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.

I've played a lot more New Vegas since my last journal entry on the subject and, as I have quite a bit more to say now, not least in terms of revisions to my earlier comments, I thought I'd do an update.

I finished my first playthrough in around 36 hours. This was not a completionist playthrough; in fact, the faction-based nature of New Vegas's storyline makes it impossible to do one of those on a single playthrough. But after about 34 hours, I'd hit the level cap and I'd explored around 2/3rds of the locations on my world map. I felt that it was time for my first character's journey to end, so I went and did the final mission sequence. I'll revisit the game at some point in the not too distant future, with a different character, but I can't imagine that this will lead to any fundamental changes in my views on the game.

I'll start by discussing the bugs, since I've mentioned these elsewhere in slashdot discussions. At the time I wrote my "first thoughts" journal entry on New Vegas, I had not hit any serious bugs, other than a few enemies that sunk half way into the ground. However, at the time I wrote that entry, I'd only just reached the city of New Vegas itself. Sadly, moving around that city is not, at present, a smooth experience. Several areas seem prone to causing a crash to desktop, while others have more extreme versions of the performance issues found elsewhere in the game. I also suffered some quest glitches as I got further into the game, most of which only cost me a few seconds, as I reverting to a quicksave fixed them. Another, however, required me to go back to a "proper" save that was about 45 minutes old. This isn't to say that New Vegas is unplayable, but it is to say that playing it in its current state will require frequent quicksaves, as well as proper use of the "normal" save slots. This is of particular importance in the city of New Vegas itself.

Bugs aside, my first playthrough was extremely impressive. There is a huge amount of exploration possible within the game, and to be honest, that wasn't even starting to get old after 35 hours. There's a better variety of locations to explore than in Fallout 3 as well; almost every building has some kind of story to it. The second half of my playthrough introduced some more substantial quests as well. For the most part, these were great. It's interesting to spend a while working with one faction, then see how that has influenced the reaction of other factions to you. There's also good variety in the quests, ranging from bug-hunts to diplomatic missions to underwater salvage operations. That said, a few of the quest-lines did seem to involve rather too much fast-travelling between two NPCs in different parts of the world, so that they could hold a conversation by proxy. This was particularly frustrating with some of the quest lines in New Vegas itself, as you can only fast-travel to the outer perimeter of the city, often leaving a substantial walk and several loading screens at the other end. The Brotherhood of Steel bunker was similarly frustrating and my heart sank whenever I had to go there.

Combat gets a lot more fun as you get further into the game. As with Fallout 3, battles can feel frustrating and imprecise early on, when you only have low weapon skills. Later in the game, I found that the exact same weapons I'd been using in the first few hours had transformed from virtual feather-dusters into lethal killing machines. The new weapon categorisations make much more sense than Fallout 3's. Not having all of the heavy weapons lumped together under a single skill is a great incentive to actually use them. With the flamethrower now ranked as an energy weapon, I was able to use it far more extensively than I ever did in Fallout 3. Moreover, as your character's skills increase, you'll find yourself less reliant upon VATS in combat. Indeed, there were plenty of times, particularly when sniping, that I found myself being far more effective with manual aiming than with VATS.

This is supported by a few other balance changes since Fallout 3. The older game had an initial level cap of 20, which was later raised to 30 via DLC. New Vegas starts with a level cap of 30, but balances things very differently. The level 21-30 perks in Fallout 3 were unbelievably good and could transform a character into an unstoppable killing machine, albeit one who was utterly dependant upon VATS. New Vegas only lets you take a perk every 2 levels (though skills increase every level) and the high level perks are far more restrained than those in Fallout 3. Perks that boost VATS usage, in particular, have had a strong whack from the nerf-bat.

In my first thoughts post, I criticised the game's implementation of companions. On reflection, this was unfair. If you spend some time setting up your companions' behaviour via the companion wheel, then they become far more useful. Of course, some of the companions are more useful than others and it didn't help that the first one I came across was one of the worst. It's certainly worth keeping two companions with you in New Vegas, not least because of the quests they can initiate. One of my favorite side-quests - and one that related to the final battle - was given by one of my companions. I particularly like the fact that you can now send unwanted companions to your player-housing, where they will wait for your return. Checking their inventory is still a royal pain in the backside, unfortunately.

Various other aspects of New Vegas don't reveal themselves properly until later in the game. The new crafting system, while available right from the start, probably won't be useful to most players until they're 20 or so hours into the game, due to the scarcity of parts in the early sections. Weapons modification, likewise, is a fun addition to the game but one which probably won't come onto its own until you are quite a long way through the game.

Finally, the overall storyline does pick up somewhat. I chose to follow the NCR-ending on my first playthrough and there is some reasonable tension in the concluding sections of that storyline. However, I stand by my original assessment that New Vegas lacks a touch of Fallout 3's storytelling power.

Since the unveiling of Gran Turismo 5's car list at the end of last week, I've been a bit unkind about the overall variety of cars on the list. I've since decided to go look at the evidence, and do a proper comparison of GT5's car list with that of its main competitor, Forza Motorsport 3. For reference, GT5 boasts a car list of over 1,000 cars, while Forza 3's Ultimate Edition (or the original game in its fully DLCed-up incarnation) is in the region of 500. However, the sheer length of the list is largely meaningless, if the list is mostly variants upon a small number of themes.

What I've therefore done is look at this on a manufacturer basis, looking which manufacturers are in one game but not the other. This is complicated a little by the fact that GT games tend to include large numbers of tuning shops, which do not produce their own cars but rather modify other people's. Forza 3 compensates for this through its tuning options, painting facility and marketplace, which allow for extensive performance tuning and visual modification of cars. For this reason, I've marked tuning shops on the lists with a *. I've also acknowledged that we have an out-of-box GT5 here competing with an Ultimate Edition of Forza 3. While I think that GT5's epic development time makes the inclusion of Forza's extra cars fair game, I have, for accuracy's sake, marked Forza's DLC/Ultimate only manufacturers with an &. I've ignored the Polyphony Digital original designs on the basis that, well, they're not real cars.

Manufactuers in Gran Turismo 5, but not in Forza 3:

AC Cars*
AEM*
Alpine
Amuse*
Art Morrison*
Autobacs*
Blitz*
Caterham
Callaway
Cizeta
Daihatsu
DMC
Dome
Eagle
Gillet
Ginetta
HKS*
Hommell
HPA*
Isuzu
Jay Leno
Jensen
Lister
Marcos
Mercury
MG
Mine's*
Mugen*
NISMO*
Opera*
Oullim
Pescarolo*
Plymouth
RE Amemiya*
RUF* (see note)
Spoon*
Suzuki
Tesla
Tommy Kaira
Tom's*
TRD*
Trial*
Triumph

(Note: RUF is a tuning shop, but it modifies Porsches. Hence this is a sort-of back door way of getting Porsche's into GT5.)

Manufacturers in Forza 3, but not in Gran Turismo 5:

Bertone* &
Devon &
Gumpert &
Joss &
Kia &
Koenisegg
Land Rover
Morgan &
Mosler &
Porsche
Radical &
Rossion &
Saab
Saturn
Spada &
Weismann &

So what conclusions can we draw from this? At first glance, it looks like GT5 wins hands down; its list is several times longer. However, that's being seriously padded by a large number of tuning shops. Knock the tuning shops (apart from RUF) out of the list and it becomes 25 exclusives for GT5 vs 15 for Forza 3, which is a rather more even match. So next, we need to look at who is on the remaining list.

GT5's remaining exclusives are an eclectic bunch. There are lots of now-defunct vintage manufacturers with some really interesting cars. The really large, well known manufactuers are Daihatsu, Plymouth and Suzuki. There are also a couple of interesting oddities such as Tesla. Over on Forza 3's side, the most striking exclusives have got to be Koenisegg, Land Rover, Porsche and Saab. Most of the other exclusives are relatively obscure but highly modern supercar manufactuerers.

So where does that leave us overall? Well, both games have some surprising omissions which mean that neither can truly claim to be comprehensive. It's difficult to see how GT5 can claim to be the definitive driving sim when it's missing Koenisegg and Porsche. At the same time, Forza 3's omission of Suzuki looks extremely strange. Beyond that, it's clear that the focus is different. GT5 focusses on Japanese tuning cars and classic European cars, while Forza 3 has the emphasis more firmly upon modern supercars, regardless of their origin.

Where's the bug tracker for Slashdot? I'd like to be able to file bugs and feature requests.

Bugs:

1. Link to posting journals is difficult to find. At one time, it was nearly impossible to click, because it was part of a page footer that retreated every time you got near it. (The page body was getting filled with more content as one got closer to the bottom.)
2. List of all my old Journal Entries is difficult to find without already knowing the URL.
3. Enable SSL by default
4. Enable "Public Terminal" checkbox by default, or replace with a "Remember me" checkbox like everyone else has.
5. For some reason, <ul></ul> doesn't work, and I had to switch these lists to <ol></ol>

Feature requests:

1. Offer an explicit programmatic API for managing my user settings, so I can crosspost my blogs to my /. journal, and my 'microblog' statuses to my /. signature.
2. Support conveniently tying my account to major single-sign-on providers who use OpenID and OAuth. Most places will allow me to click a nice, big icon to automate filling in the needed details.
3. Support post convenience features most other social networking sites (hey, remember zoo.pl? You were one of the first social networks on the market.) such as post-by-email, importing/exporting posts from/to some other popular sites/common APIs.

While some of the bugs have been fixed already, it'd have been a lot less grating if there was a good, visible way to report them and follow them as they got fixed.

I've had Fallout: New Vegas for about a week now and thought it worth typing up some early thoughts on the game. I say "early thoughts" as, despite having put about 16 hours into the game so far, I don't really feel like I've explored much of its content. I clocked up over 100 hours with Fallout 3, including time spend with its 5 downloadable content packs, and I can see that New Vegas has the potential to generate similar play-times. So this is not a review; I wouldn't want to try to put a score to the game until I've completed it. Rather, it's a summary of what you can expect to find in the early stages of the game. This is all based on the PC version.

On many levels, not much has changed since Fallout 3. The game is still running on the same (slightly dated) technology and the interface is almost entirely unchanged. If you played Fallout 3, then you'll be instantly familiar with the basic concepts of the game and will be able to move right on to exploring the new features. If Fallout 3 passed you by, then you've probably got a fairly steep learning curve, as not only do you have all of the systems and mechanics that gave the first game its depth to get used to, but you've also got the new reputation and crafting systems to pick up at the same time.

That said, in some respects, New Vegas is a much more newbie-friendly game than Fallout 3. My defining memory of my first 12 or so hours of Fallout 3 is of creeping around with a 9mm pistol with 3 rounds, a broken laser pistol and a single frag grenade. The game could be harsh in its early stages, until you managed to acquire some decent guns and enough caps (the game's currency) to keep yourself provided with ammunition and stimpacks. This situation could be avoided if you had the Operation: Anchorage downloadable content pack, which gave a nice easy method of acquiring a substantial arsenal almost as soon as you left Vault 101, but I suspect that most first-time players won't have had the benefit of that. New Vegas allows you to skip this stage entirely, which may disappoint a few hardcore players, but is probably a welcome relief to the majority. The game's tutorial stages give you a couple of decent starter guns and a fair-sized stock of ammunition. Coupled with an abundance of easy quests in the introductory areas, this should mean that most players will manage to bypass the subsistence phase and get cracking with the rest of the game.

I regard this as a good thing, on balance, because not having to think carefully before you use every single bullet or stimpack removes a huge barrier to exploration. At the same time, the increasing challenge presented by the threats you encounter as you move away from the starter down is a good incentive to hunt through every last ruin for supplies. One of the most enjoyable moments of my time with the game so far came when I carefully picked my way through a plot-unrelated building protected by potentially dangerous sentry robots, picking locks and hacking security systems, in the hope of finding some nice new gear. At the end of my exploration, I came across a unique gun that far exceeded anything I had hoped to find and which instantly became the centrepiece of my arsenal. It felt like the risks I'd taken in going off the beaten track had paid off extremely well. Not every such exploration is as profitable, which is also a positive; you don't go into every little detour with the expectation of epic loot. Inquisitiveness can sometimes backfire, but the risks still feel worth taking.

Going off-plot and exploring is by far the most enjoyable aspect of the game. It's great to stumble across a new town and spend a few hours helping the inhabitants with their problems (or, depending on your faction alignment, just killing them all and looting their homes). The Vegas Strip and the Mojave Desert are far more densely populated than Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland. In places, the world of New Vegas starts to feel almost civilised; this is a world which has started to pick itself up properly following a nuclear war that is fast fading into history. In some ways, it verges on being post-post-apocalypse fiction. That isn't to say that there isn't barbarity; some of the factions in the game have a brutal streak that surpasses anything we saw from the Enclave in Fallout 3.

Sadly, the main plot does not, so far, feel as though it's really doing justice to the game-world. It's lucky that the exploration and side-questing aspects of the game are so good, because I'm finding it very difficult to care about Courier Number 6 or the platinum poker chip he's hunting. I know that Fallout traditionalists objected to Fallout 3's plot, but I personally thought it carried itself off pretty well. It's hard to define where New Vegas falls short in this respect, but I think ultimately, it's missing some of the gravitas of its predecessor. It's not just that New Vegas doesn't go around quoting Revelations 21:6 at you. It's more that the game takes an awfully long time to reveal why your character's mission actually matters. Maybe it will do so eventually, but it hasn't done so yet.

There are other niggles as well. While the dialogue throws up occasional gems, a lot of it comes over extremely flat. With a few honorable exceptions, most of the NPCs you encounter just feel like ciphers for their faction. Don't go into this game expecting the kind of wit and flair you'd find in a Bioware game. Despite some attempts to tidy it up, the companion system still feels uncomfortable. The new "companion wheel" interface helps with orders a bit, but the AI for your companions is still shockingly bad. After a few hours, I dismissed my companion and went back to solo-exploration. Inventory management is still irritating, and is one of the few areas where the game gives away the fact that it was also developed for consoles.

It should be noted that the game has been plagued by bug reports since its launch. I've run into a couple of very minor bugs. A couple of enemies sank up to their knees into the ground at one point, although it didn't stop them from attacking me or me from being able to fight back. The game does occasionally throw up some unexplainable slow-down. My system is far in excess of the recommended specs and never had the slightest problem with Fallout 3, so I'm at a loss to explain this. It's rare, though, and seems to be quite random.

On the plus side, combat feels greatly improved since Fallout 3. The gap between normal combat and VATS combat seems to have been narrowed somewhat, so you don't get the same feeling of being completely ineffective when you don't have the AP to use VATS. Stealth feels better implemented and much more consistent. And the new range of weapons is great, as is the option to modify them.

In conclusion... so far so good. While I do have some minor criticisms, these are pretty thin when set against the sheer awesomeness of the game's exploration elements.

In the last week or two links to external sites on Slashdot generally don't seem to work unless I click several times. This only appears to happen on Firefox... Chrome is unaffected. I haven't tried IE, Safari, or any other browser. Finally fed up with it, I decided to look through the javascript to see if there was anything funky going on. Looks like there's a script being included from leads.demandbase.com that defines some kind of click tracker. Here's a snippet:

• else if(a[i].className.match(/clicky_log_outbound/i)){clicky.add_event(a[i],"mousedown",clicky.outbound);}else{clicky.add_event(a[i],"mousedown",clicky.click);

So if you find you've oddly had to click a few times to RTFA, it's not your mouse button dying. Open up adblock and disable everything from leads.demandbase.com and it will be fixed. Links clicked once in Firefox will properly load as they used to. Thanks Slashdot for using an external company for tracking my click behavior. Though perhaps implementing this poorly is Taco's way of giving us a heads-up. Much like the "Idle" section, his overlords may have mandated the addition of this awesomeness to the site and by making it break it alerts us to what we need to block. In which case, a non-sarcastic thanks is due.

I also found this wonderful gem:

• function pageload_done( $, console, maybe ){
          pageload.after_readycode = (new Date).getTime();
          pageload.content_ready_time = pageload.content_ready - pageload.before_content;
          pageload.script_ready_time = pageload.after_readycode - pageload.content_ready;
          pageload.ready_time = pageload.after_readycode - pageload.before_content; // Only report 1% of cases.
          maybe || (Math.random()>0.01) || $.ajax({ data: {
                  op: 'page_profile',
                  pagemark: pageload.pagemark,
                  dom: pageload.content_ready_time,
                  js: pageload.script_ready_time
          } });
  }

Unless my javascript is really rusty, won't this report 99% of cases?

Anyway, pass this information on so everyone can RTFA without the hassle.

Today, I realized I hadn't told you guys I'm engaged.

I went to tell you, and found Slashdot journals down. I figured they didn't care, but turns out it was brought back up.

Anyway, yeah, I'm engaged to a lovely, smart and funny gal who was already into Linux and tabletop roleplaying when I ran into her. May 20th, 2012.

Not bad for a guy who spent his formative years on Slashdot.