I could explain what Mass Effect is and why its so great, but I'll let my giving Mass Effect 2 on PS3 and 360 a perfect 10 out of 10 score on my blog and my numerous playthroughs of the original stand for itself and jump right in to this blog post on my experience with the single player portion of the Mass Effect 3 demo on Xbox 360 (I got early access through some Facebook promo thing if you're wondering how and why I got it two days earlier on Xbox, or four days earlier for my region on PS3.)

Anyways, you start off and you're asked to customise your Shepard – male or female, facial features, class etcetera. This time however there's three options that are Action, Role-Playing and Story. I really didn't care much for what Action and Story were offering (a simplified experience by the looks of it, one that I wouldn't have cared for) so I choose Role-Playing because it promised full control over my dialogue choices and a “classic Mass Effect experience” or however they said “this is how you were always playing Mass Effect before”.

Anyway, the game starts, there's some pre-amble about the state of the universe, the Reaper's are coming to turn Earth into their little playground and surprise, surprise, the omnipotent killing machine Commander Shepard must be let out of his Alliance cell to turn the tables. You go for a walk with Anderson and a Marine named Vega who talk about, well, you, the universe, reapers, that sort of thing, and eventually bump into Ashley Williams (well, I did, if she kicked the bucket in your game then I guess Kaidan Alenko would have popped up and said...) something about once knowing Shepard... oh yeah, that's a reference to ME2 and his working with the radical pro-human splinter group Ceberus who brought him back to life after he did the ODST thing minus the pods that stop you from turning into mush. There's a bit where you meet with the head's of the Alliance military and shout at them for a bit then the Reaper's come and make Inception sounds and wreak havoc with their lasers.

So it's up to you and Anderson to run to an extraction point. On the way, you meet a kid who dies later (teary moment with sad evocative music playing) when the Reapers go bwaaah and blow up his evac shuttle with their laser. This bit's basically a teary combat tutorial where we see the pretty graphics being shown off by way of the Reaper's blowing some unknown part of Earth up where you get to fly away in a now Alliance coloured Normandy SR-2.

The level ends and then we go on to the next demo level – you have to rescue a female krogan (never seen one in the ME games before so, react to this however you will) from the Salarian homeworld. It seems the Salarian's have been playing doctor on her or something and she's in a futuristic straight-jacket thing in a futuristic elevator, but now they're going to hand her over to broker a truce between krogan's and the turian's (I think) but oh! Lo and behold, nothing goes according to plan when Shepard's around so our good old pals from Cerberus barge in on the party and you have to kill many of them. AI's just a little bit better than last time, but it's still nothing to write home about, there's also some new enemies, like a dude with a riot shield (oh wow, we've never seen one of those before [sarcasm]) a heavily armoured Juggernaut-esque enemy (are they basing there Cerberus enemies off Call of Duty enemies now) and the mission culminates in a battle with a rather easily dispatched dude in a mech suit and a few more Cerberus grunts. You save the female krogan she borrows Wrex's (oh yeah, he's in this mission as are Garrus and Liara, and Mordin and Kirrahee (from ME1) show up as well) shotgun to off a couple more Cerberus chaps and they all fly off and then the demo says to go pre-order the game, when it's out and to buy it and all that post-demo stuff.

Now for the technical side of it.

Load times aren't too bad, it's just a pity that the loading screens this time around are just a static picture of Earth burning. I did rather like the loading screens of ME2 so hopefully this is just a placeholder load screen.

The graphics are better than Mass Effect 2's, but not the big graphical leap we saw from ME1 to 2. However, that being said, the majority of textures are significantly crisper, as are the effects (smoke and fire effects are still a bit on the average side) and the lighting effects and system is pretty good. The edges are smooth and there wasn't any issues with pop-in. The frame rate didn't drop during action, although the menus did feel a little bit laggy at times and there might have been some slow down during cutscenes, which are better directed than that of ME1 and 2 and both Dragon Age games.

Combat feels better this time around, although I felt the camera was just a little bit too close to Shepard's back at first but I got used to it and after a couple of minutes of gameplay, really didn't mind. The hit boxes and shooting itself is a bit more responsive than in 2 with an X appearing in the centre of your crosshairs to tell you “oh look, you've hit something and hurt it”. The cover system has been improved with you now being able to switch cover and to see where you'll go with little arrows on you HUD. Yes, there's that heavy melee insta-kill attack which is pretty useful if you want to run up to enemies and stab them in the face with an orange holo blade. Back onto cover, it whilst it's better this time around, being able to blind fire would have been a welcome addition. For comparison's sake, Gears of War is still the better third person shooter, but in terms of third person shooter RPG's – Mass Effect 3 so far has taken the crown from ME2.

I didn't get to try the weapon customisation either because it wasn't in the demo or because I couldn't find the thing to let me do it, but I kept picking up upgrades which looked interesting. The RPG elements (skill points in a upgrade tree) are much more elaborate this time around with the ability to pick one of two branches you can specialise in this time (like squad bonus or personal bonus). I basically maxed (I played a soldier class) combat skills with a focus on personal damage and wrecked shop.

As for the sound, the sound design is pretty good and weapons sound as if they have more punch this time around. The music is evocative to say the least and the voice acting is good as always, and animations are better than before.

So, all in all, the game is shaping up to be pretty good, I liked it, and any complaints I have about it are really minor and didn't detract from the overall experience. Did I like it? Yes. Would I recommend it on what I've played so far? Yep.

Platform: Xbox 360

As a game, Resident Evil 4 is a masterpiece. As one of the worst PC ports I have ever played, it's a masterpiece that's been covered in paint thinner. You see, there's nothing wrong with RE4 as a game, it's just the PC port is complete and utter garbage.

Before I elaborate on why the PC port can go to hell, I'll talk a little bit about RE4 as a game.

Anyway, you play as Raccoon City survivor now Secret Service zombie killer Leon S. Kennedy and you've been sent to Spain to rescue the president's daughter. You arrive and the locals idea of a welcoming committee are some chaps who want to bite your head off and a guy with a sack for a hat and a chainsaw as his security blanket, a security blanket that wants to cut through your neck. All in all, I rather enjoyed the story and it's cast of characters were... interesting to say the least.

Atmosphere is a key component of any survival horror game and here is where RE4 excels. Whether it be the oppressive fog in the dimly lit village or the claustrophobic corridors of a research facility filled with enemies that I can only describe as terrifying, RE4's atmosphere, helped by a wonderful score, invokes feelings that are warranted when playing a survival horror game, namely constantly feeling of tension and dread of what's around the next corner. On top of this, the gameplay is balanced so well that you will always have just enough supplies to dispatch of the zombies, but never enough to feel absolutely confident that you can just waste ammo for the sake of wasting ammo. I learnt this the hard way.

As for gameplay, it's over the shoulder third person shooting and it's very solid. Although complaints about having to stop and shoot may be levelled against the game, I really can't see any problem with it. On top of just popping the zombies heads off, you can target specific parts of their bodies, like their legs, to make them stumble so you can get in close to save ammo by performing a contextual action on them, such as kicking them. Just like standing still to shoot, these serve not only as a gameplay mechanics that make logical sense and serve to play into the game's genre. For example, you need to save ammo, so, you shoot the zombie in the knee and he stumbles, what now: do you shoot him in the head and waste a precious bullet or run up and melee it knowing he could recover and bit your face off? On top of this, we have quick time events... personally, I've never really been a great fan of them, but, RE4 does them pretty well so I guess they can be excused but there is the matter of the fact that this is the PC port and oh guess what, it's time for me to rant about why the PC version is complete and utter crap.

First off, a PC gamer will usually play their games with a mouse and keyboard (at least, I do), but what if you could only play a game with the keyboard? A game that requires such precise aiming that can only be achieved by using analogue aiming that comes from a analogue stick or a mouse would surely use the analogue input device for aiming. Wrong. RE4 PC only works with the keyboard. Sure, there's the option to use controllers, but I don't have a gamepad compatible with my PC so I was stuck playing RE4 with only a keyboard. If you thought that was bad, remember how I mentioned this game as quite a few QTE's? Well guess what, QTE's rely on you pressing the correct button that flashes on screen. Surely, you'd think, RE4 would show the bound key. But no, it doesn’t, it just shows a number. A number which makes no sense unless you've found a guide to the controls that explains which number relates to which keypress. On top of this, the in-game manuals are next to useless in giving any indication as to what the key's are. I mean, how bloody hard could it have been for the developers to show the bound keys. Oh, but it doesn’t end there, the cutscenes are of poorly compressed video sort and believe me when I say they are poorly compressed. You'd think that PC gamers would be able to render the in-game cutscenes that I'm pretty sure the Gamecube version had, but no, PC gamers get to sit through poorly compressed cutscenes. It's inexcusable. The game's engine was not optimised and options are basically choosing wide-screen on or off, windowed or not, resolution and key bindings. Furthermore, the textures and effects are sub par, the interface is low res and looks terrible, it crashed a few times and the lighting could be better. On the bright side, the PC version does come with a fair bit of extra content that was in the PS2 version, but that still does not excuse just how bad this port is.

So, Resident Evil 4 – extremely good game, marred by a terrible PC port.

Score: 7

Platform: PC – Lenovo T60 2007-6WM – 2.0GhZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300

Notes: patched to latest version

The best thing that I can say about Haze is that it didn't crash. There, now that I have stated the only good thing about this game, I can send it straight to the pre-owned section of EB Games where my copy is now. In fact, the other best part has nothing to do with playing the game, it was when I got more in-store credit for trading the game in than when I bought it (as a side note, I traded it towards a good FPS, namely, Battlefield 3). How much did it cost me originally? $5 (AUSD). It wasn't even worth $5. I could have bought a hamburger or something else McDonald's and I would have enjoyed it exponentially more. But instead I thought, let's give this game a go, it's $5, you can't go wrong right? Wrong. So very, very, wrong...

Let me preface this by saying that I did not finish the game's story simply because I got to a stage where all the crap I had put up with whilst playing it came to a head and outweighed the fact that I was almost at the end of the game and the pain of playing this game could end. First off, let's go have a look at the game's excuse “story”.

Here is the story, and guess what, even before playing the game, I knew what would happen, not because I read it on Wikipedia, but because it's more predictable than a first person shooter involving someone being shot in some way or another (which Haze can't even do well). You play some whiny fresh out of college kid whose name I can't even remember, who joins up with a mercenary company called Mantel. There was some preliminary whining about how the world's military is now outsourced to mercenaries, but anyway, Mantel seem to be the top dog and have the best soldiers? Why is this? Well it's because Mantel pumps its troops full of a drug called nectar that is addictive and will drive the soldiers insane if they don't constantly do it, but as a trade off they can't feel pain and see suffering, blood or any of that. Eventually, you fall out with Mantel and off the nectar train you fall and are captured by the enemy militia who then become your “friends” and whose leader turns out to be actually just as evil by the end apparently (according to the plot on Wikipedia at least) and your character remains a whiny, annoying, unlikeable character throughout. I assume the story wanted to explore the nature of transhumanism, private military firms, oppression, and more, but it just fails, in fact, I would go so far as to say that I'm making something out of nothing.

Next up, the characters. I already mentioned that your player character is annoying and I hated every second I was playing as him, he did nothing but whine poor dialgoue. But the supporting cast is just an abhorrence. Your team mates consist of one guy who is killed later on for falling off the nectar train and as such, but he really doesn't hang around long enough for anyone to really care about. Anyway, your team members whilst rooting for Team Mantel consist of a bloodthirsty, annoying, wanker of a leader who wants to do nothing but kill and maim and is somehow the leader of your squad even though you are the same rank as him but obviously too busy whining to stop him, and two very, very annoying characters who do nothing but illiterately shout out “bosh, let's kill us some natives” whilst chest/fist bumping and being just bloody annoying. The dialogue is an atrocity consisting of whining, boosh, kill enemy, shout, whine some more, and try and put some exposition but ultimately fail. All the characters are voiced poorly and with equally atrocious dialogue that is sometimes trying to force its themes down your throat and then all of a sudden... “boosh, kill, insert same dialogue as before here [fist bump] whine about killing and booshing” happens.

Gameplay time. Well, the guns are boring to use and enemies are bullet sponges. All in all, it's just generic and droll. The nectar system and then lack of it when joining the militia serves as training wheels for the player, but when taken away, guess what you get: the ability to see blood and suffering (which is pretty abysmal in the game as for suffering, it just means that the colours are toned down and everyone looks pale and sick and you can see dying enemies), play dead (which is useless), steal an enemies weapon (which is used once to kill the annoying boosh bros and then is useless), and make mines and grenades form the enemy's nectar supplies (which I barely used because it was just “easier” to shoot them). Admittedly, the transition between nectar fuelled whining player character and off the boosh juice whining player character now seeing pain and suffering was interesting at first, but eventually I just stopped caring and went back to trudging through the boring levels wanting the game to end. As for the levels, they range from boring, poorly designed on foot segments to even worse vehicular sections. They are the worst vehicular sections in any game I have eve played. Even the MotoGP J2ME game on my really old Motorola T720 mobile phone was more fun. And I have played a lot of games. The AI in this game... I hesitate calling it “artificial intelligence”. Maybe, pure idiocy. They run at you, and get shot. That is all. Friendly AI is useless, and does nothing but in get in your way.

As for the graphics, they are pretty abysmal, filled with graphical glitches, poor texture work, pop-in and more. It didn't crash though which surprised me to no end. The sound design is terrible, as was the music, and as I already mentioned, the voice acting is atrocious, and coupled with the poor dialogue, made me want to mute the sound and just revel in the silence.

I didn't play the multiplayer because there was no one online, but then again, that didn't surprise me in the least.

In summary, if you see Haze for even $5 or less, don't even feel vaguely interested by it and buy it even for a laugh because of how bad I've made it sound. Just don't. It's not worth it.

Score: 2

Platform: PS3

Notes: patched to the latest version

I'll be honest, at the time of writing this review, my previous experience with the Deus Ex series has been limited to completing the opening level of the first one and getting to Cairo in the second one. I fully intend to finish both these games, and have not done so simply because I got distracted by something else at the time. But anyway, the general consensus pertaining to both the previous two iterations in the Deus Ex series is that the original one is nothing short of amazing, and the second one is best left forgotten. Well, I beg to differ on the hate given to the second one as apart from the pooled ammo which made it a bit too easy, I rather liked it. But this is not a review of the original and Invisible War but a review of Human Revolution, a prequel to the original.

All this rambling about a game series called Deus Ex and not once have I even mentioned what they are about. Tsk, tsk. In short, they are about transhumanism (basically, augmenting the human body to “transcend”humanity and become “more human than human”to quote Blade Runner). Anyway, Human Revolution is a prequel to the first two games. I'll set up the story because anything further than explaining past the start would just spoil the game's story which, is nothing short of amazing. Anyway, you play an ex-SWAT now private security working for major biotech corporation Sarif Industries who into creating these augmentations (along with a few other corporations in the game's world), who ends up being saved by being augmented with mechanical augmentations (the predecessor to those of the player characters' nano augmentations in the original and Invisible War) after a bunch of chaps break into the office and leave him for dead and kill his ex-girlfriend. Beyond this, I refuse to spoil or explain the plot as I would give away major plot points, but suffice to say, it is, as I have already said, amazing.

So, the story is good, but what about the gameplay? If I had to shoehorn DXHR into an established gameplay genre, I would probably go with first person shooter. True, you can shoot your way through the levels, but why when that would only be exploring one of the four pillars of DXHR's gameplay, namely, combat, stealth, hacking and social. Combat wise, the game's shooter mechanics play out a bit like that of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 or Quantum of Solace in that you are in the first person and when in cover, you go into third person; stealth is, well, remaining undetected; hacking involves a mini-game which is pretty good but really requires practice to get the hang of; social involves talking to people to gain access by persuading them to do so. All aspects can be upgraded by spending praxis points which are acquired by gaining XP. These praxis points allow you to upgrade Jensen's abilities to suit your style of gameplay, whether you want to cloak and sneak past enemies or deploy a area of effect attack that obliterates everyone in your nearby vicinity. For example, in earlier levels, I had not been upgrading my armour to reduce the effects of bullets, and as such, I was pretty sure to die in a firefight, and so, when it came to a mission where I had to infiltrate a heavily guarded facility, me with my hacking upgrades and ability to see through walls allowed my to bypass multiple firefights that would have not only left me dead in a heartbeat, but low on ammunition, that I would need if I all of a sudden, as I later did, have to shoot my way through a checkpoint riddled with guards and security bots. Furthermore, considering I had also not bothered to upgrade my inventory and was rather unwilling to drop my upgraded combat rifle and revolver which I had upgraded considerably and for which there was no ammunition for, I had to conserve ammunition anyway, until later levels where enemies had an abundance of combat rifles and revolvers and I had acquired a heavy machine gun and upgraded my armour and removed basically all recoil and had more or less turned into a walking tank.

You see, you can play DXHR how you want, and in my case, it changed from stealth/tech/social based to a more combat oriented style. In fact, you can technically not kill anyone in the game apart from the bosses if you so choose. The levels are so well designed that they cater to these different gameplay styles (with the exception of a few side missions that required me to upgrade certain skills to proceed). As for the boss battles, I rather liked them, and found that regardless of your playstyle, you would be able to defeat them as the arenas themselves provide enough armaments to take them on, although, a combat specialists would find the fights a bit easier. As for the AI, I am quite happy to say that they are not idiots who will sit around and wait to get shot in the head whilst ducking in and out of cover. No, in fact, they are actually the opposite. Not only do they use cover effectively but they will notice things like if you have left a door open, or for example, at one stage, I had basically fired off a few rounds to get their attention to sneak away, and they actively sought to flush me out, and when they discovered me hiding in the air vents, made hiding in the air vents and then sprinting to the elevator a near death experience for Jensen. Once again, I could have tackled that scenario in a different manner, but that was just how I choose to do it.

On top of the main story, you have a multitude of side quests which have interesting sub plots that add depth to the main plot and characters, but can also have recurring consequences that can come to bare later on in the story. There is quite a fair bit of content in the game, and the two open world hubs of Detroit and Shanghai are also quite interesting to explore and the amount of detail in the world, from the well designed levels to the emails that reside on individuals computers the game adds an extra layer of believability and depth to its world. This is further enhanced by the score which the feeling of the game and the voice acting which, on a whole, is superb. Graphically, the game looks gorgeous and its distinctive black and gold colour palette looks quite nice and fits game's tone. The game performs well and did not slow down significantly to my memory.

Now time to nitpick. So far, I really can not find enough faults in the game to rant about, but I'll be brief about some minor issues I had. First on my list, the poorly compressed cutscenes. Although poor video compression for pre-rendered footage is normally seen in games, and it is annoying how disparate the quality is when you switch form cutscenes to game. I was playing this game on PS3. The PS3 uses Blu-ray's which have considerably more storage capacity than DVD's and as with many other games on PS3, I just wish they had utilised more of the disc space and included higher quality cutscenes. Although I have not played the game on 360 or PC, such issues could be worked around by maybe taking the Battlefield 3 approach on 360 and placing high quality cutscenes on a separate disc that can optionally be installed and on PC, maybe a separate downloadable pack or just place the game on multiple discs. My second, and final complaint would be the lack of a new game plus option. I personally would have liked to play through the game again with all my weapons and upgrades, but alas, there is no way.

Other than those two minor gripes, I can not really fault the game. DXHR is just a very well crafted experience overall. Whilst I have tried to explain the amount of depth that there is in this game, the only real way to experience it is to play it, and unreservedly, I would recommend you go do so.

Score: 10

Platform: PS3

Notes: Patched to the latest version.

Platform: PC – Specs: Lenovo T60 2007-6WM laptop w/ Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GhZ, 2GB DDR2 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X1300.

The game starts and you jump out of aeroplane to the “motivating” sound of your drill instructor preaching the qualities of you, the airborne, apple pie, and killing Nazi's. Later on, you jump out of another aeroplane, deploy your chute, shoot some Nazi's, and listen to the “motivating” shouts of your fellow soldiers congratulating you for not having to go into the future and involuntary be part of the Lazarus Project and for shooting Nazi's in the face. And then later on... oh you get the bloody point already.

By no means is MoH Airborne a bad game, it's just very, bloody, repetitive. After the first two missions I was feeling a little bored of shooting Nazi's, and by the final mission, this was replaced by frustration at the final levels poor design. Oh but wait you ask, what is MoH Airborne. Well, before the MoH series got in Doc Brown's DeLorean and went into the present, the MoH series' focus was on the exploits of American soldier's in World War II across just about every theatre that they fought in. Here, you play Boyd Travers, a good American boy who joined the Airborne (you know, the guys from Band of Brothers and Brother's in Arms) and somehow must've become Captain America because he has an uncanny ability to be a one man army, cutting a swathe through the horde's of evil Nazi's to the repetitive cheers of his comrades... who just so happen to say the same damn thing every, single time.

Difficulty wise, this game is not the easiest of games on two counts. First of all, to compensate for their idiocy, and for the idiocy of your team AI, the Nazi's handed out Boyd Travers seeking ammunition to all their troops so that whenever you stick your head out of cover, it's instantly popped back in because every Nazi in the vicinity, turns his guns on you and fires. Secondly, the checkpoints in some of the levels are pretty poorly handled, especially in the awful final mission which is just a repetitive slog through corridor's because you made one mistake on the only out of place, relatively linear mission of the game.

The other levels are all open-ish, in the Far Cry 1 sort of way where you're in the level and it's up to you what you want to do after jumping out of the plane. After you jump, you basically have to drop in to the two marked areas on the map as dropping anywhere will instantly trigger the Nazi's “kill Boyd Travers” programming and they will swarm on you with your useless team AI only serving to congratulate you for shooting their faces off. After this it is up to you to complete your objectives in whatever order you see fit with whatever weapons you can get your hands on. Personally, I ended up just sticking with the MP40/STG.44/Geweher 43 and the shotgun. Furthermore, you can customise your guns (by customise I really just mean level up and make it better) by well, killing many Nazi's. The openness of the levels and ability to choose what you want to do is to be commended, but after completing the initial objectives, it really is just go here, do this, congratulations, you have won; I also rather did enjoy the actual parachuting gameplay, until it just got tedious by the final mission where the level design was just infuriating.

Shooting mechanics are pretty solid after you get used to the aiming down sights and cover mechanic which sees you aim down the sights stop you in your tracks and then able to duck and pop out of cover in first person. If you are near cover, it's great, if you're in a close quarter situation where fine aiming... eh... not so helpful. The guns themselves sound and feel pretty good.

The music, as always, is a stand out. The orchestral score accurately nails the feeling of parachuting into a drop zone, or being in the thick of a waging urban battle. It's just a pity that the dialogue wasn't so repetitive and eventually annoying. Then again, considering that Boyd Travers is taking on the Nazi's all by himself effectively, their continual praise might be well deserved.

On the graphics front, the game performs reasonably well on PC and looks pretty good when set to higher settings, alas, I did have to tone down a lot of the graphics settings in favour of a consistent frame rate on my PC, but when I was playing it on the higher settings, the game did look pretty nice. It also would have been nice to have had a more in-depth graphics settings menu.

At time's, Airborne really does shine, like in five of its six levels, the ability to to tackle the mission how you want with decent shooting mechanics, audio and sound design and graphics, but this is marred by excessive repetition of droll and irksome dialogue, repetitive mission structure, poor AI with annoying dialogue, and an abhorrent final mission.

Score: 6.5