Team17 are no doubt destined to forever be known as ‘the Worms guys’, and Alien Breed Evolution (Episode 1), a return to their series of games from the 90’s, isn’t about to change that.  A basic top-down shooter, the only variety comes from simple ‘ find key A to open door A’ fetch tasks, though in truth they feel more like chores as everything is marked on the map for you when you need it, removing any real challenge.  The twin-analog stick gunplay is fun enough, but Alien Breed Evolution commits the ultimate sin of being utterly average – everything works as it should, but the whole package is completely underwhelming and forgettable. The publisher provided us with a download code for Alien Breed Evolution - Episode 1

There are a few explanations that come to mind when pondering the inclusion of a framing narrative in the Assassin’s Creed story: it allows subsequent games to jump anywhere in history; it provides another layer of both plot and gameplay on top of the rich historical settings; it acts as a legitimiser for the historical parts of the game; it gives the player control of a novice, equally confused about what is happening to him; and it even perhaps acts as a metaphor for videogames themselves. All well and good, but I’m going to debunk as many as I can. I think Assassin’s Creed 2 is a much riper fruit for this kind of criticism, so that’s where I’ll source most of the examples I’ll be using. Desmond’s genetic memory is used to allow him access to his ancestors’ lives, to become them and live their lives as they lived. You could argue that without such a device, it would be difficult for the game to leap from era to era as it has; from 12th century Holy Land to Renaissance Italy. While it is an imaginative way to link subsequent titles to the original, why not have Ezio realise he ...

In the last decade there have been around 20 big-budget blockbuster movies based on well-known comic book characters, and the vast majority of them have been given the inevitable tie-in game treatment.  Some, like X Men Origins: Wolverine and Spiderman 2 are actually worth a look, if still ultimately too flawed to really stand up to the best that the world video games can offer, while the likes of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Watchmen: The End Is Nigh offer little to entice us beyond an official licence. Batman, however, has been lucky.  Rocksteady Studios opted to cut out a stage in the usual game-based-on-a-movie-based-on-a-comic routine, instead going straight to the source material.  The result is Batman: Arkham Asylum - in my and many others opinion, easily the best comic book game ever made. Rocksteady Studios are a relatively new developer, founded in 2004 in London, with the forgettable (but by no means terrible) PS2 and Xbox shooter Urban Chaos: Riot Response their only previous title.  But their youth is somewhat deceiving, as they were in fact founded by former members of Argonaut Games, a company that dates back to 1982, but who were forced to close in 2004 due ...

Doesn't anyone else find Apple supremely irritating? Sure, their products typically exhibit the cutting edge in industrial design, and their user interface design prowess is famously unrivalled.  Yet, call me a curmudgeon, a Free Software communist, or just a sore loser, but given the restrictive choices that Apple products typically offer-our way or the highway- I choose the highway every time. It's not just the way that the company exerts paranoid control over its products through its insistence on closed software ecosystems; or the way that they thumb their nose at established computing standards in favour of proprietary alternatives. Hell, it's not even the infamous 'Apple Tax' which sees Apple product users pay exorbitant prices for basic accessories like adapters and cables, as well as the computers themselves. What really gets my goat is the religious fervour that greets Apple product launches, where Apple's well-oiled hype machine has the world's media quite literally eating out of their hand, repeating verbatim whatever hubris and hyperbole-laden superlatives that Steve Jobs and co. have offered on that particular day. It's the suffocating aura of smugness that pervades these presentations that I can't stand- the studied cool, the carefully engineered choreography, and the ever-so-slightly religious undertones that represent ...

"Mario Kart without the charm" was the snap judgement of my younger brother as he watched me slip-sliding around ModNation Racer's circuits, struggling to get used to the powersliding mechanic. It was a comment that made me smile- there's certainly a ring of truth to it- but after properly getting to grips with the beta version of Sony's great white hope for a new casual-focused racing I.P for 2010, I realised that it's a title that deserves considerably more than a pithy put-down to summarise it. Whilst all karting games will inevitably be compared to the multicoloured elephant in the room in the form of Mario Kart, it is in another game that ModNation has principally sought inspiration- for this game seeks to transplant the create/play/share philosophy that made LittleBigPlanet the PlayStation's darling of the games media. Indeed, the developers, United Front, openly discuss their close relationship with Sackboy's parents, Media Molecule. The graphical style is cutesy, but not overly so- whilst the playable racers are clearly the (more colourful) love-children of Miis and Sackboy, the style of the actual courses designs are a little inconsistent, with some adopting a realistic style, and others a more cartoon aesthetic. The result is something ...

It's a new year, a new decade, and a potentially top-notch 12 months for videogames. With all three main consoles in rude health going into 2010, the focus this year will very much be on games, rather than hardware. That said, developments like Microsoft's Project Natal, Sony's as-yet-unnamed motion controller, and even Nintendo's Vitality Sensor (no sniggering down the back) promise to extend the lifespan of this console cycle well beyond what has become normal in this industry- a welcome development for cash-strapped punters. We're looking forward to a whole lot more than 20 games in 2010- but, our focus groups tell us that articles with lots of lists in them play well with all sorts of demographics, so we're willing to make a temporary exemption in our usually strict list-free policy to make room for a brief preview of the year ahead in gaming. In no particular order, and with all the usual caveats of subjectivity, we offer below our personal picks for 2010. 1) Heavy Rain (PS3) With Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream aim to revolutionise how videogames tell stories. As we noted in our hands-on preview, the talented French developer have pulled out all the stops to create a visually arresting and ...