Coming from a company often accused of recycling its unmatched heritage, Rage is a surprisingly ambitious game - arguably the most ambitious iD has produced since the glory days of Quake. From its open desert landscapes to its dingy,...

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D should have been a cause for jubilation. Finally we have a game that shows what the 3DS can do, proving that Nintendo's newest handheld can handle graphics of Resident Evil 4 calibre, if not quite Resident Evil 5....

Shadows of the Damned is - unquestionably - one of those “love it or hate it” experiences. Admittedly, the “hate it” side is holding most of the ammunition. The result of a collaboration between Shinji Mikami, creator of Resident...

Let’s be honest: FEAR 3 isn’t exactly 2011’s most keenly anticipated sequel. The 2005 original was an excellent FPS and a deeply creepy game, but over the years it’s been largely forgotten while other franchises have stolen...

The problem with remastered classics is that they so rarely live up to their status, or indeed your own memories. What was once revolutionary now seems antiquated. Visuals that once evoked awe now evoke nothing more than pity. Developers...

Child of Eden is the sort of game that brings out the worst in reviewers. It's a stunning game - innovative, smart and genuinely beautiful, with dazzling abstract graphics and screen-filling blooms of neon light and colour. Both the visuals and the...

Duke Nukem Forever almost doesn’t need a review, just a flowchart. Fourteen years of development has resulted in a scruffy, scrappy mongrel of a game which, in a lot of ways, should have been put down permanently several years ago. The graphics...

Say what you will about Red Faction: Armageddon, but Volition's third-person shooter packs some truly fantastic toys. Sure, it has all the usual shotguns, assault rifles and rocket launchers, but alongside them you'll find mighty hammers that can smash...

It might seem strange to complain that a game that sold over one million copies and has a Metacritic score of 85% never had the sales or the acclaim that it deserved, but when that game is inFamous, it’s a valid point. Why? Well, if you’d...

By anyone’s standards, The Witcher 2 is the best fantasy RPG of the last few years. It is more polished than Dragon Age, more expansive than Dragon Age 2 and in a different league to Risen, Two Worlds II and Gothic 4. It has a strong story, a...

In the two previous iterations of DiRT, there has always been a tension between the past values of the series and the direction Codemasters wanted to take it for the future. The first two DiRT games bore the name and legacy of the Colin McRae Rally...

For once, you can believe the hype. L.A. Noire is a revolution in interactive entertainment (or video games, as us less high-falutin’ types like to call it) and a major step forwards for games as a narrative artform. Both aesthetically and technically,...

There’s a big weight on Brink’s shoulders, and it’s the burden of our collective expectation. From the previews, the trailers and all the pre-release hype, we’ve come to expect a revolutionary FPS full of graceful Mirror’s...

Ask your average hardcore gamer what their most anticipated game of the season might be, and its unlikely that Lego Pirates of the Cariibean would be on the tip of their tongue. LA Noire? Maybe. Duke Nukem Forever? Possibly. But a Lego game based on...

Steel Diver is an oddity. Originally developed as a tech-demo for the 3DS, it’s been fleshed out as a full-priced retail game to fit inside Nintendo’s generous launch window, where it joins the trickle of titles emerging for the 3D handheld....

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be the guiding design principal for Sega’s classic Tennis series. While the graphics change and game modes come and go, Sega hasn’t really meddled much over the series four...

Let’s just cut to the chase, and call this baby God of Thor. Sega’s PS3 and Xbox 360 adaptation of Kenneth Branagh’s Marvel superhero movie plays very much in the style of Sony’s epic Greek myth brawlers, with the son of Odinin...

Inevitably, nostalgia has become as big a force in gaming as it is in music or the movies. Just as there’s a market for the bands of the 80s and early-90s, or for big screen reworkings of The A-Team, Arthur, Clash of the Titans, Tron and Robocop,...

In less capable hands, Portal 2 could have been a disaster. As part of Valve’s mighty Orange Box, the original felt like the sort of brilliant support act you sometimes find on a stadium tour, threatening to blow the main band - Half Life 2:...

What do you think of when you think of the new 3DS? In your face 3D visuals? The kind of bright, colourful graphics you might expect from the Wii? Slick 3D updates of established favourites, with neat Wi-Fi features bundled in? Yep. Us too. 

So...

With 2009’s Need for Speed: Shift, Electronic Arts did the unthinkable; not just producing the first decent Need for Speed game in donkey’s years, but a sim-style racer that was a credible rival to Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo. Sure,...

If there’s any racing game series that deserves to be called ubiquitous then Ridge Racer definitely fits the bill. Sure, EA rolls out Need for Speed these days to just about anything with a processor and a screen, but Ridge Racer has now appeared...

Motorstorm was never the most restrained or sober-minded racer. After all, the series made its name with a pile-it-all-on banquet of mud-splattered carnage, pitting trucks, bikes, ATVs and buggies against each other on courses hacked out of the rocks...

The launch line-up of the 3DS leaves its buyers in a bit of a quandary: what game or games should you actually buy with the thing? Sure, there are some promising options, such as Streetfighter IV 3D Edition or Ridge Racer 3D, while Nintendogs + Cats...

Let’s kick off with the bad news: Crysis 2 is flawed. It has been streamlined and dumbed down in its transition to consoles, and the results will inevitably disappoint some fans of the PC-only original. The vast open jungles, swamps and icy wastes...