‘Resurrection‘ is a regular feature here at Resolution, where, every Friday, we take a look back at a game of old. This week, Sinan Kubba gets football-nostalgic over a management classic…

The Championship Manager 97/98 demo was my first experience of the series. CM97/98 was the third and final game to use the CM2 engine, and because of the previous two games’ success was much anticipated. For all the popularity, it was still astonishing to see a humble football management sim dominating the PC Zone issue that housed the disc with the game’s demo on it.

With curiosity piqued, I took said demo with me on my Christmas visit to family in South Wales. It was South Wales, what else was I going to do? So, the demo allowed for six months managing any English league side. As an Arsenal fan anxious over a young bespectacled Frenchman’s first full season as manager, I opted to offer my own stability to the Highbury hot seat.

Over two hours, which saw my rise to the top followed by a plummet faster than Jürgen Klinsmann in a light breeze, any lingering surprise at the hype was replaced by sheer joy and, more significantly, the roots of an addiction that would consume my teenage years - and a fair few of my adult ones too.

AN ABSOLUTE SCREAMER
When people talk of the Championship Manager addiction, they’re not talking about something that’s like any other gaming addiction. It’s not like spending the whole day on World of Warcraft or playing 100 Halo 3 matches in a row. That’s not the same as spending painstaking hours upon hours fretting about every one of the 20 stats of every last player in your squad. That’s not the same as being hypnotized by match after match being played out with no more visual reference than textual commentary that flashed whenever there was a goal. That’s not the same as realising, even at the end of yet another 30-hour session, that you’re still planning out the rest of your side’s season, be in your waking hours or in your spreadsheet-filled dreams. It wasn’t an addiction. It was a passion.

CM fans decry the claims of the games being little more than glorified spreadsheets barren of any aural or visual gloss, but that’s exactly what CM97/98 was. It’s just that glorified doesn’t do it justice. This iteration threw a whole heap load of extra tactical features into the mix, built upon the complex transfer system from the previous game, and provided international flair with the introduction of worldwide leagues. If only every spreadsheet could be this glorified.

Its best feature was not one you could put on the back of the box easily: it absolutely nailed the difficulty. CM97/98 was so enjoyably challenging, even with repeated playthroughs. Some fans will claim their 4-2-4 was unstoppable, that they never lost a match, but there was no such thing as guaranteed with CM 97/98. Sure, there were tricks of the trade. Some of these were hidden gems, close-guarded secrets to take to the grave.

Then there was Ibrahima Bakayoko. Everyone, even your football-hating aunt, knew about Ibrahima Bakayoko. Get this jewel from the Ivory Coast for about £10m from the start, slot him in the behind the strikers, sit back and watch the goals fly in. [Continues]

Format: PC | Genre: Puzzle | Publisher: Blitz 1UP | Developer: Remode | Release date: 20/01/10 | RRP: £9.99

Minesweeper. Realistically, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out we’ve all spent more time playing that free little Windows game over the years than anything else in the world. In terms of joyous simplicity, if we’re really honest, it’s probably among the most perfect games as well.

By adding a great deal more complexity, then, Mole Control suffers. Not immediately, mind. It’s initially a rather charming affair. It is to Minesweeper what Bookworm Adventures is to Boggle: a classic game, given a new spin, a story, and great lashings of indie cute. There’s a lovely soundtrack that bounces along delightfully, and it’s rendered in pleasant, vibrant 3D. As you plod along on your seated mole detector, attempting to rid the area’s gardens of the pests, you’ll uncover a sinister plot and a variety of agreeably silly side-stories. It’s well made. It works. It’s Minesweeper.

It’s a shame, then, that there’s an unfortunate heap of problems holding Mole Control back. There’s no camera control, it instead scrolling sideways as you trundle along. It feels uncomfortable - the game being rendered in full 3D, it feels like a curious omission, and one that’s strangely unfamiliar. It also means being completely unable to clearly see the patches of grass close to the nearside wall of a given garden. In a game as reliant on spatial awareness as Minesweeper, it’s a huge issue, one that’s likely to end in a terrible explosion on more than a couple of occasions.

SIZE DOES MATTER
More fundamentally, though, many of Mole Control’s stages are just too bloody big. In a game of Minesweeper in its more traditional form, there’s an eager sense of self-betterment to be found through gradually increasing the grid size and ramping up the amount of mines to detect. When you find yourself blown into oblivion, with just a few squares left to uncover, it’s a nightmare - but you’re still compelled to start over again, to beat your previous record.

Mole Control, though, is a story-driven version of Minesweeper. There are additional time trial challenges, sure, but this isn’t really about the high score board. This is about uncovering a knowingly silly and adorable story, whose next section only unlocks with the successful completion of a set of stages. Managing to detect 58 out of a total of 60 moles, after a good 20 minutes of careful mole-sweeping, only to have your face blown off right at the end… it is an absolute nightmare.

So when this happens three, four or five times in a row, and you suddenly realise you’ve failed to make any progress whatsoever in several hours, the game starts to get rather tiresome.

Which is a shame, as this is a lovingly crafted indie game with a real identity. It’s impossible to hate, certainly. And the clever ways in which the game introduces new mole types, which grant you various new abilities, is something to be commended.

But Mole Control’s greatest strength is the fact that it’s Minesweeper, and its weaknesses are mainly down to its attempts to do more than that. I’ll always get behind ideas, but this doesn’t always incorporate them successfully. By Lewis Denby

6/10

What does this score mean?

Mole Control is available for purchase from the game’s website.

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: the effect Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has on the brain.

There’s a rather substantial twist in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I won’t go into it, though I will say it’s even better if you’re familiar with the first game. You spend five hours progressing towards it, get the ta-daaa moment, and then you’re off to the end credits. It’s abrupt.

“This game plays you as much as you play it,” warns an official-looking screen at the start. That’s not entirely true, and while the game might play its users by analysing where their attentions lie and cataloguing their responses, Shattered Memories is actually at its worst when it forces you to play it like a traditional game. It’s far better when you’re experiencing it rather than actually playing it.

There’s a slightly strange cyclical relationship between game and its conclusion. The ending - what Harry Mason and, by extension, the player are attempting to discover for the duration - turns out to be largely unimportant. As far as Shattered Memories is concerned it’s the journey that counts, though it would be impossible to deny that an integral part of said journey is based around inching closer and closer to the ‘truth’ of the ending. The game’s real strength comes from making you guess what exactly is going on in the perpetually creepy town, and whether it’s all part of Harry’s imagination or if there really is some malevolent force out to get him and steal his daughter.

It occasionally segues into ‘nightmare’ sequences where Harry is forced to avoid nameless, faceless monsters and manoeuvre his way to an exit. These moments barely cause any tension as, if you succumb to the nasties, you merely respawn at the start of the sequence and give it another run. It succeeds in making you feel uncomfortable by painting a town outside of its nightmare sequences where nothing ever feels right. The effect is enhanced by showing you competent cutscenes depicting a well-portrayed world: this new Silent Hill isn’t disconcerting because of technical limitations or a set of dodgy actors. It’s creepy by design.

IN LIMITED SUPPLY
Horror contemporaries Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space create tension by limiting your ammo supply. This isn’t ever scary in actual combat, however, as the player is too occupied in action to think about it. The anxiety comes from the moments after and before battles, where you know you don’t have enough bullets to get by and approach every new area with trepidation. It’s this feeling that Shattered Memories is trying to play with. The game has no bullets. It has no monsters outside of its telegraphed nightmare sequences and its highs come from tacit moments with multiple potential inferences. The game shifts itself ever so slightly around the choices of its players and the subtle effects add the finishing touches of bizarre on a quest to find out what on Earth is actually going on.

Harry never feels like an active participant in the discord. He’s rooted in the centre of the tale, but seems to be insulated from all the game’s dramatic actions: you turn up at an area, have a look about with the clever WiiMote flashlight controls and decide everything about the place is all screwed up and maybe, just maybe, the next waypoint will give you some answers. Then it all goes a bit nightmarish, throws in a couple of ‘gamey’ puzzles and meanders about for a bit before letting you get back to soaking up the atmosphere and trying to figure out the story.

It’s an interesting one, let down by some major design flaws but, as an experience, it’s definitely something that feels unique. It’s an acquired taste if there ever was one, but it’s about as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing some of the design ideologies - creating action without guns and atmosphere without shock horror - explored in low-profile indie games attempted in a mainstream Western release. Shattered Memories evoked some of the same feelings of dread I got from Pathologic, for instance, but even then they’re both so unique it feels wrong to try and group them together. Jim Sterling would almost definitely hate it.

It’s worth a go for that alone, really, but there’s also an excellent twist at the end. By Martin Gaston

Format: Xbox 360/PS3 | Genre: Turn-based strategy | Publisher: Easy Tiger Media/Valcon Games | Developer: W!Games | Release date: 24/02/10 | RRP: 800 MSPoints (£6.80) / £7.99 PSN

Greed Corp takes the turn-based strategy genre and revitalises it with a much faster pace and simpler design than what we’re used to. As a result, it achieves an interesting and impressive balance between simplicity and depth.

The premise weighs down the scales on the side of simplicity, this being a turn-based strategy game with minimal units, small scale maps, and only a handful of potential moves to contemplate. The goal of destroying up to three other forces - each representing a tribe with differing mentalities and goals - continues the simple trend, but it’s the combat that embodies it the most successfully.

COMMAND AND CONQUER
There is only one type of offensive unit - the walker - and although each walker is uniquely designed to represent each side’s mentality, they never vary in strength. It means combat is always balanced, which gives way to a multitude of tactics and makes everything rather interesting. Instead of strength of might leading the way, cunning takes its stead.

Even the available buildings exude simplicity, in that there are only three. There’s the armoury, which allows you to build walkers and flying transports (the only other unit in the game). There’s also the cannon and the harvester. The harvester’s primary use is to generate money by consuming the earth’s resources, which in turn damages the ground beneath and around it. Once the ground has suffered too much damage it crumbles away, providing its secondary use as a tactical structure.

As the battlefield gets smaller, due to both the harvesters and the cannons eating away at the ground, choosing good tactics becomes increasingly necessary. It’s not only to conquer your enemies, but also to survive the dynamic nature of the battlefield, and it takes turn-based strategy in the exact opposite direction, back to its usually slow-paced nature.

This is where the weight of depth counters the simplicity. Specifically focused on the tactical requirements of the player, it all leads back to the idea of balance - for as simple as the premise is, in order to make any headway you need to keep your wits about you.

THE SLOWEST ROUTE TO VICTORY
The need to constantly analyse your tactics and quickly adapt proves to be both a blessing and a curse. The action remains fast-paced despite the turn-based formula, and so multiplayer benefits from a challenging yet accessible experience. But the campaign, which spans all four factions, can become frustrating at times, with even the beginner AI giving you a run for your money. It makes the learning curve steep, sometimes uncomfortably so, but with so few units and buildings available it does emphasises their importance throughout the singleplayer campaign.

Its agreeable length provides a great opportunity to develop your tactical skills, and although it can become repetitive, it’s still enjoyable and a welcome addition. But the multiplayer aspect is where it gets addictive. When playing online or locally with up to three additional players, the experience remains as fast-paced and enjoyable as the singleplayer, only with the added fun of human error. Ultimately, it’s the multiplayer you’ll stay for. Considering the AI’s punishing nature, pitting yourself against a fallible human better plays to Greed Corp’s strengths as a fast-paced strategy title.

Still, both the multiplayer and singleplayer modes are great fun, and the fast-paced and dynamic nature makes for a wonderful casual experience. But Greed Corp is all about balance, and it maintains that by providing tactical offerings that make for an equally wonderful in-depth experience. Whichever appeals more, or however much times you have spare, Greed Corp can more than match your strategy needs and will keep you coming back for more time and time again. By Greg Giddens

8/10

What does this score mean?

‘Resurrection‘ is Resolution’s weekly retro slot. This week, in preparation for Final Fantasy XIII’s release (review soon, don’t change the channel), we head back to the one before the one everyone remembers…

Watching Final Fantasy VI’s drama unfold feels a bit weird in 2010. Look at those silly old pixelated graphics! It’s like looking at a Lego recreation of Auswitz and being expected to shed tears.

It’s most famous for being a Final Fantasy game with a number below VII on the end, but it’s actually a much better experience than its more successful sibling. It doesn’t descend rapidly downhill after you leave Midgar, for example. As a general rule of thumb it’s less guarded over the twists in the story, which makes it more consistent a narrative, but it also lacks many of its successor’s overwhelming moments of meaningless but flashy spectacle.

Remember that exciting moment in VII where you have that amazing FMV and then the awkward motorbike minigame? VI doesn’t do things like that.

On the surface, though, it’s a typical Final Fantasy by numbers with an abundance of towns, dungeons and text boxes that just don’t quit. It’s all here: Characters becoming 50ft tall on the world map and taking giant lumbering strides to their next destination? Check. Relentless random battles that you beat, for the most part, by hammering Attack? Check. 30 hours of storyline featuring a big bad villain who wants to destroy the world? I’m sure you get the idea.

Scratch the surface a bit, though, and you end up with what is perhaps the most atypical example of the series. There’s a sprawling ensemble cast instead of one primary character, and with no clear-cut leader the group finds itself prone to a far greater amount of doubt, remorse and self-reflection (in a more complex manner than Tidus bursting into a fit of big girly tears, too) than you’d probably expect from a game of its ilk.

One of the game’s more explicit scenes, and one that I’ve recently found has definitely stood the test of time, has a character finding himself stranded on an island with a wounded elderly man. You are entirely responsible for his sustenance (you can fish for food, for instance) but, regardless of your nursing diligence, the old guy doesn’t make it. Alone, lost and with nothing to live for, your character becomes so world-weary that you must - as the game will not progress until you do - manually control their slow, winding climb to the top of the mountains and leap off in a sad, desperate and misguided suicide attempt.

It tows a fine line between comedy and drama, understanding the right time to crack a joke and when to play it straight. The game’s most recognisable scene features one character posing as an opera singer in a bid to catch a killer, with the player controlling the character backstage as they try to learn their lines and stage directions. With the rest of your team waiting in the wings, the trap is set and your character performs an aria that would be quite beautiful were it not being eked out of the SNES’s tinny sound chip.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS
Despite its age, it scrubs up remarkably well. You fight a weird octopus a load of times. People use carrier pigeons. Kefka poisons a lake to kill off the inhabitants of a castle because he’s a complete bastard.

[Continues...]

Format: Xbox360/PS3/PC | Genre: FPS | Publisher: EA | Developer: DICE | Release date: 05/03/10 | RRP: £34.99-£49.99

“Snowmobiles are for sissies.” This is a sentence spoken by the protagonists of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, one of a few that stands up and points a finger at Modern Warfare and the Call of Duty franchise as a whole. Such bravado could be seen as cockiness or childish name-calling, but these jibes are rooted in the competitive aspect of our industry. More to the point, whether DICE are showing off or not, Bad Company 2 is a better game than Activision and Infinity Ward’s sequel.

Face it: Modern Warfare 2 is a polished but forgettable rollercoaster ride of ludicrous set-pieces. Bad Company 2 is not. Bad Company 2 is for the purists, people who want their action and drama served with a slice of comedy and a side of camaraderie. This game stands taller because it isn’t just a game about shooting dudes in the face; it also has a heart. The writing is dynamic and full of action, the voice acting superb. It’s a game to be enjoyed for everything it has to offer.

Taking over the rag tag heroes of the first game, B Company stumble across parts of a doomsday project and become swept up in a plot that twists and turns wonderfully from start to end. The story is heightened by its cast, the special ops version of the Raggy Dolls. Haggard is still a brash sonofabitch, Sweetwater is ever the techy nerd, the Sarge still wants his retirement and Marlowe is forever stuck in between them all. It’s a brilliant group dynamic throughout.

The dichotomy of this group of individuals is akin to TV series 24, or any action movie: a group of heroes who just want to go home and settle down, only to be dragged back into the danger. As an audience, we love rooting for these people. They aren’t the elites of the army with “pussy-ass heartbeat detectors.” These are hard working men who were built for living, not dying. Journeying with them is endearing. You’re not just playing to see the game completed; you’re playing because you want these men to be rewarded.

BUT YOU DO SHOOT DUDES IN THE FACE, RIGHT?
Bad Company 2 offers plenty of rewards as you explore. Weapons discarded by enemies become collectibles through the game, and picking them up adds to your ever-growing stash of guns. These can be selected at loadouts across the game, but they aren’t just the same guns with different skins. Each firearm has a different aim, kick-back, rate of fire and damage statistic. It adds to the depth, as you play around with each weapon and begin to find your favourites.

Expertly, these loadout boxes are always placed in the best areas; if you’re having trouble taking down a particular group of enemies, then you can run back a few yards and select different guns for the task. It’s a helpful addition, as Bad Company 2 enjoys throwing everything it has at you and watching you squirm. There are spectacular moments littered throughout, moments at which you genuinely suspect you may not come out the other side.

But for each of these epic battles you are once again rewarded, usually with respite to enjoy your surroundings or revel in the world that DICE have created. Travelling from dense jungles to open deserts and stopping at snowy mountain tops along the way, Bad Company 2 forever impresses with its breadth of locations. A highlight is the mountain top, which brings with it a change of pace to the action. As you make your way down to rendezvous with your team, you must navigate through houses and huts, finding fires for warmth. Not doing so will see your vision frost up, and the jangling of your gun from trembling hands becomes unbearable.

[Continues...]

Format: PC | Genre: Adventure | Publisher: Iceberg Interactive | Developer: Microïds/GameCo | Release date: 19/02/10 | RRP: £24.99

There’s a history here that most games manage to avoid. The original Still Life, released back in 2005 and itself a sequel to 2003’s Post Mortem, made quite a stir for a couple of reasons. For starters, it was an adventure game with a personality, which was quite the turn-up at the time. But it perhaps made itself most famous by its inexplicably having been released at all.

See, developer Microïds ran into trouble during the game’s creation, resulting in the studio’s closure. Except they didn’t cancel the project. With their dying breath, they instead wrapped things up as quickly as possible and released it anyway. The game that emerged was distinctly unfinished, not just because the majority of its puzzles were in dire need of testing and refining, but also because the game just… ended.

It failed to tie up a whole cornucopia of important plot points, its lead character deciding to relocate to Los Angeles to continue working on the unresolved case and the credits rolling immediately afterwards. It was a murder mystery in which the mystery was never solved. And the tragic thing about the whole scenario was that Still Life was almost brilliant. It was artful, and gripping, and well-directed, and the script and dialogue weren’t awful. The game received plenty of plaudits anyway, but the nagging sense remained that Microïds’ final release could have been so much more.

The story doesn’t end there, though, because in 2007 Microïds relaunched itself, and began planning a continuation of the Still Life saga. But development was to be outsourced to Parisian developer GameCo Studios. The resulting sequel launched in Germany almost a year ago, in various European countries a month later, and in North America last summer. The English version has been available digitally since then, but only now does it find its way to UK retail, and only now has it landed on Resolution’s tattered doormat.

All that might seem like an unnecessary history lesson, but it’s especially relevant when examining Still Life 2. With it, GameCo had the rare opportunity to build on Microïds’ fascinating ideas, adept storytelling techniques and wondrous art design, while taking the time to refine the puzzles and tie up several loose ends. Which is why it’s so utterly bizarre to be playing the game that sits before me.

STOP THE PRESS
You’re Victoria McPherson again. A highly strung but talented FBI agent, she’s been tracking the Chicago murders of Still Life for several years. She hates journalists. But when one gets kidnapped by a new serial maniac, she’s no choice but to rush to her aid.

You’re also Paloma Hernandez, that journalist, fighting to stay alive through a series of misguided escape-the-room puzzles whose logic regularly escapes me. Occasionally, there’s a moment of simple resourcefulness, which works: of course you can drag a matress over a pile of sharp glass in order to cross safely. Other times, though, it’s just plain bonkers. Early on, you’re tasked with escaping the killer’s bedroom, but straying too near to the door gives you a nasty electric shock. The solution - not to give too much away - involves flicking a light switch.

More frequent than both ends of this scale, though, are puzzles that make sense in hindsight, but through which the game fails to adequately guide you. The point-and-click interface couldn’t be simpler, but there are times when vital clues can be missed by simply not examining something in the way the game wants.

[Continues...]

Hammerfight is brilliant. I’m not a terribly competitive gamer, but it’s one of a select few videogames that have had me fist pumping the air upon victory. Competition is at its heart, supported by a core mechanic that doesn’t change, but adapts very well to different combative environments. Like some of the best indie games, it has a hook that doesn’t actually change to a great extent for its duration, but the way it’s deployed over those few hours maintain interest.

For most of Hammerfight, the player’s sole input is swinging the mouse. Swiping and swishing to and fro - nothing more is added save for some basic item selection and combining. All of these secondary actions are achieved with single button taps, but it’s still entirely mouse-driven. It’s a stroke of simplistic genius. Those gestures control a manned flying contraption and, by proxy, its weaponry and armour, which can vary in weight, size and shape. These governing traits give movement a very tactile feel, altering depending on the machine’s loadout. There’s a certain satisfaction to be had from smashing an enemy’s armour in one fell swoop, just as there’s a feeling of flailing helplessness in missing him entirely and landing with a thwack upon his spiked hammer.

Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that the mechanic, in its purtest form, is flawless. Equally matched one-on-one combat with no music, distinguishing art direction or other mechanics would be engaging enough to keep me entertained for hours. Obviously, though, there’s more to it than that. Hammerfight has one of the most interesting stylistic pallettes of recent years, combining aspects of several bygone civilisations including the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt, juxtaposing these against Moorish architecture and steampunk drapings. What results is a bizarre cultural patchwork that actually works, helped along by detailed two dimensional art that is occasionally layered for effect, but works superbly in its own right.

BEGGING TO BE EXPLORED
Obviously the plot is nonsense, but the world itself remains fascinating throughout; it’s the kind of place that’s begging to be explored in realtime 3D on a high resolution monitor. Alas, that’s unlikely to happen, but Hammerfight is well served by this captivating and utterly unique mixture. While the art direction and music especially are of a distinctly Middle Eastern flavour, encounters - especially in tournament situations - have definite gladatorial overtones. In some ways it’s reminiscent of Capcom’s overlooked Shadow of Rome; play to the crowd and they will cheer and reward you. Not as directly as the latter, it must be noted, but with money and reputation. Cash can be spent to purchase new equipment from a training hub between levels or by using a costly “skip” feature, one that I never used save for an accidental mashing of the num-pad Enter button when slamming my fist in anger.

Was that frustration? No. The irritation was personal. In this regard, Hammerfight takes its cues from the best. Loss, though frequent, is almost always your own stupid, slow, careless fault. You didn’t dodge fast enough, you went for too risky a blow, you let yourself get cornered by the encroaching horde of delightfullydisgusting looking beasts. Notice the almost, though. On occasion, the slightly cumbersome HUD will get in the way, or an enemy pilot’s dialogue will obscure the arc of his attack. These moments are suspiciously common; by no means constant, but exacerbated by a particular stage’s design or quick movement to the edge of the screen. Oh, that’s another slight problem. Sometimes, in the open air, the player’s movements will be restricted to a box with invisible walls. Not a huge deal, but when both friends and enemies can venture outwith these arbitrary boundaries and leave you hanging it becomes an unnecessary irritation.

That said, most of the time, very little detracts from the core combat loop. Battles have an unparallelled flow to them, sometimes becoming exhausting, drawn out slogs wherein each and every hit point is crucial and on other occasions throwing a spanner in the works when you least expect it. It’s possible to attempt a boss fight a dozen times, but emerge the victor after only ten seconds in the thirteenth round. In any other game, this would seem like inconsistency. Hammerfight, though, has the capacity to produce emergent moments like these through its stripped down, precisely imprecise central conceit. An accidental upswing can be the deciding factor in a scrap. Even discounting the world’s potent character, the seemingly infinite permutations of craft attachments and the variety of conditions that both alter and spring from the dynamic of combat, Hammerfight is one of the most balls-out fun and competitive games of recent times. There are a few issues here and there, but on the whole it’s absolutely - ahem - smashing. By Fraser McMillan

Grab Hammerfight from Steam for under a fiver.

Format: PlayStation 3 | Genre: Adventure | Publisher: Sony | Developer: Quantic Dream | Release date: 26/02/10 | RRP: £49.99

Forget what you know. Forget what you think you know. Forget what you think you’re not really sure you know. Basically, start fresh.

Surrounding the tumult of coverage of Heavy Rain before it was released, there was a lot of talk of whether this would be a game, or just a film that’s three times as long as most, and with some low level of interaction that makes you think you’re in control. The problem I’m facing, and that Heavy Rain faces when you’re presented with it, is that both of these assumptions are right.

It’s a issue of perspective; do you slip sympathetically into the shoes of the four leads of the game, or do you use your position of omniscience and power to manipulate and steer them into a more rewarding and involved narrative? The problem here is that, more than any other game I’ve played, Heavy Rain doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t feel it needs to, and - in a way - that might be its undoing.

We’re competitive beings. We want to win, and I think gamers, more than most, have this urge planted deep within them. Losing a fight isn’t an option, so we do everything we possibly can to win it, and continue. This has been instilled in us over years of Game Over screens, limited lives and checkpoints. Games exist for the rule of trial and error; we try something, we fail, so we try something else. It’s worked for 30 years, and it’s understandable if, when presented with something that doesn’t follow those rules, we follow them anyway.

Heavy Rain isn’t challenging - at least, not in the traditional sense. The challenge here isn’t in whether you can press the buttons fast enough, or throw your controller to the left quickly enough to trigger the corresponding action on-screen. The challenge here is in choice. Do you choose to let Ethan succeed in this scene, or fail? Does Scott Shelby win this fight, or get his arse kicked? Does Norman Jayden find the essential clue in all of this, or miss it and fail to find the killer? These are questions you have to answer, but the game is placing both results in your hands.

Quantic Dream have made a big deal about the complete lack of fail state in the game, but only by focusing on the negatives. As in, they state that any and all of the four characters you play with can die. They set this out as if it’s a challenge, saying to the player, “see if you can make it through the game without anyone losing their life.” But that’s not the challenge. The challenge is seeing if you can bear to let any of them die.

They’re clever; they have created a set of pretty rounded characters, and given you enough scenes focusing on the peripherals of each of them for them to exist somewhat separate from the story they occupy. Ethan Mars is a man haunted by the horrific death of his son, Jason, to the extent where relations with his remaining son, Shaun, are strained. There’s an active lack of care about him that speaks to the crushing blow that losing his child has dealt him; he’s unshaven, and his house isn’t decorated, instead littered with moving boxes and dust. The architectural drawing you so joyously created in the first scene lies under a thick sheen of detritus.

Madison Paige is an insomniac, terrorised by dreams of rape and attack, fighting masked men in the fitful sleep she just about manages to claw free in the early hours of the morning. It’s rarely touched upon again, but it’s the theme of dependence that is the common thread between all of the characters. Mars is dependent on his children, Jayden on the drug Tripto, Madison on sleep, and Shelby somewhat on his asthma inhaler. It might seem like a cheap trick to instil vulnerability into each of them, but it works.

WELL, HOW DID I GET HERE?
Before delving into the fidelity of the story, you need to look at the genesis of Heavy Rain. Its obvious predecessor was Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy outside of the EU), Quantic Dream’s previous work, filled with mysticism, zombies and the anthropomorphic projection of the Internet. Filled with intrusive Simon Says QTEs, it was a game stifled by the form; it seemed much more like Quantic Dream wanted to create a film, but didn’t have the budget. Regardless, it seemed to work, and despite its flaws it was an enjoyable story to engage with.

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Format: PC | Genre: Action/MMO | Publisher: Hi-Rez Studios | Developer: Hi-Rez Studios | Release date: 01/02/10 | RRP: £29.99 + £7.99/m

Part third-person shooter, part MMO, part online strategy, Global Agenda certainly has its fingers in many pies. It’s primarily an action game, in that the majority of your time in this familiar futuristic world is spent locked in real-time battle - or, at least, waiting to be dropped into one. And therein lies the first of the game’s several problems: as a shooter, it’s a good few years behind the times.

Its class-based action almost works. Upon starting the game for the first time, you select between four separate character types depending on your desired style of play. Assault is the big bad-ass, and the guy I spent most of my time with. Recon is the sneaky type, capable of activating invisibility and precise with long-range weapons. Robotics comes equipped with the ability to construct shields and turrets, while the medic sports a gun that gradually heals those whom it’s shot at.

It’s Team Fortress-lite, in a way, with each class working together on a team to ensure maximum effectiveness in battle. Robotics characters set up defences, before the Assault player charges in, backed by the Medic at all times. Recon sneaks in around the back and causes havoc where the opposition least expects it. With everyone playing together with such ruthless efficiency, Global Agenda has a habit of sucking you in for an alarming number of hours.

LUCK OF THE DRAW
It’s a shame, then, that the game suffers from some of the strangest design decisions in recent memory. Take the player-versus-player system, which is where most of your experience points will come from. There are several game types, all of which seem to have been lifted from either Team Fortress 2 or Unreal Tournament. Except, you can’t choose which game type you want to play. Instead, you join a PvP queue, and the game decides for you. At least half of them are badly designed, resulting in mindless action that completely neglects the careful class-based play Global Agenda had previously set up. It’s bizarre.

The classes come more into the fore in player-versus-environment matches, from which you collect less experience but do have the chance to grab salvage for crafting. But these encounters are impossibly dull, emerging as a sort of throwback to early co-operative shooters with hideous AI, bland and linear level design and ludicrous, difficulty-spike-encrusted boss battles. Considering the meagre rewards available for playing these - especially at lower levels - it’s rarely advisable to pour much time into PvE at all.

Between missions you’ll spend a lot of time in one of a number of Dome City hubs, which are all identical aside from being on different servers. They’re also impossibly small, and serve only as an overly complex lobby system, rather than anything approaching a massively multiplayer world. You can purchase new armour, spend upgrades and generally stand around chatting. In practice, no one really does much socialising at all, instead opting to run around in circles and take a crazy kamikaze jump from the highest point of the city, since falling great distances does literally no damage.

In essence, it’s a case of the several different segments of Global Agenda all desperately struggling to work together, with each ending up diluted and clumsy. It might be part shooter, part MMO, but it’s not even close to being fully either, and as a result never finds its feet. Even the aesthetic lacks identity: it’s typical, shiny science-fiction fare, with such a flimsy story embedded into the world that, a month after I started playing, I’ve literally forgotten entirely.

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