Video Game Review | Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, dev. Level-5

When I blogged about the release of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch a couple of weeks ago, I discussed the difficulties I'd had with JRPGs in recent years—a bad start—still, I swore to give the genre at least one more go before abandoning it entirely. A happy ending, then?

Well... let's not jump to conclusions.

I had a fair bit of fun with Ni No Kuni, to be sure. The fifty-odd hours I spent playing it—beating it, indeed—speak to that simple fact. Alas, I'm afraid the very best moments of the experience were behind me five or ten hours in. Things certainly pick up again at the end, but the intervening tedium—especially the text-only story sequences and the endless fetch quests—nearly ruined Ni No Kuni for me. 

So it's fitting, I figure, that the story, such as it is, is all about acceptance. At the outset, the thirteen year old player character, Oliver—who lives a quiet life in Motorville: a very Ghibli village full of 1950s kit cars and an ensemble cast of charming inhabitants—Oliver loses his mother, Alicia, in a tragic accident.

That night, as he cries, a few of Oliver's tears fall on his doll... when suddenly, wonderfully, Drippy comes to life, and introduces himself (in an adorable Welsh accent) as Lord High Lord of the Fairies. He entreats Oliver to accompany him to the world of his birth, to save a once-great kingdom from the clutches of Shadar, the Dark Djinn, not to mention his master, the titular White Witch.

At first, never mind that he's talking to a doll of all things, Oliver says he isn't interested, but when Drippy suggests that the orphaned boy might be able, somehow, to save his mother—because everyone in our world has what's called a "soul mate" in Drippy's, and if Oliver can help Alicia's, then perhaps the fate of her counterpart will altered also—there's no longer any question that he'll help.

So begins an epic adventure in a world of wonders. Here be dragons! As well as cat kings, cow queens, evil genies and a few hundred heartbroken humans, through whom we glimpse Ni No Kuno's gameplay. Your task, as your party travels from place to place, is to help heal these people, and thus this land. You'll do this by finding individuals with an overabundance of one feeling—for instance courage, or ambition—and gifting said surplus to someone in need. Someone with an item you require to progress the story, say.

There's no getting around a number of these fetch quests, but though most of them are optional, Ni No Kuni is (despite endearing appearances) a rather challenging JRPG—with not a few unforgiving fights and a difficulty curve that goes off the deep end in the last act—so the more crap you collect, the better. Unfortunately, by the time I'd filled Oliver's locket for the twentieth time, I wanted nothing more than to sell the wretched thing to a vendor.

Same goes for the familiars you inherit as you adventure around the world. Initially, caring for the loveable little monsters which do the vast majority of your fighting for you adds an addictive Pokemon-esque element to the player's progression through Ni No Kuni, but by the time you're entrenched in the game's flat, protracted middle act, the mechanic has become so much busywork.

The various other systems in play in Level-5's latest are in the long haul markedly more engaging, but they're also par for the course in any decent contemporary JPRG. There's magic, crafting, questing and a whole lot of levelling as well—of you and your familiars. And though they can be unaccountably tough at times, most enemy encounters are as rewarding as they are demanding. Meanwhile, while the world seems kinda sorta small, exploring it is a real treat... especially considering how beautiful it looks: you really do feel Studio Ghibli's influence here, and in the cutesy, colourful character designs too.

Studio Ghibli's involvement can also be seen in Ni No Kuni's story, which sacrifices the melodramatic bombast of most JRPGs for a quieter, softer, sadder narrative. There's the makings of a fine feature-length film herein, but remember: this iteration of the tale takes fifty hours to tell, and drawn out to such an incredible extent, I'm sorry to say it seems insubstantial.

Furthermore, what little story there is is well written, evidently well translated, and well performed whenever an actual voice actor is involved... which is to say rarely, I'm afraid. Most of the story is communicated through text boxes. And there's an almighty lack of actual animation. Studio Ghibli have contributed a few minutes here and there, but most of Ni No Kuni's best moments are rendered in-engine.

Which is fine. Perfectly fine. It's an excellent engine, especially considering its modest origins. All the same, the legacy of Ni No Kuni as a handheld game conceived early in the generation that's now ending shows through in so many ways that those things the developers at least try to do differently—for which effort I applaud Level-5—are at loggerheads with the many traits this JPRG simply apes.

But you know what? I didn't dedicate fifty hours of my life to Ni No Kuni so that I could complain about its failings. Sure, it has a fair few, yet this is the first time I've finished a JRPG in years, so it has at least as many redeeming features, including but not limited to the look, the mood and the music. At the end of the day, I'm happy enough to have had this experience that, on balance, I probably would play a Ni No Kuni 2.

So the story has a happy ending, after all!

Video Game Review | Amnesia: The Dark Descent, dev. Frictional Games

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is without a doubt the scariest game I have ever played.

This honour used to belong to the second Silent Hill, but Frictional Games' latest and greatest makes that touchstone of terror look like clowning around by comparison.

You are Daniel, and that's all you know at the start of this unforgettable six- to eight-hour experience.

When you awaken in the dark somewhere in the underbelly of Brennenburg Castle, for some reason, you have amnesia. What else to do but follow the strange trail of bleeding red petals that leads from your position into the indefinable distance?

This is easier said than done. Most of the castle's heavy oak doors are shut tight, meanwhile many of its corridors have collapsed, so for the moment there's only one way to go... but it's so incredibly dark that you can hardly see one foot to put in front of the other. Almost immediately, Daniel's fear begins to get the better of him, and we are with him every tentative step of the way: after all, almost anything could be biding its time in the next room, and lacking illumination, we wouldn't know till it was too late.

To make matters worse, it becomes clear that there is someone, or something, hot on our heels. A shadow of some sort. An embodiment of the darkness which seems to mean Daniel harm.

So we grab all the tinderboxes we see, light all the candles that there are, and every wall sconce we come upon. This does little to brighten the castle's horrid halls, but at least it calms Daniel down. Failing this, he simply faints away.

It is not far from The Dark Descent's starting point to Daniel's first destination, but the going is slow - progress through these oppressive spaces is excruciatingly incremental - so it takes some time to find the first piece of the puzzle: on a writing desk surrounded by glowing roses, a note addressed to you, and signed by the same. In it, you command yourself to forgo your fears, the better to descend to the Inner Sanctum in the castle's deepest reaches, where we are instructed to kill the Baron, Alexander.

Next to this letter, a lantern.

For the duration of The Dark Descent, oil for this delightful device and the aforementioned tinderboxes are our only defense against the darkness, and all that lives within it. We cannot fight back. We can only hide. Thus, it seems sensible to hoard such supplies — to push yourself through ill-lit areas without wasting the contents of your meager inventory. For a few hours, this attitude adds to the unbearable sense of tension that is The Dark Descent's most remarkable aspect, but by then I had such a surplus that I wondered where Daniel was stashing all my items. Heck, by the end of the game, I could have opened a small store!

Scarcity, then, is only an issue in The Dark Descent if you're too afraid to scrounge for supplies, or insist on lighting every candle you come across. Still, this speaks to the game's biggest issue: as it goes on - as one gets a sense of the story, and with it the various systems in play - we come, in kind, to know the unknown. It dawns on us that the monsters roam in preset patterns, and are easily avoided. That Daniel's sanity can be managed with a few simple tricks.

All that's left of The Dark Descent then is a physics-based adventure game, or perhaps a first-person puzzler.

Luckily, the puzzles are involving, and the solutions not so obscure that they beggar belief in the mode of most point and click candidates. To get to the Baron you often need some needful thing: an explosive mixture, for instance. To make it, you must explore a number of new areas to find its component parts, then combine these items using the proper apparatus. It's all very satisfying.

All the more so because the developers have little interest in holding our hands. Somewhat counter-intuitively, that's to the good, because the more we know, the less there is be fearful of; the firmer our footing, the less terrifying The Dark Descent. And terror is this game's stock in trade.

Ultimately, the first in the Amnesia series - soon to be succeeded by A Machine For Pigs, which Frictional Games are co-creating with thechineseroom, who updated Dear Esther earlier this year - The Dark Descent is undoubtedly at its most effective at the outset, which is sure to reduce even the hardiest stalwarts of horror to a bundle of bloody nerves. Even after this sustained state ebbs away it remains a game worth playing, but I have never known such fear as I experienced in the beginning.

Thank the dark ones for that!

Video Game Review | Resident Evil 6, dev. Capcom

Rarely do reviewers agree on a great deal, particularly in foundling fields such as game journalism, and yet critics from competing sites - typically so desperate to distinguish themselves - have conspired to rip Resident Evil 6 to shreds.

Well, it ain't right. And I'm telling teacher.

Giant Bomb, a resource near and dear to my heart, is one of the biggest bullies: "Resident Evil 6 is a big-budget disaster on the order of the Star Wars prequels, a sprawling production that clearly required so many individual talents to bring it into being, you can't help but wonder how the end result could have turned out so bad."

At least Destructoid's reviewer quantifies his problems: "Listlessly wallowing in the depthless waters of homogeneity, Resident Evil 6 is a coward of a game, afraid to make its own individual mark in the industry and cravenly subscribing itself to every overplayed trope in the book."

Joystiq, meanwhile, are rather more reasoned — and they get bonus points for using appropriate imagery! "Everyone would do well to study its anatomy, to learn what happens to a series stuck somewhere between a new life and an old body."

Get it? Because of zombies? Oh, what wit!

But beyond the wit... bullshit. Because Resident Evil 6 is overwhelmingly alright. It certainly won't be winning any Game of the Year awards, but why would that be the yardstick against which we measure this sprawling sequel? Why not its immediate predecessor? Why not its closest competition? Why not the stale new Silent Hill, or the forthcoming installment of Call of Duty?

Come to that, why compare it with anything? Resident Evil 6 is what it is. And what it is structurally ambitious, narratively novel, graphically gorgeous and extraordinary aurally. It may be mundane mechanically - as throwback and old-fashioned as ever this series has been, despite the efforts of its developer - but it isn't broken, and the notion that it should have been overhauled to feel more modern (which is to say more like every other goddamn game on the market) is counter-intuitive coming from a community that demands diversification on a daily basis.

In any case, Capcom have gone to incredible lengths to make fans of this multifarious franchise happy. In an era when six hour single-player games have become the new normal, it's surprising - shocking almost - that Resident Evil 6 clocks in approximately five times as long. Less so when you realise it's essentially four games in one. In the first, you're Leon, returning from Resident Evil 4 in a campaign that feels a lot like that game's. The second campaign casts you as Chris, Resident Evil 5's protagonist, and it plays similarly: it's more shooter than survival horror.

But the third and the fourth campaigns return to that very territory: the former recalls Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - you're being chased by an unstoppable monster the whole time - and the latter, starring I couldn't possibly tell you who, feels like it's sprung fully formed out of Resident Evil 2, what with the secret player character and all the puzzles she-who-must-not-be-named has got to solve.

Resident Evil 6 is an odd sort of hodgepodge, on the whole: a guided tour through the make-up of the entire series to date, or a forlorn love letter to itself. In that sense, it reminded me - of all things - of Final Fantasy IX. What makes it cohesive, if anything does, is the structure of the story: characters continuously come together as four narratives neatly interweave, and each time the player experiences something a second time it's from a whole other angle, with more or different information.

Admittedly, the controls are iffy. The Quick Time Events around every corner are overbearing. The puzzles are plodding and the shooting is largely unsatisfying. The dialogue is obvious and the tone of the story is all over the place. Resident Evil 6 has a lot of problems... but so did all the other games in the series, and praise was lavished upon these.

So what gives?

Patience, I presume. Critics don't have a great deal of it on good days, and around this time of year, when there are huge new releases to play through and review each and every week, it's obviously in very short supply. But to dismiss this game on those grounds is dishonest. Resident Evil 6 may not be particularly great, but it's not bad either - not like certain ostensibly objective perspectives have suggested - and if you ask me, you've got to give Capcom credit for trying so damned hard.

Video Game Review | Thomas Was Alone, dev. Mike Bithell

In the beginning, Thomas Was Alone.

Thomas is a skinny red rectangle. Not much of a looker, no, but what of it? He's alive!

The simple visual representation of an AI in the right place at the right time - or so the story goes - Thomas becomes conscious of his own existence in the opening moments of creator Mike Bithell's blissful brainchild. Almost immediately, he decides to record his observations for posterity, and as he has them, thanks to Danny Wallace's mostly measured narration, we hear them.

For less long than I might have liked, Thomas has a jolly old time running and jumping and falling around the levels of some strange purgatory world — or rather what little of it he has access to. As his awareness grows in depth and complexity, however, so too does the abstract, graph-paper plane he inhabits. Soon, sadly, Thomas finds himself overmatched by the environment...

...so it's a stroke of luck when he bumps into Chris, a small orange square — even if he is a bit of a hater. Despite his dislike of Thomas, Chris helps his accidental companion navigate the next few levels, and of course the skinny red rectangle returns the favour, because he fancies himself a bit of a hero. They can either work together towards something more, they realise, or continue to exist where they are alone.

Through the next portal they go, then... where they meet another AI. Someone who is a little bit different from either of them again.

In the beginning, Thomas Was Alone, but by the end, my oh my had he made some friends!

For an indie game made almost entirely by one man, the aforementioned Mike Bithell, Thomas Was Alone is truly an incredible accomplishment. It's short at around two to four hours of gameplay, but so neat and sweet in that tiny amount of time that it leaves a hole in your heart when - all too soon - it's over.

Not unlike a game along the lines of Fez, but maybe more like Super Meat Boy without the madness - indeed the meatiness - Thomas Was Alone has you doing very some simple things in increasingly complicated situations. Each of the AIs Thomas meets over the course of his awakening has a unique ability, and a personality to boot: for instance Claire, a big blue blob, has self-image issues, but she can float in water, without which skill Thomas and Chris are plum unable to progress.

Later we're introduced to various other AIs. Many others, as a matter of fact, and given that the player controls them all - switching between them with the Q and E keys - for a moment it feels like Thomas Was Alone is going to descend into tedious micromanaging. But Bithell is on the ball: he never insists that we do any one thing for too long, introducing new characters and dispatching those that have served their purpose with a ruthlessness that belies the astonishingly heartfelt tale Thomas Was Alone tells. Nor are any of the mechanics repeated often enough that they wear out their welcome; a lesson the vast majority of games today would be well to learn.

Mike Bithell might be the primary mind behind the machine, but I should stress that Thomas Was Alone isn't a wholly solo specimen. The sound, say, is as good as the look, which is simply striking: all but unadorned, yet absolutely alive. Anyway, each of the game's ten worlds comes complete with an original ambient track by David Housden, whose atmospheric music complements the aesthetics of the entire smartly.

Credit too to Danny Wallace, whose performance - excepting a few awkward attempts at inflection that put me in mind of early audiobooks - gives credible personality to each and every one of the AIs.

But the writing, the coding, the art, the everything else... that's all down to Bithell, and Bossa Studios' erstwhile lead designer hits it out of the park. In fact he hits it up, and to the right!

That's a bit of an in-joke you're just going to have to play Thomas Was Alone to see the sense of. I wouldn't be surprised to see it come to the PS3 at some point in the future, but for the moment it's PC only. Ideal, then, that it runs like a dream — even on creaky machines like mine.

You can get a copy of Thomas Was Alone direct from the developer via this link, and I dearly recommend you do.

Video Game Review | Silent Hill: Downpour, dev. Vatra Games

Silent Hill has to be one of my all-time favourite franchises, but with each passing year it's become increasingly clear that my position is practically indefensible.

I don't think anyone would dispute that the series started strong. Resident Evil might have popularised the survival horror genre, but let's face facts: it was crude, and unconscionably camp. Occasionally shocking, is how I'd politely describe it, rather than scary, or legitimately horrific. Silent Hill, however, hit on a much more meaningful formula.

In concept, it's incredible: there's this town, see, shrouded in fog, where all sorts of awful evil stuff went down. Never mind the particulars... they aren't exactly consistent in any case, except insofar as there are always monsters. Into this, then, comes a bedraggled character searching for something: a loved one, or a lost one. Soon, he or she realises that they're trapped in this terrifying town - indeed that Silent Hill seems to have it in for them... that it has in fact reoriented itself around their psyche, somehow - and all they can do (which is to say all you can do) is run like hell, before hell itself comes a-calling.

Invariably, the Silent Hill games have been about exploration, with occasional outbursts of unmanageable action. The essential experience is of being oppressed into a state of permanent terror; you live in fear of every encounter, because the chances are it'll be your last. It's a game that encourages you to run away as often as possible. To puzzle your way through a world of blood and rust and ominous noises while you try not to let the horror of everything everywhere get to you. But it does. It always does.

Or rather, it always did. If I'm honest, the series peaked way back when in the PlayStation 2 era, with either its first or its second sequel. With Silent Hill 4: The Room, the writing was already scrawled on the wall, and when all the key creators departed the franchise soon after, everyone's worst suspicions were confirmed.

As a franchise, Silent Hill didn't immediately die, but it did wither somewhat. Mistakes were made with each of the successive entries, each of which emerged, tellingly, from a different developer: the handheld entry Silent Hill: Origins was a mediocre prequel, Silent Hill: Homecoming was just deathly dull, meanwhile Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had at its still-beating heart a tragically misjudged mechanic, though otherwise it worked quite well. The latest iteration, and the first to come to either Xbox 360 or PS3 in years, is much of a muchness with these three. It's sure to satisfy a few die-hards, but newcomers need not apply, and players between these extremes are apt to find themselves at best bored.

At the outset, as ever, I had hopes, and a couple of interesting twists on the prior prerequisites threatened to make Silent Hill: Downpour memorable. Our player character is an outright anti-hero rather than the well-meaning men and women we've controlled before: Murphy Pendleton has been incarcerated for a crime we don't know yet the details of, but if there was ever any doubt about his guilt, the tutorial - in which we're taught how to interact with the world, use weapons and attack "enemies" by way of a shivving in the showers - puts these plainly to rest.

Fast forward a little bit, and the prison bus Murphy's on crashes on the outskirts of Silent Hill, at a local curiosity called the Devil's Pit. In the process of exploring this area, the bells that toll the town's trademark transformation ring out for the first time, and we descend into a labyrinthine Escher-esque otherworld, complete with unbearable chase sequences à la Shattered Memories.

So far, so good. Sadly, that's where the innovations begin and end... which is not to say Vatra haven't made other changes. They have, and they're basically Downpour's downfall. Afterwards, you see, Murphy takes a train to Silent Hill proper, where the player is faced with what can only be described as a kinda sorta open world, complete with endless backtracking, maze-like level design, and everyone's favourite filler: fetch quests! Oh god the fetch quests...

If you're still considering Downpour, take heed of this advice at least: the incidental objectives you'll pick up as you explore the town - which now rains often enough that it put me in mind of the Highlands and Islands of northern Scotland - much as they might sound like they could be worth your while, they aren't. No sir. But for one or two more self-contained sequences, they're simplistic, protracted and ultimately unsatisfying. Plus the quest rewards are utter rubbish.

Story missions are only moderately more interesting. Murphy, as it transpires, isn't necessarily an out-and-out villain - he's done bad things, but for good reasons - yet his development throughout the eight to ten hours it'll take to be done with Downpour (and by then that'll be your utmost aspiration) is awkward and obvious.

Occasionally you'll meet other people, but these folks flit in and out of the narrative with no rhyme or reason, often vanishing entirely, or simply appearing purposelessly in the first. There's an angry lady cop, a suicidal bus driver, a nasty nun and a very determined postman; that's the extent of the depth and texture you can expect.

The story itself seems to be about Murphy's guilt over the "mysterious" disappearance of his kid, but even this thread unravels so ponderously and predictably that by the time you reach a revelation the clunky cut-scenes that you've worked so tirelessly toward have played out in your head tens of times.

And then there's the combat. Let us be content with the conclusion that it is truly terrible.

Downpour gets off to a credible start, sure, but all too soon everything was promising about it recedes into the middle distance, and thereafter the ever-present ether. Most players don't finish games, so I suppose it makes sense for Vatra to have frontloaded the latest in the Silent Hill series with the best of their ideas. At this late stage, though, it seems cruel and unusual to tease the type of people likely to give Downpour a go - which is to say me, and folks like me, who finish everything on principle - with an hour of reasonably good game, only to call it quits with nine tenths of the whole as yet ahead.

A disappointment, then. Not broken, but boring, and undeniably bland. No surprises there. And what, I wonder, is Silent Hill worth without the element of surprise on side?

Video Game Review | I Am Alive, dev. Ubisoft Shanghai

If it is recalled at all - and let me say off the bat that I absolutely believe it should be - I Am Alive is likely to be remembered as 2012's best worst game. It's not a fundamentally broken product, as a few frustrated industry critics have alleged, but it is clunky, ugly and oddly arcadey in spite of its self-professed video game vérité aesthetic. In terms of certain aspects of its conception and execution, additionally, I am afraid I Am Alive looks and feels tragically misguided.

That said, I had a hell of a time with it.

In the first, because it's no small wonder that I Am Alive is alive, in any way, shape or form. Understand, if you aren't already aware, that it was five years in the making under the the care of various different developers working out of several entirelyseparate studios, and that's just going from the information available in the public domain; I don't doubt the whole story is still more sordid. Be aware, also - be very aware - that I Am Alive was scrapped and restarted who knows how many times before Ubisoft Shanghai hit upon the downloadable, Uncharted-esque design let loose upon the Xbox Live Marketplace and latterly the PlayStation Store this Spring.

Thus, the extent of I Am Alive's existence as an actual buyable entity is an achievement in itself. And though some amount of the tumult behind the scenes of this strange game's creation comes through in the final product, as a matter of fact there's less of that than I'd expected. Seems to me the single greatest issue this latest iteration of the core idea animating I Am Alive suffers from is a rush to get it out of the door well before it was primed and polished for public consumption.

Needless to say, I have no inside information here... only the knowledge that I Am Alive plays, in a lot of ways, like a preview build of an incomplete product. Like a game with a couple months of beta testing ahead of it yet. I wouldn't dare to damn the thing in this fashion if Ubisoft - the erstwhile purveyors of annual installments of the Assassin's Creed franchise - hadn't crapped it out in its current state.

But I Am Alive is what it is, and what it is isn't all bad... not by any stretch of the imagination. Speaking of which, there's another thing I Am Alive lacks: imagination. That is, in terms of its narrative, its characters, and the awkward way the player interacts with both and neither. The story, to be sure, is a derivative dreg. A filthy swill of the begged and the borrowed distilled from any number of better, smarter, more exciting apocalypses. The people you meet, meanwhile - you being Adam, a husband and a father separated from his family by the lack of a proper public transport infrastructure in the immediate aftermath of The Event - are flat, uninspired, or outright insipid to a one.

Still and all, I Am Alive is incredible. Or else: it very nearly is.

Much as I might like to, I don't suppose I can overlook all its problems. The unresponsive, generations-removed controls that make simple platforming an almighty chore; the ghastly map which puts paid to any notion of either planning or on-the-fly navigation in the city of Haventon; the frustrating dead ends in the level design, a la Silent Hill's shattered streets but lacking that series' rhyme or reason; the crappy combat. Oh, the crappy combat!

But we needn't get into that, and we certainly won't so late in the game. Like so many of the crude component parts that factor into I Am Alive - like the cheap checkpoints and the fetch quests - once you get your head around how combat works, it... well, it works, and that's all it needs to do, really. I mean, say it had looked or felt more satisfying; presumably players would want to do more of it, and that'd be a complete contradiction of I Am Alive's bleakly unique take on the survival horror genre, which casts you as a half-dead dude instead of some superhuman, with a single bullet in the chamber of your rusted old gun if you're lucky - and only then if you've used your exceedingly rare resources sparingly - or a paltry box-cutter if not. Versus the world.

And what a world.

That's why I love I Am Alive, for all its faults. Because of what it tries to do, and what to some extent it succeeds in doing. Because of the breathlessly oppressive atmosphere it evokes, and the insensible terror the presence of someone who hopes to hurt you invariably brings about. Because of the fear, basically. I love a good scare - don't we all? - thus this last outweighs all else: I have rarely felt so afraid playing a video game as I did in the midst of this inimitable, if shockingly unpolished eight-hour experience.

I Am Alive is essentially the Dark Souls of survival horror. Punishing, practically impenetrable, and resolutely old school. Given its relatively tiny price whatever platform you buy it on, I'd recommend you give it a go. Just be sure to bring spare underwear...

Video Game Review | Q.U.B.E., dev. Toxic Games

When a first-person shooter comes out which superimposes neat new mechanics on the tried and true formula of the genre, nobody screams about how it's some Call of Duty knock-off. Or perhaps some do - idiots, to a one - but assuredly they shouldn't, because however much Infinity Ward's take has come to dominate the space, there were excellent first-person shooters before Call of Duty, and in time, there'll be FPS-based games which put Call of Duty to shame. Bioshock Infinite, for instance. Give it to me!

But there have been far fewer first-person puzzle games than shooters from said perspective. In fact - and please do correct me if I'm wrong here - the only one I can recall is Portal, so it's hardly surprising that every review I've read of Q.U.B.E. has made reference to Valve's masterpiece of spatial awareness. It's hardly surprising, particularly given that the pair share an identical clinical aesthetic, and take similar turns around the halfway mark... but that isn't to say it's fair. Indeed, I'd describe the tepid reception Q.U.B.E. has received as indecent.

Q.U.B.E.'s name is a reference to the gameplay principle it revolves around, which is to say the Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion. At the outset the player wakes in a simple white-tiled test chamber without a word of explanation as to how you got there, or when or why, or even where there is. The only thing you can do is move forward, into another room, where there's a ledge you can't quite reach, and a single coloured block set into the floor, blood-red against the pure, bright white. You click it... and it rises. You click it again and it lowers back into the floor. Understanding dawns when you surmount the platform and raise it up to gain access to the ledge you couldn't get to before.

In the next chamber there's a red block and a blue block. In the chamber after that there's a set of yellow blocks as well. You discern that each colour does a distinct thing, and the first few of Q.U.B.E.'s seven sectors are devoted to exploring the many and various ways you can interact with these coloured blocks, and they with one another.

Concepts fall into place quickly and moreover naturally in the first half of Toxic Games' debut. The Welsh startup studio may well have borrowed an idea here and adapted an art asset there, but they put all of Q.U.B.E.'s component parts together in an inspired order that is entirely their own. The thrill of discovering the riddle of each subsequent room is second to none. Well... it's second to one, but if there's a more soaring series to play second fiddle to than Portal, I don't know its name.

Sadly Q.U.B.E. seems to run out of ideas well before the game is over. There's been no narrative to speak of thus far, and certainly no character, but suddenly the luridly lit rooms are plunged into darkness, and then the walls begin to crumble around you; sparking wires hang loose, the mechanics of platforms are rudely exposed, and spherical security drones start factoring into puzzles that seem at best abstract. Q.U.B.E. becomes an uncomfortably familiar experience, and by the time it finds itself again, shortly before the credits roll, hours have passed, and the game has changed, for poorer rather than richer: the difficulty curve has risen sharply, only to drop arbitrarily away into jagged cracks and chasms of its own creation. In short, Q.U.B.E. has become something of a slog. 

But wait, there's more! I wouldn't usually comment on bugs in a video game review, no more than I would allude to typos or formatting problems in a review of a book, alas... there's no getting away from the fact that Q.U.B.E. is a bit broken. I lost count of the number of times I had to restart a room because I'd gotten stuck on some unexpected geometry, but these clipping issues were hardly an issue amongst all the blue screens I encountered -- and this on a computer that hasn't crashed since I fed it Windows 7.

Presumably there'll be patches - if there aren't already - to address these issues, and DLC tailored to expand upon the best moments of Toxic Games' flawed but nonetheless impressive debut. I'll look forward to both of those things, but with several reservations.

Ultimately, it's fine to find fault with Q.U.B.E. - after all it is far from a perfect game, nor by any means a stable one at the time of this writing - but to dismiss it because it bears a momentary aesthetic resemblance to Portal is wrong-headed. And despite all its issues, I'd still urge you to give Q.U.B.E. a go, the better to see what else it has to offer for yourself.

Video Game Review | The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, dev. Nintendo

I can map out my entire life with reference to The Legend of Zelda. At two years old I dare say I was a little little to care about the first game when it was released in 1986, but I did find my way back to it after adoring A Link to the Past in the early 90s, on the Super Nintendo I shared with my younger brother. Then in 1998, Ocarina of Time - arguably the pinnacle of the entire franchise, and assuredly the game that sold me on the series forever after - was released for the N64. I haven't missed a Zelda game since.


Which isn't to say I've finished them all, or even enjoyed them, every one. The Wind Waker, yes... and each of the subsequent handheld installments, from The Minish Cap in 2004 on through 2009's Spirit Tracks, not because they were particularly brilliant, but because there honestly wasn't a lot else for me to do with my DS.

Sadly I couldn't stand the awkward emo wolf-whispering of the last major game in the series, not to mention its ill-advised early motion controls. Twilight Princess was the only reason I bought a Wii, way back when, and I hold it solely responsible for all the garbage I've played on the system since.

Perhaps that's unfair of me. I mean, it did have its upsides: for one thing, it was in widescreen. Yay for widescreen! But when the best thing you can think to say about a game is that its aspect ratio was acceptable, methinks there's a larger problem in play. A larger problem that - alas - also pervades the first Zelda game designed from the ground up for the Wii, because of course Twilight Princess was essentially an ever-so-slightly upscaled Gamecube port. And it showed.


Anyway, let me be quite clear here: as staunch a defender of The Wind Waker as I am, Skyward Sword is easily the best console Zelda since Ocarina of Time. In fact, I think it might be a better game than either of the aforementioned candidates. So considered in isolation, it's rather a masterpiece; gorgeous given the limitations of the system - which I can finally sell on, now that I've played its swan song - and incredibly deep when you recall the one-note nonsense the console has become infamous for. If Skyward Sword is your first or your second or even your third Zelda game, you're going to love it. You are. And don't go telling me you're too old for baby games! You aren't, and in any event, this isn't that, so there.

But I began this review with a run-down of my experience of the series for a reason. Two reasons, even. In the first, I did so to stress that these games are exceedingly important to me, and to many other players like me. They're touchstones of a sort... landmarks by which we may measure the passing of generations, and I don't merely mean in terms of hardware. A new Zelda - and they are not so commonplace as all that: this is only the 8th console iteration in 25 years - so a new Zelda is a potential treasure... to look forward to, to love when the time comes, and to love looking back on after the fact. Or not, as was the case with Twilight Princess.

Largely, though, I started in this manner because, at least as I see it, the problem with The Legend of Zelda - specifically the problem with the latest incarnations thereof - is its legacy. A legacy that has touched me and millions of other gamers, large and small, but also a legacy that means that the developers of Skyward Sword are beholden to certain gameplay elements, narrative developments and indeed, an old-fashioned attitude: whimsical bordering on the nonsensical. In short, because of this legacy, the series has hardly changed since its inception a quarter of a century ago, when the vast industry of today was but a single pixel of a thing, and nostalgia can only transport one so far.


It would be unfair of me to say that there are no innovations in the latest Zelda game. Sure enough, there are a few new twists to turn, including the prevalence of Monster Hunter-esque collectibles around the three broad environments players will navigate over the course of their epic quests: bugs to be caught with your butterfly net, and rare drops which explode out of the family-friendly smoke that envelops dead enemies. Collect enough of these components and a man in Skyloft will use them to improve your equipment.


And there's lots of new equipment: a mechanical golden beetle you guide around in order to cut ropes or sever stalks, a vacuum cleaner you use to suck up piles of dust, and several other additions. Meanwhile most of your old favourites are back, including but not limited to the whip, the slingshot, the bow and arrow and the bomb bag. New or old, pretty much every gadget in this Link's inventory is implemented in an interesting way, up to and including the master sword, which one can loft for massive damage, or use in conjunction with a shield to parry and counter-attack.

It's no mad flurry of waggle either. Skyward Sword takes full advantage of the Motion Plus add-on it requires, and though I'd have appreciate alternative control options for several of the more finicky gadgets, most if not all of the array on offer work as advertised. Thus a sense of novelty will see you the first few hours you spend with each new piece of equipment, but eventually - indeed repeatedly - you realise you're still playing the same old game, just now with working motion control... and however functional they may be - and it bears saying that they were still more functional before the Wii had its wicked way - new controls do not a new game make.


In its own right, Skyward Sword is or is near-as-damnit the equal of the most memorable Zelda games in the series' whole history. It may very well be the best game on the Wii - in my mind only Super Mario Galaxy comes close to touching it - but if you're anything like me, once the nostalgia and then the novelty has worn off, you'll realise you've played it before. And that's fine, as far as it goes, except that Zelda deserves better.

Next time Nintendo makes one of these games, something's got to give. Whether it's the players or what they'll be playing remains to be seen - it could go either way - but take heart, as I do, in the fact that the series' creators seem uncharacteristically aware that they're this close to alienating the very gamers who made The Legend of Zelda such a success almost 25 years ago to this day. I can't give Skyward Sword a pass, exactly, but with that in mind, I am optimistic enough to refrain from damning it entirely.

Video Game Review | Assassin's Creed: Revelations, dev. Ubisoft Everywhere

You want revelations?

Well, that's too bad: there aren't any in this tepid second sequel to Assassin's Creed 2.

When the first sprung out of a conveniently-placed haystack late last year, it came fully-formed out of almost nowhere. The pre-release publicity had pitched Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood primarily as a multiplayer game, and in part it was that... but in the same breath, to the shock and awe of game critics far and wide, it was so much more than that.

As a single-player game, Brotherhood was an experience which built smartly and expansively upon the already-solid foundation of the last installment in this secret sci-fi franchise. The introduction of a marvelous managerial metagame whereby the player could recruit, train and then call upon an entire battalion of junior assassins proved to its biggest, bestest - but not its only - innovation. This worked both to add depth and texture to the world of Renaissance-era anti-hero Ezio Auditore, fleshing out the eternal conflict between his hidden guild and the wicked Templars to great effect, as well as to spice up the play mechanics of a series already looking a little long in the tooth.

Alas, like a wagon without wheels, the incremental betterment of the Assassin's Creed franchise shudders to a halt here, because there is no such masterstroke in Revelations. Saying that, there are a few new mechanics, most notable amongst them a tower defense mini-game which is every bit as awkward as it sounds, and dull as day-old dishwater to boot. More successful than Den Defense - though similarly derivative - are several heavily-scripted set-piece sequences likely to put players very much in mind of the Uncharted series.

There are a handful of further new features, too, but by and large, those embellishments Revelations makes on the tried-and-tested formula of the essential Assassin's Creed experience are... uninspiring, to put it politely. Insipid, if we aren't minding our manners. 

Revelations is still an incredibly competent game, all things considered - particularly given the sordid story of its development in such a tight time-frame (one year) by no less than six different studios - but fatigue sets in early on, such that the end, when it comes, is a real relief.

Needless to say, that's a great shame, because Revelations is a game all about endings, and Ezio Auditore's story is not the only narrative to clatter to a conclusion in this scattershot annual installment: we also spend some time - rather too much time, in point of fact - with the protagonist of the ill-considered original Assassin's Creed, Altair.

As it happens, the conclusion of Altair's story is markedly more satisfying than the end Ezio meets, which is to say no end at all since - in their infinite wisdom - Ubisoft have deemed to tell that tale in the short animated feature Assassin's Creed: Embers... and unless you invest in the limited edition of Revelations, you'll have to buy Embers separately, or track it down on YouTube, as I did.

Leave it to the purveyors of all things Tom Clancy to spin off the spin-off of a spin-off...

Revelations is assuredly not the last hurrah Ezio has earned. It's not even the send-off Altair deserved, and I didn't like that dude in the least. What it is is a bit of a kick in the teeth... an elaborate insult which does a disservice to so many of the stories this series has told better before. It looks the part and, insofar as it has such a firm foundation in its predecessor, it actually plays pretty well, too, but Revelations is ultimately no more and no less than a stopgap between Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed 3, and with it, Ubisoft run the risk of putting people off the franchise entirely.

A dangerous game, that...

...not at all like this one!

Video Game Review | Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, dev. Naughty Dog

Almost two years ago to the day - that is to say the November before I started blogging as The Speculative Scotsman - I played Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. At the time I considered it at the uppermost pinnacle of modern-day gaming. Sophisticated, fun, and oh... so beautiful to look at. But now?

Now I don't think I'd dare play it again, though I had rather planned to do so now that this loose trilogy is complete, for fear of what I'd think of it. Because if my eight hours with Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception are anything to go by, my feelings as regards the last game in this series - never mind the first Uncharted, butt-ugly and clumsy by comparison with either of its Game of the Year-caliber sequels - would be much changed.

Please, you mustn't misunderstand me: this third iteration of Naughty Dog's star-making PS3 franchise is still a very good game. It's impeccably crafted, even prettier than its immediate predecessor, winningly written, perfectly performed, and so on. The thing is, Drake's Deception is not a great game. And I'm sorry, but after Among Thieves, I expected greatness.

Drake's Deception begins by going back to the beginning; back to a period some decades before the present-day narratives of either of the other Uncharted games. On the streets and rooftops of Cartegna, Columbia, a barely teenaged Nathan Drake is on the hunt for precious treasure, as ever. This particular MacGuffin is a priceless ring owned by Nathan's apparent ancestor, the storied explorer Sir Francis Drake; it's being exhibited in a local museum, and baby Nate means to take it.

But so does Victor Sullivan. Sully, to us; remember, the affable old bloke! But 20 years back, when he and our manboy about town first meet, he was just another hired thug in the employ of fake Helen Mirren. In those days fake Helen Mirren was called Katherine Marlowe, and seemingly she was a treasure hunter too. So she and Sully and baby Nate clash over Sir Francis Drake's ring.

Fast forward to today, and they're still squabbling about the same thing. Except this time, everyone brought guns. Cue an exponentially less and less credulous portrait of betrayal, manipulation and murder.

The most effective moments of Drake's Deception are only tangentially involved in all this soap-opera silliness. The glorious, satisfying, naturalistic platforming; the thrilling set-pieces arrayed throughout the game; and the question: are we all getting a little old to be larking about like this? That dilemma goes to the gamer inasmuch as the player character Nathan Drake is faced with it, as it relates to the only father-figure he's had in his life, Sully, who may or may not be risking life and limb solely to spend time with his son in all things action/adventure.

The development of these characters - along with the lovely Elena Fisher, bad girl Chloe Frazer and a few new folks too, most notably Nate's British mate Talbot and Helen Mirren Marlowe - is simply superlative, and the voice acting is exemplary as well. All the original cast are back, and on fine form, putting in practiced performances as witty and interesting as there have ever been in this medium. Would that this could be the benchmark for voice acting in video games forward!

The story of Drake's Deception is up to snuff too. Without bordering on spoilers, I'll note that it's nicely paced, with peaks and troughs in all the right places, a finely-honed hybrid of tragedy and farce, and it is circular, particularly given that this is the third of Naughty Dog's typical cycle of three games per platform -- though I'll believe that this franchise is finished when I see it.

And that's a large part of the problem. Assuredly there's more than enough room for the narrative and its iconic characters to grow, whether that means reaching back from the conclusion of this third game, or delving still deeper, but the actual moment-to-moment experience of playing these games has never been less interesting. The formula for gameplay in the Uncharted series has, I think, officially worn out its welcome. Clambering around lost cities is still fun, but the moments where you have to stop having fun to shoot a bunch of bullet sponges before you can progress are... exasperating at best. And the frequent chase sequences are - I'm sorry - they're just terrible. Maybe they'd look cool and feel that times two if you did them right the first time, but you won't, and with the margin for error so slim, when a minor misjudgment results in an abrupt game over and load screen, as it invariably does, these many, many moments feel canned; mass produced on some anonymous factory floor. If there's meat in them, I sure don't see it on the ingredients.

All of which means that Drake's Deception makes for eight frequently frustrating hours of best-in-the-business storytelling oft-interrupted, if not entirely spoiled by an accumulation of well past its best-before-date gameplay. Which is a real godforsaken shame. But when a game disappoints in the playing, and this one does, you can't very well give it a pass, can you? Though I dare say a lot of video game critics have...

I won't go so far as to conclude that Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is an outright fail. For all its faults, it's still leagues apart from that. But equally, it's long distance away from my Game of the Year.

Video Game Review | Dead Island, dev. Techland

No-one really gave a shank about Dead Island till that tremendous trailer.

The game, for all its immediate promise when Deep Silver announced it in 2006 - of a massive, first-person perspective open world a la The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but with zombies, and the stink of survival horror - Dead Island had been long thought lost to that dead zone known as development hell when in 2011 a stunning CG short film reignited interest in the latest from the Call of Juarez developers.

I was, for my part, skeptical that we would ever see Dead Island on store shelves, and doubtful that if and when we did, it would in the least resemble the touching teaser. Half a year later, the impossible has happened. Dead Island, as it transpires, actually is a game - as opposed to the glorified tech demo I'd expected - and not only that; it's pretty terrific, too.

But that isn't to say it's anything like that trailer.

The zombocalypse begins on the island of Banoi, a fictional landmass supposedly off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Whichever of the four playable characters you pick at the start screen, after a night's irresponsible drinking you - yes, you - awaken in your room in the Palms Resort Hotel with one hangover to rule them all, to find zombies to the left of you, and undead to the right. But here you are. Stuck in the middle of a nightmare.

Thanks to a mysterious voice that guides you over the intercom, you escape the hotel by the skin of your teeth to find spread out before you Banoi, in all its broken, bloodied glory. The island may not be the sheer size of Cyrodil, say, or even the atomic wastelands of New Vegas... nonetheless it is truly a huge place, of incredible, eye-catching environs. First and foremost amongst them: the tropical resort village you find your feet in, with its shallow swimming pools and lavish outdoor bars, where Techland tutorialise the simple mechanics you could spend the next 30 hours getting to grips with.

Which is to say, see a zombie? Kill it dead.

Don't have a weapon? Well find one, why don't you! A lead pipe, for instance, or a machete... or my personal favourite, because I picked - entirely at random - the blunt weapons specialist: the level 7 Baseball Bat. Failing that, there's always your fists. Or a gun, though there are very few of those in the beginning; more's the pity for those players who pick the character with the affinity for arms.

Anyway, next on the agenda - that is presuming you don't have any more pressing business than surviving this beautiful living dead hell - find yourself a workbench and gussy that weapon up some, because the only thing better than a striking stick is a striking stick you've set fire to.

But wait, there's more! When you begin Dead Island, the combat controls default to digital, which equates to a button press that makes your undead slayer flail his or her weapon like a lunatic. Needless to say, this is not so awesome; it makes for flat, pointless combat, with no tactics to speak of, nor any species of player choice. And you're going to fight a lot of zombies over the course of Dead Island, so do yourself a favour: pop into the options, swap over to analogue controls, then let 'em have it.

The analogue controls will be familiar to anyone who's played the Skate series, which had you perform tricks with the right control stick, holding down to charge a jump, for instance, then flicking it straight up to pull off an ollie. In Dead Island, the only difference is you're charging your arms instead of your legs, so when you swipe the stick from left to right, your character does likewise with a weapon. In this way you can lop off individual arms or legs, rendering a zombie practically harmless, or if you're lucky, and you aim your strike just right, explode an undead head.

This mechanic - truth be told only this mechanic - serves to separate Dead Island from the pack. Curious, then, that by default it's inactive. If I hadn't turned the analogue combat controls on, I don't know that I'd have bothered exploring Banoi at all. As was, I completed the very lengthy campaign, as well as almost every one of the sidequests, and I spent an almighty amount of time just traipsing around, too, to see what I could see... looking for loot in all the wrong places.

30 hours of my life later - seriously - I don't regret a second of the time I spent with Dead Island, simply because the combat was so satisfying; so weighty, strategic and visceral. The missions, alas, aren't. Harvest five samples of meat from a certain sort of zombie. Find ten nails so some guy can set up a barricade. Kill all the zombies in a particular area. Well, whatever.

Nor is the world, beyond the small holiday resort you begin in, much to brag about. There's a jungle, a prison and a city, none of which have the strength of character or the freshness in terms of video game aesthetics of the starting area. Also: the voice acting is awful... the graphics get worse the further through the game you progress... and the less said about Dead Island's story - which after all was what that trailer purported to sell it on - the less said about Dead Island's story, never mind its characters, such as they are, the better.

But that combat! There's simply nothing quite like it, and though I expect The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be a trump to Dead Island's spade in every other sense, Bethesda Softworks, the undisputed masters of the open world, would be well to take this essential lesson to heart, because with such singularly solid combat, even a mediocre game - as Dead Island would otherwise be - can be great. One can only imagine how incredible a good game would be with Techland's pioneering mechanics to boot.

Video Game Review | Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, dev. Relic Entertainment

You know, on the one hand, I get why Warhammer and 40k are so important to the community arranged around fantasy and sf like cogs around a single great gear. I understand that the brands drove awareness of the fiction we all adore today - originating certain aspects of it, even, like the indomitable space marine (I think) - helping in a larger sense to cement the narrative and thematic preoccupations of a generation or more.

And of course it can be hard to leave those things you hold dear behind. To move on. Every year, every autumn - honestly, it's become like a ritual - I read the new Stephen King, and some years more than others, I ask myself: why? Why do I do this thing that causes me as much pain as pleasure?

The answer is simple: because I did... because to stop now would be to do this thing that I used to care a great deal about - and still do, sometimes - a disservice. And why should I? There is that saying, I suppose... that to become a man, one must put away childish things, but let's face it: adults today have more toys on their person at any one time than kids ever did. And Stephen King was one of my very favourite toys.

But I digress, suffice it to say that I still have my Stephen King habit, and you folks, if you're that way inclined, are perfectly entitled to - and just as justified in your continuing appreciation of - your Warhammer, and/or your 40k. No harm, no foul. Let it be said, though, that I do glaze over every time one or another of the bloggers I've followed through thick and through thin start banging on about The Horus Heresy or some such. The fiction's just never appealed to me, from the outside, and though I stand ready to be corrected, I've found it all but impossible to find a way in to such a vast and complex canon.

So Warhammer 40k: Space Marine was a welcome chance for me to see what all the adulation's been about. A test case of sorts. At worst, I expected, it would be a competent shooter with a nothing narrative, and I've played a lot worse than that, so I'd have been alright with that. But at best? At best it could have been an entry point, at long last!

Space Marine is not exactly either of those things. For a shooter, it's actually quite an interesting specimen... though its arrival practically day and date with Gears of War 3 has done it no favours. As an introduction to the 40k fiction, meanwhile, I'm sorry to say Space Marine is an almighty missed opportunity.

You are Ultramarine Captain Titus, commander of a small regiment of delightfully soft-spoken space Romans sent to defend Graia, a Forge World under attack by infinite Orks. Your mission - and you have no choice but to accept it - is to support what remains of the Imperial Guard, and prepare the planet for the imminent arrival of a Liberation fleet. Needless to say this does not please Ork Warboss Grimskull, who makes his dissatisfaction known by appearing every now and then in the early-going of the game to say silly things.

Thankfully, your path soon crosses that of Inquisitor Drogon, who has been secretly developing a weapon of mass destruction in Graia's Manufactorum. From this point on, your orders are to rescue the Inquisitor, despite him being a total sleazeball, then aid him in readying the weapon - designed to tap the energy of the Warp - in order to use it against the pesky Ork invaders.

As a narrative, it's not actually bad. There are some strong characters, though they seem straight out of the mold of commonplace military sf; the very mold 40k played no small part in making, back in the day. As you plow through the eight-hour single-player you'll encounter some predictable betrayals, handled with such staunch self-seriousness as to amuse rather than surprise or entertain, I dare say... but there are also some legitimately engaging reversals of fortunes later in the campaign.

In terms of gameplay, what's most interesting about Space Marine is the strange yet satisfying balance it strikes between melee and gunplay. In most encounters, you'll be seamlessly shifting between the two types of enemy interaction: shooting the Ard Boyz with weapons with your weapons - of which there are a few neat variations on the norm - then whipping out the mighty Thunder Hammer or your trusty old Chainsword to mow through a swarm of Orks before they overpower you. Rinse and repeat.

But this repetition, combined with an ever-expanding arsenal of arms and enemies to overcome, means that you must find, and find quickly, what works best for you: for instance the Melta Gun never left my side once I'd found it, whereas I gave the Lascannon a single shot and promptly abandoned it... because I'm a really rubbish sniper. In Space Marine, unlike most modern shooters, that's just fine.

Which isn't to say Space Marine isn't unreasonably punishing, on occasion. It is. And that's symptomatic of RTS developer Relic Entertainment's inexperience with the genre rather than some design decision, I think; that and all the other issues you don't expect from a triple-A retail game in this day and age - things like checkpointing before unskippable cutscenes, some horrendous textures (though it looks pretty good otherwise), and invisible walls here, there and everywhere - that hold the experience as a whole back.

So as a shooter, too, Space Marine is solid, if a bit cheap and cheerful compared to the likes of Gears of War 3. It's good enough... but never truly great.

And that's the thing. I was really hoping Space Marine would sell me on Warhammer. It didn't. You do get the sense that Relic are making an effort to embrace all comers - the fiction is far from impenetrable, and it could have been - but in part because of that restraint, that allowance to accessibility, Space Marine is in narrative terms almost entirely bland; resolutely unremarkable in the face of so many other similar games that have co-opted elements of the 40k canon and ran with them, evolving them in ways that leave the franchise started it all feeling not a little left-behind.

Sadly, then, Space Marine didn't make a Warhammer convert of me, though I was open to it doing so... hopeful, even, that it would. But those folks who're already amongst the faithful? I can't see any reason why they wouldn't love this thing, odd beast though it may be in the modern marketplace.

One last thing before I call it a day: for a game about space marines, called Space Marine, in which you play - yes, you guessed it - a space marine... there really isn't a whole lot of space in Spare Marine. What's that about?