Dante’s Inferno
Nobody has actually read the whole of Inferno, though many Literature students keep a copy on their shelf to look clever. Dante Alighieri's fourteenth-century poem opens with Dante, a middle-age man, pondering his existence in a dark wood. Pretty boring. Dante's Inferno, the 2010 videogame, starts with Dante pulling off a 100-hit combo in Jerusalem, killing Death so he can nick off with his scythe and falling into hell so he can rescue his woman Beatrice. Cha-ching!
Left 4 Dead 2
You only need to peek at EA's immense marketing spend for Left 4 Dead 2 to see what all the fuss is about. Last year's affair was comparatively muted, spurred along by word of mouth, adulation from the gaming press and a communal respect for Valve's pedigree as a developer. Left 4 Dead 2 begins with the success of the original, creating a sequel born out of dedication, a shrewd understanding of the online market and the realisation that the first one of these was pretty dang good.
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age is big. Really big. Over fifty hours big, and that's if you skip tons of side quests. Then your eye creeps over to the suffix: Origins. BioWare's latest unashamed fantasy epic, which once again pits you against impossible odds to decide the fate of the entire world, is - sales and reception permitting, I imagine - the equivalent of dipping your foot in the pool to test the waters.
The Saboteur
The protagonist of The Saboteur, Pandemic's latest sandbox adventure, is based upon William Grover-Wallace, an unlikely English/French race car driver turned member of the French resistance during World War II. In the game he's called Sean Devlin and is Irish. "We don't stay entirely accurate", declares lead designer Tom French. All in all, it's probably for the best.
Army of Two: The 40th Day
Bringing back Salem and Rios was never going to be easy. It would be like inviting a pair of frat-boys back to a party after they stole your toilet seat and urinated in the punch. It's hard to imagine the direction EA would take with the sequel, but it was never assumed they were going to try and tone it down. Instead of cruising into their sequel in a party wagon with pounding hangovers, they show up to Army of Two: The 40th Day in casual attire, menacing hockey masks nowhere to be seen, and casually saunter about downtown Shanghai. To report for work, of all things. Which is probably for the best: Salem and Rios were about one fist-bump away from causing serious damage to their hands.
The Beatles: Rock Band
But, what if you don't like The Beatles? Chances are, Harmonix must obviously reckon that most people are at least somewhat fond of the bigger-than-Jesus 60s supergroup. There are no other artists on display here, after all; no guest acts brought in to construct a more diverse song selection that the marketing team have explicitly designed to attract the biggest possible slice of the market. It's simply 45 songs by The Beatles. And that's a very good thing.
The Beatles: Rock Band
It's a surprisingly sunny July day in London, and journalists are excitedly filling the stools and sofas of Camden's trendy Barfly venue. The bar prides itself on showcasing musical talent in its formative stages, and in recent years has helped cement the reputation of bands such as Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, Coldplay, and Oasis. Today we've clamoured inside to see the only band in history that's officially bigger than Jesus: The Beatles. The Fab Four have been reunited in videogame form, less than two miles from the ever-famous Abbey Road Studios, thirty-four years after they legally broke up.
The Sims 3
On starting up The Sims 3, I did what any self-respecting, narcissistic twenty-something would do and set about creating a near-perfect rendition of myself and my housemates. It's all been a bit hectic since then, and right now we're all suffering from a low mood after spending the last few days working to some nasty deadlines. If I don't get to play some video games soon I'm probably going to be irrevocably scarred. Plus my housemate kept me up last night by playing the guitar. Oh, and we also live next door to a Mafia den.
The Godfather II
There's a point when, after you stumble into yet another completely recognisable bar, you conclude that Godfather II suffers from some pretty serious deja vu: the designers should probably be thoroughly checked for symptoms of serious short term memory loss. Running through all the endlessly recycled corridors is enough to make you feel nauseous, but the fact that none of these environments were good to begin with makes it all so much worse.
Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising
The more the RTS genre progresses past the mould Westwood helped fashion, the fresher each subsequent update to Command & Conquer becomes. It's almost unique now, a solitary entity extolling the hyperbolic virtues of rolling a squad of fifty tanks to an enemy base and watching everything explode between intermittent clicking. It's big, and it's silly, and now the Russians have a motorcycle decked out with a Molotov equipped sidecar. It's called the Mortarcycle.
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