• Format: PS4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Warner Bros Entertainment
• Developer: Avalanche Studios
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.madmaxgame.com/age_gate/
• Game disc provided by PR

The world of Mad Max (or ‘Infuriated Ian’ as the English version has it, of course) is a grim one. A grimy world where crude and dirty technology is king, and automobiles are valued higher than human lives; sort of like the inside of Jeremy Clarkson’s head. Previously, the closest you could get to living there was watching the local chavs do donuts down the garages while they left a trail of discarded energy drink cans in their wake; but lo! Warner Bros and Avalanche Studios have brought us a 21st Century Mad Max game.

The phrase ‘GTA Gibson’ may be a silly and lazy one, but it gives you a fair idea of what to expect. Not that Max looks anything like Australia’s most famous right-wing actor here; he’s (unsurprisingly) more like Tom Hardy in Fury Road, if Tom Hardy was instructed to mix it up with Nathan Drake cosplay. As Max, you will wander a part of the desert Wastelands known as ‘The Great White’, fighting or running from random road warriors as you see fit, completing missions of both the ‘story’ and ‘side’ varieties.

Make no mistake; the Wastelands here are superbly realised, the environment almost being a character itself. A nigh-on perfect balance has been struck between conveying the sense of an arid and near-empty desert, while also ensuring the player is never too far from something to do or see. Scavenging long-rusted wrecks or ramshackle camps is vital. Water, food, fuel, scrap metal (the game’s currency); all must be hunted and gathered for survival. In truth, fuel – while usually guarded – isn’t nearly as rare as the Max universe would have it. Apart from one scripted section at the beginning of the game, we never ran dry in a vehicle. More important is water, essentially an HP restorer. There’s (dog) food to be found, and you can also eat maggots from corpses (ew), but you rather oddly can’t carry food around with you. Only water, in your canteen.

“You put your left leg – oops.”

Max may be a legendary ‘road warrior’, but he’ll spend most of his time doing things for other people. Go here, go there, bring me this, blow up those… but we never really minded. Roaring across the dusty uneven lands in Max’s car is great fun, and car battles are good too (though best appreciated after a handful of upgrades). You’ll spend more time out of Max’s car than in it though, with plenty of places to explore and camps to raid and take over (once friendly, a camp will periodically reward you with scrap). On-foot combat is perhaps best described as a Fisher Price version of Rocksteady’s Arkham combat system. You punch with one button, counter with a second, evade with a third, and there are limited lifespan melee weapons to pick up. It’s solid, if not nearly as smooth as Batman’s graceful system. The main issue is the camera, which seems to be on the side of your enemies.

When fighting in the midst of a group (which is virtually always), it has a tendency to keep some opponents out of shot. As a result, you never see when these off-screen miscreants are about to attack, and suffer unavoidable damage as a result. You soon learn to avoid this problem by giving the camera a nudge when needed, but you shouldn’t have to.

Games like this are all about freedom, which is achieved here with mixed results. In general, you can tackle gameplay how you like. You’re encouraged to explore different approaches to the main camps (for example, rather than charge straight in you can take out perimeter defences or play trojan horse by stealing an enemy vehicle), and the more you upgrade your car, the more options you have for car combat. You’ll eventually be able to damage cars by ramming them, taking out the tires, taking out the driver directly, or hitting them with explosives. Tools available for this are car armour, rims and flamethrowers, your trusty harpoon, the explosive ‘thunderpoon’, and Max’s shotgun, which can be used while driving. Then there are the obligatory legions of optional missions and constructs, which offer either one-off or repeated rewards. There’s hours upon hours of content here, charged with a riveting apocalyptic atmosphere.

Importantly, there are lots of explodey things.

On the other hand, your freedom is to a large extent an illusion. The aforementioned car upgrades, as well as upgrades for Max himself (health, defence, offence, etc) are kept behind a variety of barriers. That upgrade you want? As well as the requisite amount of scrap, you’ll have to have completed a certain story and/or side mission, and/or reached a certain level, and/or reduced the ‘threat level’ in a certain area by a certain amount. This is most irritatingly brought to the fore about two thirds through the story, where previously optional tasks suddenly become compulsory if you want to unlock the next story mission. This then happens again a few more times.

Then there are the storms. A great idea on paper, they look awesome certainly, and have a risk/reward idea as they hide huge scrap stashes. However, they occur randomly, and can easily kill you if you’re out in the open. As a result, if one hits when you’re (for example) halfway through clearing a camp, you must (a) cower in a sheltered corner until it’s finally over, or (b) make it to the nearest stronghold to ‘cancel’ the storm, then drive all the way back to where you were. They’re few and far between, but extremely annoying when they happen while you’re busy.

Although it seems determined to hold itself back from greatness, Mad Max is (generally) an open-world game done right that will grip you for hours at a time. It’s the most depressingly realistic apocalyptic aftermath a videogame has offered in quite a while; consider this basic training, only fun.

• Format: Xbox One (version reviewed), PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: A Crowd of Monsters
• Developer: A Crowd of Monsters
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.bluesandbullets.com/
• Game code provided by PR

Blues and Bullets is… well, it’s not as easy to categorise as it first appears – which is a good thing. You wander around being prompted to press A to look at things, there are a few QTEs, and you have dialogue/reaction options; which hints at a modern Telltale-esque adventure game. By and large that’s what it is, but it confidently strides off the beaten path in ways which set it apart.

You are Eliot Ness – yes, the Eliot Ness. Ness had a fascinating life, which took a tragic nosedive in his later years. The version of him here is largely a broad sketch from his high points, in a sort of alternate history following Capone’s imprisonment. Now retired he runs a diner, but is soon unofficially drawn into investigating a series of child kidnappings somehow tied to cultists. Despite the original story, a series of historical people and places are referred to or directly included.

Unsurprisingly this includes Al Capone. Two things are notable about Capone in this first episode; (a) he ends up forging an unlikely alliance with Ness, and (b) he looks like somebody has hurriedly replicated his face with plasticine. Capone aside, the character models are generally impressive in terms of detail and semi-realism. Try to avoid making Ness run though; his running animation is unintentionally hilarious.

The game as a whole is presented in an immediately, and consistently, striking art style. The 40s/50s-style soundtrack lays the foundation for the noir atmosphere, which is strengthened greatly by the black-and-white graphics. The only other colour used almost without exception is red, giving a bloody tint to the experience. This also allows the lighting to look all the more impressive.

Visually, the world is constantly engaging.

Red is also used to subtly direct the player to the next clue or destination, not that this is really required. In terms of the physical path it’s an incredibly linear experience, with the player even denied control over the camera (though such control is, fortunately, not needed). This works to the game’s advantage at certain points, though; the few times Ness enters into a gunfight, movement and cover are handled for you, with your task being to simply pop out and shoot the bad guys without staying in the line of fire for too long. You can then continue with the story.

At this early stage, it’s difficult to say how the story as a whole holds together, but the script is so far solid. There are a handful of good witty lines, usually delivered by Capone’s trusted man Milton. We like Milton. He’s around for a lot of the first episode, and hopefully he’ll feature heavily in the rest of the series, too.

Be aware that this is a game whose primary concern is telling you its story. Aside from the aforementioned simplified shooting sections, the most ‘gamey’ section of this episode is when you come across a grisly murder. You are then tasked with scouring the area for clues until you have enough information to piece together exactly what happened and how, which you do by selecting clues to slot into various sections of a decision tree. In all honesty this requires little skill; the game won’t let you slot an incorrect clue into place. This is just as well, as the links between a few of the clues and their respective conclusions are tenuous at best.

Despite the use of historical figures, surreal moments like this strengthen the experience as a whole.

As for the decisions you get to make, the first episode is too early to draw any conclusions on their significance. However, the very first decision you make has a post-credits consequence that, regardless of whether or not it feeds into the next episode, is tense and surprising.

Our biggest fear for the series at this point is the hint that there may be supernatural forces at play, which will have to be handled with extreme skill to avoid their introduction causing the whole experience to fall apart – if that is indeed what’s going to happen. Regardless, the first episode has us intrigued, and we’re keen to continue the story. At two hours or less, it’s hardly an epic adventure; but it’s well worth the £3.99 to get a taste. If you do like it, you’ll likely immediately decide to see it through to the end of the series.

• Format: Wii U (version reviewed), PC
• Unleashed: Out Now Wii U (EU), 11th December Wii U (NA), TBC (PC)
• Publisher: Nintendo (Wii U), Valhalla Game Studios (PC)
• Developer: Valhalla Game Studios
• Players: 3-16
• Site: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Wii-U/Devil-s-Third-896464.html
• Game code provided by the publisher

Prior to release Devil’s Third was something of a virtual ghost town online, so we reviewed the campaign separately. Things have improved more than enough to review now though, and that’s the first thing to remark upon; playing at different times of the day and night, we’ve never had trouble finding other players to get matches going. Unfortunately, some modes struggle to attract attention more than others, something we’ll go into later. What we’ll also stress from the off though is that we haven’t touched the free-to-play PC version at all.

The F2P version is one thing, but we’re of the firm opinion that microtransactions have no place in a full-price retail game such as this. We suspect they were included here, at least in part, as a tactic to increase profit on a game with a very low sales forecast. They are at least not intrusive at all. There are two currencies: the in-game cash of “Dollen”, and golden eggs. Golden eggs can be spent as a currency themselves, or exchanged at a rate of 100,000 Dollen per egg. When you first create your character and get going online, you get given a small amount of Dollen and a handful of golden eggs (we recommend finishing the campaign first, as this will earn you extra eggs). This is more than enough to set you up with a decent loadout, but be careful what you do with the eggs you don’t sell.

The only way to get more eggs is to (slowly) earn them as you level up… or, of course, buy them through the eShop. Think carefully about how you use your initial stash because, when you start looking into creating multiple loadouts and customising your character (which incorporates mild stat buffs), you’ll start to realise how important the eggs are to playing the game ‘seriously’.

Some of the costume parts are daft, but they all affect things such as speed and melee defense.

Once you’ve made your character and nabbed yourself some weapons, you can start playing with others. The Drill option on the menu will now be unlocked, which contains the standard game modes. We noticed however that some modes available before release are at time of writing now locked, presumably in an effort to minimise splitting the limited player base. Even that wasn’t quite enough. It’s not unusual for a game to start without the maximum number of players being reached, and we were unable to get even one game of Cargo Capture going.

The online game has the same outdated graphics as offline, and often suffers from a shonky frame rate. Much more important than this though is that we never had connection problems in a single match, which is more than we can say for almost any other online game we’ve played. Unfortunately (if inevitably) the controls are identical to offline, including the dodgy aiming for guns. You are at least playing with other human beings suffering the exact same issue. As a result, many players prefer to rush you with melee weapons. We found a good halfway point was the flamethrower attachment; useless at long range, but very effective at disappointing sword-wielding opponents.

There are the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch modes you’d expect, which don’t have too much trouble attracting attention. The maps are admirably well designed though, supporting both the aforementioned rushes and entrenchment if you fancy gambling with the aiming. We greatly enjoyed Chickens, but this is currently a frustratingly ignored mode. Chickens are dotted around the map, and your objective is to hold onto the most chickens for the longest. Kill somebody with a firearm to steal one of their chickens, or with a melee weapon to steal two; any extra return to their original places. Then there’s Close Quarters, a melee-only team deathmatch. It’s not the buttonbash fest you might expect, and great success comes from acknowledging and making use of the block/dodge button. In fact, the melee combat in Devil’s Third is so much better online than offline, it’s almost like a different game.

You can drop a temple in your fortress if you like, but it’s best to buy things like gun emplacements and watchtowers first.

Hit level 5 and you unlock Siege matches. The basic idea is that clans compete for dominance of a virtual North America through a surprisingly in-depth system. Each clan member has a fortress that, once they hit level 20, can be attacked by other clans even if the owner is offline. You’ll therefore want to spend Dollen upgrading it before this point. A Siege match is over when one team has had its strength reduced to zero.

The attacking team loses strength (essentially tickets) by having players or equipment eliminated. The defending team loses strength in the same way, but also by having certain buildings destroyed, or the radio operator (the only one who can call in airstrikes etc) killed. The defending team can also lose the match instantly if the attackers plant and successfully defend a bomb in the main comms building.

You don’t have to join a clan to play Siege, but you’ll earn a lot more Dollen (used to replenish ammo and upgrade your fortress) if you do. You can still play as a ‘mercenary’ while in a clan, to make up the numbers in other Siege matches. What isn’t explained very well is how attacking/defending works. Basically, any clan member can initiate an attack; but if the attack fails, the clan loses points and Dollen. To further complicate matters, how well upgraded a fortress is affects how much ‘power’ it has, and sometimes ignoring an attack can be more beneficial than rushing to defend.

There are some overarching issues, such as communication; no voice chat seems odd in a game that leans heavily on clans, and clan chat gives you a paltry 36 characters per message. There are also fairly lengthy load times when searching for, starting, or leaving a match which breaks up the pace of the experience. Distinctly imperfect as it is though, if you’re looking for a ‘hardcore’ online experience for Wii U – and you’re willing to ride a bumpy road for it – Devil’s Third has a lot to offer.

• Format: PS4 (version reviewed), PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Bossa Studios
• Developer: Bossa Studios
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.iambreadgame.com/
• Game code provided by PR

I Am Bread is a bread simulator that acts as a prequel to a game where you perform operations with just one hand – a hand that is incredibly difficult to control – and things don’t get any more normal from there. It’s one of the most famous stars of the slowly growing genre of, let’s say, ‘fumble ’em ups’. These are purposefully broken games with over-exaggerated physics and intentionally awkward controls. As Goat Simulator proved however, releasing a game that boasts about its unfinished state is a fine and dangerous line to walk. Bearing that in mind, let the godawful puns begin.

Bready for release on PC back in April, this slice of whole(wheat)some entertainment has only very recently made it to PS4. There are only seven environments, but at yeast they’re used for a variety of game modes. Speaking of which, all modes are unlocked from the beginning on PS4. Good call – because only a few of them provide any lasting amount of bun.

Story Mode is ostensibly the main attraction, putting you in the crusts of an evil slice of bread slowly driving a man insane over the course of a week (one stage per day). Your objective each time is bread simple: locate and reach a heat source sufficient to toast yourself. Toast both sides, don’t burn, add some butter and/or jam on the way if you feel like doing things ‘properly’. Two of your biggest obstacles to success are the Edibility and Grip gauges. Edibility decreases each time you get dirty; fall on the floor, and this will drop rapidly. Hit 0% and it’s game over, time to restart the level. Grip recharges quickly when you’re not using it, but has a tendency to run out at the most inappropriate times. Just like a real slice of bread, yours can grab onto objects, and move/drag any that aren’t too heavy. Also just like a real slice of bread you can climb up and over objects such as chairs, walls, boxes and sofas. Every second you use your grip to climb decreases the gauge; if it runs out, you fall helplessly toward the floor, praying you land on something clean on the way down.

Yes, you can get your bread to ride a skateboard – though not in quite so dramatic a manner.

As for the controls… hmm, well. We’re not sure wheat we were expecting for bread controls, but what we got was this: use the stick to slowly and awkwardly shuffle the bread along, but rely mostly on the buttons assigned to each corner of the slice (or in other modes each end of the baguette, or halfway points around the bagel). It’s by using the appropriate button/s to grip that you flip your bread around, make daring leaps, turn, and generally act like a bit of bread possessed by the soul of somebody with really bad taste in reincarnation vessels. It really does look…strange, and is sure to amuse an audience of family or friends. In fact, it’s a great game to pass to the kids for a few minutes at a time, making them laugh until they get sick of the unwieldy controls.

The whole point is that it’s difficult to control, yes; but in the structured story mode, with delineated rules and clear objectives, the awkward controls sap most of the fun out of the experience – especially when combined with the finite Grip. In an odd parallel to Super Mario World, if you fail a level twice in a row, optional ‘magic marmalade’ appears next to your starting point which will give you infinite Edibility and Grip – in effect, invincibility. It’s a brilliant idea, but unfortunately not one which transforms the story into a manageable and fun experience. This is largely thanks to the camera, which is the worst that we’ve had to battle in a game for many years. Manual control is little help, often needing constant readjustment while you’re in the middle of complicated and delicate manoeuvring which, of course, usually necessitates being able to see exactly where you’re going. Then there’s the distinctly unintentional glitch of becoming permanently stuck halfway through a bit of scenery. There may only be seven stages and an epilogue, but we still found ourselves forced to restart due to this bug in no less than three separate areas.

The Zero G mode is a neat way of reinvigorating the experience, attaching a series of little rockets to your bread and having all objects float in mid-air. The camera remains a problem dough, and the controls are simply awkward in a different way. Much more fun – and infinitely better suited to the fumbling nature of the game – is Rampage, where you use a baguette to cause as much unnecessary destruction as possible. Better too is Bagel Race, especially as the eponymous bagel can (usually) storm through checkpoints relying on the analogue stick rather than buttons. Given the very limited number of environments, though, these two modes can only offer so much.

Bagel, It’s Cold Outside

One of the rarest trophies is the one for completing the Cheese Hunt mode – because, we would say, it’s the worst one in the package. This time you’re an extremely fragile crispbread, looking for bits of cheese and… that’s it. Your ‘life’ is integrity instead of edibility here, and it’s about as much fun as it sounds.

Given the small number of environments and especially the extremely unpolished nature of the game, I Am Bread costs about twice as much as it should. In the unlikely event that a major update eradicates the unwanted bugs and fixes the camera, we’ll come back to it again and likely increase the score. As it stands however, this merely serves to provide loafs of reminders why games such as this have yet to rise to widebread mainstream success.

• Format: 3DS
• Unleashed: Out Now (EU), 15th September (NA)
• Publisher: Marvelous AQL
• Developer: Tamsoft
• Players: 1-2 (local & online)
• Site: https://senrankagura2.com
• Game code provided by PR

The Senran Kagura series of games, for the benefit of the uninitiated, goes out of its way to thrust cartoon cleavages and knickers in your face (even more so than the anime, if our skimming of episodes is any indication). You already know if this is the game for you; but let us fill you in on the details.

We have to spend time on the titillation, because the developers sure as heck did. There are huge boobs everywhere in this game, and they are hilarious. We must stress that at the moment, Critical Gamer has an all-male team, so take the following as you will; but we find it difficult to imagine the boob movement being offensive or exciting for any but the tiniest minority. Seriously, the boob physics – such as they are – are bizarre and, if anything, greatly amusing. Female chests virtually never stay still, even if the women attached to them do. Imagine being surrounded by various pairs of water balloons being wiggled around in zero gravity, and you’re halfway there.

The hyperactive chests may not be offensive (to some, at least), but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing creepy about the game. It’s hard to believe that the cast hasn’t been designed to appeal to a variety of fetishes, but that’s not the main problem. The now well-established ‘stripping’ mechanic means that during battle, as you or your enemies (the human ones) take damage, clothing will be torn off. Each time this happens, the camera gleefully goes in for a closeup of the affected area before returning to battle. Similarly, when your character undergoes a shinobi transformation (a form that allows for more powerful attacks), there’s a scene where the relevant lady transforms – by pushing a ninja scroll through her cleavage whilst in her swimwear, of course – that plays before the battle recommences. Objectifying? Hell yeah. Creepy? Not so much. Though as an aside, these scenes have a negative effect on gameplay; when you return to battle after they play, any action you were carrying out has been cancelled, but enemy actions have continued – leaving you open to attack for a frustrating moment.

The boob fixation and upskirt shots during play clearly weren’t enough, and this is where the creepiness comes in. There’s a ‘viewer’ mode where you can take shots against various backgrounds, or even make use of AR (shudder). You can put the women in various far-from-innocent poses, move the camera around, and even change their hair and accessories. They’ll even spout playful phrases while you go through the choices, to make things extra uncomfortable. In the unlikely event that you’ve bought this without being aware of/harbouring an interest in ambulatory cleavages and exposed skin, you can spend time dressing characters up in slightly more modest clothing that will then transfer to gameplay.

“Take that, you dastardly parasol!!”

Now that’s (mostly) out of the way, let’s concentrate on the rest of the game. It’s a brawler made up of over 50 missions, each of which is either an extremely linear journey through a series of fights, or a boss encounter. There are a total of ten playable characters (with a further two unlockable by finishing the game), and you’ll go into battle with either one or two at a time as the story dictates. Controls go beyond the standard ‘two attack buttons and jump button’ setup, by also including a dash button and super moves charged up by landing consecutive hits. Surprisingly perhaps, most of the characters are also very distinct, with very different weapons and varying strengths and weaknesses.

Further dispelling fears of a cheap and lazy product decorated with boobs, the story should last you a respectable 10-12 hours – and completed missions can be revisited with any character/s of your choice. There’s online and local co-op. There’s XP and levelling, which makes a noticeable difference. There are special missions with strict rules, and an endurance mode where gambling your skill can result in a significant XP payoff. There’s a story/character glossary, and stacks of costumes, pictures, music and more to unlock.

Despite all the time and effort that’s clearly gone into making the game, it’s unfortunately just not that fun to play.

Well, er, at least she remembered her tie.

The combat system is theoretically solid, but the inability to block and lack of a dedicated dodge button – combined with the enemies’ tendency to rush you and/or spam hits – steers the experience towards button bashing. Mission structure is unerringly move forward–kill things–move forward, which makes sessions even as long as an hour tiring. In addition, bosses have life bars so long that they’re layered on top of one another, which is fair enough – until about four fifths of the way through the final chapter. One of the final bosses is gigantic and spews forth an almost constant stream of hugely damaging, screen-engulfing attacks. Even after grinding for XP (which we hadn’t needed to do up until that point), we had to reluctantly knock the difficulty down to Easy in order to progress. Even more annoying than the end-game boss who can (and does) teleport constantly. A lot of effort has gone into the storytelling but that, too, disappoints; with too much of the dialogue predictably centred around boobs, and all attempts at serious issues of friendship and loyalty blown away by series such as Persona.

Established Senran Kagura fans will buy this regardless, and are well catered for here in terms of continuing the story with established characters and, of course, plenty of unnecessary underwear shots. It may not be the disaster that may have been expected, but if you’re not bothered about the licence and just want a new brawler – and/or something anime flavoured – there are many, many better examples out there.

• Format: Wii U
• Unleashed: 28th August (EU), 11th December (NA)
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Developer: Valhalla Game Studios
• Players: 1
• Site: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Wii-U/Devil-s-Third-896464.html
• Game code provided by the publisher

EDITOR’S NOTE: We struggled to find people playing online prior to release, sometimes encountering literally nobody, and never playing a match with the maximum number of players. We will therefore review the online element separately some time after release, especially considering the planned F2P PC version. 

There seems little point in going over the well-documented, troubled history of this game. The story ends with Nintendo picking up publishing rights, and why? One suspects because, almost three years after it was first released, the Wii U still has very few exclusives aimed firmly at the adult market. Devil’s Third is now here to help increase that number; but do we get to make a hilarious ‘Devil’s Turd’ joke, like the rest of the internet probably will?

First impressions ain’t great. As is the norm for a game that started development several years before hitting shop shelves, the graphics are behind the times. How behind? DT looks like a PS3 launch game, complete with moments of plummeting frame rate. Even the design could do with some work. Generally, the cutscenes are what you might expect from a PS2 game in the latter stages of its life, which actually isn’t bad at all; but the general who gruffly gives you intel and orders looks like a Mr Potato Head that’s been melting for a full minute.

So yes, it’s graphically imperfect, but not to the point where it has any significant impact on gameplay. You take control of a Russian chap by the name of Ivan, entirely hairless (well, so far as we can see) so that he can cover himself in a hilarious amount of tattoos all in Japanese for some reason. By the time you reach the end of the prologue, you will already have experience of using both firearms and melee weapons, and have learned that you can swap the ones you’re holding for any you find. Melee combat remains in third person, with basic yet functional controls; weak attack, strong attack, defend, dodge, throw weapon, jump attack. The main problem you’ll find here is that ‘defend’ and ‘dodge’ use the same button; and the jump attack involves holding down one of the same buttons also required for throwing your weapon. In a particularly hectic fight, it’s easy to make mistakes that don’t necessarily feel like your fault.

The enemy organisation carries the acronym SOD, leading to a few unintentionally hilarious lines for us UK people.

Firing from the hip keeps you in third person, but aiming down the sights of a gun takes you into first person. There’s no option to change or disable this but, actually, it works very well and doesn’t interrupt the flow of play at all. Unfortunately, attempting precise fire in first person makes the sloppy aiming stick out like a sore and imprecise thumb. It’s possible to adjust the sensitivity, but we found it impossible to find a spot where the controls were as tight and infallible as, say, Black Ops II on the same console. This is a significant issue that should have been fixed.

Two wrongs almost make a right, in that super-precise fire is rarely needed in an instant; because the AI is so iffy. Enemies will make use of cover, and don’t suffer from schoolboy errors such as running in circles or standing out in the open on a regular basis. However, you can usually – so long as you’re not facing a large group – pop your head out of cover and calmly line up a headshot while your target is seemingly oblivious to the fact that you’re flanking them, and/or the fact that they’re looking directly at you from fifty feet away. Sometimes, it almost feels like cheating.

There are times when this isn’t an option, and this is usually when a small but deadly group rushes you to engage in close quarters. This theoretically then means that you’re forced into melee combat. However, to DT’s credit, most fights give you a lot of leeway in how you want to approach them, in terms of combining firearms and/or explosives and/or melee combat. Our favourite example of this is when a pack of sword-wielding ninjas rush us, and we’ve made sure to hang on to a flamethrower attachment, so we just wave a jet of flame everywhere and watch them fall to the floor in agony rather than engage in a protracted ballet of swordsmanship. That was greatly satisfying every single time.

Lots of pointy things in this game, to make a mess of enemies – or for them to make a mess of you.

That’s the thing. For all of DT’s flaws (and there are many), it’s not hard to squeeze a lot of dumb fun out of the ten-hour-odd campaign if you switch your brain off. There are many weapons, with admirable variety in strengths and weaknesses. The story and script tend to be forgettable nonsense rather than outrageous hilarity, unfortunately, but play itself is… well… almost sort of ‘accidentally competent’. In all fairness, an effort has been made to throw a new idea or experience in every so often to stop things getting stale and, by and large, it works. It’s just a shame that everything the game contains has been used in a million other games. Explosive barrels, ninjas, a secret underground lab, turrets, a vehicle section, mutants, over-the-top gore… one of the final bosses is – prepare yourselves, folks – a giant mutant wearing a jetpack who spits acid and uses a missile launcher.

In fact, the bosses are arguably the low points of the game. They’re not Deus Ex: Human Revolution bad; but the fact that most of them force you into melee combat means that your freedom of approach is snatched away, and you have to deal with just one awkwardly implemented combat system without the option of mixing it up with the other one.

This is gaming pulp fiction. It’s eighties TV cheese in videogame form, like The A Team (with a less coherent story) bathed in blood and given a dollop of T-Virus. It doesn’t deserve to be top of your shopping list, and isn’t worth paying full price for; but if it’s piqued your curiosity and you find it cheap, you’ll find that it easily holds your interest until the end. And the song that plays over the end credits is pretty good. 

• Fable: Blood of Heroes
• Jim C. Hines
• Published by Titan Books
• £7.99
• Book provided by the publisher

Fable Legends may not be out of beta yet, but it already has its very own tie-in novel. Blood of Heroes is written by Jim C. Hines and, while you may not have heard of him, he does have previous experience writing comic fantasy stories. That’s the most important point to make; the Fable series is traditionally associated with a strong sense of humour, and this book has very much been written bearing that in mind. What would likely have been the worst mistake (playing things po-faced) has been avoided – but where does the book go from there?

The book, like the game, is set long before the events of Fable 1-3. This rather conveniently means that there’s little worry of contradicting events or character traits seen in the main games. What it doesn’t explain is the absence of the element that’s arguably associated with Fable immediately after its sense of humour; the idea of choice, usually the choice between good and evil actions. How well choice is or is not implemented in the games is another issue, but it’s there. On the one hand, it’s a theme that could have worked excellently in a novel; on the other hand, it’s not a theme that seems to be at all important to Fable Legends, and that’s the game this book is specifically supporting.

Hines has, presumably under strict instructions, used the game as a template for the novel’s world at every opportunity. Places from Legends appear in Blood of Heroes, as do certain enemies. The eponymous Heroes are lifted directly from the game, in terms of both character class and even name and hazily-sketched personality. There’s plenty of room for Hines to flesh out the details and make the Heroes his own; but he never achieves this in the way that you might hope. Due to a combination of pre-existing character traits and an unfortunate willingness to settle into fantasy fiction stereotypes, each Hero is distinct but sadly unremarkable. The worst offender is Tipple, a heavily built and inhumanly strong bare-knuckle-brawling-jolly-and-uncouth-but-good-hearted drunkard that you’ve seen, heard, and read about a thousand times before.

This is Sterling, and Hines does a great job of creating a mind’s-eye version of him.

You can probably guess at the plot with fair accuracy without any hints. The land of Albion is under threat from a diabolical plot with a single mastermind. Magic is involved. It’s up to the Heroes to go forth and, working together, kill things and save people until the danger is gone. There’s a plot twist you quite possibly won’t see coming about two thirds of the way through; but in honesty, this is largely because of withheld information, and the exact (and very important) details of the related past event remain hazy.

Unsurprisingly, the Heroes win out in the end. This is worth remarking upon when discussing the book because, as is made clear at an early stage, Yog – the witch determined to bring woe unto Albion for reasons that are never made entirely clear – is not only powerful, but also extremely difficult to kill. This is due to a very specific reason that (a) to give credit where it’s due is eventually explained well enough to understand, and (b) entirely contradicts the method with which the Heroes claim their victory over the witch in the end. The initial reveal of Yog’s weakness is something of a plot hole in itself, but still…

In more general terms, while taking a humorous approach to the writing was absolutely the right call, it’s an unfortunate fact that most of the jokes, well… aren’t funny. It’s not tediously unfunny, and it is funny on occasion. The best line is perhaps “He was shouting, assailing her with pent-up pain and outrage, along with the occasional spray of spittle. It was as if she had killed his beloved dog, then used the body to kill his other, even more beloved dog”.

So as you can see, there are some strong parts in there. Overall however the humorous approach merely creates a lighthearted approach to storytelling – which is no bad thing. Bad fantasy tends to fall over itself with unwarranted seriousness and obstinately named characters and places. Much can be forgiven when this cringeworthy writing style is wisely avoided.

Yet another fantasy doctor wearing a beak mask.

Although characterisation is almost exclusively generic and disappointing, there is one exception. Blue is a ‘redcap’, what looks to be generic blade/arrow/magic fodder in the game. By using one as a main character in his novel, Hines has allowed himself plenty of room for manoeuvre in his creation of one of the story’s main personalities. Blue is unrepentantly self-serving, mischievous, and utterly unpredictable; making him easily the most interesting character in the novel. There’s more than a touch of Smeagol about him, but he’s far from a carbon copy. Is this a hint at what Blood of Heroes could have been with less tie-in restrictions?

All of this leaves the book in an odd place; who’s the audience? Existing fans of Hines’ work will doubtless be pleased, but who beyond that? You don’t need to have played any Fable game to understand the plot (though there are a few subtle references to the established, digital Albion). If you gobble up anything fantasy and/or Fable related at every opportunity, then you could do a lot worse than this. If you’re more selective in your reading, however, the truth is that you could do a lot better, too.

• Format: PS4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, PS3, 360, PC
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: 505 Games
• Developer: Starbreeze Studios
• Players: 1
• Site: http://www.brothersthegame.com/
• Game code provided by the publisher

Brothers originally launched back in 2013, and you can read our original review here. Now, it’s been released again in extra-shiny flavour for PS4 and Xbone. In terms of emotional intelligence, is it Band of Brothers or Bros?

We would ask ‘has it stood the test of time’, but two years isn’t much of a test. More of a brief questionnaire. The game itself remains exactly the same, a bittersweet fact that we’ll elaborate on shortly. The gameplay has a foundation of beautiful simplicity, offering controls that are understood in seconds but still not truly mastered after hours. You take control of both eponymous brothers simultaneously. The older brother is moved with the left stick, and uses the left trigger for interactions; the younger brother is moved with the right stick, and uses the right trigger for interactions. That’s it (save for the two tab buttons for optional camera control). It must have been a nightmare designing a game where the player controls two characters simultaneously yet doesn’t spend most of it in utter frustration, but they pulled it off; just about. There are a few sequences where the demands placed on your left-right co-ordination are higher than usual – especially if you happen to have the two brothers on the ‘wrong’ sides of the screen – but generally speaking, you’ll breeze through the game.

Indeed, there’s no option to increase or decrease the difficulty, and it’s rare to find a section where you’ll die more than once; or, to be honest, at all. That’s not a problem though, and actually works to the game’s benefit. All dialogue is in a fictional language derived from Arabic, and not much even of that. The story is shown to the player and, in a few extremely memorable parts, is given a significant emotional boost through actions the player is required to take. The most wonderful examples of this are at the end of the game, which only the heartless would spoil for you.

The overarching plot is fag packet basic; mother already dead, father so sick he even has a cough, father’s sons go on a quest to fetch the magical cure. It’s all about the journey there and back though, and an army of instances where the player is taught that the brothers are very different, but each essential to the other. In gameplay terms, this means that the younger brother can fit through small gaps but only the older brother can pull heavy levers; and some paths and tasks are impossible unless they both work alongside one another. Their personalities come through very well without words too. The older brother will generally stay on-task and take things seriously and is instantly protective of his sibling where necessary; the younger brother tends to take every opportunity he can to be playful – or mischievous. For the full effect, you need to engage in optional interactions at every opportunity, which you’ll soon find yourself doing without overt provocation by thinking “I wonder if I can…”.

There’s no shortage of fantasy worlds in the videogame industry, and most of them – let’s admit it – are a bit crap. Not so here. The atmospheric lands of Brothers are rich and deep, and we ache to explore more than what is on offer. The wonderful art design is given another little boost with the graphical polish this version has received, and the mostly understated soundtrack works together with the very well-designed camera work to suck you in with little hope of escape. Drop in many instances of extremely clever uses of the two-character mechanic, and you have a quest well worth going on.

You’ll have a WHALE of a time playing this! Ahahahaha!! *fetches coat*

But.

In a way, this re-release seems like a missed opportunity. For one thing, as superbly constructed as the whole thing is, it only lasts for 3-4 hours; meaning most people will likely play all the way through in just one or two play sessions. There is no extra content to the main package at all to encourage those who already played to revisit, not even a single brief sequence within a chapter. It’s unlikely most people will feel the need to play through a second time at all. It’s an intelligent journey, an emotional journey, a wonderfully well designed journey; but also an almost completely linear one, with little scope for a different experience the second time around.

It’s not even true, unfortunately, that the game is now entirely bug free. It only took us a few hours to play this in its entirety (two years after the first time); but that proved long enough to encounter several frame rate blips, one crash before we even reached the title screen (and that after installing the patch), and an odd NPC model duplication glitch. Far from game breaking, but unwelcome stains on the experience.

Ask your dad.

The new version gets a few extras; an art gallery, the soundtrack, and director’s commentary. The soundtrack can only be accessed in-game – no mp3s for you! Even the commentary is separate from the game, in the guise of an in-game video of the game (abridged) narrated by Josef Fares. It’s probably the best commentary we’ve ever heard, but how many people are going to put on a game and then sit watching a non-interactive video in it for ages? You can’t even (so far as we can tell) pause, bookmark, rewind, or fast forward it.

So: Brothers remains a beautifully crafted experience, albeit one that feels somehow incomplete. If you’ve yet to play it, then this is certainly the version to go for; just be sure to make sure the play time floats comfortably on your cash flow.

This isn’t a review. Why bother? It’s free to download to try for yourself! This is however what I make of the game after playing it for a week or so. Why not read it while waiting for all those gigathings to download? Boy, I’m really selling this to you, aren’t I?

I’m approaching this as somebody who does 99.9% of their gaming on consoles, and is extremely wary of the free-to-play model. I’ve played F2P games before, such as the more honestly named ‘free to start’ Steel Diver: Sub Wars on 3DS (which is actually very good), and a handful of games on PS4 – Loadout (meh), Warframe (very good, but wearily grind-centric), and Planetside 2 (brilliant when it works properly, pointless when it doesn’t). In all honesty, World of Tanks didn’t appeal to me as a concept. A new and shiny Xbox One version – free to download – made me think ‘oh, why not?’. Full disclosure: I was given a significant amount of free in-game currency by the publisher. I’ve nonetheless done my best to also view the experience from a standard, entry-level gamer perspective.

The currency of which I speak essentially comes in four flavours. Top of the pile is gold, which can only be purchased with real moolah. Gold can be used to buy lower-tier currency, or in-game items that can only be purchased with gold, such as extra garage slots to keep tanks in; or ‘premium’ tanks that come pre-loaded with upgrades and bonuses to what you earn.

Gold is not cheap.

They make a cute couple.

Silver is, with any luck, the currency you’ll be using the most. It can be used to buy almost everything, and there’s a lot to pay for; tanks, ammo (yes), repairs to your tank, upgrades, consumables to be used in-game, and more. You earn this during matches, as well as XP, which is a currency in itself. There are two types of XP – standard (which can only be spent on the tank in which it was earned), and Free (which can be spent on any tank). You see, before you can buy a new tank, you must fully ‘research’ the previous one in the tree. All that basically means is that there’s an XP price you need to pay in order to earn the privilege of being able to buy a new toy. The copious amounts of currency I have allows me to leapfrog these hurdles to an extent, and it’s easy to see it being extremely frustrating having to grind many hours to earn enough to buy a tank tantalisingly out of reach.

But what about the important bit? How does the game actually play? Well, this is how my first match went: Trundle forward slowly in the general direction of the enemy base for thirty seconds, get obliterated in a heartbeat by an enemy I never even see, sit around watching the rest of my team play for ten minutes.

I learnt from my mistakes very quickly. I’m a console pleb rather than a member of the glorious PC master race, so I consider things here in an FPS analogy: it’s best to play not as an assault trooper, but as a sniper. Amusing as it sounds, hiding your tank is not only possible, it’s absolutely essential to not getting blown out of the match embarrassingly early. I don’t mean hide your tank in a bush (though I literally did that for an entire match once), but more hide at least partially behind cover – such as a rock or building – while giving yourself a decent view of the battlefield, in the hope of spotting Them before They spot you. You’re still likely to want to move from cover to cover, dashing (very slowly) when you think it’s safe.

None of the tanks can fly. None of the ones I’ve been using, anyway.

The controls are nice and simple, so even I was able to pretty much do the ol’ pick-up-and-play. Left stick movement, right stick aiming, left trigger accurate aim (click right stick to zoom further), right trigger shoot as you’d expect – though there are other control setups if you’d prefer. Apart from a few other little things, that’s about it. Despite this, WoT controls very much as its own beast. You need to be patient in order to play and enjoy this game. Not just because tanks are slow; and besides, some of the light models are actually quite nippy. The aiming system also requires you to hold the cursor over your target for at least a few seconds for maximum accuracy and damage, another reason to try to stay hidden. Due to carefulness being the road to victory, one match can last ten minutes or more. I never found it to drag, though. Especially not when I realised that, when your tank is destroyed, you can exit to the garage without penalty (though your current tank is out of action until the match ends, which is also when your earned silver/XP is awarded). I rarely choose to take advantage of this, though.

Now with all this talk of in-game currencies and upgrades, you may well be worried that this is a ‘pay-to-win’ game. Ironically perhaps, my ridiculous amounts of digital moolah have allowed me to confirm that this is definitely not the case. Upgrades do make a difference but, in all honesty, it will almost always only be an extremely subtle difference. It usually involves tipping the behind-the-scenes dice rolling slightly in your favour, in terms of being spotted, chance for/against critical damage, etc.

The most obvious worry is, perhaps, that Johnny Cashbags can just log in for the first time, buy himself a pile of awesome tanks, and crush the proletariat opposition without even having to try. Especially when you discover that there are ‘premium’ tanks that can only be bought with gold, and come pre-loaded with upgrades. Here’s the thing, though. If you use gold to buy such a tank (as I did; the Löwe, a high-tier beast), you’re saving yourself a lot of time in terms of grinding for free digital cash – but you’re not allowed to bully players who choose not to empty their bank accounts. In my specific example, my new toy has very tough armour and a fearsome gun – but this means that while using it, I’m placed into matches where other players also have tough armour and fearsome guns. I still have to actually display some skill in the game, damn it. And in fact, the tank with which I have the most impressive stats – and in which I earned my one and only MVP ribbon so far – is one of the starter ones, the Vickers Medium I. A lot of players don’t like this tank apparently, because it’s a bit slow; but buy British, I say.

No, seriously, none of the tanks can fly. Not even the Premium ones.

That’s not to say that you can play without having to worry about currency – far from it. As mentioned earlier, silver is used to pay for almost everything you could think of in the game, and you need to keep an eye on how much you have in the bank compared to how much each one of your purchases costs. There are a variety of factors that affect how much you earn in a match – whether or not you have a Premium subscription (which awards you extra silver and XP), your performance, whether you have damage and/or consumables and/or ammo set to ‘auto resupply’. It’s entirely possible to finish a match spending more silver than you earn. Play sensibly and keep an eye on your virtual finances though, and you should be fine.

If you want my advice (and if you’ve made it this far without falling asleep, maybe you do) then when it comes to buying yourself a new tank, choose very carefully. The two main types to avoid rushing in on are tank destroyers and artillery. Tank destroyers sound good, and they do tend to have great guns; but their turrets have extremely limited rotation, meaning you have to be very careful you don’t get flanked. Artillery tanks offer an almost completely different playstyle, which is great for some players and irritating for others. It controls like a normal tank, but aiming your gun means panning around the map in a bird’s eye view. This means that you almost always rely on teammates to spot enemies for you, and getting the aiming reticule to shrink to a sensible size can take an age; but this is balanced by the huge damage that your gun can do. Get spotted by the enemy without the opportunity to trundle behind cover within a few seconds, however, and you’re basically doomed.

World of Tanks is the antithesis of twitch shooters, and I’ve grown to love it. This surprised me a bit, because I love a good twitch shooter. You can (and often will) go minutes at a time without seeing an enemy tank, and even more minutes at a time without scoring a hit on one. Even when you do, that rarely means a kill unless you or a teammate has already weakened the target. This isn’t a game where you sit on the top of the leaderboard by getting kill streaks. In fact, look at the in-game boards, and you’ll notice that the top player rarely has more than two or three kills to their name (teams have up to fifteen players each) – and it’s not unusual for a player with no kills to rank higher than a player with one, or even two. Spotting multiple tanks for others and dealing part damage to a handful of enemies may well secure you more XP than stealing three kills in a row.

World of Tanks is easily the best free-to-play game I’ve tried so far and, to be honest, has injected a little life back into my appreciation of the idea. Price tags given in gold tend to be alarmingly high, as gold itself is priced such that depending on your choices, you could probably get a new Xbox One for the same real-world price as a garage full of premium tanks. Everything except these tanks and the Premium subscription can be purchased with silver though. Just expect to grind a lot if you’re determined to get the best that the game’s store has to offer. Also, very important: While PS4 F2P games let you play without Plus, you can’t play WoT without Gold; even if you’ve spent real money on it.

There’s an awful lot of depth to the game for those who choose to dive in, such as the concept of tank crews (who can be levelled up and all individually taught perks) and the painfully-detailed effect the combinations of different angles and ammo types have to the effectiveness of tank armour. Me? I just wade in far enough to enjoy myself, and I know I’m going to continue doing so.

Speaking of which, yes, Xenoblade Chronicles X is confirmed for a European release this year (although the release date is at time of writing no more specific than “December 2015”). As you can see above, there’s going to be a limited edition featuring a steelbook, an artbook, a double sided poster, and a map. Oh yeah, and a copy of the game. Interestingly, there’s also going to be an X branded Wii U hardware pack; Nintendo are clearly gambling on the title being good enough and well-promoted enough to shift some units. Will it work?

In other awesome news, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water now has a firm release date – October 30th, just in time for Halloween. ‘Tis the season to wee yourself, after all. And yes, you use the GamePad as your camera for snapping pictures of the ghosties – so lots of potential. Lots and lots of potential. You won’t even need to put any money down to get an idea of whether this potential is squandered or allowed to blossom; it’s already been announced that a trial version, covering the prologue and the first two chapters, will be available to download for free from release day.

It’s being marketed primarily as a digital release; there will be a retail copy, but only as a limited edition with a steelbook cover, an art book, a double sided poster (hmm, this all sounds familiar), and – we quote – “four spirit photographs”. We pity the poor interns sent into realms of the dead, each armed with just a camera and a spare pair of pants, all in the name of limited edition extras.