At 23:00 on Thursday 9 June - 12 years late and 1 hour early, my pre-order copy of Duke Nukem Forever unlocked on my Steam account. My expectations for the game had already been lowered by the demo, so I had a feeling when I first started the game up that it wasn't going to be stunningly good. However, after spending a sizeable chunk of my life knowing that this game would be released "when it's done", after seeing all hope apparently lost with the collapse of 3D Realms and after the stunning last-minute reprieve granted at the hands of Gearbox, there was no way on Earth that I wasn't going to play the game through. By Saturday evening, I'd finished it - and now I thought I'd share my views. For once, I'll start with some scores:

Graphics - 3/10
Sound - 6/10
Gameplay Longevity - 3/10
Overall (not an average) - 3/10

Those are not good scores. This is not a good game.

Genuinely bad commercial games are rare these days. Spiralling development costs means that every middling-to-major release has a lot riding on it, so a lot more effort tends to go into quality assurance and playtesting than was the case in the past. As such, even the games which underwhelm and disappoint tend not to be actually bad. Look at Homefront - a game which managed only mediocre reviews and was widely considered a waste of potential. If you showed Homefront to somebody who hadn't seen a game in 5 years, they'd probably be very impressed. It's only because the competition had come so much further in the mean-time that Homefront was regarded as a disappointment.

However, the occasional genuinely bad game does manage to still sneak out. I'd count Lair - the PS3 flight-action game with the famously unplayable controls - as one example. More controversially, I'd count Mario Kart Wii, with its utter destruction of anything that might possibly be considered "fun" from the series's heritage in the name of cramming more racers and more weapons onto the track, as another example. But these games don't come along often - you don't always see one in any given year. With the release of Duke Nukem Forever, we've now seen two such games in 2011 before the year is even half done (Hyperdimension Neptunia being the other).

The first thing that you'll notice when you start playing the singleplayer campaign is that the game is ugly. Environments are spartan and lacking in detail, looking for all the world like an Xbox 360 launch title - or even a PC port of a late-cycle Xbox game. Worse still, there's a particularly crude and intrusive blur-filter applied over objects in the middle difference (even with all graphics settings maxed) which verges on the headache-inducing after a while. PC players can take some comfort in the thought that they are at least playing the best version; early reviews of the console versions are complaining about long loading times, poor framerates and screen-tearing, none of which I encountered on my PC (a two and a half year old Core i7 quad 2.66ghz, with 6 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 290-series graphics card, which struggles a bit with Bulletstorm on maxed settings).

If the ugliness were purely technical in nature, that could be written off as an ultimately forgivable consequence of the game's development time; after all, we could have understood why Gearbox wouldn't have wanted to start porting the game to yet another new engine. Unfortunately, the ugliness is as much about design as it is about technology. Levels are, for the most part, bland and drab. Duke Nukem 3d was known for its vibrant, colourful sections, but aside from a few short sequences early in the game, you can expect to spend most of your time in Duke Nukem Forever running down brown or grey corridors - periodically made even more tiresome by the frequent necessity to make use of what must surely be the worst ever implementation of night vision in a game. Enemies are similarly unimpressive, being lacklustre visual updates of the old Duke Nukem 3d enemies, but with none of their predecessors charm or character. A few boss fights feature slightly better visual design and do provide a couple of rare high-points. Human character models, unfortunately, are particularly unconvincing, both in terms of their design and their animation.

Things are somewhat better on the sound side. The game has an effective soundtrack, which makes good and varied use of Duke's iconic theme music. This is supported by a hammy but effective voice-track, with voice acting that ranges from the adequate to the quite good. Most of the weapons sound reasonably convincing, with the shotgun sounds adding a real feel of heft to the weapon.

There's quite a lot of dialogue in the game, which is something of a mixed blessing. As noted above, the voice cast are enthusiastic, but it's clear that they have their work cut out in livening up a dull and uninspired script. Duke's famous one-liners haven't aged particularly well, to put it mildly. Back in the days of Duke Nukem 3d, Duke's occasional comments were fairly few and far between. As such, they were usually unexpected when they arrived - and timing is a huge part of comedy. In Duke Nukem Forever, Duke has a severe case of verbal diarrhea; he has a repetoire of 3 or 4 "witty" comments he makes after the player kills an enemy which he repeats over and over and over again. He makes an incredible number of very, very stupid comments (not even jokes, really) about willies and poo, most of which would embarrass a 12 year old. And he makes the occasional joking reference to other games - which would be fine, if the other games in question weren't all so much better than Duke Nukem Forever that it is invariably the Duke himself who ends up with egg on his face.

Which leads into the biggest problem with Duke Nukem Forever - the gameplay. And when a game's biggest problem is its gameplay, that's not a happy situation to be in. Duke Nukem Forever's problem is that its development span means that it incorporates gameplay concepts from over a decade of gaming history - and that in each case, it seems to choose the worst and most irritating aspects to incorporate.

Think back to the fpses of DUke Nukem 3d's generation. What were the best aspects? The open level design, which required players to explore and think. The ability to hold as many weapons as you could find, which meant that the player had to think about how to manage the ammunition for all of those different weapons and actively choose the right weapon for each fight. The pacing, which allowed for "slow" sections as an antidote to the all-guns-blazing bits, meaning that games of this era often felt more complicated and nuanced than their successors. And what were the worst aspects? The all-too-frequent bad level design which gave the player absolutely no idea about where to go next. The feeling that the game-world wasn't particularly interactive. Dumb-as-bricks enemies. The occasional platforming sections. The often complete absence of any kind of narrative to drive the game forward. All of the latter complaints show up in Duke Nukem Forever, while all of the former strengths are conspicuous by their absence.

Now think about modern fpses. What are their best aspects? The way they use modern technology to create atmospheric, highly scripted set-pieces. The clever cover mechanics they've developed to help combat look and feel more realistic. The way they manage to incorporate plot sequences seemlessly into the gameplay. And what are the worst trends in modern fps games? The extreme linearity which forces players down a single, tightly defined route, removing any kind of freedom. Two-weapon-only systems that mean that you know that if you find a rocket launcher, you're going to be fighting tanks within the next couple of minutes, and if you find a sniper rifle, you're going to have a sniper nest right next to you. The "relentless" pacing which means that all of the battles just end up blending into each other in the player's mind. The tedious vehicle and turret sequences which feel awkward and were clearly included just to tick some box on a marketing checklist. Again, all of the weaknesses show up in Duke Nukem Forever, with all of the strengths absent.

So when Duke cracks a joke about not needing a suit of Halo power armour, it's hard not to want to shout "But you only carry 2 weapons and have recharging health, so how are you any different"? Jokes about hating Valve puzzles are undermined by the fact that they are made while the player is being made to solve tepid puzzles that, in all likelihood, Valve would have been far too embarrassed to have included in one of their games. And oh god the platforming sections. Don't make me write about those. It's just too painful.

Again, one or two of the boss fights (though certainly not all of them) provide a slight high-point. There are a couple of clever bosses in there (an underwater boss near the end of the game stands out) which both look impressive and play well. These are just a few small points of consolation against a pretty dismal backdrop, however.

In terms of longevity, the game is not great. The campaign is about 7 hours long, which is at least longer than some of its competitors (yes, Modern Warfare 2 and Homefront, I'm looking at you). However, I found it so actively unpleasant to play in places that there's almost no chance I'll ever replay it. The multiplayer feels dated and my (admittedly brief) experiences with it have shown up poor map design and balance. I doubt there will be many people playing it in a month's time.

In conclusion, while almost nobody will have been expecting Duke Nukem Forever to live up to the kind of expectations that a 14 year development cycle creates, I think we can be forgiven for feeling deeply disappointed by what was put out. This is a game that sacrifices all of Duke Nukem 3d's charm in exchange for some dull, over-used modern fps conventions, without importing the more impressive aspects of the modern fps experience. I suspect a lot of people - like me - will feel compelled to play the thing through just because of its place in gaming lore. Don't let me stop you - but prepare to be disappointed.

Gearbox took the unusual step of restricting access to Duke Nukem Forever's demo - at least until the game's release - to those with pre-orders for the game. This might seem a strange move; after all, a demo is typically intended to sway the curious and the wavering into making a purchase. Those with pre-orders are rather more committed than that (particularly if they have a Steam pre-order, in which case they'll already have paid for the game on a non-refundable basis). Unfortunately, there is actually a very simple explanation for Gearbox's behaviour; the demo is utterly dreadful.

Let me back up a step here. I was a huge fan of Duke Nukem 3d, back in the 1990s. I still maintain that despite its technical inferiority, it was a better game than Quake by quite some margin. DN3D put fun ahead of balance, gameplay innovation ahead of technical polish and laughs ahead of brooding. My defining deathmatch memories aren't of dreary 1-sided Quakeworld duels, but of elaborate holoduke tricks designed to lure my opponent into standing right next to those cunningly concealed pipe-bombs. Duke himself might be a stereotypical meat-head, but DN3D's gameplay often rewarded cunning and flexibility over aim and twitch skills. I loved it.

And I want to love Duke Nukem Forever. Sadly, after playing the demo, I very much doubt that I'm going to find this possible. I played the (20 minute long) demo through twice and could find almost nothing about it to love. In fact, the only thing that stirred any affection at all was the intro movie. After all these years, it's great to hear the theme music kicking up again and the intro does a good job of capturing the over-blown beyond-parody tone of DN3D. From there, it's all downhill.

For those who haven't played the demo or watched a playthrough on Youtube, here's a quick run down. There are two gameplay sections on offer in the demo. The first - clearly from the game's opening sequences, has Duke engaged in a fight against a large boss - in fact, against an easier version of DN3D's final boss. The fight is framed by a few story sections, which are generally obnoxious; Duke was funny when he was confined to a few throw-away comments, but quickly grows tiring in any scene that goes on for longer than a few seconds. The boss fight is distinctly old-school in nature. It's the player, the boss, a few ammo resupplies and not much else. Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with that. It's recalling classic boss fights such as Doom's Cyberdemon and Spider-brain fights, both of which worked just fine in a similar arena-type setting (as did DN3D's boss fights). Unfortunately, this is not a well done fight and it makes for a poor way to start the game. Being the first fight of the game, it has to be pitched extremely easy, so provided you keep moving, the boss will never hit you. Ever. He does, however, have quite a lot of health. End result? A couple of minutes of circle-strafing around a near-stationary target, occasionally being forced to wait for an ammo resupply to spawn.

The second demo section is, if anything, worse. It clearly takes place later in the game; there's no story continuity from the first sequence (this isn't a criticism - I'm quite happy for a demo to jump around like this). Initially, you're in an ugly, blocky monster truck, driving across an ugly, blocky desert landscape. The truck has all the agility and handling responsiveness of a dead walrus. You wobble unconvincingly through canyons for a minute or two, optionally running over the occasional enemy that appears. You jump over a canyon and then... run out of gas. Duke dismounts and you now begin the largest and most significant part of the demo - the on-foot fps stuff. And this is where any final hopes that somehow survived the demo to this point will be cruelly dashed.

Duke moves through a bland, uninspired and graphically underwhelming desert, shooting at brain-dead enemies. He uses a reasonable selection of weapons - some imports from DN3D and some new creations to do so. Unfortunately, and for NO GOOD REASON, he is restricted to holding two weapons at any given time. Sorry, guys, this is NOT Operation Flashpoint. If the Duke wants to carry 10 weapons at once, he should be able to. Weapon limitations discourage the use of the weirder and wackier parts of Duke's arsenal. You'd have thought they'd have learned from the Resistance series. If your game is all about crazy and unconventional weapons, then a 2-weapon restriction DOES NOT WORK, as Insomniac found (hence the return to the weapon-wheel for Resistance 3). As it is, 95% of DNF players are likely to spend their only playthrough of the game clutching the ripper and the shotgun - simply because experimenting with anything else is too risky when you have limited choices.

Besides, a lot of the joy is sucked out of the weapons selection (of which a good portion is on show in the demo) by the dreadful enemy design and AI. The enemies are as bland and generic as you could possibly imagine and they just rush towards the player like it was 1993 and they'd just been offered the chance to understudy Doom's pinky-demon. After a few minutes of uninspired on-foot combat (including a redundant and derivative turret sequence) a mini-boss appears, in the form of a dropship that Duke has to shoot down. In true modern-fps fashion (very much one of Half-Life 2's less welcome legacies), this involves picking up the conveniently placed rocket launcher and lurking in the cover placed conveniently next to the ammo resupply crate between shots until the thing finally goes down, opening up the path to the next area. The player then fights a few more boring enemies in a mine, endures a comically bad mine-cart sequence, finds some fuel for his monster truck and returns to it via another pathetic mine-cart sequence. Then the demo ends.

Seriously, if these were the two sections of the (completed) game that were felt to be good enough to pluck out and place in the demo, then I dread to think what the rest of the game is going to be like.

Sadly, I'm still buying it.

As stated in my previous entry, I picked up my 3DS on Friday morning. I had kind-of hoped that I'd get some time during my lunch-break to mess around with it. Unfortunately, all kinds of hell kicked off at work just before I was about to go for lunch, so nothing of the sort happened. This didn't stop some of my colleagues having a mess around with it, however - to the extent that they drained the battery, meaning that I had to recharge it once I got home before I could use the thing.

At any rate, I got a little time on Friday evening and Saturday morning to test the thing out, along with a more substantial chunk of time on Sunday. On the basis of this, I thought I'd post some first thoughts about the device.

First impressions As is often the case, my first impressions of the console were formed before I'd even switched it on. In this case, they were pretty positive. This is an expensive handheld, so I'd been hoping that it would look and feel the part. The omens weren't great - previous Nintendo handhelds have basically felt like "plastic toys" rather than "desirable gadgets". Fortunately, the 3DS is a big improvement, with a slick, well-presented design. It doesn't quite have the slick-yet-solid feel of the first-generation PSPs, but it does match the 3000-series PSPs in terms of feel (which is by no means bad). If I have a complaint - and this is one that I have seen elsewhere - I would have liked stiffer hinges for the case - as it is, the thing tends to feel a little bit floppy unless you have it locked in the full-open position. Once opened, the 3DS is reasonable enough, albeit in a fairly unsurprising way. The upper screen is notably larger (and higher quality) than that on my old first-generation DS. The arrangement of the buttons is more or less what we saw on the DS, but with the addition of an analogue nub on the left hand side. I was impressed by the analogue nub - previous Nintendo controllers, such as the Gamecube controller, the Wii's nunchuck and the "classic controller" have had really, really bad analogue sticks, with poor ergonomics. The 3DS's analogue nub, however, is about as good as you could reasonably expect to see on a handheld - which is to say, better than the PSP's. It has quite a lot of "travel" and I found it easier to make precise adjustments than I do with the PSP's nub. On the down-side, there's only one analogue nub - which means that some types of games may suffer from the same control-method issues that have plagued the PSP (and which Sony seems to be trying to address with the NGP). Powering up

After a fairly long recharge cycle (about 3 hours, maybe a bit more, but at least I had Crysis 2 as a distraction), I powered on the 3DS. The new front-end is fairly good. The touch-sensitive lower screen is used for navigating the menus, with the 3d upper-screen just being used to eye-candy (which I confess I wasn't paying much attention to at this point).

The menus are fairly well presented - the style reminds me heavily of the XMB system from the PSP and PS3 (though in this case, it's ordered bottom-up rather than top-down). There's quite a bit of stuff pre-installed, but I confess that besides a quick mess around with the camera, I've not really looked at most of it.

After setting the 3DS up to access my home network (which was painless), my next step was to stick in the Ridge Racer cartridge and fire the game up. Having set up a profile etc, I jumped into the "quick race" mode and got to the car-selection screen. This was the first time that I actually paid attention to the 3d effect on the upper screen.

Jumping into 3d

For the first few seconds, I just couldn't see it. It looked blurry and out of focus and not even slightly 3d. Then after 5 seconds or so, my eyes refocussed and the effect suddenly jumped out at me - and oh my word it is impressive. The effect - without glasses - is among the most convincing 3d effects I've seen - including "with glasses" setups on far more expensive hardware. Once properly in-game and racing against other cars, it becomes more impressive still - and is occasionally actually useful in helping the player to judge entry points to corners.

This does, however, come at a price. Focussing your eyes so as to be able to see the full 3d effect is a bit uncomfortable. On an instictive level (which may not be at all evidence based), it feels as though it may be doing dangerous things to my sight. This means that reflexively, I keep snapping my eyes back to their default focus (losing the 3d effect and getting some double-vision on the upper-screen into the bargain). I get similar losses of focus if I look away from the 3d screen for a moment - including if I look down at the lower screen. Each time, I have to actively refocus my eyes to see the 3d effect in the upper screen properly. Adjusting the 3d slider down to a lower setting reduces the effort involved in focussing slightly, but does not eliminate the problem (and diminishes the 3d effect somewhat).

Moreover, after about 20 minutes of play, my temples began to throb. At this point, I turned the 3d mode off entirely and continued to play for another 10 minutes or so, before the continued throbbing prompted me to switch off the machine entirely. Over the next couple of hours, I experienced a fair to middling headache and a general sense of tiredness around my eyes. Later experiments replicated this effect - playing on lower 3d settings delayed the headache, but did not remove it. Only playing in pure 2d mode allowed me to get away ache-free. As a result, most of my play on Sunday was done in 2d mode.

The games - Ridge Racer and Pilotwings

The 3DS's launch lineup has come in for quite a bit of criticism - the absence of the "big" Nintendo franchises was particularly controversial. Actually, I don't care about this - I long since got tired of the constant rehashing and lack of fresh ideas associated with Mario and Zelda.

Indeed, from my point of view, the launch lineup wasn't too bad. I settled on Ridge Racer and Pilotwings on the basis that they both belonged to genres I liked and represented a 3rd party game and a Nintendo franchise (albeit not one of the big ones).

Ridge Racer is more or less what you would expect - the series has been through enough iterations across enough platforms now that we know what we're getting with it. This is by no means a bad version - there's a good list of tracks and a reasonable career mode (though the series' trademark lack of depth does stand out after an hour or two). The 3d effect, as previously indicated, is very impressive indeed, though it does come at a cost. Graphics in 2d more are ok-ish, but certainly not spectacular. My recollection is that the PSP version was more impressive - though I would need to go back and check. This is a consistent risk in comparing the 3DS's graphics to the PSP's - the PSP is a mature platform and developers know how to use it, while the 3DS only has launch-titles. Direct comparisons may, therefore, currently be a little unfair on the 3DS (which on the basis of its launch titles comes out slightly behind the PSP).

Pilotwings is similarly unsurprising to anybody who's played previous installments. There's a familiar array of challenges, mostly constructed around the three main vehicles on offer - plane, hang-glider and rocket-belt - though with occasional forrays into more exotic territory. The challenges - as is somewhat traditional for the series, tend to flip over from "ludicrously easy" to "nightmarishly hard" fairly abruptly, but there's still a good bit of fun to be had. Unfortunately, the "free flight" mode turns out to be nothing of the sort (being instead a fairly frustrating time-trial), and it's disappointing not to have an option straight out of box to just jump into a plane and explore the (rather attractive - and familiar from Wii-Fit) environments.

The graphics are generally fairly good (though again, not as good as what we see from the PSP these days). The 3d effect is not quite as impressive as Ridge Racer's and it seemed to need a bit more effort to get my focus right. Indeed, on some occasions I could only see the 3d effect if I first forced myself to focus specifically on my plane, and then widened my view out to see more of the game-world.

Summing up

The 3DS's centrepiece - the 3d effect - is very impressive indeed. I suspect they will have no problems selling the console on the basis of in-store demonstrations. However, at least some people (including myself and some of my colleagues) will have issues related to the effect, which might render it impractical in the long term.

In many respects, the machine is a big step forward from the 3DS. It looks and feels like a high end and desirable gadget and it brings graphical capabilities that are, at the very least, nearly on a par with the PSP (and which may surpass it once developers know the hardware better). However, the question that remains is whether this will be enough to secure the system's dominance once the NGP appears and shifts the boundaries at the end of this year.

I just picked up my Nintendo 3DS on the way into work. I'll post some thoughts on the thing later - right now, I haven't done much more than switch it on and set the time and date. The 3d test-cycle that displays when you first switch the machine on was fairly impressive once my eyes focussed on it properly, but I can't say much more than that.

However, I did want to post a rant about the process of buying the thing - or specifically, the process of buying it from Game (the UK's largest specialist games retailer).

I'd put a pre-order (with deposit) down - after all, hardware is often in short supply when a new console launches. Now, at a basic level, the process worked just fine - I placed my pre-order in a store (a fairly average London branch near my workplace) and, on launch day, was able to collect the thing. However, this summary disguises what was a whole suite of irritations and frustrations.

First of all, when I put down the deposit, the launch titles weren't yet confirmed - the broad range of early releases was known, but not which of the titles would be available on launch-day. Besides, I hadn't particularly felt the need to pre-order any launch titles - these never tend to be particularly hard to get hold of, once you've got the hardware itself. I was a bit surprised, therefore, to get a phone call from Game about 2 weeks before the launch, telling me that if I didn't put down a pre-order, I would be highly unlikely to be able to get any games at all on the day. "We understand", the guy on the phone told me breathlessly, "that Nintendo are only shipping us one game for every four systems". This immediately sets off my "nonsense" detector. However, there is that little seed of doubt; after all, Nintendo are among the gaming companies I trust they least and they do have a bad habit of screwing the UK over when it comes to shipments. So I relent and put down a pre-order (plus deposit) for Pilotwings and Ridge Racer.

I then get a succession of about 4 phone calls in the days leading up to the release, trying, with increasing desperation, to get me to commit to trading in my old DS and its games when I buy the 3DS - in return for what is frankly a pretty poor discount. This is despite the fact that I explain when I get the first call that they wouldn't even take my DS if I offered it - due to it being a US model (yes, I know the original DS is region-free, but they're funny about these things). This ends the first phone call but doesn't stop a succession of others.

This morning, I get up half an hour earlier than usual and make it to the branch of Game in question for their opening. There is a big queue - which is something I had been expecting. What I hadn't been expecting is just how damned slowly it was moving. Once I get to the front, I realise why; every customer who has come in to collect a 3DS pre-order is getting a several-minute long sales pitch for the extended warrenty, in addition to a renewed plea to trade in old DSes. This is a store in the middle of one of London's main business districts and most of the people in the store are increasingly frustrated looking professional types who, like me, can see their arrival at work getting further and further delayed. Requests to skip the pitch are refused on the grounds that "it's company policy", and my comment that "I won't tell if you won't" gets me nowhere. Eventually, 50 minutes after joining the queue, I finally get out of the store.

As I'm leaving, I notice something that moves me from profound irritation to cold, seeting fury - stack upon stack of 3DS games - absolutely no shortage whatsoever.

Having written this rant, I'm not really sure what the point was - as much catharsis as anything, I suspect. But seriously, in an era where bricks and mortar games retailers (including Game) are known to be struggling, you'd think they'd actually try to work out what their customers want. What I want is to be able to order a product and pick it up from the store on the day it's released with no fuss and hassle. Actually, I'd ideally like to be able to do that without a pre-order, but I know that's as much down to the manufacturers as it is to the retailers. What I don't want is weeks of haranguing and badgering about pre-orders and trade-ins, followed by an in-store experience that is as frustrating as they could possibly make it.

Anyway, I'll give the thing a whirl this evening and post some thoughts on the console itself.

I'd been looking forward to Dead Space 2 for quite some time. I think this was partly a result of the oddities of the seasonal games release cycle; there were no other releases I was particularly interested in between Gran Turismo 5 at the end of November and Dead Space 2 at the end of January. Even though I have a collection of "never got around to" titles sat on the back burner, I was pretty desperate for something new by the time DS2 hit the shelves.

However, there was more to it than that. The original Dead Space struck me as a flawed masterpiece; there was some excellent fiction driving it, the creature and weapon designs were excellent and the game generally looked and felt "right". However, it was hampered by occasional control issues, a plot that rather lost its way in the final act and issues with the pacing that detracted from the tension in the second half of the game.

Since then, we've had the rather excellent Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii (and now PS3), which is pretty much my favorite rail shooter of all time and far more intelligent than anything I had ever thought could emerge from that particular genre. We've also had the Dead Space: Ignition interactive comic book/minigame collection, about which, quite frankly, the less said the better.

Some of the pre-release publicity for Dead Space 2 had me rather worried; it sounded like they'd shifted some focus towards multiplayer (lacking from the original), which many games allow to undermine the quality of the singleplayer campaign. It also sounded like they'd gone in a more "action game" direction, with big Call of Duty-style set-pieces replacing the exploration and tension of the original.

The game is now out and I've played through the singleplayer campaign in its entirety on the 360, using the middle (of 5) difficulty settings. I've also messed around a little with the multiplayer. In addition, I picked up the PS3 port of Dead Space: Extraction off the Playstation Network, though that's a topic for another post. I thought I'd offer some thoughts - and a review - of DS2, following the same criteria I used for my earlier Gran Turismo 5 review.

Graphics - 8/10

Dead Space 2 is a good looking game. In a purely technical sense, it is on a par with the "best in class" and is as good as we are likely to see from the current generation console hardware. In all likelihood, outside of a small range of PC games, technical standards in graphics are not likely to advance now for several years and DS2 is therefore "as good as it gets" for the time being.

Of course, technical specifications aside, the quality of the artwork and visual designs can have a huge impact on how good a game looks and it's here that current-gen console games have a chance to stand out from the crowd. DS2 stacks up well in this respect. The game uses a broader range of colours and designs for its environments than the original; there's no shortage of grey and brown corridors and storage bays, but there are also more colourful living quarters and

psychadelic neon shopping districts to explore. One particularly effective section has the player exploring an infected elementary school, with the brightly coloured walls and cheery artwork contrasting sharply with the more gruesome signs of infection.

And "gruesome" is a word that you can't get away from when discussing DS2, particularly once you look at its creature designs. Many of the creatures in DS2 return from the original game with only minor facelifts; the overwhelming visual influence is still John Carpenter's "The Thing", with a touch of "Event Horizon" mixed in for good measure. There are a few new additions, however, which tend to be suitably horrifying. It's good to see that the designers have tended away from "writhing masses of tentacles" this time in favour of more defined horrors.

There are a few sour notes; some of the weapon effects look a little lame and the animations for some of the Necromorphs are more convincing than others. However, these are minor niggles; on balance, this is a visually impressive game.

Sound - 9/10

For the most part, DS2 has an excellent repetoire of sound effects and knows how to deploy them. As you make your way through the Sprawl (the gigantic space station that DS2 is set on), it will creak and groan alarmingly. Odd environmental effects combine with half-heard whispering voices and some of the creepiest BGM ever heard in a game to ensure that the sound really ratchets up the tension.

The combat sounds are similarly impressive. The shriek of rage that certain necromorphs emit when they sight you can have a real bowel-loosening effect. Better still, these shrieks don't happen every time; sometimes, your first warning of an approaching enemy is the sound of a footstep right behind you.

Voice acting is consistently well done.

If there's a small negative on the sound front it centres around a particular type of enemy; a strange mollusc like creature which attaches itself to a wall and spits explosive goo-balls at you. These creatures make a loud and irritating sound. This is helpful in a way; the creatures are otherwise very difficult to spot, but the sounds here do tend to emphasise one of the more irritating sections of the gameplay - the hunts for these limpets so that you can walk across a room safely.

Gameplay - 9/10

I'll talk here about the actual shooter aspects of the game, leaving the flow of the campaign for the next section.

Things are somewhat improved from the original Dead Space. The controls have been tweaked and now feel substantially more intuitive. It's certainly much more comfortable to go throwing statis blasts around during combat than it was in the original. I do, however, still have some reservations about kinesis. The game clearly expects you to use this during combat, but I found selecting the item I wanted to pick up too imprecise, and aiming too unwieldy, for it to really be intuitive.

Combat follows more or less the same pattern as in the first game; the Necromorphs are relatively slow and unintelligent by the standard of enemies in third person shooters. However, this shouldn't be taken as a criticism; the relatively slow speed of the enemies is offset by the need for highly precise fire, focussed on their limbs, to take them down. Besides, there are a few faster and smarter enemies in there, who stalk you and use hit-and-run tactics to grind you down. These make a good change of pace.

Overall, combat in DS2 is an extremely solid experience, which improves on some of the rough edges that were on show in the original. This is fortunate, because it must be admitted that there isn't all that much variety. The number of necromorph types on display is still quite small, although most of them receive "hardened" upgrades later in the game. The variety of weapons, however, along with their myriad upgrade options, does help to keep things fresh.

Outside of combat, while the game is as fiercly linear as most other third person shooters of this generation, there's a good deal of exploration in search of secrets to be done, with some nice rewards for the more adventurous gamer (as well as some eye-wateringly difficult ambushes).

Difficulty overall is, on the third of five difficulty settings, at the higher end of the spectrum for the genre. Ammunition is never plentiful and the player can't sustain more than a few hits. The game did seem to push health kits at me more often when I was low on health - which may be coincidence, or may be evidence of a Left 4 Dead style director system at work.

Speaking of Left 4 Dead, it's very much obvious that Valve's effort has provided the inspiration for the multiplayer portion of DS2, which features teams of survivors working together towards objectives. However, in my experience, the pacing and the flow of the multiplayer doesn't really work. If you are buying this game, buy it for the campaign and don't expect to get much out of online play. I should note that the game has no co-op campaign options, but I'm not sure that such an option would really "work", anyway.

Structure - 10/10

At the heart of Dead Space 2 is its singleplayer campaign. One thing I should get out of the way now is that, by the standards of the genre, this is a lengthy campaign. My first playthrough clocked in at eleven and a half hours and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even close to finding every secret in the game. Given that I beat the Gears of War games in around six hours apiece, that's not bad going at all.

The story takes the player, once again in the boots of Isaac Clarke, through the midst of a necromorph outbreak on a large space installation known as the Sprawl. A nightmarish opening sequence, in which the player controls a straightjacketed Isaac as he flees waves of attacking necromorphs, sets the scene. From there, the game takes the player through a hospital, living quarters, a shopping district, a school and countless industrial facilities.

I confess that I was worried that, removed from the Ishimura, DS2 would lack some of the sense of "place" that you got from the original game. Yes, backtracking in general is not a good thing, but what is good is to get a feel for a location and see how it changes over the course of the game. This is something that the original did extremely well. Happily, DS2 does it just as well, if not better. Without wishing to spoiler too much, players may find that some of the locations they got to know in the first game are still relevant.

The game's pace is also much better than I had feared from the previews and early reviews. Yes, there are a few set-pieces, but while impressive, they are generally short and do not dominate the experience. The emphasis is still upon tense situations in tight spaces. Moreover, while the onslaught of enemies does pick up pace later in the game, there is one magnificent section, around three quarters of the way through the game, where everything goes quiet for a substantial period of time, which is nerve-wracking stuff.

The plot is generally very good and does a better job of holding itself together than the first game's did. That said, there is a distinct "middle installment in a trilogy" feel this time around.

Longevity - 7/10

I've already noted that the campaign is longer than you'd expect for this genre (almost three times the length of Vanquish). There's a fair bit of replay value to boot. Upgrading all of the weapons just isn't possible on a single playthrough and with the top-tier weapon upgrades often substantially changing a weapon, this leaves quite a lot more to see.

There aren't any branching plot paths or alternative endings, but you can't have everything I guess.

Overall (not an average) - 9/10

For the most part, my pre-release misgivings about Dead Space 2 were unfounded. This is a seriously good horror-themed third person shooter, which, with its lengthy and well designed campaign, provided excellent value for money.

Previous installments in this series have tended to fare better in terms of review scores than sales numbers (particularly poor, neglected Extraction). Given that EA actually seem to have put a bit of marketing power behind Dead Space 2, the series might finally taste the commercial success it deserves. There is mileage for at least one more main-series game in this franchise yet.

We're now a few days into the new year and the games release schedule, dormant for the last couple of weeks, will soon start to pick up again. Following my "games of the year" post, I thought I'd do a quick scan ahead and highlight the five games, currently scheduled for release in 2011, that I'm really looking forward to.

5 - The Last Guardian (PS3) - Small confession here - I played through Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, butI found them easier games to admire than to like. The artistry was undeniable, but I always had a feeling that the gameplay was desperately trying to keep up and not quite succeeding. Ico's combat and escort mechanics could get frustrating, while SotC had well-documented control problems. However, I have high hopes for The Last Guardian. Technology and gameplay standards have moved on far enough now that there is no excuse for repeating the (forgivable) flaws of the earlier games. Moreover, I'm pleased to note that the game includes elements that develop on the player's horse in SotC; that remains the best implementation of an animal that I've ever seen in a game.

4 - Dead Space 2 (Xbox 360, PS3 and PC) - The original Dead Space wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but I found it pretty exhilerating. It had a good mix of action and scares, some really creative creature design and novel combat mechanics. I particularly liked the way in which the game forced you to "un-learn" the habit of aiming for headshots that other third and first person shooters teach you. Better still, the game had a great sense of "place". Rather than simply having you walk down a corridor through a succession of locations like many other games, Dead Space featured quite a bit of backtracking through previous areas, some of which may have changed since you were last there. You came to feel like the Ishimura was a real location, with areas that you knew like the back of your hand - making it all the more frightening when an area you thought to be safe changed its character dramatically. I'm hoping that Dead Space 2 can build on this. I'm also excited about the fact that the PS3 special edition includes a Move-compatible port of the sadly neglected Dead Space: Extraction. It will be nice to see this game (which is one of the few genuine third party treasures on the Wii) running on a system that can do its visuals justice.

3 - Dragon Age 2 (Xbox 360, PS3 and PC) - The original Dragon Age: Origins felt like a bit of a flawed masterpiece. There was some awesome stuff in the game; a funky combat system, a plot which genuinely responded to the player's actions and some interesting background fiction. Unfortunately, I came away from it with a slight feeling that the whole was somewhat less than the sum of its parts; things just didn't quite hang together right. I'm glad that Bioware have got a second chance at getting it right. I'm not at all bothered by the loss of the "origin stories" system from the original; this always felt like something that could only possibly be relevant to the first game in a series.

2 - Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360, PS3 and PC) - I loved the first two Mass Effect games (despite taking a while to warm up to the second) and the trailer for Mass Effect 3 looks absolutely amazing. The Mass Effect series is stunningly ambitious, with decisions made early in the first game apparently having consequences in the third game. I'm also pleased that it looks as though part of the game will be set in London; as a Londoner, I generally feel that my home city doesn't get enough attention from games developers.

1 - Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360, PS3 and PC) - This was the only possible choice for the top slot. When Duke Nukem Forever went into development, I was still at University. The original Gran Turismo had just been released. Mobile phone owners were still in the minority. The Spice Girls were still in the charts. After years where Duke Nukem Forever was nothing but a running joke, it's pretty incredible to think that the release is now - probably - just a few months away. Even if the game looked dreadful, I'd still be excited about it. Fortunately, the trailers and gameplay footage we've seen so far look anything but dreadful. That said, I'm still not going to believe that this is really coming out until I have the game in my hands (or more likely, on my Steam games list). No, scratch that. I'm not going to believe it's really coming out until I've played it for an hour without getting a "Thanks for playing the demo, the full game will be coming out when it's finished" screen.

With all of this year's major releases now out, I thought I'd do a roundup of what have, for me, been the best and worst games of the year. It's been a funny old year as far as I'm concerned. A few games that I was very much looking forward to have been huge disappointments, while others that hadn't been on my radar at all have bowled me over. I think if I were to run through my own top 10 for the year, it would be something like this:

10) Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii): Badly dated in many ways, clinging to outmoded cliches such as a "lives" system. The control system is also horribly imprecise for a game that contains more than a few precision platforming sections. However, there is some really, really clever level design in there, which raises this above many other entries in the genre. Therefore, it just about squeaks into the top 10.

9) Valkyria Chronicles 2 (PSP): In many ways, a huge disappointment, as the game felt horribly crippled compared to its predecessor due to being shoehorned onto the PSP. However, the core gameplay and storytelling techniques are still strong enough to deliver a really, really impressive game overall.

8) God of War 3 (PS3): Another brutally uncompromising puzzle-brawler from Sony, which features some of the most spectacular set-pieces ever seen in a series which already had a substantial reputation for this. Somehow, the combat doesn't feel quite as polished as that in the first two games, but this is still very, very good. An honorable mention needs to go to Ghost of Sparta on the PSP, which is, I suspect, the most visually impressive game we'll ever see on that platform. I'm bundling the two games together here, really, as they're so similar.

7) Supreme Commander 2 (PC, also Xbox 360): One of the better (though not the best) RTS of the year. Delivers a slightly less sanitised experience than its predecessor, but still gives plenty of opportunities to command truly huge armies into battles whose scale dwarfs anything you'll see in other RTS franchises.

6) Vanquish (Xbox 360, also PS3): Incredibly fast paced third person shooter. Basically, think Gears of War where the player character is wearing rocket powered roller-skates. The game has been criticised for its length, and for having absolutely no multiplayer components. However, it delivers a tightly focussed campaign, and the fact that they haven't had to balance it for multiplayer means that they've been able to do some really fun things with the weapons.

5) Castlevania - Lords of Shadow (Xbox 360, also PS3): A God of War clone that manages to beat God of War at its own game, while liberally borrowing from Shadow of the Colossus at the same time. A massive game by comparison with others in its genre, with a deep yet smooth-flowing combat system. The first 2 hours of the game are disappointing, as the game is a little bit too slow to give you full access to the magic system (without which the combat doesn't really work), but once this gets going, it's an amazing game.

4) Starcraft 2 (PC): I confess, I hated the original Starcraft. Really, really hated it. However, this is a highly polished sequel that delivers the best singleplayer campaign of any RTS I've played for years. I really loved the "Wing Commander" feel. There's some great mission design in there, particularly once you get past the first few missions. Multiplayer is still a fetid pit of willy-waving and ego-polishing, but you can't have everything.

3) Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale (PC): The only Japanese RPG to make it into my top 10 this year (Valkyria 2 isn't an RPG, it's a strategy game), and it's a port of a several-years-old indie game. A cute and well designed game is enhanced by a hilariously well done translation. This is a short game by Japanese RPG standards, but that's no bad thing, given how much padding the genre usually contains.

2) Mass Effect 2 (PC, also Xbox 360): I spent the first few hours hating this. The move to an ammunition based weapons system feels like a step backwards and planet-scanning is incredibly tedious. However, there's a truly impressive game in here, with great combat, storytelling and atmosphere. It feels like the natural middle-installment of a trilogy and I can't wait for Mass Effect 3.

1) Fallout - New Vegas (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): The ultimate flawed masterpiece. Yes, as absolutely everybody has commented, this is a very, very buggy game, though it is slowly improving via updates. If you play this, you're going to be running into crashes, quest bugs and enemies that slowly sink into the floor. However, Obsidian have done a great job of taking the strengths of Fallout 3 and building on them, with a more densely populated and interesting game-world that ties more closely into the Fallout lore established by the first two games. A basic playthrough will take 30-40 hours and you could easily spend 3-4 times that on exploration. Those are the kind of numbers normally associated with Japanese games, but New Vegas's most impressive achievement is to manage this epic playtime without ever feeling like a grind.

There were a few other games that impressed me this year, but which I couldn't quite put into the top 10. In alphabetical order, these are:

Alan Wake (Xbox 360): Clever and atmospheric survival horror game, though it did start to feel like a bit of a one-trick pony by the half-way point.

Amnesia - The Dark Descent (PC): the scariest survival horror game I've ever played, bar none. The complete lack of any combat ability and the clever use of lighting turns this into a nightmarish experience. Sadly, the game is let down a bit by an atrocious user interface, but it's still worth a try, particularly given the low price-tag.

Bayonetta (Xbox 360, also PS3): Possibly the least subtle game of the year, but also one of the most spectacular. The difficulty curve on anything above the bottom difficulty level is probably a bit too extreme for everybody apart from creepy Japanese otaku, but this is still one of those games that has to be played to be believed. The plot makes no sense at all, but there's so much going on that it's hard to really care.

Civilisation V (PC): Impressive new installment in the long-running PC series. Plenty of nice new tweaks, but I cannot alt-tab it without it crashing to desktop. Unfortunately, for a game like this, this is a critical flaw and keeps it out of the top 10.

Dante's Inferno (Xbox 360, also PS3 and PSP): This got a bit of a critical mauling, but I must confess that I quite enjoyed it, despite the liberties it takes with its source material. It can't compete with God of War or Castlevania, but there's still fun to be had here.

Dragon Age Origins - Awakening (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): Very decent expansion pack to one of the better games of last year. Cuts out some of the less interesting elements of the original in favour of plenty of well designed dungeon crawling.

Limbo (Xbox 360): Clever and creepy little downloadable platform/puzzler. Uses minimalist lighting and sound to great effect. Sadly, it's over very quickly and the second half of the game fails to live up to the expectations established by the first.

Persona 3 Portable (PSP): Nicely updated version of the PS2 classic. However, I did find myself wondering whether it really needed another update. Please, get on and give us either (or both) of Persona 4 FES or Persona 5!

Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360, also PS3): Yes, it's Grand Theft Horse, but it's still pretty fun. Some of the base mechanics of the core design that Rockstar keeps recycling are starting to creak a bit, though.

Sakura Wars - So Long My Love (Wii, also PS2): There's a lot wrong with this game. Incredible amounts of cheese in the dialogue, an underdeveloped combat system and an intensely frustrating Wii control system that had me rapid-fire swapping between the nunchuck and the classic controller. However, the game has such an innocent, bouncy energy that it's hard to hold these against it. Definitely worth playing, even if only for the scene where the Statue of Liberty launches giant technicolour missiles at a flying Japanese castle. Probably best to go for the PS2 version rather than the Wii version, if it's available in your territory, as by all accounts the older console's version is superior in every respect. Also notable for being a Japanese game with RPG elements which is completely 100% devoid of any need to grind for experience.

Sky Crawlers - Innocent Aces (Wii): I really wish this had been for a better platform, but it's still a decent air-combat game. I had no idea how they were going to make a game adaptation of Sky Crawlers, given the... unique... nature of the source material. This starts off feeling wrong, but over time, it becomes clear that this is the only possible way an adaptation could have been made to work. Very clever ending.

Spider-man - Shattered Dimensions (Xbox 360, also PS3, crippled versions on other platforms): I was hoping this would be the new Arkham Asylum. It isn't, though the underwhelming stealth sections still want to be. That said, the platforming and brawling sequences are excellent.

Transformers - War for Cybertron (Xbox 360, also PS3 and PC, with crippled Wii and DS versions): Decent, pacey third person shooter. The flying levels were definitely the high-point for me and it's a shame there weren't more of them.

Y's Seven (PSP) - decent, but decidedly non-groundbreaking, Japanese RPG. Even competence within this genre, let alone excellence, is starting to feel rare these days, so this came as a bit of a relief.

And now the disappointments. As I said at the start, there were far too many of these this year. While not actually bad games, the titles below (again in alphabetical order) spectacularly failed to live up to expectations:

Aliens vs Predator (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): The first half of the marine campaign is great; with alternating scares and adrenelin rushes. The rest of the game is a badly-thought out mess. The Predator campaign in particular is about as scary as Sesame Street.

Dead Rising 2 (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): Once again, a decent concept is slaughtered by Capcom's usual crappy execution, with an emphasis on needing multiple playthroughs and suffering through fiddly, unbalanced boss fights.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, also Xbox 360): Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Yes, it's pretty, but you spend the first 25 hours of the game runing through a linear tunnel. It opens out a little later on, but not to the degree of previous Final Fantasy games. The plot starts well and has potential, but it's clear they have absolutely no idea how to bring it to a conclusion. Still, it wasn't Square-Enix's worst game this year. Oh noooooo...

Front Mission Evolve (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): Clearly the "evolution" of a clever turn-based tactics series is an dull, flat, sub-Mechassault third person mecha shooter. And they say that progress is a good thing...

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3): Good in parts, but the actual racing experience is profoundly disappointing. Dismal AI, laugable collision physics and a general lack of any kind of adrenelin (or even fun) all conspire to give the impression that Polyphony Digital just can't keep up with the talented chaps at Turn 10.

Halo Reach (Xbox 360): The same boring combat and atrocious dialogue we saw in the original Halo, but now updated with a noxious coating of po-faced self-satisfaction. One or two of the set pieces work quite well, but the rest of the game is a mess.

Kingdom Hearts - Birth by Sleep (PSP): I was looking forward to this. Unfortunately, a reasonable combat system and decent graphics can't hold up against serious performance issues and some of the most hideously cliched writing in the history of gaming. Still not Square-Enix's worst game of the year, though.

Medal of Honor (PC, also Xbox 360 and PS3): The good news, I suppose, is that the autosave bugs managed to extend the campaign's playtime to around 5 hours. The bad news is that everything else about the game is half-arsed. Lazy mission design, stupid dialogue, bad checkpoint placement and badly mishandled set-pieces all conspired to create a game that promised the earth and failed to deliver more than "meh".

Metroid - Other M (Wii): An ambitious attempt at reinventing the Metroid franchising, which ends up failing in many, many ways. Poor controls and hammy writing are the worst offences, but this is still a deeply lacklustre experience in many other ways.

Nier (PS3, also Xbox 360): I feel a bit sorry for Nier. There are elements of a really good game in there somewhere. The combat can be fun and the bullet-hell sequences in boss fights are certainly innovative. Unfortunately, the good bits are buried under PS2-level graphics, creaking performance issues, monumental load times even with an HD install, huge amounts of grinding and some unutterably tedious fetch quests.

Sonic 4 - Episode 1 (Xbox 360, also PS3 and Wii): The first level is really great. After that, this gets fiddly and unforgiving far too quickly.

And now - the outright bad games. These are incredibly rare in these days of multimillion dollar budgets and huge development teams. That said, a few still slip through the net.

Final Fantasy XIV (PC, PS3 coming next year): The worst game of the year, bar none. An MMO which is not only primative compared to WoW, but which actually manages to be a worse experience than its own (badly dated) predecessor. Even with Square's deep pockets behind it, I'd be surprised if this was still running in 18 months time.

Lost Planet 2 (PS3, also Xbox 360 and PC): The original Lost Planet was hardly great. This only makes things even worse by making the single-player campaign virtually dependant upon having co-op partners. Virtually unplayable.

It's rare to find any actual news of interest on Sony's official Playstation blog. As with many such outlets (Sony and Nintendo are no less guilty here), the official blog is generally a tedious re-tread of "news" that appeared on sites like Kotaku days before, combined with advertisments masquerading as features. I do keep an eye on it, largely because as somebody who decided to take a punt on a 1-year Playstation Plus membership, I like to see what the upcoming content is, but it's rare that I actually find anything there worth my time.

Today, however, I did find an interesting tidbit. In the course of an otherwise unremarkable puff-piece about the upcoming Resistance 3, I found the statement "The weapon wheel returns, allowing Capelli to carry his entire arsenal and letting the player choose which weapons and strategies they want to use for each encounter." This, for me at least, is some seriously good news.

A bit of history here. The original Resistance: Fall of Man was a PS3 launch title. It was probably the best of the launch titles for any of the current gen consoles (Zelda: Twilight Princess was ok-ish, but nothing special). While I remain of the view that fpses are best played on a keyboard and mouse, there are certainly good console fpses out there. The original Resistance was at the time (and arguably remains now) the best fps we've seen on a console?

Why? Because it managed to have some unique hooks that other, more generic fpses such as the Halo and Call of Duty series don't have. A console fps is never going to compete with the best the PC can offer in terms of graphics and, except in the few rare cases that permit keyboard and mouse play such as Unreal Tournament 3, is never going to be as intuitive to control. A good console fps, therefore, needs to have a real hook to its gameplay that none of the current PC alternatives can offer. For Resistance, this hook was its weapons.

Resistance: Fall of Man goes far, far beyond the usual "pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher" repetoire of most fpses. Sure, you could find all of those in there, but you could find a whole host of other innovative goodies. such as weapons which should shoot (slowly) through walls, lay down shields, create cover, deploy short-lived turrets or coat an area with a layer of corrosive goo. You could carry all of these weapons at once, provided you'd found one, and select them from a wheel-menu (if you've played a recent Ratchet & Clank game - from the same developer - you'll know the concept). This meant that firefights which might otherwise have been quite pedestrian were transformed into gleefully chaotic affairs, with your exotic arsenal being used to tear up the game's enemies in any number of clever ways.

Then the sequel came out. Resistance 2 is a fairly good game, but despite the fairly impressive graphical improvements, it is not a patch on its own predecessor. Uncharacteristically, Insomiac decided to follow the crowd with Resistance 2; they limited players to the usual formula of holding two weapons (and a few grenades) at any one time. There were still some wonderfully inventive weapons (a delayed-action pistol was particularly fun), but chances are that players would never do more than look at them once and then discard them during the course of the game.

This is a common feature of "two gun" shooters. Players aren't going to leave behind the comfort blanket of having a general purpose weapon on them at pretty much all times, so some kind of assault rifle or equivalent is always going to take one of the two slots. As the designers don't want players getting completely stuck, they're always going to make sure that you have a particular weapon if it is required for a certain section. So your second weapon slot goes to "whichever second weapon the developers have told me I should be using". If you're going into a section with lots of close quarters combat, the developers will give you a shotgun. If you've got to fight vehicles, there'll be a rocket launcher. If you need to snipe - oooh look - there's a sniper rifle over against that wall. Not only does this limit the player's flexibility, it also takes a lot of the suspense out of the game. At least in the old multi-gun fpses, if a game like Doom gave you a room full of ammo, you knew there was something bad coming, but you didn't know what it might be.

So yes, Insomniac are to be applauded for returning the series to its roots. A game that had, frankly, been flying under my radar has just found its way onto my "must buy" list. The PS3 Ratchet & Clank games are among my favorite titles of this console generation and, if they get the weapons right, there's no reason why Resistance 3 shouldn't join them.

Now if only we could return to the UK-based setting of the first game...

Gran Turismo 5's development time has become something of a legend within the industry. To some degree, this is unfair; after all, the original Gran Turismo shipped in the same year that Duke Nukem Forever went into development, but Polyphony Digital have managed to put out quite a few games since then. However, there's no denying that expectations for Gran Turismo 5 (henceforth abrieviated to GT5) have stoked by the numerous delays that the title has suffered, ostensibly in the name of delivering the perfect driving experience. The game is now on the shelves and the initial reviews have ranged between the good and the great. However, given the sheer scale of the game, I thought it worth taking a little more time to explore it before posting anything resembling a review.

I've now spent a good number of hours with the game, have seen the impact of a substantial patch and have tried out all of the significant game-modes. I've assessed the game across five key categories; graphics, sound, gameplay, structure and longevity. I'd hope that this might allow for a more comprehensive - and fairer - assessment of the game than the average zero-day review based on a pre-release build. I've done my best to score the game on its own merits, set against the backdrop of the general position of the racing game genre. However, I've added a short section after the review doing a side-by-side comparison with GT5's most important competitor; Turn 10's Forza Motorsport 3.

Before I move on to the review proper, I think it's probably appropriate to make mention of the game's Signature Edition packaging. While expensive (I paid £120 for mine), this is probably the most impressive packaging I've ever seen for a game. The Signature Edition comes in an attractive (and heavy) metal box, the size of a large briefcase. Inside the box, you get a copy of the game (in its standard packaging), codes to download the pre-order and signature edition cars, a reasonable sized book with a comprehensive guide to race driving, a short but glossy coffee-table book with screenshots from the game, a small model car, a keychain fob, a USB stick loaded with a promotional video and a servicable wallet. Inside the wallet is a code that allows access to a competition to win a real Mercedes SLK. The competition is not yet open, but it has been announced that it will be based around GT5's driver-management mode (about which more later), meaning that entrants will not need to be professional level drivers to have a chance at success.

Graphics - 7/10

GT5's graphics are difficult to sum up concisely. At times, the game presents graphics on a par with the best that we have seen from the current generation of console hardware. At other times, it looks like a resolution-upscaled version of Gran Turismo 4.

A large part of this inconsistency is down to the game's division of its cars into premium and standard tiers. The premium tier cars have massively detailed models, including fully detailed interiors. The standard cars have essentially the same level of detail as cars in Gran Turismo 4. With the standard edition cars outnumbering the premium cars by a ratio of roughly four to one, you can expect to spend a lot of time looking at some rather dated models, particularly in the earlier stages of the game's career mode.

The game's tracks are also rather inconsistent. While a few, such as the famous "green hell" of the Nürburgring Nordschleife are lovingly detailed, many of the others, particularly the tracks inherited from earlier games in the series, are extremely spartan by modern standards. The city tracks can be a particular disappointment; a few key locations are well detailed, but many of the sections in between feel like they've been copy-pasted. As a Londoner, I found the London circuit a real let-down, as it looks nothing like the streets it is supposed to be modelling.

If you play GT 5 for long enough, you will encounter some shockingly pretty moments. When you have half a dozen premium cars on screen, ploughing through the rain on the Nürburgring, the game can look incredible. To describe such moments as photo-realistic is to do a serious disservice to the game; it's rare to see photographs that look so good. Unfortunately, you will spend most of your time with the game looking at something that more closely resembles a resolution-upscaled Playstation 2 game.

Sound - 6/10

GT5's sounds are, much like the graphics, something of a mixed bag. Indeed, I tend rather more towards the negative end of the spectrum with the sounds than I do with the graphics. Engine and wheel noises are a key part of the game; not only do they add atmosphere, but, as in any racing game with pretensions of realism, they can be a vital aid in determining how hard you can afford to push a car in a corner.

With the engine sounds, the same two-tier approach is in evidence that we saw with the graphics; the premium cars' engines sound extremely realistic, while the sounds for the standard cars do not seem to have come along much since the days of the Playstation 2. Wheel sounds are uniformly disappointing; wheel-screech sounds vary very little depending on the car you are driving and the speed you are going at.

There is, however, one strong positive worth mentioning. While the game's soundtrack ranges from the eccentric (the elevator-style music on the menus) to the inoffensive (the race music), the game does offer the option to load your own custom soundtrack. This is, of course, nothing new to Xbox gamers, but it's the first time I've seen the feature on a Sony console and it is a most welcome addition.

Gameplay - 5/10

I'll talk here about the "in-car" sections of GT5's gameplay, leaving issues such as the career progression system for the "structure" section of the review.

There are two distinct themes to consider in GT5's gameplay; "driving" and "racing". The driving side of the game is excellent. The game has a huge range of cars on offer and the modelling of their handling is much improved from previous Gran Turismo games. The series has, in the past, been accused of making some of its cars feel rather heavier than they should, resulting in a somewhat leaden, under-steer oriented driving experience. This is now gone.

The handling model in GT5 is excellent. Lightweight rear-wheel-drive cars feel properly skitish, while heavy cars will wallow around the track. I've tested a number of cars that I've driven in real life within the game and can confirm that they are modelled extremely accurately. If you are only interested in GT5 because you wish to drive a large range of cars, many of them extremely desirable, around circuits, then you can add 4 points to the score above.

If, however, you want to go racing, then I'm afraid the situation is far less appealing. Shockingly little has changed since the days of Gran Turismo 4 (and, if we're honest, since Gran Turismo 2). The AI opponents are still incredibly poor, completely unaware of the player's presence. The new damage modelling is laughably bad, with major collisions resulting in only cosmetic damage even with the modelling set to maximum. Collision physics feel outright buggy, with impacts between cars occasionally producing results which break at least two major laws of physics.

The difficulty level of the licence tests and special events is erratic, veering wildly between "ludicrously easy" and "so incredibly prescriptive as to be impossible on a Dualshock 3". There's very little sense of fun to any of the events (though the rather excellent kart-racing events are a welcome exception) and many, particularly the NASCAR events, feel like an outright chore.

It feels as though, in building the car collection and simulation sides of GT5, Polyphony forgot that they were also making a game, and that games are supposed to be fun. A little more work on issues such as AI could have had a truly transformative effect upon the game.

The B-Spec driver management mode is an interesting addition, but unfortunately, with no time-acceleration and the same dismal AI as the more traditional modes (albeit with the ability to instruct the player's car to make mistakes), it is unlikely that many players will have the patience to stick with it for long.

Multiplayer remains difficult to review at present, due to the pace with which Polyphony are continuing to evolve it. The initial implementation of multiplayer was dismal, with no matchmaking support and no sensible way to limit the cars that can be used in an event (turning every event into a scramble between top end race cars). A major patch has already added some useful functionality, including proper limitation options, and far more patches are in the pipeline.

All I can really say regarding the multiplayer, therefore, is that it is unsatisfactory at the moment, but likely to improve significantly in the near future.

Structure - 7/10

The non-racing structure of the game is also largely unchanged since Gran Turismo 4, although this particular aspect has stood the test of time rather better. The singleplayer game follows broadly the same progression; you create a driver, pass some licence tests, buy a cheap car, do a few races, upgrade the car, do a few more races, buy a new car and essentially repeat this cycle many times.

Many players, including myself, will be disappointed to see the licence tests making their return. However, there are, I believe, people out there who enjoy them, so this is probably not an area on which to mark GT5 down.

The huge range of cars available gives a multitude of options for new players; the series has always offered the choice between starting with a car that uses up almost all of your starting cash and racing it untuned, or picking up an older, cheaper model and tuning it ahead of your first race. GT5 adds plenty of scope for experimentation within the two options outlined above. It's a little disappointing that the game's standard cars, sold via the used car shop, are only made available 30 or so at a time, however, as this makes it difficult for players to jump to a particular favorite. The usual suite of Gran Turismo tuning options are available, though they have not expanded substantially since Gran Turismo 4.

Progression is slower than I would like. Races award relatively little cash, and even taking into account the rewards available from special events and B-Spec mode, players will likely have to repeat a few of the early events several times to get the cash needed to buy a car for the next set of races. Jumping into the special events early and often is a good policy; the rewards they offer can only be won once, but are far higher than those from the races.

There is an arcade mode, which, I confess, I have spent rather less time with than I should have. It is probably of less interest to most players than the career mode, but it is a good way to see the damage modelling and other "advanced" features, which are not unlocked in career mode until the player has reached a fairly high level.

Longevity - 8/10

At first glance, GT5 feels as though it should provide countless hours of play. There are over a thousand cars to play with (at least some of which aren't Skylines) and dozens of race events. Indeed, if playing around with as many different cars as possible is your thing (and for many Gran Turismo players, that's the most important part of the game) then GT5 will indeed last you for many months.

A few notes of caution, however. The size of the game's list of circuits, while by no means poor, is still relatively limited. You will notice them repeating fairly quickly and over time this may sap your enthusiasm. The general lack of adrenelin that results from the poor opponent AI in singleplayer may also prove a bit of a drag.

Overall (not an average) - 7/10

GT5 is a good game. On occasion, it is a very good game. It is hard, however, to escape from the feeling that it falls a long way short of what it should have been, in light of its budget and development time. One gets the impression that most of said development time was spent on the endless polishing of a few narrow areas of the game, while large and important sections went neglected.

The game feels, in a way, something of a prisoner of the series's history. There are elements, such as the AI, that have clearly not been revisited in many years. There are also elements, such as the licence tests, that need to be reviewed to check whether they are still enhancing the game. With Gran Turismo 6 already under development, a more imaginative approach is needed, as well as a willingness to blatantly copy elements of the series's main rivals, where they would enhance the game. Whether the current development team can rise to this challenge is open to debate; personally, I suspect that new blood at the top is needed.

That said, if you bought a Playstation 3 in anticipation of this game (and hence have missed out on developments elsewhere of the racing genre), you probably won't be disappointed. There is enjoyment to be had here, provided you can look past the infuriatingly rough edges.

Postscript - comparison to Forza Motorsport 3

The most direct competition to Polyphony Digital comes from US-based developer Turn 10, whose Forza Motorsport series has been through three iterations since we last saw a main-series Gran Turismo game. The original Forza Motorsport, released on the Xbox, felt very much like a poor man's Gran Turismo 4. However, Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3 (henceforth referred to as FM3), released for the Xbox 360, have evolved significantly, incorporating new features and eliminating old ones that were deemed to have failed.

In visual terms, somewhat to my surprise, FM3 comes out as the winner. It cannot match the quality of GT5's premium cars. However, FM3's cars do not have a two-tier system, and consequently have a higher average quality. Moreover, FM3's tracks look significantly better than GT5's. I've done side-by-side comparisons of a number of tracks, and while both games are close enough to call it a tie in their renditions of the Nürburgring, FM3 comes out significantly ahead on every other track.

FM3's sound is also slightly better. Engine sounds are more consistent, with none of the premium/standard split in GT5. Tyre sounds are also far more useful; FM3's sounds are a vital component of the game that provide information to the player in a way that GT5's never quite manage.

In terms of the gameplay, I would say that GT5 has a slight edge in terms of the "driving" (its handling physics are awesome), but that FM3 is a long way ahead in terms of "racing". FM3's AI opponents react to the player, will apply pressure to him, and on occasion will respond to pressure from him. FM3's collision physics work properly and fulfil their primary purpose; giving players a real incentive not to get into collisions in the first place.

FM3 has a far more "open" career structure than GT5. All events and cars are unlocked from the start (although you will need to collect the cash to buy the cars, of course). There's no licence system and, in a welcome change from Forza Motorsport 2, no level requirements on events. This does mean that FM3 lacks some of GT5's role playing game elements, but it also means that it probably has the edge as a racing game. I'll acknowledge that this one is largely a matter of personal preference.

And in terms of longevity, it should be noted that FM3 has a car list that, even in its ultimate edition is only half the length of GT5's. Of course, a large part of the difference here is due to FM3's vast numbers of near-identical variants. There are some real differences in emphasis, though. FM3 has very few cars older than 20 years old, but has a large number of extremely recent (or concept-stage) high end cars. GT5 has some startling omissions at the modern top-end (no Koenisegg), but does have a good number of interesting vintage cars. GT5 also has a small advantage in terms of its list of circuits, though the difference here is not huge.

FM3's car tuning system is more advanced than GT5's and the game offers a wide array of impressive visual customisation options (and an online marketplace for sharing them). This depth of customisation helps FM3 make up a lot of the ground that it loses to GT5 in terms of the size of its car list.

In conclusion, these are both good games, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that FM3 is rather better. If you own an Xbox 360, do not own a Playstation 3 and want to play the best racing game around, you do not need to go out console shopping. If you own a PS3, do not own an Xbox 360 and just want a decent racing game, then GT5 will suit you just fine. If, however, you want the best racing game around, then this might become an expensive Christmas for you.

For the rest of the racing games development world, the message is clear; Turn 10, rather than Polyphony Digital, now set the standard by which other games should be judged.

I want a bit more time with Gran Turismo 5 before I post a review; the size of the game makes me very nervous about sticking scores to it before I've seen a greater proportion of what it has on offer. My last few sessions with the game haven't fundamentally changed my view, but they have added some new positive and negative factors.

In the mean time, I thought I'd do a post about an old game that I've been replaying recently; Kingdom Hearts. Released on the PS2 way back in 2002, Kingdom Hearts was a game that, by all rights, should have been an abject disaster. The idea of a Disney-based action RPG developed by Squaresoft - and featuring a number of iconic Final Fantasy characters - was pretty much heresy and was widely mocked before the game's release. Winnie the Pooh and Sephiroth do not seem obvious candidates, after all, to appear in the same game.

And yet, Kingdom Hearts and its direct sequel went on to be two of the defining games of the PS2 era. Indeed, I would personally argue that Kingdom Hearts 2 was the single best game ever to see release on the PS2 (and it's up against a lot of tough competition there). More recently, the series has been come known for a series of good-but-not-great handheld titles, many of which are inexplicable to anybody not intimately familiar with the series's complicated lore.

With Square-Enix having given its clearest indication yet that the company does intend to develop a proper Kingdom Hearts 3, I thought I'd go back and revisit the earlier titles. This basically means playing through the original Kingdom Hearts, the PS2 port of Chain of Memories (the plot-critical interim game originally released on the Gameboy Advance) and Kingdom Hearts 2. I've not touched these games since finishing KH2 back in early 2006, so I had wondered whether I was applying a degree of rose-tinting in my memories of the game.

Now that I'm half way through the original Kingdom Hearts, I'm already able to answer that question. No, I wasn't rose-tinting. Kingdom Hearts (KH1) is a truly awesome game, which has stood the test of time shockingly well.

The first surprise was how comparatively good the graphics are. Now, ok, I have my (US 1st-gen 60 gig) PS3 applying its hardware upscaling, which smooths some of the edges a bit. But the game's bold graphical style obscures any technical limitations. What really struck me is how an 8 year old game looks as good as, and in many cases better than, any game I've seen on the Wii. Square always were the masters at pushing the PS2's hardware to its absolute limits and I don't think this is demonstrated anywhere more so than in the Kingdom Hearts games.

The sound, and particularly the music, has aged well. A few of the sound effects are slightly grainy, and the music is clearly a product of its time (and the PS2's less than stellar sound hardware), but a lot of effort went into creating the audio side of the game. The game's opening theme and its core orchestral score are fantastic (I prefer the Japanese opening "Hikari" to the English "Simple and Clean", but both are great). Most of the background music in-game is cleverly adapted from various Disney themes and, while it gets a little repetitive over time, it works extremely well.

The gameplay is showing a few rough edges. The control system feels quite antiquated, with targeting and camera control in particular being a pain in the backside. I do recall that KH2 made some welcome enhancements to the control system. Ultimately, though, after an adjustment period, KH1 feels perfectly playable.

The combat system is the same deceptively complicated system that I remember. At first glance, it looks like a button masher. Most of the early enemies can be defeated by chaining physical attacks. However, the further you get into the game, the more the combat system opens up. By the mid-point of the game, a decent player will be dashing around the field chaining physical attacks, dodge-rolls, special moves and magic in an incredibly fluid way. The real time battles are as good as any I've seen in an action RPG, with the boss battles in particular carrying real tension at times.

The storyline is perhaps the most controversial elements of Kingdom Hearts. There's no denying that some of the Disney-world storylines are trite and irritating (much like most non-Pixar Disney movies for the last two decades or so). You can expect to hear a lot of rubbish about "believing in yourself" and "following your dreams". However, as you press further into the game, you realise that Square have managed to create a pretty decent meta-narrative to surround these, which takes a far darker slant. The meta-narrative is, admittedly, difficult to follow unless you take care to follow all of the journal entries and the like, but it is there and is real. The series doesn't really get into its cleverest narrative plans until Chain of Memories and KH2, but even in KH1 you can tell that there are larger ideas moving behind the scenes.

But to end on a downer, if there's one thing I've taken from my Kingdom Hearts replay thus far, it's how far Japanese gaming in general, and Square in particular, have fallen since the days of the PS2. I struggle to think of a single Japanese game for the current console generation, with the possible exception of Valkyria Chronicles, that has matched the breadth, depth and ambition of Kingdom Hearts and its sequel. I'm hoping and praying that Kingdom Hearts 3 can change this, but after seeing the thirteenth and fourteenth installments in the Final Fantasy series, I'm not optimistic.

This is probably the penultimate post that I write on Gran Turismo 5, and it's a bit of a round-up of the areas I haven't touched on yet, or areas that I only mentioned briefly in my "first thoughts" post.

I'll start with the cars. As, I think, everybody knows by now, GT5 contains around 200 "premium" cars and 800 "standard" cars. When this split was first announced, many were afraid that "premium" meant "reserved for downloadable content". Happily, this is not the case; the only downloadable content packs for the game right now are the two "bonus" car packs - one for the pre-order, one for the special editions - which contain only re-skinned versions of existing cars. Instead, the difference between the premium and the standard cars is one of quality; not of the cars themselves, as there are some seriously impressive cars within the standard lineup, but of their representation within the game. The premium cars are incredibly detailed, with their surfaces polished to a frightening degree. It's not just the external surfaces that have been given this treatment; the cars also have fully detailed interiors, with working dashboards. The standard cars are far less detailed and are essentially resolution-upscaled versions of the cars from Gran Turismo 4. The standard lineup does include cars that weren't in GT4, but these are only modelled at a GT4 level of detail. Standard cars have no interior modelling and there's no cockpit view. The upshot is this; the premium cars look slightly better than Forza 3's cars (and have a notably better cockpit view), while the standard cars look a lot worse. GT4 was a pretty game by the standards of 2005, but its car models have not aged well.

The selection of cars on offer is, of course, vast. I'll get one thing out of the way now: no racing game which does not include Porsche and Koenisegg can claim to have a truly comprehensive selection, so GT5 falls short on that score. However, if you focus on the list of cars that are in the game, there is a huge amount on offer. Japanese cars obviously form the bulk of the list, with Nissan, Honda and Mazda being particularly heavily represented. This slightly parochial focus from Polyphony looks a little curious, given the more genuinely internationalist approach taken by Turn 10 with Forza 3. It's certainly debatable whether anybody is really going to get much value out of having all of those Skylines and all of those MX-5s on offer. It's disappointing not to see many of the more recent offerings from US and European manufactuers on display. Why, for example, are none of the latest Aston Martins in the game (they're in Forza)? Where is the Bentley Continental GT? Where are many of the more recent Ferraris?

That said, while GT5 has a very Japan-centric view of the current automotive world, it takes a far wider view of classic cars. The game has an impressive array of vintage models from the 1940s, 50, 60s and 70s; an area that Forza 3 just doesn't go into. It's occasionally questionable what some of these cars, such as the WW2 military Kubelwagen, are doing in a racing game, but their inclusion does add a touch of both historical interest and charm. There are a good number of events which capitalise on these vintage cars, and while these suffer from some balance problems (see earlier posts), there's no denying that they offer something genuinely unique to GT5.

So to summarise regarding GT5's car lineup; there is a huge variety of modern cars, which nevertheless suffers from an overly Japan-centric focus. There are some startling omissions in terms of Western manufactuers, both in terms of manufacturers that are missing entirely, and manufatuers that are woefully misrepresented. But the game does feature a veritable encyclopedia of automotive history, with some real curiousities on display that you won't find elsewhere (and all with extensive text information entries). If you are interested in a comprehensive simulation of the latest and greatest cars from around the world, Forza 3 is clearly a better proposition than GT5. If you are interested in a huge variety of common road cars, a more limited selection at the top end, and a wide range of esoterica, then GT5 is the game for you.

Moving onto the tracks, there are a number of startling additions and reappearances, as well as some shocking omissions of previous GT series tracks. I'll start with two obvious complaints about the tracks in general; there aren't enough of them (a problem shared by Forza 3) and they look ugly (an area where GT5 is notably worse than Forza 3). On the number of tracks, any game with as many race events as GT5 is going to involve a lot of races, and the tracks are going to repeat irritatingly often. In fairness, this is a problem shared by pretty much every racer in the same territory as the GT series. I wish that developers would spend more time increasing their track roster, as the current limitations are a real challenge to these games' longevity. On the appearance of the tracks, it's fairly shocking how ugly most of GT5's tracks are. You can do side-by-side comparisons of many of the tracks in GT5 (such as Tsukuba Circuit, Fuji Speedway etc) with their Forza 3 equivalents, and Forza 3 is overwhelmingly better looking in every single case. GT5's city circuits are somewhat better looking, but suffer from a lack of detail and authenticity. I used to work in a building that you pass along the route of GT5's London circuit, so I know that particular area of central London pretty well and I can tell you now that it looks absolutely nothing like its in-game incarnation. Even Project Gotham Racing 3 did a better job of recreating these particular streets.

Visuals aside, there are some decent tracks in here. Series-original favorites such as Grand Valley, Deep Forest and Trial Mountain make a welcome return and will be an immedite nostalgia trip for anybody who spent countless hours with earlier games in the series. There's a reasonably good selection of real-world tracks, with Norburgring, Monza and several Japanese tracks on display. There are also some great new additions (some resurrected from the very early days of the GT series). The peripherary version of Cape Ring is a fantastic track, with some awesome sweeping curves that allow for high speed cornering battles.

However, there are also some odd omissions. The biggest shock for me was that Midfield Raceway has gone. This is a GT-original track that has been in the series since GT2 and has been in every single title since then, with the exception of GT5 prologue. It has, in many ways, become the iconic GT track. A wide, generally fast track with a good variety of corners, Midfield was a perennial favorite for multiplayer matchups and the ideal track to stick on if you had friends over. Its wide curves meant that less experienced players could generally stay on the track and not get too familiar with the crash barriers, while there was still plenty of opportunity for experiened drivers to chase after tiny improvements on their best times. Its loss in GT5 will be mourned; hopefully it can be reinstated via downloadable content. It's also noticable that Silverstone has dropped out of the game, which as a Brit, makes me feel slightly aggrieved. That said, there is one omission that did raise a cheer from me. The pretty but insanely tedious New York circuit has finally gone to meet its maker. I don't know what it is with racing games and this series (Forza 3 has a serious hard on for it), but it's about time that it died a death.

Moving along, I finally got around to trying out the game's B-Spec mode. This is a "driver manager" simulation, where you create an AI driver and enter him into events, issuing guidance throughout the race. The events list from B-Spec mode is the same as that for A-Spec mode and there are unique prizes available (the DeLorean, for example, is locked away behind one of the amateur-level B-Spec races). Unfortunately, this mode is crammed with serious problems that make it a tedious and frustrating experience. The series' trademark bad-AI is on full display here. Yes, you can tell your driver to drive too fast and make mistakes, but this just seems to be a case of the driver trying to take racing lines at above the maximum speed and making occasional inexplicable mistakes (such as sudden swerves half-way through a straight). Overtaking is horribly broken, with your AI driver neglecting obvious opportunities to pass, while taking insane risks at other times. The drivers allegedly get more intelligent as they level up, but I've not really seen any sign of this.

And oh boy do the drivers level up slowly. Races only grant the same xp as their A-Spec equivalents, which is to say: not very much. The are no licence tests of event-modes to give an xp boost here, so those level restrictions on the better events are going to feel seriously painful. To make matters worse, B-Spec races are twice the length of A-spec races (to allow more time for your idiot AI drivers to get to the front of the field) and there is no time acceleration feature. As the best strategy in B-Spec is often to take no action for most of the race, things can get awfully boring.

Finally; multiplayer. I've only given this a relatively brief whirl, as multiplayer has been plagued by occasional problems since GT5 launched (plus competitive multiplayer isn't really my cup of tea these days). The problems are to some extent inevitable with any launch on this scale, so I won't harp on about them. However, the multiplayer side of the game is currently extremely limited. There's no match-making; you have to join games manually. Polyphony have belatedly added some more useful options for limiting the cars that can be used in any given race, which does allow for some decent and sensible matchups. However, with no real rewards for success, there's a general feeling that the design of GT5's online mode is something that would have looked wobby five years ago and which is hopelessly dated now. Races occasionally suffer from strange glitches; players will sometimes be dumped into races that have already begun, which is unforgivable in a racing game. There's no market place to trade cars, and none of the third-party tuning and decoration market that Forza 3 did so well. In short, the multiplayer feels like a bit of an afterthought. I should add that Polyphony have given explicit committments to improving the multiplayer side of the game, so I suppose we should watch for improvements, but the current implementation is unsatisfactory.

There's probably only one more post to come from me on the subject of GT5; an actual review which attempts to put scores to the game.

First things first, a couple of quick corrections and clarifications. I'm trying to give a balanced and accurate view of the game in these posts and while I stand by 99% of what I've written, there are two corrections needed:

First of all, the long "mini" installs I complained about on the first day were, it seems, as a result of congestion on Polyphony's servers. I didn't realise that the game accessed the net constantly (if a connection is available) during singleplayer play. With the congestion now somewhat relieved, the loading delays navigating the menus are much reduced and the mini-installs tend to be over in 10-15 seconds. Of course, how comfortable you are with a game that accesses the net constantly while you play singleplayer may vary.

Second, I found other ways of making cash in-game (which I'll cover in a moment) which reduce the amount of time you will have to spend grinding the same few events for cash. Note, however, that I say "reduce", not "remove"; you'll still have to repeat events from time to time, which doesn't tend to be the case in other games these days.

With that out of the way, I thought I'd cover GT5's event mode. Event mode in GT4 was pretty poor, really; a sequence of fixed-car races which demanded a level of cornering perfection that was mostly impossible on a Dualshock 2. GT5's event mode has been expanded upon significantly, with quite a few unique-vehicle races and even a few cutscenes locked away here. I spent a few hours in event mode last night and had experiences which, while mixed, did include some positives.

I'll start with the positives; the kart racing is fun. Kart racing is the first of the event mode races to be unlocked (they all have level restrictions) and, based on the ones I've seen so far, certainly the best. Yes, the same problems that plague the proper races, such as braindead AI and a horrible implementation of slipstreaming, are still there, but the nature of the kart races tends to shift the emphasis away from them. The karts are nimble and slightly tricky to control, which pans out very well; you need a lot of finesse to manage both the steering and the acceleration and braking. Happily, the degree of finesse required is not beyond what's possible on a Dualshock 3, so overall. Better still, the collision physics, which feel vastly inappropriate in the rest of the game, actually feel just fine for kart racing.

Some of the other events are rather less impressive. I found the NASCAR one deeply dull, though at least the slipstream stuff feels vaguely appropriate in the context of NASCAR. A race in camper vans around the Top Gear Test Track is a good pun but a bad event, and demonstrates the irritating uber-perfectionism of GT4's events. The Nurburgring events are ok, though timed point to point runs are hardly anything new (Forza 3 did them too). The rally events lie further into the event mode, but I've not yet gotten around to trying them out.

One curious fact about event mode is that it is absurdly generous with its cash rewards. Getting a gold in a single event, some of which last only a few seconds, can give more cash than an entire comparable-level 3-race event out in A-Spec mode. Interestingly, while completed events can be played again, they only give out each level of cash reward (gold, silver, bronze) once. They don't want you farming these for cash.

Back in A-Spec mode, I spent some time with the "classic" car events. These form three out of the nine beginner level events, so they're prominent right from the start of the game. For the most part, they're not too bad. The classic cars handle convincingly enough, though all of the flaws of the other races are still present. One irritating fact I did find with these heavily restricted-entry races is that there tends to be one or two cars on the AI roster for each whose performance is completely out of line with the rest. For example, in the Japanese classics series, you may find yourself facing a 1978 Dome Zero; this beast is going to be completely unbeatable unless you have either a fortune to spend boosting the power of one of the other cars, or get lucky enough to snag one for yourself (and I've not seen one on sale). I ended up quitting and reloading one race several times until the game's random number generator decided not to put that car on the grid. The game is in desperate need of a Forza-style "Performance Index", which can be used to keep events reasonably balanced (not least by preventing the player from "cheesing" them with an overpowered car).

I also spent some time with the car tuning menu last night (as opposed to the upgrade menu). This is, irritatingly, tucked away on the garage menu, rather than on the tuning shop menu or the race menu, meaning a lot of clicking through menus if you need to change a car's setup between races). This became necessary for me when I hit a race around the Cirque de la Sarthe, which the default gear ratios for my car was rendering unwinnable. Aside from tweaking gear ratios, I was slightly disappointed by how limited the tuning options were; there wasn't that much else I could do. Maybe more will unlock later.

When I posted my first thoughts on Gran Turismo 5 yesterday, I covered quite a number of topics, but only touched relatively briefly upon perhaps the most important of all; the racing. This was largely a result of the lack of time I'd had with the game. Of the 90 or so minutes of post-install gameplay that I had with the game, 45 or so were with the car shops, the tuning shop and the licence tests. As a result, I only saw a small number of races. Now that I've spent a few more hours racing, I thought I'd add a bit more commentary on the most important part of the GT5 package.

GT5'a A-Spec racing mode will be instantly familiar to anybody who's played a previous GT game. Races are grouped into events, either as packages of single races or as tournaments, which, once started, must be played through to completion or aborted in their entirety. Events have different entry requirements and restrictions, though one new (and entirely unwelcome) addition is that of a new "level" requirement to participate in an event, alongside the more traditional (and still unwelcome) licence requirements.

The opening events are fairly undemanding; the initial Sunday Cup consists of three short single-races of two or three laps each around the game's shortest circuits, against opponents in basic, entry-level cars. Be warned, however, that many of the other beginner-level events are quite prescriptive, with very few of the "generalist" races found in Forza 3. If your first car doesn't meet the entry requirements of more than one event, you can expect to have to repeat the early events a good few times to build up the cash for a second purchase. This kind of repetitive grind of the same events had been eliminated in its entirety from Forza 3 and it feels antiquated here.

With a relatively small number of events compared to Forza 3, the challenge level of events, or at least the level of car you will require, seems to increase relatively quickly. My AE86 Levin was perfect for the Sunday Cup and, with a bit of tuning, managed to beat the Compact Car event without too much trouble, but to stand a chance in the beginner-level FR cup, I needed to save up for something a bit meatier; I eventually went for an RX-7 FC.

The format of the races is again familiar. The player's car is placed around the middle of a (pleasingly large) starting grid. The number of participants in events varies, but some have as many as 16 cars on the track at the same time. I haven't yet found an option to run a qualifying lap to improve my starting position, but that doesn't mean it isn't in there; GT5 does not make all of its features easy to find.

In terms of the cars' handling, there is both good and bad news. I'll start with the good news; and it is very good news indeed. The overall quality of the handling model is decisively improved not just since GT4, but also since GT5 Prologue and GT Portable. The GT series has previously been known for a rather heavy handling model, with understeer showing up in all kinds of unexpected (and inaccurate) places. Even with the driver assists turned off, racing in the older GT games could feel like driving with an exceptionally heavy-handed traction control mechanism switched on. This is a thing of the past. A lightweight FR or MR will now feel like the skitish beast that it should. If you want to try your hand at a drift racing style, you'll be pretty pleased; GT5's drifting is easy to get started on, but difficult to master. This is exactly as it should be.

Some of the GT5 reviews have enthused about the quality of the modelling of braking in the game. I must say that I've yet to be particularly impressed by this. However, it is entirely plausible that I'm being hampered by the rather crap nature of the Dualshock 3's analogue shoulder buttons, which are nothing like as precise as the Xbox 360's counterparts. I'll test the braking using pedals at the weekend and see if things improve.

Sadly, there's a lot more bad news about the handling and physics, and some of this bad news is extremely serious. Crash modelling is absolutely appalling. Cars bounce off each other in a massively unconvincing way. Occasionally, when two cars collide, the physics will glitch and both cars will drive along locked together, frequently with one of the cars pointing out at an odd angle. Then they separate and continue as before, perfectly unscathed. There is a single collision sound, which is a bit like the sound you get if you throw a baseball hard into a wet sack of sand. This plays for every collision, no matter how severe, and will play on a loop when two cars get locked together.

Another problem relates to slipstreaming. Now, slipstreams are a real and valid part of racing and it is absolutely right and proper that a racing game models them. GT5 is into this in a big way, with the first tier of licence tests making a big deal of slipstreaming. Unfortunately, the implementation is hideous. Slipstreaming can allow a car to gain on an equally-powered competitor directly ahead of it, or can allow a less powerful car to keep pace with a slightly faster opponent. Slipstreaming is NOT a massive nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner strapped to the back of a car which sucks in everything behind the car with the force of a small black hole. Except in GT5, that's exactly how it feels. I've managed to find some replicatable situations where GT5's implementation of the slipstream effect accelerates a substantially slower car to speeds far in excess of what the maximum that the opponent it is chasing is capable of. It feels a lot like that most hated and despised of racing game features; rubberbanding.

The problems caused by the broken slipstream modelling are amplified by the dismal AI.

The AI opponents in GT5 have no awareness of the player.

Read that line above again. I am not exaggerating. I am not trying to make some comic point. That line is a simple statement of fact. The opponent cars in GT5 are not aware of the player and will not take any action at all based on the player's actions. They won't dodge, they won't pull out to overtake, they won't try to block, they won't do anything except stick to their pre-defined line and return to it if you nudge them out of it.

This gives rise to a hilariously awful situation which I have encountered several times in just a few hours play. The player comes out of a corner with a faster exit than the car behind him. The player's car is faster on the straights than the car behind him. But WHOOPS, there goes the nuke-o-vac-9000 on the rear of the player's car and now the car behind is hurtling towards him with a 20 mph speed advantage. The player has to decide. He can move aside and let himself be passed, or he can hold his ground and hope to make it to the next corner, where the nuke-o-vac-9000 gets turned off again. Opting for the latter, the player holds on for dear life. Sadly, it's to no avail; there's a muffled, wet thumping noise as the car behind ploughs straight into him. His car now locks at a 30 degree angle to the road, but continues moving in its original direction, as the car behind locks together with his. Both cars roll serenely forward, with the player now completely out of control, as his speed ticks down and the rest of the field passes him.

Of course, you can use the rubbish elements of the physics engine to your advantage as well. When overtaking, it helps to think of the other car not as an opponent, but rather as a kind of mobile steering-aid for your own car. You can just bounce off the inside of them on the next corner and sail on past (but watch out for the nuke-o-vac-9000 on the next straight).

So overall, the racing experience in GT5 is profoundly unsatisfactory. Forza 3 is a racing sim. If you want to do well in Forza 3, you will need to learn how to race. GT5's Signature Edition comes with a large book that teaches you how to race, but the game itself is more akin to a rather buggy Mario Kart than to an actual racing sim.

I got home with my Signature Edition of Gran Turismo 5 last night. Sadly, as I ended up stuck at work later than usual, I didn't get as much time with it as I would have liked. However, I still had time to do the install and setup and then get in an hour and a half or so with the game (at the expense of being a bit bleary-eyed this morning).

I'll start with a note about the Signature Edition. This is probably the most impressive packaging I've ever seen for a game, which is probably to be expected given the price-tag. You get a substantial, well-built metal case, which has more than adequate padding inside to protect the contents. Inside, you get your copy of the game (of course) in the regular PS3-game box, two voucher-codes to redeem the special edition cars in the Playstation Store, a short, glossy coffee-table book with screenshots from the game, a larger (but less glossy) book with a fairly comprehensive guide to race-driving, a metal keychain fob, a 4 gig USB memory stick which comes pre-loaded with a "behind the scenes" video and a servicable wallet. Inside the wallet is a code that allows for entry into the "win a real car" competition, though these codes don't seem to be working yet. Obviously, whether this package is worth the substantial price-tag for you will depend on how attached you are to the Gran Turismo series; despite the generally high standards of the package, it's hard to see it as anything but an extravagant purchase.

Once you stop admiring the package, GT5 makes one of the more frustrating aspects of PS3 gaming immediately apparent; the days of just sticking the disc in the drive and playing are long gone on Sony's system. GT5 is by no means setting a precedent here, but it is certainly one of the most striking exemplars. The first step is to load the bonus edition cars from the Playstation store. This isn't too painful and only takes a minute or two and it can be sped up hugely by plugging a USB keyboard into the PS3. On inserting the disc into the drive, it downloads a 130 meg update. I'd heard about this in advance and was worried that Sony's/Polyphony's servers would collapse on launch day. Happily, I was wrong, with the update downloading at my connection's maximum rate of circa 620k/sec.

With the update installed, the game then offers you the choice of a hard disk installation, along with a strong recommendation that you allow this. The install process is long. Seriously long. At 42 minutes on my first-generation 60 gig US PS3, GT5's install process takes longer than many Windows installations I've done in the past (in terms of going from formatting the PC's hard disk to having Windows installed and pointed at Windows Update). You'd hope that allowing this mammoth installation would result in a smooth experience once the game is loaded; unfortunately, this is not to be.

You see, the install doesn't actually install all of the required content. This will continue to install itself in further chunks as you play the game. There seems to be very little logic to when these mini-installs take place. Going into some menus would trigger an install, while other menus wouldn't. There was no install when I first accessed the used car store, but exiting it triggered an install sequence. The mini-installs average about 3 minutes in duration, with one install going over 5 minutes. I'm hoping that these will become less common as I spend more time with the game, but they are proving fairly agonising so far. Why the game could not just install all of its data during the initial install process is a mystery to me. However; don't think you can get away without the install. While it is theoretically possible to play the game with only a few megabytes of footprint allowed on the PS3's hard disk, there are reports online of this resulting in truly horrendous loading times; worse even than Forza 3's (which are painful enough already).

As for the game itself... I must confess that I find it difficult to describe my early experiences as anything other than a brutal, crushing disappointment. As is traditional for Gran Turismo games, the game takes great delight in locking most of its content away behind a series of fairly arbitrary gates. The much-reviled licence tests make a distinctly unwelcome return. They're now tied to a level-up system that further restricts your access to cars and events (a la Forza 2, before Turn 10 realised that the system sucked and ditched the restrictive aspects for Forza 3).

Your first task will be to purchase a starter car, with the 20,000 credits that the game starts you with. I've always enjoyed this aspect of the GT and Forza games; starting out with a low end car, tuning it to its limits and then moving onto fancier and faster cars. Be warned, however, that if you have downloaded any of the special edition or pre-order cars, then these will go straight into your garage. I'd assumed that, as with Forza 3, they'd be added to the game's car-shop for purchase with in-game credits, but this is not the case. Some of the fastest cars in the game will be deposited straight in your garage. The same presumably also applies to any cars that were in your Gran Turismo Portable garage. Fortunately, I have enough willpower to avoid making use of them at this stage, and instead head to the used car store.

A word of explanation here; only around 1/4 of GT5's cars have had the "full" development cycle (meaning detailed artwork, damage modelling and interiors). These cars are sold through the "new car" show-rooms and you probably won't be able to afford any with the starter-cash. The game's remaining cars are sold through the used car dealership, with only a random selection of 30 or so of the game's 750ish non-premium cars available here at any given time.

After seeing the jaw-dropping screenshots and videos that have been doing the rounds online for quite some time now, it is a real punch to the gut to see how primative the models are for the non-premium cars. They are basically unchanged from GT5, released in 2005 back on the PS2. GT5's non-premium cars look substantially worse than the Forza 3 versions of said cars, where direct equivalents exist. There are also markedly fewer visual customisation options; the game basically limits you to changing the colour of the car and its wheels. It's not all negative, though. Each car is accompanied by a substantial piece of text describing the car and its history. This is a nice touch which I've not seen replicated elsewhere.

So, after enduring the first sequence of licence tests, it's time to start a race. It should be noted that loading times for the races themselves are pretty good; certainly faster than Forza 3's, once you've done the install. The loading delays seem to be entirely confined to the game's menus. The thing that struck me on starting my first race (a 3 lap run around a short section of the Autumn Ring course in a Toyota AE86) is just how little has changed visually since GT4. The starting grid is packed with non-premium cars with their low detail models and the circuit itself seems to have been given only the most rudimentary of visual updates since GT4. If you've ever played an old game using a modern tool that allows for higher resolutions (for example, running a PS1 game in an emulator that allows for high resolutions), you'll be aware that upscaling the resolution on such old content results in a rather stretched, sparse look. This is exactly how many of the "old" tracks in GT4 look. I need to add here that the premium cars and many of the new tracks look much, much better; certainly, they're at the top end of what we've seen the PS3 do in terms of graphics. But starting out in your career, you are going to be looking at some seriously ugly graphics.

The gameplay feels similarly dated. I noted with some amusement that the game defaulted to using the Dualshock 3's face buttons for acceleration and braking. Erm... no. While I'm fully aware the buttons are pressure sensitive, the idea of actually using them for an analogue control axis is not acceptable. A quick bit of button reassignment later and acceleration and braking are safely on the R2 and L2 buttons where they belong. This isn't significant in itself, but it's indicative of how GT5's gameplay has failed to keep up with the times. One of the biggest disappointments for me was the absence of any noticable improvements to the notoriously poor Gran Turismo AI. Opponent cars still bumble around the track happily ignoring the player. I'm told things get slightly better at the higher levels, but I remain skeptical. I can well understand why the game may have weaker opponents in the early events, but this just felt like bad AI, rather than good AI driving badly.

Collisions remain laughably poor. Even with damage modelling in the game, collisions feel (and sound) like something from a dodgems rink. Cars get bounced out of their racing line and then bounce back into it unperturbed. The car handling is good, but not spectacular. In many ways it feels like GT4's. It's really not helped by the poor sound quality, which, like GT4, uses a single generic "wheel screech" sound. You can forget about making any serious use of sound to figure out the limits of your tyres' grip.

After a couple of races in the AE86, I decide to try out one of the premium cars. As I've had no problems winning the first two races in the starter car, I decide that it's morally justifiable for me to jump into one of the premium cars for the third race in the series. Things are slightly better here. The sound quality is slightly higher (though still poor compared to Forza 3) and the in-car view is undeniably impressive (though I suspect I will still end up racing with the bonnet-camera).

There's still a lot of the game I haven't seen yet. I haven't seen the high-end races yet. I haven't touched the multiplayer. I haven't been anywhere near the karts or the ralllying yet. However, first impressions are not good. I don't have much I need to do this weekend and I'm off work on Monday, so I should be able to spend some proper time with the game over the next few days. Hopefully things will improve. But there's relatively little cause for optimism so far.

Gran Turismo 5 will finally be released less than 24 hours from now, after many years in development. We've already seen the game's graphical prowess and I suspect that this, along with the sheer scale of the game (which will make the review process tricky) will ensure that early reviews are filled with burbling praise.

Now, I'm greatly looking forward to the release of GT5 and will be picking up my pre-order on the way into work tomorrow, but I'm by no means prepared to lavish praise upon it in areas where it may not be merited. Indeed, the sheer length of the game's development time, as well as the deeply poor GT5: Prologue have me in a suspicious frame of mind and there will be a number of things I will be looking out for.

The areas where I'll be focussing my attention are:

1) The racing experience: this is an absolutely fundamental aspect of the game and I've been worried that there's been a near total absence of coverage of this. The game can have stunning graphics and as many cars as it wants, but if the actual racing isn't up to scratch, then most players will ultimately end up underwhelmed.

GT5: Prologue was significantly behind the competition in this area in a number of respects (as was Gran Turismo on the PSP). The most important areas were damage modelling, artificial intelligence, difficulty scaling and event design. In every single one of these areas, Forza Motorsport 3 performs significantly better than GT5: Prologue.

Now, of course, GT5: Prologue was released quite some time ago and we can expect the game to have moved on since then. We know that damage modelling is in GT5, which is an extremely good thing. Proper damage modelling encourages proper racing, in both singleplayer and multiplayer, as opposed to the game of high-speed dodgems that previous GT games have tended to become. So in this specific area, it's clear that the racing experience has been improved.

I've not seen or heard anything about AI, though, and this does worry me. The opponent AI in GT5: Prologue and GT:PSP is woeful compared to that in many competitors. Opponents in Forza 3 and Grid actually race against the player. They will block the player, put pressure on him when chasing him, and even, on occasion, make serious mistakes that send them spinning off the track. Throughout the entire history of the GT series, AI opponents have never done anything other than drive around a pre-determined racing line, largely ignoring the player (until they crash into him). The first thing I'll want to see from GT5 is a more convincing sense that my AI controlled opponents are actually racing against me.

Difficulty scaling has become more advanced in a number of ways over the years. The biggest (and best) innovation has been the "rewind" button, which allows players to zap back in time to before they made a major mistake. This was pioneered by Grid, but has shown up in the Dirt series, as well as in Forza 3. In a genre that tends to eschew quicksaves, the rewind feature has been a huge frustration reliever, particularly once players get into races which can last 30 minutes or longer. I will be expecting to see one of these in GT5 and will be seriously unhappy if it isn't there.

I'd also like to see more thought put into the toggleable driver assists. One of the great things about Forza 3 was that you could toggle any number of assists on and off. While this has some singleplayer value, its main use was in balancing multiplayer matchups, allowing for players of wildly different skill and experience levels to have competitive matches in head to head multiplayer. When you have a bunch of friends or family gathered around a console, this is a huge bonus. In fairness, previous GT games have not been bad in this respect, but there is certainly more that could be done in GT5.

Event design is a tricky one. Of course, one of the great joys of the whole GT5/Forza genre of racing sims lies in collecting new cars and tuning them to optimise their performance. However, it has been relatively easy in previous GT games to tune a car to the point where it becomes effectively unbeatable in many of the events. The Performance Index system pioneered by Forza went a long way towards countering this and it would be nice to see GT5 also putting some thought into this area (even if it doesn't come to the same solution).

2) The game's sound. First things first, some major kudos to GT5 for becoming the first major PS3 title to allow for custom soundtracks. This has been common in Xbox and 360 games for years, but I've never come across it before on a Sony platform. Custom soundtracks are a huge bonus in a game like this.

But I was very disappointed by the sound quality in GT5: Prologue. While engine sounds were fine, the game still seemed to be using a single "tyre screech" sound, which sounds frankly inappropriate in many of the cars in the game. Sound is a vital part of a high end racing game and listening to your tyres can be a vital tool for working out just how card you can push a car in a corner. This is an area that I hope has had a lot more attention since GT5: Prologue.

3) Career mode: The Gran Turismo series essentially pioneered its particular variety of career mode and it is a model that many competitors such as Forza have imitated over the years. However, pioneering though it was, the old GT4 career mode is looking a bit dated now.

It's interesting that none of GT's competitors have ever seen fit to mimic the licence tests. There's a good reason for this; while the licence tests may have value as an optional extra, as a core part of the career mode, they have never been anything but tedium and frustration. Requiring licences to enter events should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

I'd also like to see GT5 moving towards the Forza 3 model of not locking cars away behind arbitrary requirements, but having them all purchasable (and usable in arcade mode) from the moment the player first loads up the game. Not only does this allow the player more leeway to develop his garage, but it's a welcome feature for multiplayer sessions.

Anyway, those are a few of the things that I'm hoping to see in GT5. These mostly reflect advances that have been made elsewhere within the genre. If Polyphony have any sense, they will have been looking at their competitors and taking notes. If they haven't... their game will have suffered as a result.