1. It must be a game I’ve reviewed. If I haven’t reviewed it on this site, it doesn’t qualify.
2. Regardless of the game’s release date, if I reviewed it this year, it can go in the top five.
3. Any type of gaming platform can be included, whether it be console, PC or smartphone.

That’s it really. They are very simple rules but they are the rules that I have put in place. So without further ado, I bring you the top five.

Honorable  Mentions

• Portal 2
• Just Cause 2
• Fight Night: Champion
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

The new unique selling point in the game is the fact that you, playing as John Tanner, are able to astro project out of your body and take control of anyone that happens to be behind the wheel of a car. My initial reaction to this was one of appall as I knew the game has some respect for the laws of physics and reality and something as simple as astro-projection wouldn’t break the laws of reality, it would throw up on them. It was only later that I discovered that the entire game is played in the character’s comatose dream state and thus suddenly became acceptable. Let this be a lesson to you children – “Don’t judge a game by it’s cover…or in this case it’s unique selling point” Despite my initial hesitance, the mechanic itself works especially well. Throughout the numerous different mini-games and the main story, it’s good to know that at anytime, should you need to set up a roadblock ahead, all you need to do is jump to the closest semi-trailer, hit the handbrake and turn it to block the road just as Larry, Moe and Curly come along at Mach 10 and smash right into it. The finer details were as delightful as they were surprising such as when you jump to another car, all the extra people in the car have additional personalities like couples on a thrill ride, daddies taking their children to violin lessons etc. It’s a detail that wasn’t necessary but makes the whole experience more enjoyable, like vanilla ice cream with chocolate cake. However there were times that I did raise an eyebrow and wondering whether it was just too easy to use other vehicles as ramming devices.

There was one particular mini-game that comes to mind when you and you’re partner need to come first and second in a race and the game seems to think that the best way to do this was to jump rapidly from one car to the other to make sure that both of you got the required positions because as we know, racing AI has the IQ of mash potato. However I found the best way to win such races was to make sure my cars were as far back as humanly possible and then simply borrow the cars coming in the opposite direction and ram the opposing team’s vehicles enough times for them to have to pull out of the race and thus giving me the victory by default.

There are other niggling issues that come with the game that did annoy me, the story is somewhat flimsy as despite the fact you playing in the character’s dream world, it was being based on real world events and the finale of the game plays out in the real world in an ending that is as obvious as the ending of every single Disney movie. Another complaint is the fact that every single road in the lovely city of San Francisco has invisible wall syndrome and thus should you accidentally launch yourself off one of the many, many vehicle transporters as it is going round a curve, you are going grind on the air like a skater from 2015 using a Mattel Hoverboard.

Dares are also a funny thing as while many of them are simple enough, towards the end they get somewhat frustrating as rather than rely on skill and driving expertise, they seem to rather rely on you knowing the city well enough to find the spot you need to do them in. One such example is when you need to knock over a certain number of objects but only those in alleyways and side streets and its only after you find one that is long enough and with enough objects, can you manage to pull off the dare. Some may argue that knowing the city goes hand in hand with skill but just because you know where in the city you might be able to pull off a 150m drift doesn’t mean you can pull off a 150m drift.

The other issue that comes with dares is the fact that you are unable to choose the car you use for the particular dare and it refers back to the car you selected last time you entered the garage. The might sound like a small thing, but small things lead to big problems like anthrax spores in the water supply. There were quite a few times I found myself racing on a dirt track in a Corvette ZR1, something that is as useful as an ice cream churn in the arctic.

The number of cars you can purchase and drive is insane and thankfully every single one of them has the camera option of having you sit behind the wheel and I cannot praise the detail enough when it comes to this. Not only has the interior of each car been detailed from the real life version of the car, but the motions that the hands make when driving is fantastic. When you’re turning a real car, you don’t go to full left or right lock with a simple 45 degree turn of the wheel. No,you have to rotate it a few times with both hands before you get all the way there and that’s what it looks like inside the car. Pulling the handbrake sees the right hand leave the steering wheel and go to where the handbrake should be. It’s these simple details that allow you to truly immerse yourself in the experience and despite large chunks of the game reminding you time and time again that you are only driving in the San Francisco dream world, you are still able to feel like you are driving a car at obscene speed in downtown San Francisco.

So in the end what can I say about this game. The visuals are brilliant, the gameplay is solid and despite the issues I’ve already mentioned there is only one real way to sum up this game. Supoib.

The Wii Bowling Ashes were originally thought when the Wii was being played a year ago and we, by which I mean Phil, Jonny, my brother and myself, worked out we could do an England vs Australia Ashes test series on the Wii. It was a great idea and there was only one simple rule the first time. Every 5 frames,a shot of Jägermeister had to be consumed. Of course as this was an Ashes test series, there were five test matches. So five matches, ten frames a match, you do the math on how many shots we had. That didn’t included the drinks we were having before, after and during the series. So needless to say the next morning we were fucked over completely and I suffered the wrath of my then new girlfriend for still being drunk on the way to meet her extended family.

This year however the rules were extended, mostly with punishments for fucking up or even do well. As one of my tweets categorically states “There is no winning or losing in Wii Bowling Ashes, only strawpedoes and Jäger.” The extended rules are as follows.

• Throw a gutterball – shot of Jäger
• Misthrow the ball – shot of Jäger
• Three strikes in a row (Turkey) – shot of Jäger or Smirnoff Ice Strawpedo.
• Win a match – Smirnoff Ice strawpedo
• Lose the test series – A shot of Jäger, a strawpedo, and a shot of Poire William in rapid succession.

So those were the stakes. They were high, but we also decided to only do a three match series so it kind of evened out. So for an outline of how the night went, here are a list of the tweets that were flying around that night in time order.

Phil - #WiiBowlingAshes hudson’s have just been wiped out of Smirnoff ice.
Daniel Barrett – Baha!!! Dont let @AdamCMcWhinnie have any!! #gameover RT@philwhite101: #WiiBowlingAshes hudson’s have just been wiped out of Smirnoff ice.
Phil – #WiiBowlingAshes warm up game goes to Australia. @JonnytheRocketand get some post game Jagers and a team talk.
Jonny – @philwhite101 @AdamCMcWhinnie some impressive lunges going on ahead of the #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - #WiiBowlingAshes proper rules start as from now #worried
Jonny - Immo, however is refusing to lunge #controversial #WiiBowlingAshes@philwhite101 @AdamCMcWhinnie @SimonMcWhinnie
Phil - @JonnytheRocket opens with a half respectable 3.5 sec strawpedo#WiiBowlingAshes #gameon
Phil - First penalty Jager to @SimonMcWhinnie #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - @philwhite101 I was frankly disappointed with myself there#WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - First #penaltyjager of the night to Australia’s @SimonMcWhinnie#WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - And the second #penaltyjager goes to…… @AdamCMcWhinnie yes, the other Aussie #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - #turkeyjager for @JonnytheRocket #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - To quote @philwhite101 there’s a fine line between gutterball, jäger and glory #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - #WiiBowlingAshes gutter ball for @AdamCMcWhinnie drink, drink.
Jonny – I’m sure @AdamCMcWhinnie is trying to throw the game, 3 penalty jagers and a gutterball jäger #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil – #WiiBowlingAshes first test to Australia although England pick up the fair play award. @cathywhite10
Me – Aussies win the opening test but things may change with the penalty jagers impacting the Aussie side. #WiiBowlingAshes
Me – There is no winning in #WiiBowlingAshes only jäger and strawpedoes.
Phil – #WiiBowlingAshes its possible that the second test will be better for the Brits as the ozzies are pretty fobared.
Me – Second test of the #WiiBowlingAshes about to begin.
Jonny – The 2nd test of #WiiBowlingAshes about to commence, this could get ugly
Phil – #WiiBowlingAshes second test open with @AdamCMcWhinnie doing a jaeger.
Jonny – @AdamCMcWhinnie concedes a penalty jäger on his first shot, ugly it has turned. #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny – And @philwhite101 pulls out his first strike of the series#WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny – Almost just killed @philwhite101 #chestbumpfail #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil – The chest bump after the second strike goes wrong and I’m lucky not to have a nosebleed #WiiBowlingAshes
Me – Excellent second strike by @philwhite101 in the #WiiBowlingAshes but the chest bump with @JonnytheRocket, way more entertaining.
Jonny – OMG turkey from @philwhite101 can only mean mean one thing#turkeyjager #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny – I am playing like a nun with crabs #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny – Oooohh, first English #penaltyjager goes to @philwhite101#WiiBowlingAshes
Me – A turkey shot of jäger being enjoyed by @philwhite101 in the#WiiBowlingAshes Who would have thunk it? Congrats to him http://t.co/ZIyvh9vV
Me – The 5th frame jäger has been replaced in fine fashion with the#champagnebomb at the #WiiBowlingAshes http://t.co/l3hHBV9k
Jonny - Merry Xmas to you @JnrHarrison #champagnebombs#WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - @philwhite101 receives his 2nd #penaltyjager of the test, things could be slipping for England #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - #WiiBowlingAshes anyones game. Come on England. @cathywhite10
Me - 9th frame and it’s anyone’s test. #WiiBowlingAshes
Me- The English may very well have the second test thanks to@philwhite101 spectacular bowling #WiiBowlingAshes
Jonny - Late drama in the #WiiBowlingAshes @AdamCMcWhinnie gutterballs England win 2nd test, @philwhite101 at his journeyman best
Me - English have the second test but Aussies will get the third#WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - #WiiBowlingAshes third test should be interesting as I can’t see.#pasoface
Me - English have won the second ashes test but the aussies will come back in the third. The losers punishment is severe. #WiiBowlingAshes
Phil - Looks like @AdamCMcWhinnie may be a man down #WiiBowlingAshes
Me - Third test in the #WiiBowlingAshes and I’m slightly concerned since my teammate @AdamCMcWhinnie is completely fucked.
Jonny - Exciting times at 3rd test @ #WiiBowlingAshes @AdamCMcWhinnie is almost passed out but continuing, @philwhite101 has incurred#jagerpenalty
Jonny - Oh dear #gutterball jäger for @philwhite101 things could be going wrong #WiiBowlingAshes
Me - #WiiBowlingAshes third test coming down to the wire despite a very drunk @AdamCMcWhinnie c’mon Aussies.
Jonny - I can confirm that the 2011 #WiiBowlingAshes have returned home to england
Me – England has taken the third ashes test. Congrats to them. They have done well. #WiiBowlingAshes
Me - The worthy winners of the #WiiBowlingAshes congrats to them.@JonnytheRocket @philwhite101 http://pic.twitter.com/8PaiIvK5
Phil – Epic night with @AdamCMcWhinnie @SimonMcWhinnie the Ashes won by the English. Until next year. #WiiBowlingAshes
Adam – @SimonMcWhinnie @philwhite101 @JonnytheRocket Fucking#jagerpenalties
Jonny – @AdamCMcWhinnie @simonmcwhinnie @philwhite101Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
#WiiBowlingAshes #jagerpenalties#champions2011

The Victors – Jonny and Phil.

So yes in the end. The aussies did lose the Wii Bowling Ashes. However there is always next year. Got no clue what rules we might make up for next year but it’s going to be a mess.

Let’s talk story first. It that of one Jackson “Jack” Rourke, a man who is in substantial debt to the mob and after escaping their attempts to kill him, he enters a race in order to earn enough to pay off his debts. The race is from San Francisco to New York, a distance of about 3000 miles, and Jackson needs to come first out of 200 competitors. Unfortunately despite the promising concept, I would estimate that you only race about 250 miles of that because the entire thing is damn well broken up into so many chunks and you barely get to have any of them.

You see there are 10 stages to get through in your trip from San Fran to New York and there are about 6 races in each of different types, sometimes you will need to make a series of checkpoints, other times you will need to overtake a certain number of racers before the time is up or various other types of races. However, no matter which one it is, each one is just as frustrating as the other as despite the fact you are racing 200 others to win this damn race, you can only go up by a set number of places in each race.

The game also suffers from some of the worst rubber banding AI I’ve ever seen. The AI gets a head start like you would expect, you work your way through the race and eventually the race boils down to getting past the guy in first in the last 100 metres. Even if you do managed to get in first early in the race, the AI catches up in rapid fashion. One time I was easily 15 seconds ahead of the guy behind me going top speed down the highway. Next thing I know I see the time behind start to drop very rapidly and then before you know it, the guy in second was right up my backside. The whole thing is truly horrible it really is.

The control aren’t much better. In Hot Pursuit you were able to execute beautiful drifts and slide around corners with grace, The Run on the other hand would have you try to go around corners in a shopping trolley with an engine strapped to the back. The controls are unresponsive, clunky and just caused endless amounts of frustration, particulary when the game’s over-enthusiastic reset kicks in. Every time you go too far off course or off a cliff, the game will reset the game back to the previous checkpoint, however the definition of too far off course the game had and the definition I had were very, very different indeed. One time I was taking the corner a bit wider than I should of, the game decided I spent too much on the grass and decided to reset my game back to the last checkpoint with no adequate reason. Yet another example of absolute frustration this game brought down upon me.

The game did attempt to make up on the whole story mode with a challenge mode however you can only access a small fraction of the cars, and the ones that are locked are typically the ones that can get you the gold or extreme medals. You can unlock them through a variety of means but the one that really put breadcrumbs in my arsecrack was the one that required you to beat a certain number of Autolog recommendations i.e online times that you should aim to beat in the story stages. I don’t know if I needed Xbox Live Gold membership in order to access the time recommendations or just silver, but I didn’t really care enough to find out which.

In the end, the game is meh and borderline crap. I played it through to the end only because I wasn’t going to let the game beat me and there were times I was having fun, they were just so infrequent that had I known in advance, I wouldn’t have bothered buying it at all. In fact the only really good thing the game did for me was get me was get the cost of my “Driver:San Francisco” game down to £10.99

Whilst the JavaScript involved in this, many could argue to be pretty basic, for me it’s a large step forward from what I used to be able to do so I’m quite glad that I am able to publish and display something of real quality.

So the basic principal is as follow, the streams rotate on a timer and when the user clicks on the stream arrows, it will rotate either direction. Like I said before, it’s pretty simple but it also works very nicely. You can look below and see the code used to build it.

var imagewidth = 260;
var images = $('#stream_images li').length;
iwidth = imagewidth * images;
$('#stream_images').css({'overflow':'hidden','position':'relative'});
$('#stream_images ul').css({'width':iwidth,'position':'relative','left':-imagewidth});
$('#stream_images li:first').before($('#stream_images li:last'));

var textwidth = 220;
var texts = $('#stream_title li').length;
twidth = textwidth * texts;
$('#stream_title').css({'overflow':'hidden','position':'relative'});
$('#stream_title ul').css({'width':twidth,'position':'relative','left':-textwidth,'top':'0px'});
$('#stream_title li').css({'float':'left','padding':'0px','width':'220px'});
$('#stream_title li:first').before($('#stream_title li:last'));

intervalspace = 3000
interval = setInterval(function(){stream_move(-1)},intervalspace);

function stream_move(d){
clearInterval(interval)
var inewleft = parseInt($('#stream_images ul').css('left')) + (d * imagewidth);

$('#stream_images ul').animate({'left':inewleft},200, function(){
if (d == -1){
$('#stream_images li:last').after($('#stream_images li:first'));
}else{
$('#stream_images li:first').before($('#stream_images li:last'));
}
$('#stream_images ul').css({'left':-imagewidth});
});

var tnewleft = parseInt($('#stream_title ul').css('left')) + (d * textwidth);

$('#stream_title ul').animate({'left':tnewleft},200, function(){
if(d == -1){
$('#stream_title li:last').after($('#stream_title li:first'));
}else{
$('#stream_title li:first').before($('#stream_title li:last'));
}
$('#stream_title ul').css({'left':-textwidth});
});
interval = setInterval(function(){stream_move(-1)},intervalspace);
return false;

}

$('#stream_control #left').click(function(){
stream_move(-1);
});

$('#stream_control #right').click(function(){
stream_move(1);
});

The design is quite simple but the animation involved with this Gallery theme (1 of 3) is really sleek and I have never had anyone complain about it when I used it on their site. I this version also allows the user to download images by right-click on them and saving them, a feature that was frequently requested at my work and has recently been implemented. The other thing to note is that it does feature a fallback to the JavaScript Galleria gallery which I have posted about previously on this blog. The fallback at this stage is only for iPhone, iPad and iPod users but I think that is enough as 99% of individuals have Flash on their machines.

There are several good features to this gallery.

• Lots of display options (colors,sizes etc)
• No flash/javascript knowledge required to implement
• Gallery images are pulled in from images uploaded to a page.
• Button included in the WP editor in order to add the Gallery to the page.

The best thing for me about this gallery is in fact the simplicity, once you have your options set up, you can use it in as many WordPress posts as you like all with the click of a button.

So now for the code. The function that you need to put in place is as follows.

function permit_access($user_types:Array,$type:String = "page",
$template:String = "member-area.php")

The function itself is pretty straight forward. The $user_types variable is an array of string with the appropriate user type, whether it be admin, editor, etc. The $type variable is, at this stage, either a page or a menu, but could be expanded to work with other things. The last variable, $template, is simply to make sure that the code doesn’t run on any page it shouldn’t. I recently discovered due to my site design, that the menu could change on the public site and be replaced with the members area one. Whilst this isn’t a deal breaker or major issue, it’s something I didn’t want running.

There is only one flaw at this stage regarding the function and that is regarding the menus. The menu naming structure that needs to be in place for the menus to work is very specific and is used only mostly by myself. So if other people in the office wanted to use the plugin, they would have to follow the same structure but apart from that, the plugin has been in place for several weeks now on active sites and I have not received any complaints. The other issue is that the WordPress version required needs to be above 3.1 in order to work. However I have solved this by literally copying the needed code from a 3.1 version of WordPress and it all works fine

You can see the php file in full below to see how it works.

function permit_access($user_types,$type = "page",$template = "exhibitor-manual.php"){
	$access = false;
	foreach($user_types as $user_type){
		if(get_current_user_role() == $user_type){
			$access = true;
			$u = $user_type;
			break;
		}
	}

	if(!is_page_template($template)){
		$access = false;
	}

	if ($access){
		if($type == "menu"){
			print_menu($u);
		}else{
			print_page_access();
		}

	}else{
		if($type == "menu"){
			print_menu();
		}else{
			print_page_access_denied();
		}
	}
}

function print_menu($menu = "main"){
	$menu .= "-nav";
	wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => $menu ));
}

function print_page_access(){
	if ( have_posts() ) while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
		<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
		<p><?php the_content(); ?></p>
		<?php endwhile;
}

function print_page_access_denied(){
	?>
	<h2>Insufficient Access</h2>
	<p>You do not have access to visit this area of <?php bloginfo() ?>.</p>
	<?php $url = home_url(); ?>
	<p>Please <a href = <?php echo $url; ?> title = "Home Page">click here</a> 
           to be taken back to the home page<?php

	if (!is_user_logged_in()){
		?> or <a href = "<?php echo $url;?>/login/" title = "Login page">
                click here</a> to log in to the site<?php

	}
	?>.</p>
	<?php
}

function get_current_user_role () {
    global $current_user;
    get_currentuserinfo();
    $user_roles = $current_user->roles;
    $user_role = array_shift($user_roles);
    return $user_role;
}

So we are at the third installment of Saints Row and this latest release follows on more or less where the story finished last time. The Saints have taken over the city of Stilwater and have become more than a gang, they have become a brand with stores, merchandise and a film in the works, when a routine bank robbery goes horribly wrong and they find themselves on a plane having pissed off an international crime organisation known as “The Syndicate.” After finding themselves in the city of Steelport, you as the leader of this gang of homicidal merry men and women, decide to take down the organisation and the three gangs working for them that run the city and thus takeover the city at the same time.

I’m not going to go into much detail with this game, nor am I going to review it maybe as critically as I do others and there is a very good reason for that. I can’t criticise the gameplay mechanics because unless you haven’t played a GTA or Saints Row game before, you’ll have played this one as the mechanics operate pretty much exactly the same. Also I don’t want to put any spoilers out there as I truly believe that this game is something to be enjoyed through playing it, not reading about it in a review. So what I will do instead is give some of the highlights and low points for me of this game rather than my traditional review.

Highlights

• Professor Genki’s S.E.R.C
  This was an absolutely brilliant inclusion. The principal behind this activity is that you are on a game show where you are trying to make it from one end of a maze to the other without being killed as their are people brightly dressed up in costume trying to kill you. The other catch is that you need to earn enough money before the exit doors will even open. Money is earned by killing your opponents with additional cash being given for head or nut shots.
• Funny moment
  One of the best moment for me was towards the end of the story line missions when you have to make a choice. In order to make the choice you have to run to one of two locations. The best bit however was the fact that when I made my decision the first time, I was running along the street, assault rifle in hand with Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” playing in the background. It was fantastically atmospheric, particularly when the lyrics lined up with me blowing up car and shooting people in the head.
• Vehicles
  The vehicles in this game are surprisingly solid all round but there is one I really have to mention called The Specter. This is a hover motorcycle that you can get as part of a reward choice when completing a mission and it is absolutely brilliant. Rather than just hovering off the ground, this thing acts like a plant and flies around the city. It is a brilliant idea and heaps of fun to play.
• Choice system
  The choice system that Saints Row has now is very intriguing. It allows the player to get different bonuses throughout the game as well as permanently changing the skyline through certain choices. It’s nice to see a system that has it in place just for the sake of it.
• Character customisation
  Like the its predecessors, you can design you character at the start and throughout the game through the “Image Designed” plastic surgery clinics and the level of customisation is insane. While not entirely original, its a very nice feature to have. The wardrobe options that you get throughout the game are also very entertaining. On a side note, I did actually play as a female for most of the game as I found it far more entertaining to play the bitch that the asshole. And no she was not dressed like a slut the entire time. I was not out to create a new Lara Croft character with a hole in my shorts pocket and all.
  

Disappointments/Annoyances

• Ending
  As previously mentioned, there is a fairly in-depth choice system in place and the ending is no different. However the differences between the two endings are quite disappointing as one of them finishes the game quite nicely and the other one…well doesn’t. It doesn’t leave it hanging by any means but it doesn’t suit the game as well as the first one I chose.
• Grand Theft Auto
  There is a point in the game when you have to run around and steal certain cars for people and for the most part it is pretty straight forward. However there was one mission where I had to steal a Garbage Truck and what most may consider to be a fairly solidly built vehicle, it was destroyed surprisingly easily by a few bullets and left me nearly deciding to put a controller shaped hole in my wall on more than one occasion. The situation wasn’t helped by my next point.
• Dumb as shit AI
  For the most part, the AI in this game, both enemies and friendlies alike, are so unbelievably thick. The two highlights for me would have to be the following. Firstly when I was attempting to steal cars, and anytime should a police siren be heard, the car in front of you would turn to the side in order to make room. However on a duel lane road, both cars would turn to the right and when I’m driving down the middle at Mach 10, having the car in the left lane turn right and park itself right in my path only to have me crash into it and do severe damage to my car. And this happened every fucking time and was extremely irritating. The enemy AI for the most part was useless and nailing them with headshots time after time wasn’t that difficult, even if they were moving.
• Quick time events
  Yes, the QTE rear their ugly heads again and although after a while you can predict when they are going to happen, getting to them is still somewhat difficult. There is one particular enemy called the brute that would charge at you and you have to hit a button to avoid being smash with its giant fist. This must have happened to me over 50 times and despite consistently seeing it and guessing when it was going to happened, I still must have failed to get it over half the time.

So there you have it. My thoughts on Saints Row: The Third. If I was going to sum it up let me put it this way. Before Saints Row:The Third, I was playing Skyrim en mass. However I picked up Saints Row and didn’t stop playing it until I had finished it. It wasn’t just a rush through the story campaign either. I had actually gotten over 90% of the game completed when I had finally finished with it. I think there is little else to say about a game that managed to drag me away from Skyrim for so long.

Some may consider this review to be somewhat in haste considering the vast amount of content that Bethesda’s RPGs are known for and the game itself has only been out for less than a week. However thanks to some previously mentioned vacation time and doing pretty much nothing but play Skyrim, eat, drink and sleep for the past week, I have played over 60 hours on my first character, with it becoming the head of the thieves guild, reaching level 26 out of 50 and completing the main story line and am well underway with my second character.

Let’s discuss the main story first and thankfully it’s not as convoluted as it was in Oblivion. Dragon’s are coming back to life and messing the place up with the flying, fire breathing and the general destroying of towns and as the most recent prisoner turned hero in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series and also the only Dovahkiin around, its your job to find out what is causing the dragons to come back and sort the whole mess out. I don’t want to go too far into it for risk of giving away spoilers but what I can say is that the story is very enjoyable to play through, and is somewhat shorter and less repetitive than Oblivion thanks to not having to close down an oblivion gate every 30 seconds. There are also numerous other story lines throughout the game with the guilds and the civil war that is raging across Skyrim but again, I’m not going to speak on those either, partly again due to spoilers but mostly because there are just too many to go through and I didn’t go through all of them.

If you have played Morrowind or Oblivion, you know how to play Skyrim because the mechanics of the game are virtually identical. However there has been a somewhat large change in the fact that casting a spell can be done with one hand rather than always with two. So what this boils down to is the fact that you can have one spell in one hand and a different spell in the other. You can still keep the same spell in both hands and cast them simultaneously and if you choose the appropriate destruction perk, the damage is greatly increased by doing this. What I really, really love about the change is that you can wield a mace in one hand and a spell in the other. It makes for new and more interesting ways to play the game and I don’t think I there are enough ways for me to praise this change.

Character selection and development has also undergone a change with the whole thing being stripped back somewhat and I think for the better. You are no longer able to define your stats, abilities and star sign at the beginning. In fact the only thing you choose right at the start is your race and there is no “are you sure that you’re happy with your choice” 10 minutes into playing the game. Some may raise the eyebrow and wonder why something like this would be done but it does add something to the game by taking away what was unnecessary. You level up your specific skills as you normally would and when you hit the next level you choose to either increase your health, magicka or stamina and then you pick a perk. Now unlike before when you hit a certain milestone say 50 in sneak, you would get a passive bonus that comes with the appropriate skill level. However in Skyrim, you pick what bonuses you want through the perk system which operates similar to the talent tree system in other RPGs but because you only can get to level 50, you can’t max out all perks in all abilities and become some sort of demi-god among men. Also thanks to the new system, the perks are somewhat more varied and can be tailored more to your play style, albeit only slightly in the grand scheme of things. The star signs that were in the old games have been replaced by blessings come from stones which you can change at anytime simply by going to and getting a blessing from another stone. The other major new gameplay component is that of the shout. You learn various shouts through finding dragon words around Skyrim with each shout having three levels, increased by finding an additional word in the shout. The shouts themselves are nicely varied and useful to have around in a pinch or in boss battles.

Thankfully the whole levelled difficulty that I spoke about in my oblivion review has gone away. Now when you wonder around Skyrim and if you stumble across an enemy much higher than yourself, you could end up in 18 different pieces if you don’t run away fast enough. You still can’t access the highest leveled items straight away and you have to level up high enough before you even begin to see them but I think that along with the strong enemies wondering around creates a great sense of achievement as you play through the game.

The quick select has been revamped from oblivion and rather than having yourself limited to 8 items, you can now have as many as you like with the quick select accessed by pressing up on the d-pad, a change which was very enjoyable.

Melee now also has a very impressive looking killing blow which shows up every so often and while it does look very impressive when you beat up a human, it’s even more so when you climb onto the neck of a dragon, leap into the air and smash down on the dragon’s head in order to kill it.

However the game itself is not perfect and it is crying out for a dodge button along with block in order to mitigate damage. There is a surprising lack of gold around with most vendors holding around 1000 gold or so. The graphics haven’t improved that much since Oblivion but they may be due to the limitations of the Xbox 360 and may be better on the PC. There is also occasionally large amounts of lag when doing any interactive that requires a menu such as looking up quests and going through your or someone else’s inventory which can get very frustrating. There are also a few bugs throughout the game. An classic and hilarious example is that if you get hit by a giant, it could possibly send you flying through the air Team Rocket style. There are a few other bugs that are mildly annoying throughout but I can’t fault the game too much as having minor bugs is par for the course for Bethesda RPG series and while I’m sure that the developers would love to have no bugs whatsoever, it would be difficult to achieve such a goal in a game as large and as complicated as this.

But for all my praise and minimal criticisms there is only one way I can truly get across how good this game is. I have been on vacation since the game came out on the 11th of November. On the date of writing this review, I have played 52 hours on my first character and 23 on my second totaling 75 hours. I have had the game from approximately 173 hours. This means in the past week, I have spent 43% of my time playing Skyrim. I haven’t hit a play time ratio since World of Warcraft and I absolutely loved that game. Imagine what it says about Skyrim.

When I played and reviewed Batman: Arkham Asylum, I described it as a perfect blend of what Batman should be; stealthing around and picking enemies off one by one, having a belt chock full of “bat” gadgets and being able to compete against a horde of enemies in hand to hand combat. I didn’t really elaborate much when I wrote the review so let me this it now. Stealthing around is mostly done by swinging from the rafters and then jumping down on individual enemies once you get them alone and knocking them unconscious. However there was a large variety in takedown methods that you could exploit. You could hang from a ledge and pull them over it, you could hang from a gargoyle and yank them up into the air, you could set a small explosive charge on a weak floor or wall, throw a sonic batarang to attract their attention and then blow up the explosive knocking them out. So needless to say it was varied and interesting and if you really wanted to perfect your takedown craft, you could always practice in the challenge maps.

Now onto combat and if you have ever seen a batman movie, you’ll get an idea of what the combat is like. You get surrounded by x number of bad guys and you take them down one by one until you’re the only left standing. The combat itself is very brutal however it does not degenerate into button bashing, rather it requires a bit of timing and finesse in order to keep your combat multiplier up or even remain standing for that matter as the hooded masses can take you down surprisingly easily if you don’t know what you are doing or continuously counter their attacks.

Now a few may be raising their eyebrows and question why I am talking about the combat and stealth from Asylum rather than from City. Well that’s because the developers have cleverly recognised a great thing and simply left it alone for the most part and only giving the already sparking stone a quick polish.

So little has changed in combat and stealth but the locale and story has undergone a drastic change as the game title implies. Instead of being in Arkham Asylum, the game is set in the self titled, Arkham City, a prison area within Gotham (because it’s always a good idea to have a large gathering of criminals in the centre of town with the only thing stopping them being a 3ft cement wall) where Batman gets trapped and needs to save the day from Dr Hugo Strange and a variety of other bad guys including The Joker, Penguin and Mr Freeze. I would like to go into some more detail but I won’t for two reasons; partly because I don’t want to give away any spoilers but mostly because I refuse to try and detail a story that has as much structure to it as a house made of jelly. The Asylum story, whilst being flimsy at the best of times, did at least drive the game properly. City on the other hand is driving the game in the same way a drunk would drive a hovercraft. You never really know what the greatest threat in the game is meant to be. Dr Strange featured prominently in the trailers and he does a bit in the game as well but The Joker keeps popping up when he feels he is no longer the center of attention and the game ends in such a way that if you don’t enthusiastically read Batman comics you’ll be left wondering what the fuck and if you do you’ll be jumping up and down and complaining like a two year old who has had their saucepan helmet taken away. The worst of it comes with the introduction of Catwoman as playable character that people can acquire when you put in a code when purchasing the game. She pops up every now and again at fixed points in the story, has a total story play time of 20 minutes in what is a 10 – 15 hour game and has a way of getting around the city that is horribly clunky and unrefined. It’s something that I had known in advance was going to break the flow of the game as badly as it does, I wouldn’t have bothered.

The city itself where the story takes place has a greater sandbox feel in comparison to its predecessor while attempting to maintain the same atmosphere and while it achieves it to some extend when you go inside buildings and into the sewers, on the surface it doesn’t have the same impact. With any sandbox title the way you get from point A to point B becomes so much more important than with any other game and while putting Batman in a sandbox is a great idea in theory, it doesn’t feel quite right when applied. If the game was the entire city of Gotham rather than just one small subsection of it and you could drive the Batmobile rather than just run and glide everywhere, then it probably would have worked very nicely , but when the area you have to work with is just so small and the way you get around quickly becomes monotonous, it just leads to something quite meh and believe me when I say this, you will be wondering around this city a lot!

There are numerous side quests to complete like solving crimes, protecting political prisoners and capturing other notable albeit lesser known Batman villians like Deadshot, Bane and Zsasz. The Riddler’s puzzles make a comeback for better or worse with even more riddles to solve however rather than having a strict “one per zone or room with the clue to help you” policy as in Asylum, City has them spread out across the entire map and the clues only pop up one at a time and won’t change until you’ve solved the previous one. Fortunately you still have the maps to help you so more often that not you will be solving the riddles through finding the location on the map and pure luck rather than actually solving the riddle. There are also hundreds of question marks to collect as well but these prove to be more annoying than enjoyable because there are just so many. Although at least the highlighting of riddles and questions marks on the map makes a bit more sense. Rather that collecting maps from around the Arkham grounds, you have to interrogate Riddler’s henchmen who are spread around the city and these guys are usually within a cluster of other henchmen and you won’t be able to interrogate them until you knock everyone else out, something which adds an extra challenge when it comes to combat.

But despite my criticisms, these are only small issues in an otherwise excellent game. It’s fun and enjoyable and I’m already playing it through a second time and I feel sorry for all those PC players who don’t have the game yet and will have to choose between it and an obscene number of games that come out following the 11th of November.