the town folk and approached by the guy’s son to be thanked for avenging his father’s murder. I thought to myself “hang about, let’s replay the third scenario again”. Again I went through the motions and did the same thing again, this time when I went up to the bar and watched the same thing happen again, as soon as the man-made motions to pull out his gun, I hit the vats button and quickly killed him to stop the lawman from leaving his son fatherless. This time I was thanked by a shocked lawman for saving his life and I still I got the reward from the town people. Every single thing I did in this one instance directly altered the game one way or another. If I saved everyone, I still had both Megaton and Tenpenny Towers left in the game. If I chose to get rid of Megaton, it was gone permanently, same with the characters. Still, with all that I could do, I still felt that it was lacking.

Games like Grand Theft Auto allow you to run around with a bazooka killing anyone in sight, the problem being that nothing you do affects the game. There are no consequences for your actions. You die and wake up in a hospital or you get arrested and spawn by the nearest cop-shop. You can choose to not be Ted Bundy, but it makes no difference either way. You decide to sleep with a prostitute afterwards you decide to kill her; you get your money back that’s about it. It’s not really a moral choice because morality is knowing that there are consequences after taking an action, whether it be good or bad.

Mass Effect is as linear as they come

What I wanted to be able to do is not just effect a game on a dialogue or on a physical way, but to be able to do both and more. In real life when you talk to someone, if you call them an asshole, chances are they will more likely not talk to you again. If you attack someone they will more likely fight you back and if you kill someone you can’t take that back and will end up arrested serving hard time in a place you wouldn’t really like to go.

The next evolution of moral choice is something that I look forward to. Imagine a game that if you speak to someone in the right way, you get a different response. If you are aggressive then they won’t talk to you and spend the remainder of the game avoiding you like you have bubonic plague. Killing an in-game character will mean they won’t exist and doing so has serious consequences much like in real life. Sleeping with the wrong type of prostitute will make you contract a sexually transmitted disease. Finding a nice woman and marrying her won’t give you a dose of the clap, but choosing to have a baby will also affect the rest of the in-game world. Opting to wipe out a town will mean that other towns will not allow you entry or try to kill you on sight. Every single thing that you do whether it be deciding to do a paper-round or refusing to take on a quest of epic proportions, changes the outcome of a game entirely. Being good or bad in any capacity changes everything that happens to you later on. Obviously there has to be some sort of story, otherwise what’s the point? However, getting through the story won’t be as much of a straight line and will have a lot of choice and variety along the way.

Like real life, things happen that affect the outcome of what choices you have in life, this in turn determines how life will pan out for you. Fate isn’t set in stone and a good game world should always have several ways to accomplish something; each resulting in events panning out differently. I don’t see why things like moral choice in a game can’t directly affect how a story will unfold or if it will at all. Maybe it’s too much of a tall order but game like Fallout are already halfway there, let’s just see who decides to go the whole hog first. As always, I’m sure that some of you will agree and disagree with my views on this, and I’m sure you will let your opinions known.

Bad publicity is still publicity
Keith Vaz, Kevin McCullough, Jack Thompson, The Daily Mail; despite being ill informed imbeciles the gaming industry owes these guys (and many more) a great big hug for the way they’ve selflessly promoted the market. “Xbox 360 gains sentience and cripples decorated war hero”, “Sonic the Hedgehog promotes bestiality” and “Gary Glitter: I was normal before I got a Wii” are all (in some universes) genuine headlines that have attempted to degrade the reputation of games as a viable platform for artistic expression. Of course the only thing these lobbyists have all succeeded in is doing the exact opposite, with the games in question receiving a popularity boost in a similar manner to the way that Vernon Kay is now regarded as being actually newsworthy.

Rockstar Games have undoubtedly benefited the most from these unintentional plugs, and it’s fair to say that they know exactly which mass media buttons to press. The GTA series can certainly walk tall based solely on its technical merits, but that can’t be said for the Manhunt series which I imagine would have fallen under the radar completely if not for the hysterical reaction to its gruesome content. Manhunt’s appeal was that it was breaking the boundaries of acceptable levels of violence in such a way that gamers across the globe were buying the game out of  sheer curiosity rather than based on the game itself. That’s not to say that its necessary to go looking for trouble however, since the global media will regularly manage to  find something to have a good old fashioned “It wasn’t this way in my day” campaign, regardless of minor details like factual accuracy.

Not so interesting now is it?!

While Mass Effect was already doing pretty well for itself with rave reviews from all sides, it received a welcome publicity shot in the arm through the frankly hilarious over-reaction from Fox News and Kevin McCullogh which was utterly convinced that Bioware’s space epic was in fact an unrelenting interspecies gangbang with an error ridden article with concluded with a sentence that will (and deservedly should) stick with him for the rest of his days:

“With it’s “over the net” capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.”

This showed that he not only completely misunderstands the nature of technology at large but a distinct lack of evidence that he had ever actually played the game. Even though the realisation that he had based an entire opinionated article on a completely fictional concept forced a prompt public apology, the media furore had already ahcieved the desired effect from Bioware’s perspective. Though thousands of extraterrestrial nipple hunting teens would have been disappointed at the sight of a mere blue side-boob I have no doubt that Mass Effect would have shipped a considerable number of copies based solely on the promise of being able to… well maybe you should take this one, Kev:

“hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of…”

Indeed.

There are occasions where bad publicity can have a plain and simple damaging effect on your game however, which Electronics Arts found out using a marketing ploy that only they would have the balls to even briefly entertain, never mind pick up and run with. Considering the biblical nature of Dante’s Inferno (as well as including an achievement for killing non-baptised babies, how the hell did that make it in!?) you would expect religious protestors to descend upon the game’s development studio with great haste. Well not quickly enough according to EA, as it came to light that a group of protestors kicking up a fuzz at E3 about the game’s religious context were in fact hired actors, with EA themselves picking up the bill. With a false website and reading material to back up this “unique” viral marketing campaign, EA must have thought that they had covered all of the bases. Until the next day that is when the entire thing was unveiled as a farce, and we all went back to vocally regarding EA as a shower of unscrupulous suits who live in volcano lairs and set our hard earned cash on fire to light their gargantuan cigars. Bastards.

Get yourself meme’d
The internet is a phenomenally power marketing tool and it’s very rare to jump into any gaming website without your screen being filled with the latest God of War 3 or Wii Fit propaganda, which is more often than not implemented with the subtlety of an Activision rep throwing a Call of Duty branded brick at your head. It’s not just the shady contracts between publishers and reviewing sites that gets people talking though, with a game that is worthy of being subjected to the meme treatment essentially doing all of the work itself, for better or worse.

If you can include any kind of glitch, hammy acting or moment of awkwardness in your pre-release footage you can bet that it will have been recreated, re-imagined and redistributed within hours of it entering the public domain. The E3 presentation of Genji 2 for the PS3 reached hilarious levels of stupidity and as a result the phrase “Giant Enemy Crab” is jokingly referenced across the industry, from Viva Piñata to World of Warcraft. While the producer of the game excitedly revealed that the game would be full of genuine historical battles from ancient Japan, footage of the infamous Giant Enemy Crab filled the screen behind him, leading to a few confused attendees frantically checking their history books, while the rest of them simply soiled themselves laughing. The situation was compounded as innovative new features such “real time weapon changes” were unleashed on the unsuspecting audience. Despite the obviously embarrassing consequences, the farcical press conference put Genji on the map in an unprecedented fashion, although I don’t think many publishers would go employ that particular marketing plan too readily.

Be a tease
Sometimes when it comes to building up the interest in a game, less is more. A well placed teaser trailer for your upcoming game can get the masses salivating at the mouth before you’ve even written a single line of code, particularly if you’ve already established your brand. Take the Mass Effect Teaser trailer as an example. It consists of two core elements, the first of which is a brief recollection of the many glorious achievements you as Shepard had heroically performed in the first game, followed by the useful tidbit of information that he’s dead…

I’m sorry what? Commander Shepard, who I spent slightly north of fifty hours levelling up has died within a few months of me turning my back? Why is that Geth wearing his armour?! I have too many questions, someone take my money so I can find answers! PLEASE!! Ok, that reaction was certainly on the more vocal end of the spectrum but it got people talking in a way that never really died down until Mass Effect 2 hit the shelves, with hype hitting fanatical levels as each character in Shepard’s suicidal space opera was gradually drip fed to us.

Where do I pick up my cheque?

Not that drip feeding information has a detrimental effect on the hype surrounding a game, with many publishers rightly making the decision to release as many trailers that tell us absolutely nothing for as long as they can. In the same way that gory scenes in horror movies are most effective when left to our imagination, the number of people attempting to hopelessly dissect a game trailer increases as the level of tangible information that the trailer provides begins to drop. The recent trailer for the next title in the Ghost Recon series, Future Soldier, encapsulates this pretty well with the fifty second video telling us that it’s set in the future and some people will be invisible. Do we know who we’re fighting? Where this conflict takes place? Why the US Military have gone all Predator on us all of a sudden? Hell no! Does that stop the gaming community shouting their support or distain at the tiny morsel of information they’ve just been fed? Of course it doesn’t!

There’s no doubt that I’m only scratching the surface and some of the larger franchises have probably already implemented new advertising techniques that us simple gamers would never even consider. Where does the pre-release hype machine go from here though? Subliminal messaging perhaps? For all we know, every minute that we play the latest FIFA or Call of Duty could result in thousands of unnoticeable commands being hardwired into our minds.

Fortunately my mind is protected from any such ~ BUY ARMY OF TWO ~ attacks and as a result I’m impervious ~ FOOTBALL MANAGER IS YOUR FRIEND, GO TO IT ~ to any such suggestions…

Disclaimer: Of course I’m aware that Commander Shepard can be played as either a male or female, but for the sake of this review I’ll be referring to Shepard as a male to keep in line with my playthrough. Please don’t yell at me Bryony…

Come with us now on a journey through time and space…
Mass Effect 2 begins two years after after Commander Shepard defeated Saren and the Reapers, with him taking the helm of the Normandy once more in order to face a new threat, the mysterious Collectors. That’s all you’re getting. Mass Effect 2 should be experienced entirely unspoiled and for that reason details of the story will be kept to a bare minimum in this review. What I will say is that the plot is a captivating and exciting story which is expertly backed up with fantastic characters and dialogue. The core plotline is still a bit short (and I didn’t like the game being split into distinct missions with explicit debriefings at the end of each one) but where it falls short in terms of longevity it compensates with suspenseful storytelling with sheer impact. Each mission drip feeds more information about the motivations of the Collectors while occasionally hitting you with a haymaker of a twist; it’s another epic tale of space heroics that builds on the already substantial foundations built by the first game.

That being said, the foundations of the first game aren’t exactly set in stone. Players with a saved game from the original Mass Effect can import their own version of Shepard into the new story. This has slight implications on a gameplay level in terms of abilities, but much more significant ramifications regarding how the new story pans out. Characters who died in the first game are dead, while decisions you made back in your original quest can and do make a difference this time round, whether you’re reaping the benefits or having something come round to bite you in the ass. I was surprised to see just how many minor actions that I had taken in Mass Effect had translated into the sequel and I think it’s a great thing to be able to experience the long term consequences of your actions first hand.

This could have a detrimental effect on a newcomer’s enjoyment of Mass Effect 2′s narrative on the other hand, since it does refer back to Shepard’s original quest a lot. That being said, it’s a sequel! I managed to rush through an entire Mass Effect playthrough in order to get a completed save (thanks to my original save becoming corrupted, not that I’m bitter), what the hell makes others so special!?

I could've sworn there was a ceiling here before...

Shepard’s mission in Mass Effect 2 sees him going slightly more rogue this time round, and as a result you get to experience some of the galaxy’s seedier locations and inhabitants. The characters that are encountered throughout Mass Effect 2 range from mercenaries to vigilantes to outright murderous criminals, which seems to have given Bioware more scope for some excellent menacing banter between them and Shepard. The members of your crew aren’t exactly angels either, most of which have complex personalities and motivations that must be fulfilled in order to gain their complete loyalty. Shepard’s crew is a diverse and fascinating ragtag group of fighters, although I think it’s just a bit too big and could have benefited from having one or two less members. That said however I can’t really think of anyone on the Normandy who I’d want to throw overboard, with the possible exception of Jacob, who goes through the least development across the story and is generally a bit boring to talk to.

It’s an RPG, but not as we know it
Mass Effect 2 still falls under the ‘Action RPG’ category, but with more emphasis on action than its predecessor. Some of the more bloated RPG elements have been stripped down, streamlined or just removed altogether while the combat has been dramatically improved. Shepard and the crew of the Normandy still gain experience through completing missions and winning battles, but the number of abilities has been reduced to four per character, with the exception of Shepard himself who has a bit more flexibility. The ludicrous inventory system from Mass Effect is no more, with weapon and armour upgrades having a cumulative effect each time you research them on the Normandy. I’m glad to see the back of the inventory, but feel that the new levelling system is a bit too basic. Each skill has four levels, with the number of skill points required to upgrade a skill increasing each time (Two skill points to upgrade to Level Two etc.). Initially this works fine, but as I progressed further I found myself effectively having to hoard skill points until I had enough to do anything with them, meaning I could level up two or three times without receiving any benefits from it.

The dialogue mechanic is relatively untouched, apart from the addition of “interrupt” actions which allow you to put a premature end to a conversation through a Paragon or Renegade action. These help to make conversations feel a bit more dynamic and natural, and a well timed interrupt can also result in the occasional unexpected benefit. I also like that characters very rarely stand directly facing each other while the camera flicks between faces. People move, gesture and react in realistic ways which go a long way to providing a much needed cinematic touch to the way dialogue is presented.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the more lightweight RPG elements in Mass Effect 2 is a step backwards, but these changes have been made to allow more room for the new focus of the Mass Effect series: shooting people. During most missions I very rarely found myself having time to holster my weapon, with the body count often reaching Total Recall levels. The number of weapon types has doubled, not including the destructive Heavy Weapons, with Shepard already being completely proficient in whichever weapons his class allows him to use. Weapons feel a lot more meaningful this time round, with weapons blowing limbs off of enemies and ammo upgrades granting bonuses such as freezing enemies to the spot or removing shields.

They no longer suffer from overheating problems either, through the use of dischargeable heat sinks which introduces a simple but effective method of ammo management. The biotic’s and tech abilities also seem to yield more tangible outcomes such as briefly reprogramming an enemy mech to fight for you or simply setting someone on fire. Enemy AI is nicely varied although it’s a little easy to judge at times (Krogans willl constantly advance before launching a desperate charge, while Asari will usually perform supporting roles with biotics), while new squad AI grants Shepard a simple interface to control team members individually. Every change to the combat mechanic improves the experience in some way and as a result it’s a much more exciting and rewarding experience, particularly when Shepard’s team has to come up against a heavy mech or Thresher Maw.

Of course before you can go toe to toe with a bunch of mercenaries there’s the little matter of traversing the galaxy to find them, a function that’s provided by the Normandy’s shiny new Galaxy Map. You actually get to control the Normandy as it flies around each system this time round which is a nice touch that adds to the feeling that you’re actually exploring deep space, rather than just selecting a set of predefined locations. The galaxy is comprised of cluster of solar systems which are connected through Mass Relays. Each solar system can be directly accessed at the expense of fuel, after which you get down to the nitty gritty of exploring each of the planets within. Rather than just clicking on each planet and hitting the Land option however, planets can be scanned from a distance via a pretty fun mini-game. Scanning for resources involves moving the scanning reticule across the planet’s and launching a probe towards its surface when something comes up.

Some planets also house anomalies which give you the option of dropping in for further investigation, even if Shepard’s “investigation” will without fail end in an all out fire-fight. The scanning is a bit sluggish at times and having to replenish the Normandy’s stock of probes can be a chore, but it’s a much more less cumbersome task than exploring planets with the Mako, while watching your scanner go off the charts after uncovering an untapped resource is surprisingly rewarding.

Shepard’s mission against the Collectors is widely regarded as a suicide mission, with the complete annihilation of your team being a very real possibility at the end of the game if you haven’t gained the complete loyalty of your squad. While this concept is an interesting one, its execution is a bit too transparent and formulaic. Outside of random side missions Mass Effect 2 is made up of recruitment missions to expand your squad, one loyalty mission per crew member and plot missions which keep the story moving along.

By completing a character’s loyalty mission they are instantly flagged up as loyal, and while certain decisions can result in Shepard losing a character’s loyalty or not getting it at all, I would have liked to see more subtle influencing of characters rather than the binary setup that’s in place. Fortunately the content of the missions themselves is exceptional and brimming with beautifully realised locations and believable characters, so gaining a character’s loyalty will never feel like a drag. Except Jacob funnily enough, boredom seems to dog his every move for me.

Massterpiece
The visual element of Mass Effect 2 has probably gone through the least amount of upheaval between the two games, although that’s hardly a bad thing and the changes that have been made make nothing but a positive impact. Facial models have been tweaked slightly, allowing for more emotive expressions from the hundreds of characters across the universe. This redesign also results in character’s faces looking much more cohesive and natural, where I felt that in Mass Effect sometimes their composite parts appeared to be acting independently of one another. The revamped combat is also given a much more visceral feel thanks to some of the new special effects on display. I love how enemies realistically react to taking a hit (enemies falling when you shoot them in the legs, chunks of metal being dislodged from a Mech by a shotgun blast) which gives a much more satisfying level of feedback from using each weapon.

Thank goodness someone left those highly unstable explosives lying in the middle of a corridor

The environments that Shepard’s crew travel to throughout the game are a pleasure to look at, not least because of the variety and scale that Bioware have been able to maintain throughout. With the removal of the Mako, vast, explorable (as well as bland and interchangeable) planets are no longer necessary which allows much more thought to be put into the style of each location, and it really shows. Repetition is almost a distant memory among the planets that can be landed on, with stunning beaches, vast cities, derelict ships, treacherous jungle worlds and much more all making an appearance. I felt that the interior locations could benefited from some more variety, particularly on the non-essential locations, but for the most part I found myself being pleasantly surprised with the eye-candy on offer every time I landed on a new planet.

Mass Effect 2 includes pre-rendered FMVs during gameplay, which goes a long way to adding a more cinematic touch to even the most random of side missions. Rather than the same quick scene of the Mako being dropped from the Normandy being played to death, every new planet is accompanied with its own distinct landing scene. It might seem like a small thing but I felt that the excellent presentation throughout made some of the more peripheral assignments I decided to tackle come across as an integral part of the game. Not that these cut-scenes are restricted to touching down on a new world of course, they’re also extensively used in the core plotline to great effect, with the game’s opening being on par with anything to come out of the most recent big budget sci-fi flicks to grace the screens.

In space, no one can hear you seduce a robot
The biggest strength of the Mass Effect series is the depth and high production values present in every aspect of the narrative, with the voice acting being especially well executed. So it’s great to see that Bioware have delivered on this front in Shepard’s second outing, with Mass Effect 2 benefiting from an enormous dynamic script that is delivered to perfection almost without fail. When you consider that there must be hundreds upon hundreds of lines of dialogue across the missions the high quality throughout is nothing short of astounding.

The voice acting very rarely comes across as if it’s being read from a script with each line being delivered in just the right context. Choosing Renegade or Paragon options also seems to have a more significant effect on the flow of a conversation which is backed up by the emotive voice acting. Choosing to threaten an NPC from the beginning will result in the rest of the conversation coming across in a more sarcastic or aggressive tone for example, while a Paragon Shepard will usually be more sympathetic and formal. Your overall Paragon and Renegade scores won’t have an effect on this, but I thought it was a nice touch that made each conversation feel a bit more consistent.

Massively Effective
The core elements of what made Mass Effect so great are very much still in place here, but when you add the vast number of improvements made across the board Mass Effect 2 is a very impressive package. It’s incredible that Bioware are able to create an entirely new story, add ten new characters that succeed in really engaging the user into the world. Fan service is consistently prevalent throughout the game with almost every character who you happened to even walk past in Mass Effect reappearing, with the decisions from Mass Effect all translating seamlessly into the sequel and really enriching the experience as a whole.

There’s still plenty to get newcomers up to speed however and the new streamlined combat will certainly win some new fans in the shooter demographic. Mass Effect 2 is quite simply one of the top titles available for the Xbox 360 at the moment and is so fluid and dynamic that players will be able to experience something entirely different every time they take the Normandy out for a spin across the galaxy.

Oh, and elevators are no more, rejoice!

So, yes, I am a woman who likes games. It had never really bothered me before that the industry seems to be seen largely as a man’s world; that the boobed ones are allowed to play in from time to time, until quite recently. The abomination that is Nintendo’s GirlGamer magazine came to my attention while searching the internet for something entirely different, and I think I tasted a bit of sick in my mouth. I won’t go over old ground and repeat why this image is just too ridiculously offensive, however.  If you haven’t come across the venom (rightfully) directed at Nintendo, and are unable to work out why it frankly stinks, well, you clearly are neither living in this century nor the last. It did, rather get me to thinking about a lot of other (mis)representations of women in the games industry. Without wishing to go all crazy feminist on you, I’d like to share some of these with you.

While doing some academic ‘research’ I came across the story that Lara Croft (it would be illegal to write an article on women and games and not mention Lara Croft) was never meant to have quite such… impressive…? ridiculous…? large…? lady lumps as she ended up with. The story goes that her designer was meant to augment her polygons by a mere 50%, but his finger slipped, and he typed 150% instead.  He (and presumably the rest of the men in the office) thought she looked significantly better that way, and so they stuck. I won’t even ask how one manages to type ‘150’, rather than ‘50’, but I am not a programmer, so maybe it wasn’t as simple as all that. This story, (while I admit may be somewhat apocryphal) surely blows the theory out of the water that Lara is a ‘feminist icon.’ I’m not going to sit here and diss Lara, you must understand; I’ve enjoyed playing her games, for the most part, and I’ve been pleased that she is a woman. She is an unrealistic wet dream, but a woman nonetheless.

Another character with a similar physique is Vitalia Domina  from the (I won’t hide this fact) incredible Wizardry 8. Vitalia was of the Valkyrie class, but also of the sluttily dressed class. Her armour would not have saved her from anything, unless by some miracle she were stabbed in the bra strap. Her chest rivaled Croft’s. (Hey, they could have had a boob off!) So Sirtech made a relatively likable female. Great! Then ruined it by making her obviously targeted at males. I could go on about women putting their lives at stake by dressing inappropriately. I won’t, though. So don’t worry, you can carry on reading.

What bothers me is the apparent assumption that women want something entirely separate from the gaming industry than men. So I ask the question – what do men want from games? Surely the answer is simple: entertainment. What do women want from games? Um, at a guess; entertainment? As far as I am aware it isn’t a different medium for cookery books, or virtual pets to tickle. I am not saying that these things don’t have their place, the fact that people buy them surely validates their presence, but I do think that there is a lack of traditionally ‘male’ games that are produced with their female audience in mind.

Personally I am not a big fan of war games, I’ll admit. However it isn’t the guns and blood that put me off, it is the slight feeling of uneasiness I get from knowing that while for gamers from the comfort of their lounge it may be fun, for the real soldiers it is real hell. On the other hand, I LOVE blasting the living *insert expletive of choice here* out of aliens with a big Plasma Rifles in Halo, or bagging and tagging the Geth in Mass Effect.

A Geth awaits my Biotic nastiness.

What we do not have, though, is really strong, believable, female leads, who are not merely waiting to be saved, or there for the fun of teenage boys. The Metroid Prime series scores a couple of Brownie points with me, as Samus Aran is at least a woman, but if it weren’t for the eyeshadow that you glimpse when her visor steams up, I am pretty sure you wouldn’t really know. She doesn’t say anything, the armour hides her form, and Samus (unless I am much mistaken) is not a gender specific name.

Mass Effect gives you the option of playing as a woman, which I appreciate. However, all the promo stuff for the game features the default male character. While I can see that keeping continuity is a good idea from a marketing point of view, I think they have missed a trick. If they were to promote a believable female lead (I always play as a woman, and her attitude and bra size are very believable) they may find that they appeal to a wider audience.

There are some developers that realise that producing believable, likable, and suitably attired females is a good idea. I promised myself that I wouldn’t act the fangirl in this article, so I’ll just put two words into your head: Elena Fisher. If you have been in a remote PS3-less cave for a couple of years, and don’t know who she is, Google her. Now.

Elena Fisher: "She's a lot tougher than she looks!"

One great character does not a female gamer satisfy. If it is indeed the case that men and women want the same thing out of their gaming experience, why is it that women get agitated about feeling sidelined? Maybe it is because without decent female characters that make us feel like we were at least in the producers’ minds while they were being designed, we will constantly feel like any units that we buy are merely a bonus for them. Maybe it’s just our time of the month.

The matter of sex. Sex in games. In-game sex. In-game nudity. Penises. Penii?! Well that is a perennial debate so I will shy away like so many chaste maidens from that particular issue.  More accurately, the portrayal of sex in games and why it’s so controversial when it is portrayed, despite the utter saturation of it in other mediums.

The Lost and Damned, whilst developed by an (aptly-named) studio who already have a good pedigree in controversy, managed to shock, delight, confuse many with its cock-sure depiction of a male member (of congress, no less). With The Ballad Of Gay Tony, the closing chapter of the GTA 4 saga dealing in part with another aspect of sexuality, Rockstar are certainly one of the few developers not afraid of raising a few issues about sex and sexuality, and it’s these I’m interested in.

For one, if we, as a community of gamers wish to be granted ever-more respect by the mainstream media, we must, as a rule, respond to issues of sex and nudity in a mature fashion. I don’t wish to imply that people are not, just that it is an important foundation to lay. We must be able to enter into a dialogue about sex in games in the same way as developers must be able to depict it in such a way as to facilitate mature discussion. Now, Japanese developers have a vivid history of sex games, but cultural differences abound; I’m talking about the way forward for a western audience and industry. What have we learnt from Hot Coffee, J. Thompson, blue aliens and japanese dating sims?

"Let's get it oooon..."

Mass Effect spawned an absolutely hilarious reaction in the media upon its release (if you somehow haven’t seen it before, it’s absolutely hilarious how ignorant some people were about it…)

Aside from being laughably under-researched (my favourite line is ‘the ability of players to engage in graphic sex’) the feature linked above highlights all that is wrong with the interaction between the mainstream and video games. Especially surrounding the issue of what is, ultimately, no matter how many different religious groups believe otherwise, a perfectly natural act. Again, fun as it would be, I’m not offering a diatribe against either Fox (Megan or the TV company), the media, religion, your mum, or Bioware (the twisted, predatory corrupting influence that they are). This video is timeless, but seems especially relevant once again as Bioware are set to release Dragon Age: Origins, a game that we’re told (or perhaps warned) has a good deal of on screen hanky panky.

Yeah, this looks like fun...

Let’s cut to the chase: I propose that the only way we are going to make progress in the matter, is for more games to have sex featured in them. The problem is how to present it. The power of suggestion is as powerful as ever, and to my mind the sex scene in Mass Effect is both tasteful and effective. ‘Sleeping’ with hookers in Grand Theft Auto is not tasteful but it’s certainly not offensive or gratuitous. So far so good. Let’s take a look at a few more examples.

Sex in Fallout 3 is possible but inconsequential, unrewarding, and ultimately pointless from a gameplay or narrative perspective. A non-committal depiction shall we say. Fable 2 takes another interesting approach by letting you only hear the act of coitus. If you’ve played Fable you’ll also know that having a child is amusing but again, ultimately a gimmick; I call this a morally neutral stance. Both are fine, but one is sincerely lacking in ambition to drive the matter forward, understandable after the fiasco that the ratings boards conjured over the naming of in-game drugs

Where is the sex that adds to the drama? Think about the potential of sex scenes in films and literature to really evoke emotions, to create powerful drama and motivations between characters. How games developers, backed into a corner by ratings boards and neurotic censorship endorsed by a morally perplexed billboard society continue to shy away from a responsible yet vivid depiction of all things sexual baffles me.

"That is one massive penis".

I’m hoping that Heavy Rain, the TIMJ hands-on preview of which you can read here, with its ostensibly ‘life-life’ portrayal of a believable scenario will feature a real, bar-setting sexual event or relationship. If games are ever going to cross over the threshold from entertainment to art-form, from wasted artistic potential to responsible medium of expression, we all need to get virtually laid a little more.

Vicious Circles ‘Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard’ (released February just gone) was one such title that tried to come in and fill part of the void. Having managed to pick it up fairly cheaply not long ago, and figuring that with the unusual glut of high quality first-quarter releases it would have slipped under many people’s radars enough so that it’s probably still worth evaluating. Read on to find out whether I laughed or cried after parting with my spondoolies.

‘This joke isn’t funny anymore…’
Eat Lead takes place in a world where the lives of videogame characters don’t just end when someone isn’t playing their games; they have lives outside the industry, and Matt Hazard (voiced by legend Will Arnett) is a character whose popularity had seen a spectacular fall from grace. After a successful early career stemming from 8bit side-scrolling shooters (an obvious nod to Duke Nukem), Matt secured a new contract with his developer ‘Marathon Megasoft’ that allowed him more creative input into his games, his subsequently skanky games nearly ruined the company.

After years away from the public eye in light of his indiscretion, Marathon Megasofts newest CEO Wallace Wellesley (Neil Patrick Harris) decides it’s time to bring Matt out of retirement, only he has an ulterior motive in doing so; to kill Matt off once and for all. Using his team of developers he has the ability change the environment around our protagonist, code in enemies from his previous games and generally make things difficult. The player as Matt must complete the game to foil Wellesley’s plans with the help of the ‘Cortana-alike’ QA, while taking snipes at all areas of the industry in the process. It’s here where we find our first issue with Eat Lead; the humour.

You see, the gags and parodies you find within Eat Lead are very hit and miss; at their worst they are absolutely terrible and predictable, at their best are mostly only worth a chuckle. The problem with this is that if your game is being sold primarily on how funny it is it pays to keep that humour at least consistent. While the actual gags are lacklustre, there are one or two extremely clever set-ups which had me laughing, such as the battle against a stereotypical J-RPG protagonist in which he selects his attacks from a menu, but these moments of true inspiration are rare. There are too many nods and parodies to name them all, but it pokes fun at the likes of Mass Effect, Bioshock, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem and many many more. Overall it’s like they were aiming for a ‘Spinal Tap’ style satire and ended up at the crude ‘Scary Movie’ parody style instead. Not brilliant when you consider the game has other issues, which we’ll approach very shortly.

Could actually be from any J-RPG ever...

‘It’s Hazard Time’
Playing like your normal ‘stop ‘n pop’ experience; nearly everything about the cover and shooting mechanic is fairly accomplished, or at least it feels that way very early on. Eat Lead features a clever ‘cover-to-cover’ system as seen in the likes of Wanted: Weapons of fate; from behind cover you can look at your next location, hit the required button and Hazard will run there automatically. The cover itself is semi-destructible; if it takes enough damage it will ‘De-raz’, leaving you exposed.

Occasionally there were times I found the aiming to be a little unresponsive as if there was a dead space in the centre of the analogue when popped out from behind cover, however in comparison lining up shots while in cover it was almost too easy; letting me rack up an unprecedented amount of headshots. Over the course of the game you will earn a couple of powers in the guise of ice and fire, and occasionally you will come across power-ups such as temporary invincibility. The combat flows well and remains fun throughout, however I did discover a notable glitch here; if you don’t snap to cover, and creep out just enough to land your cross hair on the nearest enemy you can shoot through walls and negate the cover mechanic altogether.

At times the experience is dogged by awful A.I.  Occasionally if you rush to cover too deep in the map, the enemies seem programmed to go to certain positions and won’t deviate from that path, which can have them running directly at you leave you heavily under fire. This can lead to other problems, a couple of times in small rooms I made a run to the right and sought cover there, but the enemy didn’t counter that by taking a different position and just kept running right at me, after a couple of attempts I realised that the only way around it was to head to the left and then take out my attackers; this was pretty early on in the game and it’s something that becomes more obvious later on as you are faced with more foes.

Another sticking point to an otherwise fun system is the mediocre level design. The game is fairly linear, which I have no problem with as long as it suits the story or other areas of the overall package make up for it; here it really does neither. You fight your way through a samey section of corridor until you are faced with a contrived reason to be locked in a particular area. There you face a few waves of enemies and then you are back to the corridors again. Rinse and repeated until you finish.

The enemies themselves are extremely varied, ranging from zombies, to cowboys all the way to space marines. Each type has its own set of weapons that you can pick-up along with their own level of power and weaknesses. For example, zombies can only die from headshots; space marines require an unholy amount of ammo from non-futuristic guns. Each weapon is different, but the way the game tends to concentrate on throwing certain enemies through particular passages of play, you are never really left in a situation where the weapons you have aren’t effective, leaving little room for inventory strategy. It also has that light feeling when firing, almost like a weightlessness that is reminiscent of the Hitman games.

SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR COVER-TO-COVER MECHANIC!

Visual humour
Graphically Eat Lead is pretty clean looking and in some areas well stylised, however with the long levels the environments tend to get very tedious very quickly. The character models are well rendered, and there are some really neat touches; for example seeing the 2D ‘Waferthin’ soldiers navigating a 3D terrain is an extremely cool visual feat, but with that comes inconsistencies. I mean, if the Waferthin get introduced in their retro form, how come the rest of Matt’s enemies from previous games are fully rendered by today’s standard? It doesn’t quite add up. It’s definitely not what I’d call an ugly game, but it won’t win awards for graphical achievement either.

Repetitive audio
Despite having two fairly big names on the box cover in Will Arnett and Neil Patrick Harris, who both put in decent performances despite the sketchy material they were given, the repetitive speech will be cause for annoyance for many. I lost track of the number of times that Matt Hazard exclaimed ‘I love this cover-to-cover mechanic’, and other such unintelligent one-liners when popping heads and the same is true of the enemies too.  The soundtrack is adequate, yet uninspiring. It kicks in when in the full flow of the action and lulls in the quieter spells, which are few and far between. I had some technical issues here too, where the action-packed audio would cut to silence for little reason.

Is eating lead hazardous to your health?
I’ve picked up on a lot of chinks in Eat Leads armour in this review, but the overall gameplay experience is competent and there are some rare genuinely humorous moments to be found amongst the dross. It had enough at least to keep me playing through to the finale, but whether others can be bothered to persevere and find enough fun in the combat against lot of repetition and poorly written gags is another thing entirely. It is just about worth a look at the right price; if only just to experience the sheer random brilliance of killing a zombie with a super-soaker.

I think I’m clear in my conclusion, if you see it at a no-lose price; snap it up, at the very least it’s worth a rent in a meagre release period.