Making a direct comparison between Prince of Persia and Dragon’s Lair or Space Ace is really not fair. Prince of Persia has a tremendous new art style behind it, looking like the beautiful bastard offspring of Okami and Tomb Raider. The prince himself has been re-imagined as a wandering thief whose royal heritage is missing right along with any of the pointless brooding or split personality disorders of the previous games. The sands of time and their accompanying mechanics are gone, but they have been replaced by a cute flying girl who rescues the prince from all sorts of dismal endings without fail, input or effort; something of a middle eastern Tinkerbell in tight Capri pants, if that were possible. Prince of Persia has absolutely everything going for it in the looks department; it is only when actually played that the seams start to show.

The prince and his new glowing sidekick move effortlessly through the levels in both look and execution. Every bit of animation, from scampering upside down in a pure affront to physics to just running over the sand as shadows play across the dunes, looks almost perfect. To accommodate this, however, the vast majority of the prince’s actions have become either automatic or have such huge timing windows that no skill is involved, and if a jump or handhold still manages to be missed, the rescue call-girl is right there to drop the prince back on solid ground. Huge chunks of platforming can be pulled off with single button presses. All the painstakingly accurate movements through beautiful environments feel disconnected not from each other, but from the player. I felt at best like a casual observer, at worst like I was playing through a quick time event that would make the fight scenes from Indigo Prophecy jealous. There was no danger or risk of failure, so there was no emotional connection with what was happening.

This is Prince of Persia for the casual gamer. Levels are chunked up into small areas with the next checkpoint sitting conveniently just behind the ledge the prince fell off of. Combat is now a completely one on one affair that offers the same safety net as everything else; it’s not that there is no death penalty, it’s that the player cannot actually die. Even the storybook presentation of Sands of Time has been completely removed. There are very few cut scenes explaining what is going on; instead the player has the option of telling the prince to talk to Elika. Most of these interactions are forgettable, even if some of them were worth seeing. Aside from the visuals, the whole experience feels watered down for the masses, but really, who can blame Ubisoft for doing this? The first three Prince of Persia games were never exactly difficult, but the new Prince is designed to hold just about anyone’s hand right on through to the end while hopefully keeping them just engaged enough to buy the next one. Prince of Persia, the franchise: love it or leave it. It’s a wonder there is no version of this that supports waggle controls.

I was surprised by how lazy the ‘no death’ mechanic made me. It spite of the path through any level being laid out as plainly as possible, I still managed to need rescuing quite often, mostly because I had stopped paying attention. Why bother lining up a jump if you can’t fall? Imagine playing through Bioshock, which also has zero death penalty, with a big daddy following you around and killing most things for you on sight. Without even the illusion of challenge, maintaining interest becomes difficult. It’s like playing Dragon’s Lair with unlimited credits: eventually anyone will get to the end, even if it is by chance.

The successful Tomb Raider games (and there have not been many of them) are necessarily formulaic. Lara needs to get from one place to another, but there is no easy way to do it without falling to death or being crushed by giant boulders, and it is the player’s job to get her there. Oh, and this should take place mostly in tombs. It’s estrogen-heavy Indiana Jones, and Underworld sticks very close to the proven patterns; it is only when it veers from them that it stumbles. There are a few ill-advised and unnecessary vehicle levels, and the combat is just as bad, if not worse than it has been in the past, but these are just temporary distractions. The focus here is on subterranean parkour; nothing new, but polished up and presented so well that any sense of déjà vu is washed away.

Tomb Raider games have never been known for their story; CORE relied entirely on boobs and a bad camera for years, and each game sold incrementally less than the one before. Even teenage boys require more than that; the fact that most porn has dialogue proves it well enough. Underworld provides a shocking amount of continuity, though I would expect nothing less from the house that built the best parts of the Legacy of Kain series. The tale of old gods and a search for dead parents is, again, nothing new, but it is interesting and un-intrusive at the same time. Lara is not a static character, nor is she a perfect one; the fact that she has personality at all is a huge step over the old Lara. Again, nothing new here, but quality nonetheless.

For me, the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games have been the equivalent of gamer comfort food. It is like revisiting my younger, less jaded gaming days and finding things better than I remember them being. Underworld is not perfect; there are camera issues that force blind jumps and shooting things is more a chore than anything else, but what it does right it does very, very well. Tomb Raider started a genre; without it, there would be no Prince of Persia or Uncharted, and Underworld stands up to its virtual grandchildren admirably. I am not ashamed to admit that I like Lara again; she has been reborn after slumming it up with Army Men games and virtual pin-up shoots for years. Tomb Raider: Underworld is a good sequel, and if I have to wait another two years for the third game instead of six months for a repackaging of the old game with new skimpy outfits, that’s okay.

From the start, it has been facing an uphill battle: with the advent of DC characters, the game sports a Teen rating, which means no spine-ripping, skull-exploding, blood-gushing fatalities. To classic Mortal Kombat fans, this may come as a disappointment, but the rest of the game suffers little from this decision. In fact, there’s still a surprising amount of blood for a Teen-rated game, along with bruised faces and tattered uniforms. The neutered finishers are still a let-down, but would you really want your childhood idol having his heart ripped out by Sub-Zero?

Besides textures swapping when characters get too much of a beating, it is worth mentioning that the models look great (especially the faces), though the backgrounds tend to look last-gen. This game still has that Unreal Engine gloss to it, but it manages to hide it most of the time behind brightly coloured uniforms and set pieces. Presentation-wise, my biggest pet peeve is the loading screens between menus. I understand the need to load from one fight to the next, but why is it necessary when I just want to cycle through character bios?

While the loading times can make it frustrating to access them, MK vs. DC does have a lot of modes to enhance the core game. Beyond the standard “Arcade,” the game offers a story mode, online play (with no lag!), character biographies, different endings, a practice mode, and a Kombo Challenge. The story tells a much more direct tale than most fighting games, and while it is plagued with overacting, I actually felt compelled to finish it. It feels like a great episode of The Justice League.

Unfortunately, after finishing the story, none of the other modes are particularly compelling. This mainly has to do with the unbalanced fighting engine. While there are intricate combos, they’re so hard to pull off that most players (especially online) find spamming Flash’s tornado spin just as effective. You may see one or two cool juggles, but this is definitely not the next tournament fighter.

What it lacks in balance, though, it makes up for in flash. Each character’s special moves are easy to pull off and are well-suited to their persona. Also, every stage has multiple areas that one can reach by running their opponent through walls or hurling them over a railing. These offer fun scenarios of back and forth button mashing until one player gets the best of the other. They don’t make it fun to play through Arcade twenty times, but they do distract from the lack of balance and keep the game lively when playing with a friend.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe takes a number of steps in the right direction. It is by far the most fun I have had with an MK game since Mortal Kombat 3. It still has a way to go if it wants to compete with the top tier, but it provides a fun time by coupling a few unseen fighting styles with familiar characters. It isn’t for everyone, but for those who have fond memories of DC or MK, it might do enough to rekindle your interest in the franchises – it definitely has mine.

I know it’s no Forza or Gran Turismo, but it’s definitely not a Burnout title either. It’s more PGR4 than Motorstorm, but it’s still its own distinct title in middling ground. Unfortunately, this time it’s not middle enough.

There was a brief period before and after Need for Speed: Most Wanted in which the franchise had racing games with no police involved. If your most iconic title is called Hot Pursuit 2, here’s a hot tip: don’t drop the cops. Thankfully, the chases are back into the formula, and they’re done fantastically to nobody’s surprise. But the one thing fans of the series gained from the enforcers’ reprieve was a very determined focus on the actual driving and racing aspects (these somehow came to light as important parts of a racing game in which you drive cars). Undercover is a pleasing amalgamation of all previous entries into the Need for Speed family. The police have returned in full force, but at the same time, you are benefiting from the police-free titles like ProStreet and Underground, as well as Carbon, which had police, but sucked anyway. The point is, car customization is fantastic, controls are pretty straightforward (it’s hard to fuck up a good thing when it works across the board, but somebody always manages it), and the new driving engine is designed to let you pull off cool maneuvers, but it still handles your individual cars very well and as realistically as I imagine it ever should.

There’s really not much to complain about here. The plot, while ending on a kind of wait, what note is actually pretty good. A lot of people hear the basic synopsis and say something snarky and mildly retarded about the similarity to The Fast and the Furious. Good one. Yeah, you play as an FBI agent trying to uncover some racers who decided to step up their game and commit more serious crimes, which explains why you have to be in just as much danger from the police as any other racer (you are undercover, after all). The gameplay actually requires this plot and vice versa: in order to have someone to race with, you have to prove your worth. In order to prove your worth, you must “dog” some “bacon” and prove you’re not a cop yourself. To engage police in chases and escape, there must be an open game world in which to drive. In other words, while there isn’t anything to do outside of the events that progress the plot (in the form of a leveling system accompanying each race’s payout), the open road has merit just in its necessity to police chases, which are relevant to the storyline.

As I said, though, the benefits of the police-free games are here, but there is nothing beside the reintegration of pursuing squad cars to offset these perks from the “simulator” side. This game needs more “arcade.” It has a handful of cars that can only be described as “totally badass,” and each of them takes physical damage, but this has no actual effect on the performance of the vehicle, thank the gods. That is indeed “arcade.” However, in some instances, you can completely total the car, smashing it so hard that the game just says “wow, you fucked up hard, start over.” Where is my Burnout-style exploding shattering shrapnel storm of wreckage and former bits of vehicle? If you’re going to go all out and tell me my car is so screwed it can’t even drive, I think we deserve a little more than just seeing the car in the same state as it was after bumping into one million things very lightly, rather than one thing at one million miles an hour. When I smash a cruiser out of commission, I want to see it sawed in half like that poor son of a bitch in The Matrix Reloaded that got nailed by those ghost twins’ huge truck. What I don’t want is to see just another cruiser slam into park with minor cosmetic issues.

Critics and designers and fans have all touted and hailed Undercover as a return to form, but I only see baby steps from there. I see a necessary piece of the franchise being returned to its rightful place and done very well, but at the same time, it’s hard to call that progression. Yes, the game brings together the worlds of its prequels and does everything either well or very well, but it lacks that joie de vivre found in its most beloved predecessors. I thoroughly enjoyed the game from start to finish, and I had several “oh damn yes” moments, whether it was by myself or racing online with and against my friends, but occasionally pumping my fist in the air or telling an AI driver to go fuck himself as I blur past him isn’t quite worth an A+ around here. When the Need for Speed games embrace their full potential, I’ll be waiting with open arms, but for now, this is just good; an upgrade for anyone who already enjoyed the series’ previous entries.

There are many individual pieces of Far Cry 2 that work very, very well, but none of them fit together into one cohesive game. For example, simply driving around the environment looking at the scenery is amazing. Far Cry 2 is right up there with Crysis in the looks department; the day/night cycle can take a brightly lit jungle area and transform it into a nightmarish landscape where the plants themselves look ready to attack. This spirit of freedom is completely squashed, however, by the constant flow of enemies. Almost every crossroads is filled to the brim with angry mercenaries wielding high-powered weapons. Cleaning them out is futile, as they will just be back the next time; perhaps soldiers here are grown on trees like bananas. This would explain how quickly they come back, as well as their lack of self preservation. Seeing a soldier run his jeep into a rock at full speed, then get out and forget what he was doing long enough to catch a machete in the back is funny the first time, but does not make for very engaging firefights.

When Far Cry 2 wakes up and remembers what it is, or at least what it should be, the combat suddenly improves. Individual missions provide a guided tour of the savannah, and each is very good on its own. When confined to a smaller area and denied vehicles, the AI’s death wish disappears. For five to ten minutes at a time, it is a very good shooter, until poor pacing once again interferes. There is no quick-travel option to jump from mission to mission. Perhaps I was spoiled by Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but driving across the map two or three times on one job is just tiresome, especially when the magic enemy checkpoints are brought back into play. There are bus stops scattered around the map, but even those can be painfully far from the end target. The game becomes schizophrenic, open but then not open enough, slowly paced and then too fast. I enjoyed it almost as two different games, but together they are a mess.

Sadly, Far Cry 2 just becomes the opposite of Far Cry, when it could have been so much more. Far Cry is famous for its third act collapse. For two thirds of the game, it was almost perfect: open but not directionless, it required stealth and planning to overcome the eerily intelligent enemies. Then the monsters came out and the game went downhill from there. Far Cry 2 stumbles through the first two acts, until out of nowhere I found myself skulking through the underbrush in a linear final level that was just as good, if not better than anything the prequel had to offer. There is nothing wrong with a shooter being a shooter. Not every game needs a sprawling map to get lost in; by offering more, Far Cry 2 ends up being much less than it could or should have been.

Faith is a real person, and the unnamed city she traverses is a real place, not an assortment of set pieces. Run up to a wall and she stops herself by putting her hands up against it. Look away from the ledge she is hanging off of and she takes one of her hands off so she can turn all the way around. Her subconscious is even relayed directly to you via colored highlights of objects you should move across to advance as easily as possible through the level. Faith knows, so you know. The connections between player, character and environment are as close to seamless as they ever have been. With the utmost respect to Super Mario 64, this is everything it isn’t (in the best way).

It’s not all sunshine and lollipops, though. Mirror’s Edge’s story is a flop and totally usual for video games. This raises questions like ‘does a video game like this need a story?’ What if the time trial and race modes - which you unlock after beating it - were all there were to it? Would it be enough to just have to get from point A to B with no explanation of why? I think if certain areas and enemies were removed or changed, the game would have been better that way.

The other major fault in its design is that of its combat. You’re rewarded with Achievements and unlockables for beating the game without using guns, which is a shame because melee feels floaty and detached (so far the opposite of the rest of the game), and weird because developer DICE seems to be aware of its failings in this section of the game, as they’ve said in interviews that if a sequel is made, combat will be changed or removed. First-person shooting feels alright, but still doesn’t have much of a place alongside the rest of the game.

So this game fails in that it has (bad) combat because it has enemies, and it has enemies because it has (a bad) story. Remove or improve both and we really could have had something special on our hands. Instead, this game only proves its worth as a tech demo, which, thankfully, is more than enough to give us a great experience. First-person shooter developers, take heart. Put this type of animation, control and physics into your games from this point forward. The bar has been set.

What initially drew me into Valkyria Chronicles, and what kept me playing for as long as I did, was simply how the game looked. Seeing the storybook scenes in motion is a must, as still pictures do them no justice. I would love to watch someone with more ability than myself play through the game just to see what is next. Characters are expressive in spite of not being overly detailed; equipped weapons actually change when swapped out. The protagonist’s tank, featured prominently in every mission I got to, changes with new equipment as well, becoming just as important and likeable as any other character. Everything is polished and consistent, from the layout of the menus to the literal book that the story unfolds in. Valkyria Chronicles looked more than good enough to distract me from how frustrated I was getting from the repeated ass kickings I was getting - at least for a while.

Combat in Valkyria Chronicles is something of a real time-turn based hybrid. The action stops while the player chooses which character to move, then swoops down to a third person shooter perspective. From there the player takes position and shoots in pseudo real time, the action only stopping when it comes time to take aim and hope in vain that the bullets go where the gun is pointed. Here is where things began to fall apart for me; as soon as the ‘action’ dropped into third person I assumed that my crosshairs meant something. They are more of an approximation of where the shot might go than anything else. Nothing for me is more frustrating than taking the time to line up a sniper shot after boosting his accuracy, only to have him miss the same shot he made seconds before. This randomness felt oddly out of place and is really what turned me off of the game in the end. I don’t think it is any more difficult than other games of its kind, but I do think that straying further from its progeny would have been a change for the better.

It really is a shame; I want to see more of the game, but after missing several shots with my tank only to have three Empire tanks make the same shot all in a row, the final one being a critical hit that blew the top clean off my vehicle (with no warning) an hour into a mission, I just don’t want to go back. The real time part of the combat feels like a tease; in the end it is no different than Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics or anything else in the genre. If you happened to like those and don’t mind that a significant part of winning relies on virtual dice rolls, you can do worse than Valkyria Chronicles. It is the most visually striking game that I have played in a long time. While it may not have converted me, if Sega ever releases a game that looks like this but allows me to control what is going on, instead of pushing pieces around, I’ll be the first in line. As it stands, it is an excellent addition to a relatively niche area; it’s just not for me.

Bethesda has decided to stick with their Oblivion Engine, for better or worse. Advantages include Bethesda’s familiarity with its tools, and various improvements to the engine. Disadvantages include a strange conversation perspective (like Oblivion, we zoom right into our friend’s face as we speak to them, the world behind pausing mid-step) and Bethesda’s continued penalization of ranged combat. Bows never worked particularly well in earlier Elder Scrolls titles; on top of having to aim carefully there was still a high chance to miss until your stats with that weapon were high enough, and this tradition has continued. This isn’t just frustrating, but needless and unintuitive. While I have a deep respect for dice rolls, having them effect your accuracy so greatly makes these weapons uninteresting at the lower levels, and results in constant saves for convenient reloads should you get unlucky. This was a problem in the earlier Fallouts, too, but I’m guessing this design decision wasn’t retained on account of a desire for meaningful progression or a deep respect for Fallout’s foibles and personality.

On that note, the Fallout universe has been diluted. I’m not speaking of child-killing here, that’s something I’m quite thankful to be free of, but the warm welcome this world offers. Fallout 2 featured a suffocatingly harsh cast, and some characters were memorable simply because they were friendly: this tradition has been lost. Fallout 3 offers a warm welcome with Megaton, your first home city. And while you do have an option to free yourself of it, it’s somewhat strange that the city even exists. Its residents don’t seem particularly crazed, aside from a few cult members, and the guy who runs it is protective and fatherly, qualities that seem more appropriate for a character that exists in The Elder Scrolls rather than Fallout. This is not some Episode 1 shit, it’s not a terrible disservice to fans, but Fallout’s spirit feels more alive in Fallout 3’s dangerous environments than its surprisingly polite characters.

Fallout 3’s environment is one aspect that’s been greatly improved. Exploring vaults (not unlike the one in which your character was raised) and new areas are infinitely more interesting than they were before. That’s not to say they’re going to surprise you; dungeons play out in familiar ways. You risk health and ammo for rewards, and sometimes that risk pays off, sometimes not. But as you do more of these, your encyclopedia grows, making your second and even third characters’ progression more fluid. It’s here Bethesda has played to their strengths, the novelty of discovery and satisfaction of familiarity resulting in a whole greater than the sum of all parts.

After 40 or so hours of play, Fallout 3 feels like something of a mixed bag. Bethesda’s decision to package Elder Scrolls as a Fallout game feels forced, and while it’s a fresh aesthetic, the Fallout universe isn’t used particularly well. Ultra violence is still featured, and you’ll hear “fuck” and “shit” from time to time, but poor characterizations make this world feel transparent. Still, if you’re a fan of Bethesda’s games and you can forgive these missteps, Fallout 3 offers a lot of silver lining, and it’s worth the time you put into it.

First and foremost, LittleBigPlanet is a platformer. Ordinarily this would be worth quite a few bonus points for me; 2D platformers are few and far between these days. The last really good one I played was New Super Mario Brothers, and that was two years ago when I still had a DS. That game knew exactly was it was and reveled in the old-school-ness of it. LittleBigPlanet, on the other hand, was not content with just 2D and had to try to pry in just enough of the third dimension to make playing the game an absolute chore. As trite as it may sound, the game controls terribly. There is no option to use the d-pad instead of the analog stick, so movement feels mushy even before the exaggerated physics come into play. It is impossible to do anything with precision; jumping is awkward, landing worse, and just running over loosely wobbling obstacles a matter of luck instead of timing and skill. No one is actually good at this game, they simply have enough patience to try over and over until little scrotum boy bounces just the right way.

It unfortunately does not end there. Moving between planes is inconsistent; sometimes jumping forward a level is not possible, other times it leads to instant death by bottomless pit. Telling which plane you are on at any given time is also a matter of guesswork, leading to death by falling behind a platform into the aforementioned bottomless pit. For a game this insufferably pleased with itself, it just isn’t any fun. After two levels I wanted to wring the John Clease sound-alike narrator’s neck. Even the look of the game quickly becomes annoying, busy being almost photorealistic and uninteresting at the same time. The level design swings wildly between boring and easy to actually creative but impossible. I would love to take Mario for a spin through some of the later levels - maybe he would actually land on a platform once in a while instead of waving his arms, trying to be cute on the way to another inadvertent and unavoidable death.

There is of course much more to LittleBigPlanet than just falling into pits and making obscene gestures with custom avatars. The ability to create just about any level imaginable with the included editor is a big selling point. It is unfortunate that playing through the included levels to unlock items is required; it feels like being punished for something someone else did wrong. The editor itself is difficult, but not impossible to use. Mouse support is probably a bit much to ask for, but it would have been nice. The ability to play through other users’ levels for free is also welcome, though as brilliant as some of them are, they are still saddled with the same control problems from the main game. Think of playing with Lego while wearing mittens, then coat everything with ice. I am amazed at what some people have had the time and skill to come up with, I just wish I could play them in a different game.

Making a level editor the selling point of a game seems like a cop-out to me. It almost feels like admitting that you have a great set of tools but have no idea what to do with them, then selling them for full price with the hope that someone else will. Sony has been lucky; the community has come through and made some great levels for their broken game. It is a shame that no one will see any benefit from it. LittleBigPlanet is begging for an in-game economy, something like the coppers system in Trackmania. Players there are rewarded for their creativity with in-game currency. It’s not as good as really getting paid, but it is better than the trophy awarded for having five people download your level. It also doesn’t hurt that the game attached to the tool set is good in its own right - something LittleBigPlanet cannot hope to claim.

The problem is not that there is nothing new in Silent Hill: Homecoming. On the contrary; more has changed with this title than any previous, and that includes The Room. The famously bad combat is now just annoying instead of painful; I still ran past most enemies, but when I did have to fight them, I at least had a chance (and my weapons didn’t break, screw 0rigins). The game of course looks better, but many of the new graphical flourishes are cribbed directly from either the movie or other games; the influence of Silent Hill: The Feature Film That Tried Really Hard is readily apparent, and from the walls peeling away when changing worlds to a silly and canon-destroying cameo from Silent Hill 2, most of it looks cool but adds nothing. It might as well have been called Silent Hill: The Movie: The Game, only it’s several years late.

Since changes to the combat system actually made fighting easier, the puzzles are more abstract and difficult than ever to make up for it. I quickly succumbed to the temptation of GameFAQs; there are barely enough hours in a day to play everything that I want to play this time of year as it is. Spending hours on a sliding block puzzle or context-free riddle is just not an option. It should come as no surprise that this ruined big chunks of the game for me. Part of the fun, or terror, or the previous games was figuring out puzzles while being constantly worried about some refugee from a Japanese tentacle rape anime accosting you from behind. Even the puzzles became frightening; Silent Hill: Homecoming took the puzzles one step too far, past “hard” and right on to “almost impossible,” and cheating was the only way for me to keep going.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is far from all bad, though. The bosses are some of the best the series has seen: grotesque, unnerving, but beatable. Most of the cut scenes were very well done, in spite of borrowing heavily from Saw and High Tension to name a few. The game is definitely gory, but it skirts the line between icky and nauseating very well. I can only recall one or two times that it sank to the level of Condemned 2, which both my dinner and I definitely appreciated. None of this changes the fact that the game had Silent Hill on the cover, and that I had serious expectations for it for that reason. I wanted to be frightened, and I was not. Of course, if the game didn’t have Silent Hill on the cover, I would never have played it; without the now slightly tarnished moniker it would have been just another dark third person action game with loud noises and spooky music. It looks like the only really scary series left is Fatal Frame, and playing the latest in that series would require buying a Wii.