Deadlight

Dark, foreboding, foggy. This is about as bright and promising at the game is going to get.

The platformer. An often overlooked genre of gaming these days with the big budget licenses out there seemingly opting for more and more use of the First Person Shooter, or that over-the-shoulder Third Person perspective given to games like Gears of War, Silent Hill, Resident Evil 4 (and onwards). Yet the platformer seems to be running in the background along its 2D plane and gathering focus from smaller developers that are taking it into this bullshit term "2.5D" which means nothing. The games are 3D in many cases but the control is suited to the 2D plane. Games of this ilk have been made ever since Quake was adapted and modifiable into a Total Conversion. Rather fittingly, it seems, that Deadlight has taken the Unreal Engine and done the same thing.

No... I didn't make this jump as I was too focused on taking the picture. Looks nice though.

Deadlight, takes the "2.5D" (sod it, it's a platformer, let's leave it at that) and gives us a back-story, a setting and a form of play not unlike Prince of Persia (the ORIGINAL) or Limbo. You're a survivor in 1986 where there's been an outbreak of a disease that causes blackening of the whole body and bright lights to appear in your eyes, while also removing higher brain function and has the patients wandering around infecting others with bites and clubbing/clawing them to death if they won't succumb to the munchies. So yes, it's a zombie affair.

Death, incidentally Randy has the amazing ability to drown faster than most people can hold their breath, let alone choke.

We're introduced to Randy, our husky-voiced protagonist while he's blowing out someone's brains and then telling his fellow survivors to run for it before the shadowy zombies turn up. Which they do, breaking the ladder on their way out, which nicely shoehorns us into the "lone survivor searching to reunite" story through a wrecked and bashed up Seattle. Add into this the dilemma of hallucinations, bad dreams and whether or not Randy will find his wife, daughter and friends, and we've got ourselves all our motivation and reasoning for running, jumping, rolling, shooting, axing and dying through the burning backdrops of Seattle, apparently, I cannot vouch for historical accuracy or landmarks and given it's an alternative history for 1986, it pretty much gives the level designers carte blanche on creativity.

Cutscenes are shown in a very impressive "moving comic" fashion. The design and execution fitting in aptly with the overall setting of the game.

But creativity is certainly the focus. The entirety of Deadlight looks wonderful with its dark and bleak tones, the sense of gloom and despair almost so thick you can cut it with an axe. Everything looks rancid, rotten and ruined from the warehouses and homes to the sewers, subways and hospitals. There is very little that looks positive in this game and when the flashbacks happen, showing times before the end of the world has happened, the game looks overly fake. Whether this is because it's trying to ham up the 1970's view of hot apple pie on windows and every man in a suit and hat returning home saying "Hi honey, I'm home" to the 2.4 children nuclear household, is up for debate.

Another wonderful use of the 3rd dimension interacting with this plane of existence. Namely by a helicopter and machinegun trying to add to your problems.

Deadlight plays very much like Prince of Persia, Flashback and Limbo. You've your main character, he can run, jump, climb, wall-jump, duck, roll, axe, pistol and slingshot (contextual puzzles, trust me) his way out of most difficulties while also having to navigate around and over most of the enemies. It's highly unlikely you'll kill everything, in fact in some situations there are infinite enemies hiding around the corner in the background waiting for you at key points. It's an odd situation, since some of the set pieces will require you to kill 2-3 enemies, some will require you to fend them off until you can escape and others are simply that you have to outrun, out-maneouveur and outwit the shadow zombies. This can be from summoning them to you and watching them go swan-dive off a cliff, drop things on them, have them walk through electrified flooring, push them into machine-gun fire coming from the background and a whole host of other ways to dispatch them.

Brief moments of quiet are often accompanied by rather exquisite detail showing the dilapidation of the surroundings and structures.

You've got your health, which can be upgraded, your stamina which also can be upgraded but there's no puzzle in this game that requires the use of more stamina. If anything it just gives you a little extra breathing time between one awkward jump and another, they're often hidden in very out of the way places that most people wouldn't consider or stop to explore given their hidden nature. Jumps need to be made to places that don't look like they'd support Randy landing upon them, or alternative routes found in the middle of speed puzzles that require fast dexterous reflexes and reactions or they'd die before reaching the end and have to start over.

The axe. Nothing really more needs to be said.

Speaking of which, the game is fairly forgiving. Dying at any point only really puts you back barely a screen's worth unless it's one of those ongoing, lots of things to avoid, puzzles. Like running away from helicopter gunships, or escaping from a collapsing building. Speaking of which...

It's not an easy thing to navigate through but by the time you're here, you'll have mastered most of the moves and can throw it all together almost flawlessly. Though what is a shame, is the fact that you won't have much time to master everything and use it, for the game is over in around 3 or so hours. Perhaps the sign of a good game, perhaps not, but when you're seeking to enjoy a game and it leaves you wanting more, you can always replay it but there's little scope for alternative solutions to situations.

There's often a way for players to kill the Shadows by using the environment.

Herein lies the problem. It's a lovely game, there's no two ways about that, it's very well thought out and fantastically executed in showcasing a dark and foreboding environment but there are, as almost always, issues with the game itself. In particular in this case the control system. There's something counter-intuitive about the layout of the buttons that leads you using the triggers and shoulder buttons in what isn't apparent to be a sensible manner at the time and the causes of death will be simply, hitting the wrong button at the wrong time or the right button but only after you ran a self-diagnostic check on your muscles and synapses. Occasionally there is the issue that the game won't let you jump a specific direction in time and combat with the shadows can be rather hit and miss where you'll be dependent upon scoring a knock-down but find yourself running out of stamina before it falls so you can run past it.

Though in some cases it's quicker to run past them by running through and jumping.

Rooms like this are often a puzzle in themselves. Here you can fight the Shadows and run the risk of death, or use the environment to skip around them.

In some cases the game also acts rather unfairly and expects you to play via trial and improvement. Deliberately goading the player into causes a mistake to happen, punishing them with death and then handing them back the controller as if to say "Go on, try again, next time you get a slap". Not exactly the most rewarding way of playing a game, while succeeding the first time through a trap or level will leave the player feeling unsatisfied at the prospect and idea that they've rushed through and likely missed something or some such trinket and item.

"Oi dead guys!" and watch them go haplessly to their deaths.

Thankfully, the game, for the 100% completionists, will let you replay previous chapters and scenes of the story in order to gain all of the diary pages, memories for Randy's stock book and even old-style LCD video game controllers with jokes taken aimed at Monkey Punch animes, Chthulu Mythos and Guitar Hero as if done via Tiger Handheld machines. It's a cute little throwback and nod to the older days of gaming and thankfully more fun than the actual handhelds were.... Except the Turtles one, that was quite fun.

If you can see a vent or alternative route to the one you're currently on, you can pretty much guess you'll be taking it at some point

Overall a fun romp, punctuated with comic-styled cut scenes between levels and scenes, marred by gameplay hiccups, brevity and a slight dependence upon trial-and-improvement development to passing through the levels and scenes. That aside, it's certainly a game worth playing at least once all the way through, particularly if, like me, you enjoy the scopes and imagination behind apocalyptic worlds and visualisations, in all their horrid splendour.

The hazards come thick and fast, numerous too in their approach. This helicopter providing the infamous "Scrolling wall of death" following you across the rooftops.

And you get a fire axe!

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic.

It's a name nowadays that conjures up mixed feelings and emotions, all depending upon how old someone is and how well versed they are with the long series of games this little blue mammal. If you take a look at the more recent games, some will say that there's been relative success in capturing the fun back into the games with titles such as Sonic Unleashed and Sonic 4, though this is a point of contention amongst the extremely jaded and divided fan-base.

With which, I entirely sympathise. A series they've grown to love over the decades is being systematically fucked up beyond all recognition (yes, FUBAR'd) by rushed deadlines, cut corners and lack of decent quality control and testing which is being acted upon in post-development. Seems a lot of games have that little issue, they're tested and found to have faults but nobody is rectifying this stuff as it's the bottom dollar the company bigwigs are really interested in. But I'm not going down that particular route today.

I could go on about whether or not the Sonic games for Dreamcast and GameCube were any good or not, I may even review them at a later date. But for now we're going back to the Megadrive (...Genesis) and looking at the first outing by our 23 year old cerulean spiked one. (and let's get the giggles out of the system now before I start to mention Blast Processing... who the hell came up with that one needs to be given an award for having the balls to make that up then shot for being a prick)

Mr Needlemouse (look it up), lives in a wonderfully designed and colourful world where naturally growing and occurring loops, spins and corkscrews are common everyday happen place events. In this saccharine world however, is a royally fat-fuck asshat called Dr Robotnik (No, not Eggman, we don't talk about that in this game and that term wasn't coined for many a year) who was formerly Dr Ivo Kintobor and in some instances of back-story, helped Sonic to develop his speed and blueness through experimentation of a friendly sort. See kids, animal testing can be a positive thing! (This reviewer does not condone animal testing of any kind, except testing how many government politicians it takes to slake a carnivorous animal of its bloodlust)

The mean old naughty bad-man, Dr Robotnik, decided it would be a good idea to turn all the cute little animals in the land into robots. He also decided he'd take the Chaos Emeralds (of which just ONE is actually emerald coloured, must be some genetic testing by-product thing) so he can do more naughty things. Cue our cobalt coloured hero deciding that after many MANY robots have been made, that this cannot be allowed to continue and our journey begins in the first level where we, as players, basically run right. There may be some jumping and rolling at times, the occasional boss every 3rd stage of a level and a few bonus levels if you're great at collecting coins... I mean rings.

That's the game in a shell of nuts.

There's a lot to be said in the game for the fast flowing pace of the main character gradually building up speed, pressing down to roll and then sending our azure ball of spikes racing through ramps, loop-de-loops and soaring sky high on springs and bouncing things. The game belts along at an almost breathtaking pace that eventually becomes a test of "how fast can the game scroll through its own levels" rather than actually playing the game. Occasionally you may have to WALK somewhere back and forth and in some of the levels there's a considerably slower pace being forced upon the player with the whole "jumping onto platforms and being slowly, SLOWLY, moved across lava safely". Although, with this being the first game, there's some leeway in arguing that the designers may not have been sure as to what kind of game they were producing at this point.

Because this is the first game, there's no spin-dash move. That wonderfully typical, nay, ESSENTIAL technique in the second game onwards that allows you to build up speed while being motionless before racing off going from 0-60mph before you can say internal-organ-rupturing. So when you're faced with a ramp leading upwards and you're not going fast enough to clear it, you'll have to run back and try again with more momentum built up so that you can clear the ramp. It becomes a rather annoying point when you especially lack the speed and jumping height to simply hop over the ramp and instead start bouncing back and forth like a bus full of kids after all the passengers were given energy drinks for breakfast.

You still get the pre-requisite power-ups though. A shield to help you tank a hit of damage, any and every ring you pick up will allow you to take a hit of damage and drop all the rings, so having one ring at any time will save you from death unless that death is being crushed, landing on spikes and bouncing onto MORE spikes (mercy invincibility does NOT work on spikes) or falling off the bottom of the level, will kill you outright. Speedy shoes for moving EVEN faster and seeing even less of the level while you race through it quicker than Jessie Owen doing a victory lap through Berlin. Other power ups include extra lives and more rings as well as the invincibility effect that negates spikes but not being crushed or falling off the game.

Getting to the end of a level with more than 50 rings gives you the opportunity (unless there's a boss) to jump up into the giant ring, which will magically take you to a bonus round. Where you get the opportunity to navigate as a jumping ball through a constantly rotating maze with psychedelic backgrounds and hopefully attain either enough rings to achieve a continue, or get the Chaos Emerald hidden within the core of the level, before being dropped out by hitting a "goal" icon. Getting all of them nets you the lovely "good ending" where you make the science fat man cry and your character does something mildly impressive; walking left for a bit by himself.

Each level in the game usually has multiple ways of getting through the level, taking higher or lower routes depending upon how quickly you can leap up to various heights and land on outcrops rather than not, each route having its own share of tricks and traps to navigate while fighting off various enemies (there's usually 2-3 types of enemy per level) and the bosses which have a small level of ingenuity behind them not seen until the 3rd game and cross over with Sonic/Knuckles cart. Hit the boss 8 times to win, and then free all the collected furry friends from the large metal ball.

Variety between levels is diverse, but with this comes a lack of cohesion. One level has you running through the lush green (and mathematically formulaic) setting of the Green Hill zone, before turning up to lava and underground purples of Marble Hill with no real indication of whether it's simply a few steps away or there's been a long travel from one to the other filled with multiple hardships and angst on the part of our main character overcoming his doubt and self-loathing to see his way through towards taking up the responsibility of defending the land in which he inhabits.

No, you just turn up.

I've deliberately ignored one aspect of this game until now. Take the game as it is, bright, colourful, full of fluid motion and fast game play (when you get a decent run up) and then go a little further into the wonderful land of Labyrinth Zone. And already I can hear some people reading this and groaning in the dawning realisation of where I'm going with this. It's a simple enough set of levels where you'll face off against a few enemies which pose little threat but then the big threat is the water. Sonic can drown here and you'll get a few light warnings to escape. When there's about 15 seconds to go you'll be treated to some of the most harrowing, terrifying and rather upsetting music akin to a sped up and high-octane version of Jaws, before the music stops and Sonic just drowns. Complete with count-down timer, which all induces high panic levels and lack of co-ordination until you get yourself to an air bubble, or jump back out of the water.

Allow me to reintroduce you to your own nightmares http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yw5jkAHgME with thanks to YouTube for hosting.

Now that I've ripped apart enough of people's childhood memories or introduced some people to a few new ones, I'll take my leave by departing with this little snippet. The game is not great, it never was. It served a purpose as a launch pad of mediocrity against poor competition and won many over with its speed and sacrificed actual game play mechanics to do it, repeated in later instalments with less control and more autonomy from the game. Given this game is missing some of the much needed improvements implemented in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, there's little to be said for this one save that it served a purpose, started something reasonably impressive but failed to deliver even back in the day. If you've never played it before, don't. If you have, go back and see just how far we've come by comparing it to Sonic 3 and/or Sonic and Knuckles and be thankful that someone decided to make the changes the first game needed.

Resident Evil 6

This game interests me on various levels. For a game with this much clout to it, I find it surprising but entirely unjustified that people are going in with attacks on its presentation; it changes and deviates from a supposedly socially-accepted norm for a genre that, as a series, it created itself; it has fallen into the 'marmite' selection of games where people either love it or hate it (and one or two spread it on toast). It also has zombies in it and other such fun monsters that need a royal arse kicking, preferably with a magnum or something more lethal.

In essence, we've 5 games in one based around various levels we get to see during the game. 3 games are the main story mode where you'll progress from A to B, killing the infected, undead, brown bread and done-up-like-a-kipper enemies that need more than just a smack in the mouth to fix and solve the situation of "how to get from living enemy to dead enemy" which has plagued almost every video game villain/opponent since day 1.

Control wise, it plays very much like a third person shooter in that "over the shoulder" view used within the series back with Resident Evil 4. Items and weapons are on two inventory wheels and the new addition to the system is the advent of health pills that can be popped in rapid succession for oneself or a downed partner to get them back in action more quickly. Weapons effectively remain with the characters the entire time rather than the inventory switching around used in RE5 between rounds, opting instead to have things bought through experience points gained including infinite ammo for each weapon type. It does take a short while to get used to the new system but feels a lot more intuitive than RE5 managed to make itself but not as efficient in its deliver as RE4 was when it adjusted to the 3rd person camera approach.

The first story is the campaign with Leon Kennedy and generic new face mcbreasty having shot the president in the head (after becoming a zombie, sadly) and taking the slowly building and suspenseful approach to a long build up to an actual zombie attack with the obligatory jump scares. The first run through of the first level takes elements from previous games and even self-references situations from the first game Leon was in, where in people are fighting through the streets against zombie infections. It takes roughly an hour or so to get from the start of the first level to the end of the first level and packs in so much that it would have been most of a game in its own right back in the mid-late 1990s.

Large building, check. Sewers, Check. City scapes, check. Meeting other survivors, check. Watching them get killed horrifically in nasty attacks as a result of their own stupidity, check. The only thing missing from the first level is the underground huge complex that turns up in level 2. Then we hit the plane in a rather jaunted fashion to China and blow up a dinosaur that sprouted out of a man and back again while juggling a forced little 3way situation between Leon, McBreasty and Ada Wong. Nobody really wins on that.

This particular game is set and based around gradual and slow builds towards the medium level enemies that result in being challenging, if only because of the lack of availability of higher power weapons, which can be seen in other sessions. The main focus is on the zombies as the slower and more predictable enemies and leaves for the game having a slower felt pace towards the general feel. Almost as if it's a "beginners" session for the game, and becomes a little jarring in the cross over sessions with the faster paced characters that have fought tougher opponents (i.e. the ones with real guns or can do instant-kill moves against our protagonists).

As a campaign, it feels more of a return to the original games (barring the helicopter/train crashes and huge monsters fighting around buildings with lightning strikes from the heavens. It's the big budget Hollywood special remake of the gritty original B-Movie, no cast, games.) If anything it feels like a subversion of the movie industry doing big money remakes of films and losing all the tact and subtlety of the original games. Most noted when the plane crashes in China, fire-balling everything out, spotting another character UPON a train, before walking out and meeting 2 other characters involved in the plot and fighting the big stalker monster of the game, before meeting the other characters in a fight then riding another train out while battling a giant monster.

After the 3rd act it goes WAY overboard compared to the first two acts that manage to build suspense and give a slow rolling inertia to the pace and setting of the game, then it goes all Michael Bay on us and loses its integrity. But still pretty to watch the CGI fireworks. It depends on your preference, yes the genre has changed from what it originally and occasionally dips into the Hollywood banding and because of the way CGI can be made, there's little limit on the excessiveness of what can be achieved.

Second story is the Modern Warfare take on the zombie invasion, with no zombies. Starting off instead in China with Chris Redfield, series staple rock punching hard case, and a new guy, Mr ArmyYoungDisposableMan who looks better on the cover of magazines advertising 'generic new man' specials. Following the two on a mission to rescue people while blowing up buildings and shooting idiots with spider like faces in masks that shoot back. Very little to do with zombies and almost entirely apart from Umbrella and other such previously established names and organisations. Yet this makes sense, we're DONE with Umbrella, and we're looking at the world wide view and other companies taking the remnants of Umbrella and making their own contraptions and creations/creatures. Going beyond Raccoon City and STARS to the BSAA and the world wide prevention of B.O.Ws and punching them out (if you're Chris at least).

The 2nd story runs a bit of the back-story showing the former group of soldiers with Chris and FreshFaceMan taking on small militias of enemy soldiers and giant monsters too large and impractical to develop and use in small skirmishes as overkill, and too large to use pretty much anywhere else as being too big and inviting tanks, choppers and planes to open fire on them.

This might be expected with the key players armed with machineguns, rifles and the more heavy duty weaponry and as such, get to have the fun time of taking on the greater number of enemies and the more gung-ho approach to the gaming, in their quest to find the villain that caused all the big problems in the flashback and turned Chris's team into a bunch of muppets with a few syringes in a grenade. (Yep... makes sense in ... never), before enjoying a pointlessly destructive fight with a giant snake, chases through cities against a sports car that would destroy the speed limit while in a Humvee. Attacking an aircraft carrier, attacking ANOTHER aircraft carrier with a Harrier, then going deep underwater to battle the big bad monster to end the world, and having a very long-winded battle against what is more accurately described as a translucent foetus.

Again, the story escalates from being pseudo realistic/appreciable, to becoming full on crazy-bullshit within a level and a half and never going back on that. It's a shame when the game forgets the situation that it has started upon and whether through the use of too large a department in making the game, or some people just not getting the right memo about consistency.

The third story starts off as possibly the more interesting of the 3 main games with the storyline being that Sherry Birkin (daughter of the great inventor/asshat, William Birkin) has gone the super powered healing route and now not under government surveillance, is allowed to roam free in working for the government to find and locate Jake (Wesker's son) whose blood holds the cure to the current virus outbreak. Basically, she needs him to come along and play nice, everyone else is not playing nice, so he's a ninja with speed and power moves while she's got a stun rod.

It basically sums up the start.

Through their story they get chased down by one HUGE son of a bitch that makes Nemesis look like a midget, with interchangeable guns and a cage. Most of their story is running from this guy or other indestructible creatures (like the creature with the chainsaw of flesh... yes...I said that) and fighting various troops or monsters. Or running from a tank, before they too end up underwater and fighting the big guy again in a fist fight brawl that apparently works despite spending the whole game and a 6month period of imprisonment, shooting him with Gatling guns, shotguns, explosives barrels, dropping buildings on him, ramming him with an industrial drill taken from Total Recall, dunking him in lava for yet ANOTHER return (instant bad guy, subtract legs) to the final magnum in the face.

There's an attempt to highlight how a bad guy can be money grubbing one moment, human the next and not having to be tied down to whomever his father was and how avenging death is not necessary when there's guys to shoot that explode into insects and various monsters that can worm wriggle their way back together and give you an Alien Chest burst death if they get close enough to kiss you. By the time the "story" comes about, you won't give two shits and you'll be busy running up combos that Bruce Lee would have called bullshit upon.

And that seems to be the biggest issue with the game. Part way through the story, plot and everything that has been built up, is thrown aside and destroyed by the urge to one-up itself in a poor display of disregarding everything previously established to show a wank-fest of explosions, big special effects and the like of which would have cost millions in a film. Which in itself is destroyed when things like this in the game DON'T cost that much to make. But with the emphasis on this supposed big-budget situation, atmosphere and plot are shoved aside and relegated to the back seat.

Given the game has that co-operative function, used again since the RE5 attempt, there's pros and cons to the involvement of other people. A good partner can aid the game and blitz through the system with remarkable ease and battling bosses can be made easier (depending upon the boss). The AI can have issues with trying to get back to yourself to get you picked up and healed, while another player will (usually) put it in higher priority. Though you could get some boneheaded player that will be walking around every situation and taking their sweet time and eventually fall into various traps over and over. While the AI won't do that. They could also fail Quick Time Events while the AI never does. The use of another player can speed things up with considerable difference to not using them, IF they know what they're doing.

At various points in the plot, the game will pause for approximately 60 seconds, at points where multiple characters intersect from other storylines, to find other players who are at that point as well. Case in point: After Leon and Busty McTitty crashes down from a jet-plane, they encounter Jake and Sherry and a fight kicks off with the giant Nemesis-Wannabe in a scrap yard where a double-decker bus is sitting. At this point, the game will try to connect with someone else playing the game, in the same point on the Jake and Sherry team, and combine the 4 together for the fight, including having a person from each pairing, having to combine forces in a Quick Time Event. Incidentally, anyone dying fails it for everyone. It's an interesting way of engineering this all together though the costs for failing are rather high where someone random is joining the game. This has everyone joining up with everyone else at least once (if the game permits this in the settings) with Jake and Sherry teaming up with Chris and NewbieSoliderMan three times during their respective campaigns.

This however does run nicely into the much more interesting aspect of the online mode where the game has bottle neck points of enemies attacking which can be populated by other players, playing as the monsters. Ranging from zombies (with an assortment of weapons) to dogs, lizard beasts, fly-people, worm-filled monsters, powered zombies, knife-wielding troopers, mutant crows, walking pustule bombs and armour-plated goliaths, all with the sole purpose of screwing up the players by attacking and hopefully killing the main heroes. You can respawn as many times as you want until they heroes leave that particular area.

In easy mode, it can be a real chore to batter someone down to the critical point and then deliver a killing blow, more frustrating when you do all the work and the AI makes the kill and even MORE frustrating when the other player quits like a pansy. A good team up with another player allows for 2 people to stalk and try to kill the hero player(s) and although only one of them can make the final kill, it's actually a very rewarding feeling when one of you distracts the player so your partner can sneak up behind them and deliver the killing blow.

Personal preference goes to the worm-filled skins that can effectively instant-kill someone if they grab a hold of them and then it becomes instant worm-face snogfest death. Hilarious and you know it's just pissed off someone else's day.

Other vs. modes include the mercenaries modes where players pick a character and try to survive and score as many points as they can within an arena until the time runs out or they kill everything, including the involvement of hidden bosses or super monsters such as fatty-boy zombies, lizards and a whole host of nasty pieces of work. Modes where you take control of the biggymonster of the game and try to kill everyone else within an allotted amount of time or playing a sort of vs. mode where the more monsters you kill, the more spawn in your opponents arenas. They're an interesting subset of the game and have a level of appeal but to be honest, I'd much rather have more of the Trolling Mode where you get to be the monsters. It's a lot more fun, in some cases more fun than the story mode, trying to hunt down and kill someone else and ruin their fun.

It's a very mixed bag for the game, it has good points, it has bad points, and it has terrible banging-skull-against-wall points. It can be appreciated if you can REALLY suspend your belief for some of the cut scenes but that's going quite a stretch for the game that already has the supposition that not only do zombies exist, but people are freely making monsters in competing companies/organisations. It's the attempt to make a move into a bigger and more expansive world within the Resident Evil franchise but it's taken in far too wrong a direction akin to the excessive sequalisation. If Resident Evil 1 is the same as Saw, then Resident Evil 6 is Saw with people lobbing nukes at each other while dropkicking helicopters of explosives towards Blue Whales. It's only really the name that's keeping the same and the use of a few characters from earlier instalments, but the game isn't the same.

Not to say it's a bad game, it's a responsive game, it's a good co-operative experience, it's a great trolling-session with the bad guy mode, but it is a bad addition to the established order of the franchise. It's the difference between Alien and Alien 3, some good ideas and most of the film done really well but very different over all in sense and feeling that the film tries to stay loyal to the roots but goes about it in such a convoluted way, that it misses the point it tries to make and might have fared better as a stand-alone experience rather than part of the series.

At the very last, naked breasty boss with tentacles for the shot gunning! Will the next game just have full on mutant porn?

Multiple: Far Cry Blood Dragon

Sometimes a game can take itself far too seriously. Sometimes a game strives to have itself believed and struggles at the yoke of reality wherein it sets up its own rules and tries ever so hard to keep to them as if this is the universe you're looking into through your window of screen/television. Sometimes games fail horrifically at the meagre standards these games set themselves and ultimately end up being just faded pastiches of themselves.

And then a game like Fry Cry: Blood Dragon comes along lampoons everything these games have tried to do but being so overblown, so overboard and cliché-spouting, meme riding, trope ridden infestations of pure awesome. Far Cry: Blood Dragon (FCBD from here on) is a game that takes the modern sandbox shooter, strips away most of the bullshit (what little is left is heavily made fun of within itself), pumps it full of the neo glory that was the late 80's and early 90's and just has fun with itself in a good way, not the creepy way YOU do each night. I've seen the footage on YouTube and you should be ashamed of yourself.

The premise is simple enough, you're a cyborg (85% cyborg, 15% man+) tasked to drop in on an island and stop the danger threatening the world. But even this is ridiculous beyond compare with the opening description being "It's 2007 and the Apocalypse has had an Apocalypse" you realise this game is just going to be silly about everything and you're going to be brought along for the ride. You're tasked with taking out the dangerous threat of your cyborg series creator while armed to the teeth with guns, bombs, grenades and all manner of fun laser based surprises. Upon reaching him, you're captured, stripped of weapons and thrown to the games' title-giver, the Blood Dragons (Think dinosaur that fires lasers from its eyes and you're on the right track). You now have to shut down the whole operation, stop the experiments, stop the monsters, save the day, kill the bad guys and get the girl.

It's as 80s action movie set in the future as you can get and it's just raw fun.

Virtually everything (even the display of the game looking like some neo-punk virtual cyberpunk punk, punk... no I lost my thread there... It looks neon!) looks like it belongs in some stereotypical neon night club of some seedy underground scene bathed in black lights. Guns get upgraded with more lights than Blackpool Tower and the idea of stealth is bullshit if you're walking around like a beacon of shining focus, but as long as you're quiet, it counts.

Nearly any iconic scene of any iconic movie is represented in some fashion or another in this game with references as long as my arm and back (no dick jokes there today... oh wait...) ranging from the helicopter intro in Predator, to Terminator's synth backing ambience (and voiced by Mr Michael "Got Killed By Terminator At The End But Fuck Wasn't I Bad Ass" Biehn which just adds to the 80's nostalgia as he recants lines from Abyss, Aliens, Terminator and so on.

The game also pokes fun at various other games such as forcing the player to sit through the mandatory "here is how to play the game" while your character moans and swears his way through it while the HUD actually takes the piss in other ways by telling you to "Press A to confirm you can read" before telling you in explicit detail which muscles to engage and biomes of the brain to activate to press the button again. While there are collectables in the game, you'll actually want to hear your character swearing at the futility of it all, VHS tapes referencing other films will leave you with clues to what they're supposed to represent.

There's a multitude of weapons in the game though you can only carry 4 or carry one of the heavier weapons like the minigun. Each gun is upgradable to higher and more powerful standards and each gun is a reference to something else. The pistol looks more at home as Robocop’s side arm, the shotgun called the Galleria 1991 referencing Terminator 2's year of production AND a location within the film highlighted by the T-1000's response to a group of kids. The sniper rifle is the Cobra Cannon from Robocop, montages taken from Operation Wolf and Commando. If you know the pop-culture of films and arcade games from 30 years back, you'll get most of the references and some of the more modern ones. I personally can't vouch for the Far Cry 3 references and as such, I can't make cross references here.

Your exploits will range from combating cyborg wildlife from snakes to large cats, all of which can be stalked and killed or taken down with quick time events if you let them grab hold/attack and in some cases HAVE to be done this way. Assaulting bases which double up as speed travelling locations of which you can rush in and butcher everyone, stealth your way through it all, drop the shield and welcome in the Blood Dragon (though you might have to kill it yourself later) giving you various methods of completing objectives and each base can give you specific side missions to complete for further upgrades to unlock, which is always positive to give you a reason to sidestep the main quest and do something else though pointless items like cash etc are best left alone in game design.

A lot of the current gens’ first person shooter restrictions are lifted here. Been a long time since I played a game with no fall damage, infinite sprinting, most of the special moves already unlocked etc. It makes for a welcome return BUT it does feel that there have been some corners cut on this one. There's no messing about with inventories, just grab the gun, get the ammo and shoot the hell out of whatever opponent approaches, or steal a jeep and drive off for a bit, hang gliding a while through canyons and avoid sharks. The action, like most 80s gun toting testosterone fuelled explosions fests of pure man balls of steel, doesn't let up from start to finish with the cheesiest plot line one could imagine and the cut scenes... 8bit graphics never looked so pornographic.

I won't spoil the big ending but I will say that it's well worth the effort to get there and pick up something B.A.D.A.S.S as opposed to avoiding something A.S.S.H.A.T earlier in the game.

It's not all glory and greatness though. It might be hard at times to actually get to the location you're trying to navigate to and ignore the random brawls between scientists and soldiers on the roads while the bigger dangers are running out of ammo in huge fights and forcing you to utilise stealth in a game almost exclusively geared towards firepower. A stealth element here is fairly out of place in this game and the mechanic behind it seems rather hit and miss at the best of times, particularly with rescue missions that require stealth and often becomes a case of rush in and kill everyone BEFORE (hopefully) they kill the target you're after.

The game does become repetitive when you're seeking to break down bases left and right for the bonus weapons and powers because taking on multiple Blood Dragons at the same time is deadly if you're not adequately equipped AND know their weak spots. So the side missions become essential to a point but once you're maxed out on levels and on equipments, you're a walking tank for the most part and even more so when you've got the ultimate weapon in the game, which looks like it's been stolen from Krull.

It is however a fun romp through nostalgia but without it, it's a simpler step in gaming where complications are removed and an entertaining, if more single-minded, game is put before us to enjoy.