DJ Hero 2′s realigned focus on two turntables and a microphone was actually designed to be more than fodder for games journalists everywhere, who will now make coy references to Beck’s “Where It’s At” at every possibly opportunity from now until launch. Look, I just did it. Still, it’s the one thing FreeStyleGames is determined to get across for the (first) sequel: DJ Hero 2 has two turntables and a microphone.

The cynics will probably point out how, actually, DJ Hero 1 had support for two turntables and a microphone. But the microphone’s now been made a proper part of the game, with its own scrolling lyrics indicator and scoring system, instead of something you can sing into if you fancy it. You might as well have just used a hairbrush last year.

It’s easy to imagine nipping round your mate Dave’s place and belting out Jon Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer in Guitar Hero: World Tour. It’s harder to imagine performing karaoke in a custom DJ Hero mix with pauses, rewinds and the lyrics you know being cut into another track. I can picture FreeStyleGames looking enviously across the room at the Activision staff parties, their jealousy of Guitar Hero’s naturalistic co-operative experience uncontainable. Note: Jon Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer has not been officially announced as part of the DJ Hero 2 tracklist, nor will it ever be. Probably.

But with the vocal experience featuring plenty of spoken word lyrics, and with a game having a scoring system based on beat and rhythm alongside pitch, actually being the person on the microphone looks set to be a whole different kind of experience than it is with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Crooners need not apply, presumably, and those with a musical bone in their body will be delighted to see a game that’s about sticking to the beat instead of missing all the high notes on Don’t Stop Believin’.

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Like any self-respecting band of aging rockers, Guitar Hero’s having a moment of realisation after trying to stay current for the past few years. The adoring fans don’t want a modern tune – they want the old band back together. Who ever thought it was a good idea to put the Kaiser Chiefs in last year’s iteration? Guitar Hero is supposed to be about the gargantuan power of thrashing your tiny plastic guitar as an ode to the might spirit of rock.

So now Neversoft is taking the series in the opposite direction of the super-slick Guitar Hero 5, which was comfortably on par with Harmonix when it came to the Rock Band mould if you ask me. Then again, I’m the kind of person who last rolled out my Rock Band band (Goretopsy) to do a marathon Journey session. That’s clearly not what Neversoft is after: now we’re riffing off Guitar Hero 1, with an even more accentuated sense of nostalgia regarding the rock classics.

Of course, ‘rock classics’ is a bit of a subjective term and, with so many iconic tunes already rinsed and repeated throughout the series, Neversoft is left dishing out a setlist you probably wouldn’t include in your Desert Island Discs. Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It was the opening track of choice in a recent presentation – need I say more? – and with Gene Simmons providing the game’s narration you could be forgiven for thinking it’s come over a little bit too glam for the most hardcore guitar heroes.

That’s until Black Sabbath – Children of the Grave blasts out of the speakers and cranks it up to 11. Just listening to it makes me want to grow my hair down to my knees and permanently dress in black. Rock. The full tracklist promises over 90 songs, and currently confirmed are tracks from the Buzzcocks, Rammstein, ZZ Top (a live version of Sharp Dressed Man – which should bring back memories of anyone who remember Guitar Hero from back in 2005), Slayer and Queen. Yes, it’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Goretopsy will knock that one out of the park.

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We’ve not had to wait long for the Resurgence Pack, have we? It’s barely been two months since the Stimulus Package first spread like wildfire across Xbox Live, and here we are with another batch of 5 maps for the same hefty price of 1200 points. Oh Infinity Ward, you do spoil/exploit us and so on.

Map packs. We’ve been here before, we’ll be here again. Do they add anything to the game? Will they divide the player base? How on Earth am I supposed to find the time to work out new hiding spots? I’m a busy man you know. Oh, and price. I ended my review of the Stimulus Package with some thoughts on the pricing, but the initial community reception to the announcement of the Resurgence Pack shows there’s still plenty of venom regarding the cost.

It’s probably worth expressing some personal thoughts on the matter, so there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind as to which side of the fence I’m on. My Modern Warfare 2 clock stands at a little under four days, so dropping down about three pints worth of money on five new maps isn’t too much of a big deal for me. I’ll get my money’s worth.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops takes us back through time or, more specifically, to one particular stretch: the Cold War. It’s another case of history being told through the eyes of videogame designers, with military vignettes being picked out and displayed on account of their raw violence. Real life soldiers don’t have checkpoints, but let’s not worry about that.

From the get-go, Black Ops looks to be doing what Call of Duty does best – bombastic scenes told with explosive relish, scripted down to the very last tree trunk. The two levels on show at Activision’s pre-E3 press conference confirm the series’ age-old mantra of if it can explode, it will explode. And things certainly do explode.

The first level, WMD, takes us to the snow-kissed peaks of soviet Russia, with an elite black ops squadron (wait – that’s the name of the game!) named Kilo One tasked with infiltrating a dodgy weapons lab. Seeing as this is Call of Duty, ‘infiltrate’ loosely translates to ‘roughly shoot everyone in the face, jab them with pointy blades and toss them off mountains’. Who’s not down with that?

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Forget simple pylons, the reality of StarCraft II is that you must construct additional everything. My gaggle of Mauraders was my pride and joy until I looked up and saw the sun blotted out by a Mutalisk swarm. GG, f10, surrender. I even thought I was doing a pretty good job, up until the game told me I was performing a terrible 83 actions a minute in the post-match report.

I’m ashamed of myself and you, the reader, probably pity me. StarCraft fans still without access to the beta are probably fuming: “how did he, someone who is rubbish and a bit fat, get to play this game early when I was left out in the cold?” The answer is luck, mostly, alongside the fact StarCraft II is so daunting every other member of our staff was too afraid to have a go. That’s the kind of game it is.

Blizzard’s taut dedication to difficulty is impressive, and whilst other developers seem to be going out of their way to simplify every conceivable facet of the RTS genre it’s refreshing, admirable but still somewhat fear-inducing to see Blizzard proudly declare their game has been built from the ground up for the competitive eSports crowd. It’s serious business, for serious gamers, and it elicits such dedication that peripheral designers will release keyboards and mice specifically tailored to StarCraft II. People who just nip into their games for six hours and then move on need not apply.

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If Modern Warfare 2′s in-game player monitor is any indicator, Infinity Ward has already succeeded with the Stimulus Package: hundreds of thousands of people are currently playing, above and beyond the kind of numbers most developers would be happy to drown a sack of adorable puppies to achieve. Even after a quarter of a year, the world’s most successful videogame is still staggeringly popular.

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If a greater amount of pride equates to a more spectacular fall, Eddie Van Halen must have had more self-esteem than Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan combined when popping his signature on the contract for Guitar Hero: Van Halen. It’s a crushing disappointment – a confused, rambling mess of a game – from the moment you load it up and realise “Why Can’t This Be Love” isn’t on the tracklist.

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Continue reading @ play.tm