By Phill Cameron

The camera is one of those things you ignore when it works right, and get so, so frustrated about when it doesn’t.

So when you finally get your hands on Heavy Rain, and suddenly if feels as if every single camera angle has a director behind it, it’s both wondrous and a little disconcerting. Heavy Rain is at once one of the most free-form and exquisitely scripted experiences I’ve ever come across.

Since Fahrenheit, we’ve not really had anything follow in these footsteps. There have been adventure games, of course, but nothing trying to recreate that action-based, story-driven experience that literally tries to place you inside the closest thing games have to a movie. So Quantic Dream, the developers of that slightly batshit insane game, are the natural choice for the spiritual successor. And it really is a successor, providing you with the finely detailed scenes that tell a very specific story. Except, this time, your choices seem to have a far wider range of effects, even if it is only in the slightly contained situation each scene seems to find itself in.

It’s a difficult game for me personally to get behind, even though I find myself doing so almost whole-heartedly. I feel that this tightly scripted experience is a dead end, only able to place you so far into a living, breathing world without it feeling constricted and false. I crave the procedurally generated mayhem of something like Spelunky, or the almost aleotoric excellence that is Dear Esther’s narration. These are things that will have me coming back, but what Quantic Dream have managed to convince me is that there’s more game in Heavy Rain than I could ever play myself.

//Epic fail
It all rests in this notion that they’ve all but done away with the fail state. You have four player characters, and each of them can die, without presenting you with an immersion-breaking and frustrating Game Over screen. You carry on, with the other three, or two, or one character that survives, merely missing out on the scenes that the other characters would have had. Perhaps it’ll even open up different scenes, because the focus shifts so much more heavily on the survivors.

And that doesn’t mean that you’ll miss one of the many, many prompts during a QTE and suddenly fail, that character dead and gone. In both the scenes we went hands-on with last week, there was the possibility of a fight (one far more likely than the other), during which each prompt is just another event – maybe a punch, maybe swinging a large industrial hook at a bad guy, or smacking him over the head with a bottle. Maybe you’re dodging a punch, or saving yourself from danger. The thing is, all of these can be failed, without failing. You just miss with that punch, or fail to dodge one from your assailant. It means the pressure is slightly off, and you can focus on getting the next one right. It also means the action is far more fluid and believable. You missed that punch because you missed that button press. You got smacked by that pipe because you didn’t hit triangle quickly enough. It removes the assumption and stigma that usually is associated with QTEs that you’re just watching a cutscene that you can’t ignore, and have to actively participate in. This is more than that; it’s actually a proper game.

That sounds like a strange statement to make, but it’s an important distinction. Yes, you’re just hitting buttons when you’re told to, but it becomes far more involving when you aren’t learning the order, and everything is a desperate reaction test to press exactly what it’s asking at exactly the right time. And that relies on the interface being as fluid as the action, so you aren’t fruitlessly searching the screen for that prompt, while at the same time not covering up the action with a huge circle.

[Continues...]

By Lewis Denby

In Split/Second, you don’t brake.

As if you’d ever need to.  Smashing head-on into a wall at a hundred miles per hour simply flashes up a ‘You’ve crashed’ screen before depositing you back where you should be on the track, still hurtling along at top speed.  And besides, doing so would only dampen the ferocious atmosphere that emerges from driving full-pelt around a track while the world happily explodes all around you.

In many ways, Split/Second is your typical arcade racer.  You’ve never to worry about vehicle damage, and you can easily plough your way through a race barely touching anything anything but the accelerator.  But in another way, it’s set apart by its focus on alarming levels of staged destruction.

You’re a driver in a reality TV show, the tracks on which you’ll race having been rigged with explosives.  Drive well enough, and you’ll earn the chance to detonate these explosives at just the right time to bring an entire building crashing down on top of the car in front of you.  Or a large, open area crumbling beneath your wheels, allowing you to access a shortcut through tunnels below.  Or a shopping mall blowing up while you’re inside it.  Or a jumbo jet falling from the sky, in extraordinary flames, as you flail around an airport runway.

Split/Second is ridiculous.  And, judging from our short time with the game, it’s shaping up to be a whole lot of fun.

//New season
In development at Black Rock Studios and set for publication by, somewhat amusingly, Disney, Split/Second is an exciting prospect.  Set across a fictional television season, its story is strewn across 24 episodes, each comprising three separate race events.  Since the version we played at last week’s Eurogamer Expo only featured a single race, and even that entertained us again and again across the two days, things sound promising for the full release.

It certainly won’t have any trouble keeping up the momentum.  Cars roar around the tracks at unfathomable speeds, the background’s once-crisp lines blurring as the speedometer reaches its highest figures.  By the end of the race, the level of destruction is… well, it’s absolute chaos.  Buildings have exploded, bridges have collapsed, planes have crashed and cars have flown through the air, propelled by the most fabulous of collisions.  Its pacing is marvellous.  Each lap ramps up the madness ever more.

Where it might struggle, however, is in keeping things interesting over repeat plays.  We played the build’s single event a good few times each, and few of us reported any significant differences on each occasion.  Perhaps things exploded in a slightly different order, or were triggered at a different time.  Maybe one person was in the mall when it collapsed, while another had shot out the other side to safety.  But that seems to be around the level of variety on offer – and that could hinder its lasting value somewhat.

Of course, it seems silly to complain when you sit Split/Second alongside linear, set-piece driven action games – which, curiously, is almost what the title seems to have most in common with.  None of these games offer much variety when it comes to a single sequence.  And with the impressive promised length of the story mode, it’s likely Split/Second’s lasting appeal will lie more with the variety of events on offer than it will with different approaches to each one.

//Not a scratch
Still a fair way away from Release, Split/Second already feels mightily polished.  There’s a gorgeous, vivid contrast to the art style, and the vehicles handle well.  The only downside is a lack of damage feedback – there’s little in the way of visual representation when you crash; very few bumps and scrapes and wheels-falling-off as a memoir of your crazed destruction.  There’s just a message telling you you’ve wrecked your car, then – miraculously – the race continues.

Actually writing off your car half-way through an event would feel cruel and pointless in Split/Second, but it’s still a slightly awkward transition between crashing and being deposited back in the race.  It’s the sort of thing that, if tidied up, could really brush Split/Second with that enormous, high-quality sheen that it already deserves.

And if it can manage that… well, then come Q1 next year, it can hit me with all the ridiculous explosions it likes.

For what seems like an eternity, Alien Breed fans have been waiting for their beloved series to reappear.

It’s been 13 years since the franchise last saw a release, with Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Ground. Now, thanks to the opportunities provided by the digital distribution channels on consoles and PC, Alien Breed is back, with improvements galore. Shying away from the previous FPS iterations, Evolution returns to its roots, with a top-down perspective similar to the 2D days of the first Alien Breed titles. The game makes full use of the Unreal 3 engine, and looks truly gorgeous. Even in dark corridors, illuminated by your character’s torch, the details jump out at you, whether it’s from the magnificent fire and explosion effects or the impressive care that’s been lavished on the walls and floors. We only had time to play for a short while on a single interior level at last week’s Eurogamer Expo, but Team 17 promises to deliver many more locations just as visually impressive, and based on the quality of the locations we did see, excitement is growing for what else there is to see in brighter settings.

The visuals are further complimented by the general design of the experience. The look and feel of the game remains authentic to what fans of the original fell in love with all those years ago, yet feels modern and fresh thanks to the benefits of present-day presentation and mechanics. It all works to maintain the core experience that made the originals so successful in the first place, but adds much needed updates to keep the formula relevant.

With our session playing Alien Breed Evolution over, we sat down with Team 17’s Design Manager, John Dennis, for a chat about the game.

Resolution: Why bring back Alien Breed? What made you decide to do it?

John Dennis: Well, we’ve been trying for years. I’ve lost count of how many ‘almost’ Alien Breeds we’ve developed. You know, for years we’ve been shackled by third-party publishers, in the sense that we could only make the games that third-party publishers see as economically viable, and they have to factor in a number of things into that calculation. For us as an independent to start publishing our own games, that’s an entirely different calculation, so with the success of Worms on XBLA and PSN, it essentially proved to us it was a viable market and we may be able to recoup our development costs if we made another Alien Breed game. So really it’s circumstance. We’ve been wanting and trying to do this for years, getting that game and that content to the audience.

R: Other than the obvious – the new engine – what else is new or improved in Alien Breed Evolution over the originals?

JD: Oh wow, I don’t really know where to start. Firstly, the level design. In the levels in the original Alien Breed, you’d have limited keys and you’d have to shoot doors; sometimes you’d find yourself in a position where you couldn’t complete the level any more. There’s none of that in Evolution. Our levels have all had a lot of time lavished on them, a lot of design. There’s loads of new weapons; the aliens in the original all behaved the same way, and now they don’t. We have lots of new and different aliens that act in different ways. They all require different strategies from the player to deal with them, and that’s something that we felt makes a larger scale game – you know, maybe this can occupy you for five to eight hours. That was important, so the experience doesn’t get stale; you always have to think, you’re always tested.

The other thing we’ve done is we’ve kind of added a survival horror element, so when your player character gets to low health he starts limping around and he can’t run, so it becomes even more dangerous. Health is always in really short supply – so is ammo – so you’ve got to be sure to use the weaker weapons on the weaker aliens rather than using your really powerful ones, otherwise you’ll really struggle later on. We’ve also got intelligent audio, where it ramps up when you’ve got lots of aliens on screen. And also, when you become injured, the screen drains of colour, it kind of goes black and white, and you get a heartbeat sound effect and a heartbeat rumble on the controller, so it scares the hell out of you. It goes all out to really make you nervous. So we’ve done lots of things to try and induce that unnerving feeling, and coupled with that we’ve got the narrative as well. It runs over the three episodes, so that provides a context and a meaning to your actions that the original never had.

[Continues...]

By J.D. Richardson

On the surface at least, Global Agenda doesn’t offer anything particularly original.

Yet despite this, it still emerged as one of the most interesting games on show at last week’s Eurogamer Expo. And, as seemed to be the case with many of the show’s attendees, it still had me gripped for about an hour straight.

It’s an online, team based, third-person shooter with a difference. You see, it’s also an MMO with an optional subscription plan, one that lets you join in with a massive factional war for a persistent world, all on one server as in EVE Online. Now, for obvious reasons, this part of the game was not being demonstrated, but what we did get to play was a four-player PvE mission, which was set mostly on the rooftops of a huge futuristic city and involved four separate classes working together to defeat a series of bosses and capture re-spawn checkpoints. It’s a case of constantly trying to push forwards and gain ground, and it works extremely well. The presentation is consistent, slick and well designed, all clear lines and high-tech futurism.

//Top of the class
The four classes on offer are Recon, Medic, Assault and Robotic. I played the Robotic class, which is similar to an engineer in other team-based shooters, involving tasks such as building turrets and drones, repairing shields and generally acting as support. It proved to be a whole lot of fun.

In Global Agenda, it genuinely feels like you’re making a difference in the fight – and that’s a great feeling in any team-based game. The four classes work so well together in such a way that, even though I was playing with three other players who I had never even met before, we quickly started to gel together. We instinctively knew what we were supposed to be doing, thanks to the clear-cut way the game presents itself and plays out.

A typical boss situation sets up a large room full of enemies and a boss, with force fields around the entrances that prevent you from simply waiting outside and shooting from there, and stop your foes from charging out and beating you down before you have chance to react. It means you can plan your attack as a team before you go in, usually with the assault class heading in first to take the heat, Robotics darting in quickly afterwards to set up a shield and, behind that, a turret that will pound the boss with heavy fire. Then the Medic will rush in to provide aid, and finally the Recon to snipe and clear up. This strategy proved very effective in our game, but there seems to be huge scope for variation. It’s fantastic to experience proper team work in a game like this, and makes the prospect of even bigger battles and full-scale factional warfare seem enormously exciting.

The demo on show was but a small part of the game, though, and it seems that the full product is going to be pretty epic if the developer’s promised feature list is anything to go by. Next year looks set to be full of tough gaming decisions indeed, with what seem like three accomplished MMOs set for release in the first quarter alone. Global Agenda, Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic are all hugely promising titles, and while I really want to play them all, three separate monthly subscriptions may be a little too much for many players.  I have to say, though: at the moment, Global Agenda is looking like a serious contender for my money…

By Greg Giddens

Sometimes, the best characters come from truth rather than fiction.

This is certainly true of Rouge Warrior, a tactical shooter developed by Rebellion, set in the eighties in the USSR and North Korea. You play as real life American Navy Seal Richard Marcinko, partaking in missions based on his military experiences, pulling off signature moves the man himself used to perform back in the day.

He’s an irrefutably cool character, and the concept is solid.  But it’s ultimately unoriginal, and unfortunately this unoriginality threatens to plague the entire game.

//Déjà vu
Rouge Warrior struggles to do anything new. It sticks rigidly to the typical stealth-action formula, which will result in inevitable comparisons that, in its current state, could well reduce the game to sub-par fare. It’s a bit of a shame, as the aggressive and brutal style works, with the prolific melee instant kills standing out. In the end, though, the good ideas risk being far out weighed by the apparent abundance of recycled concepts from other similar titles, ones which are neither surpassed nor even matched. Unless something strong can blanket these flaws, there’s a chance Rouge Warrior could slip by into obscurity when it’s released near the end of November this year.

We played a short night mission at this week’s Eurogamer Expo, and it turned out not to be the most ideal setup to showcase the game, as the night-time setting unfortunately failed to show off the visual presentation. The dark exterior and building interiors are hugely lacking in detail, muzzle flashes look quite frankly awful, and the animation for enemies is a little stiff. Add to that weapon balancing issues, with pistols and submachine guns sometimes failing to cause any noticeable damage to enemies, and screaming enemies failing to alert nearby guards… well, it’s safe to say the questionable quality of the current build, both mechanically and visually, raises some concerns.

//Stripped down to the gears
The mechanics aren’t completely broken, but still fail to shine. The controls feel somewhat slow and heavy at times, but this could have been due to the setup rather than the game itself, and it will be interesting to see how this translates to the final build. The variety of different melee instant kills, which can be triggered with a button press when in close quarters, are admittedly impressive, mainly due to the brutality and clever use of the environment. These executions seemed to be Rouge Warrior’s saving grace, until it become apparent that they could be used in every encounter, regardless of whether you’ve been spotted or not, encouraging a charge mentality that entirely eliminates any form of tactical play.

Across the occasions on which you can use weapons, a few different tactical options become available. A cover system can be used during firefights, and shooting lights out allows you to sneak up on enemies in a fashion almost identical to Splinter Cell, but justifying the effort is tricky when a charge and instant melee kill proves just as effective. Once again, it’s a system that feels unoriginal, a sort of hybridised version of Rainbow 6 and Gears of War, but it works well enough, and the main character’s detailing and animations are shown off by the switch to third-person view. If only the enemies’ presentation were as well taken care of as Marcinko’s.

While it would be unfair to draw a concrete conclusion based on such as short play session, nothing yet stands out as at all special. And while everything is certainly functional on all accounts, there’s a chance that the abundance of older, similar and seemingly better titles will mean Rouge Warrior fails to impress. Although the possibility remains that the narrative may be strong enough to redeem the experience, Rouge Warrior is looking too dated and lacking in individuality to compete against the stronger titles due for release in the near future.

By Daniel Lipscombe

I’ve never seen so many grins – real grins; big, Cheshire Cat grins – as those tucked away in a corner of this week’s Eurogamer Expo.

On two machines in the event’s Indie Games Arcade sat Joe Danger, a simple and wonderful game, one that delivers buckets full of charm and left those who played it mesmerised.

It might be easiest to say Joe Danger takes the mechanics of Trials HD and gives it a cartoon finish, but it’s so much more than that. Admittedly, Joe rides a stunt bike, jumps off and onto things, and stunts his way around a variety of courses. But the similarities end there, as Joe Danger really has more in common with the platformers of the 16-bit era. Jumping from ramps, flipping through the air collecting stars and letters, Joe would feel right at home next to the early Mario games.

Much like any platformer, Joe Danger is a simple affair on the surface, with pick-up-and-play controls, a bright and friendly interface and an addictive charm. Pick up the controller and it’s easy to start playing and score a few points. Give it to one of the developers, though, and feel that grin turn into an astounded expression as he doesn’t just smash your score, but completely obliterates it. Underneath that simple premise is a system that will allow those who enjoy high score chasing to chain complex stunt patterns and beat their friends on the leaderboards.

It would be nice to say this game will be with you soon, but unfortunately nothing is yet set in stone. Creative Director David Ream informed us that Joe Danger is loosely scheduled for a spring 2010 release. Interestingly, though, it’s yet to be signed to a platform. We may have been playing with a 360 controller, but it was hooked up to a PC. But the game will definitely be available in digital download format, said Ream, with the team aiming at PSN, XBLA and PC.

//Create your own
Joe Danger would happily sit on any of those platforms, thanks to its community-based spirit. Ream showed us what could well be the cherry on the cake: the game’s level editor. Not content with a career mode, trick mode and multiplayer, Hello Games have added the opportunity for players to craft their own stages to share with the community. And the beauty of this editor is that it’s inspired by that of LittleBigPlanet.

Opening the design screen, Ream showed us the many items that can be added to the blank canvas level, in this case a Wild West style backdrop. With just a few simple button presses, there was a ramp; in front of that, 50 cars. With another press of a button, it was time to test the course and fly off of the end of the ramp.

Just as Joe was about to land, Ream paused the game and entered the edit screen. By switching modes so easily, you can see how your level will play while you’re still building. After dropping in a shark tank at the precise point Joe was to land, Ream restarted the level, leaving Joe to plunge into the tank to be eaten by the hungry sea creature. The creative opportunities are almost endless, and any level you make can be shared among your friends, via whichever service snaps up this already wonderful game.

It’s no wonder that Joe Danger is shaping up to be so good, considering the talent producing it. The small team of four friends boasts a working history of games including Burnout, Geometry Wars Galaxies, Moto GP and even Black. According to Ream, the game has been in development for around a year already, and with a few more months left until launch… well, it’s difficult to imagine where the extra effort will go. It’s already so polished.

It’s hard not to fall in love with Joe Danger and his escapades on his stunt bike, when the central character and his world are full of such love themselves. I’ll leave the last words to David Ream, words that sum up Joe Danger and its team of creators perfectly: “Why not have giant, mad robots dancing around in the background of the scrapyard level, while Joe flies past using his turbo?”

Why not, indeed?

By Graham Jones

At the Eurogamer Expo this week, editor Lewis Denby went around introducing me to everyone as “our Wii man.” Well I’m taller than bloody Lewis…

But I am a Wii man – or, more generally, a Nintendo man. If a game’s come from the mind of Miyamoto, the chances are I’ll love it. So I was particularly excited to get my first hands-on with New Super Mario Bros. Wii – and doing so has left me just as excited about getting hold of my own copy in the next few weeks.

Following a successful return to classic side-scrolling platform action for the Italian plumber in New Super Mario Bros. on the DS in 2006, Nintendo decided to bring us a sequel, but this time for their ever-popular home console. Anyone who’s played the handheld original will feel instantly at home, and anyone who’s ever played a classic Mario game won’t be far behind. Run, jump, swim, crawl, glide and slide your way across the level from left to right until you reach the castle at the end, grab the flagpole and move onto the next area. There’s no doubt going to be some sort of storyline involving a princess who’s more kidnap-prone than Kim Bauer, but it’s hardly going to be the most important aspect of the game.

There were several levels on display on the show floor, all very much standard Mario fare. Grassy hills, underground caverns, icy wastelands and Egyptian ruins all featured as one might expect, and everything was as it should be. Hopefully the full game will showcase some more original design, as despite the variety on offer, these ideas have all been seen before, and there’s a risk of it feeling too much like a greatest hits package from previous titles in the series.

//Rude awakening
The controls are as tight and balanced as ever, with the Wii remote being held on its side like a classic NES pad but with a bit of motion control thrown in for good measure. Don’t be alarmed though – this isn’t as gimmicky as it sounds; it’s simply a spin attack performed by quickly jolting the remote upwards. But it’s not through waggle commands that New Super Mario Bros. Wii is set to define itself, but through one of the most hectic, riotous and hugely enjoyable multiplayer modes since Nintendo’s mascot first went kart racing.

When played on your own, the game delivers a solid and entertaining platformer. But grab up to three friends and all hell breaks loose. Four players can simultaneously play through the game and you can either co-operate, watching your friends’ back from Koopa attacks and helping them to grab an elusive power-up on an otherwise out-of-reach ledge, or – and this is the way most of my games went – you can ruthlessly pound on them, ensuring you get as many coins as possible and finally bumping them off by lobbing a red shell or two in their direction. At the end of each stage the coins and number of enemies killed are tallied up, and an overall winner is declared.

It’s a great new way to experience a Super Mario, title and I’m stunned by just how much fun it is, and how competitive each stage becomes. On one occasion, some snotty-nosed teenager beat me to a giant golden coin before Koopa-shelling my arse down a pit towards instant death, thus taking first place. At this point the demonstrator felt the need to step in, as you’re apparently not allowed to use the term “Twatty McTwat-face” on the family-friendly Nintendo stand.

//Ah, memories…
The previous DS game took some criticism for being too easy, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii appears much more challenging. Absolute precision is required to negotiate your way through obstacles, and when you’re in competition with other players there are going to be a lot of game over screens displayed. Even in single-player mode, the difficulty on a couple of levels conjures fond yet frustrating memories of the final battleship in Super Mario 3. Casual gamers who aren’t accustomed to such hardships can breathe easy though, due to the promised “Super Guide” function that lets the computer take over control if a level proves too much.

As with all new Mario titles, there are the obligatory new power-ups to go alongside the classic fire flowers and mushrooms. There’s a propeller suit that allows your character to jump high into the air before slowly gliding back down to earth, and a penguin outfit that lets you freeze enemies and thus turn them into handy temporary platforms. Everyone’s favourite saddled dinosaur, Yoshi, also makes a welcome return.

There’s a reason Mario’s appeal has endured for all of these years. Nintendo’s ability to continually throw in fresh ideas to the formula has prevented its games from ever feeling tired or dull. New Super Mario Bros. Wii’s multiplayer is certainly a huge step for the series, and first impressions are that it’s a huge amount of fun. What remains to be seen is whether Nintendo have pulled enough tricks from their cavernous sleeves to ensure this “New” Super Mario isn’t just “Old” Super Mario with a great multiplayer mode. Either way, I can’t wait to play through the full game in the privacy of my own home, where I can shout all the obscenities I desire.

By J.D. Richardson

Along with God of War III, one of the most popular games at the Eurogamer Expo this year was Rebellion’s upcoming Alien vs. Predator revamp.

The constant crowds of people eagerly looking on, wide-eyed with excitement, were testament to that. The only thing is, it was a multiplayer only demonstration – so no single-player info here, I’m afraid. Still, that didn’t stop us from having a jolly good blast on the game.

The set-up was a four-player deathmatch, with each of the three characters available. I chose the Alien, as it has the most unique control method; I was curious to see how it handled, and how it compared to the original PC games.

It did not disappoint. The Alien sticks to and climbs up almost any surface, which adds to that fantastic sense of being able to stalk your enemies, as you sneak around and devise various ways to ambush them. Sticking to a ceiling and waiting for a hapless marine or Predator to run underneath you, then dropping down behind them and executing a stealth kill, is priceless – as are the stealth kill animations themselves, which show you slamming your tail through opponents’ chests or slashing their throats wide open. It’s all very gory, especially where the fragile bag-o’-meat marine is concerned. That said, one of the funniest animations occurs when the Predator kills the Alien, as he grabs the Alien’s little snapping inner jaw, rips it out, then holds it up while it still tries to bite the player.

//Jump around
As the Alien’s movement is lightning fast, it does take a lot of precision when navigating the maps and attacking – but that, for me, is part of its charm. When you enter that zone of concentration and you start racking up the kills, it becomes a compelling and thoroughly entertaining experience. It’s a proper skill that will have to be practiced and perfected to play competitively, as occasionally one wrong move will send you grabbing for a surface opposite to where you actually wanted to be, which can be rather disorienting.

The two maps that were on show were interesting and well-designed, with plenty of high vantage points and dark tunnels for stalking. Both were themed around old architecture, one placing you in and amongst a set of ruins in a dark jungle, and the other in an ancient temple built in worship of the actual Alien by some long-lost civilisation. Both felt right in terms of atmosphere, and both seem to fit in nicely with the lore of the Alien and Predator franchises.

Any fans of the original two games will no doubt be wondering if it actually feels like an Alien vs. Predator title – and the answer to that, if the multiplayer is anything to go by, is a resounding “yes.” It has the same ability to make your heart race and the adrenaline start pumping through your veins. It feels more akin to the vibe of the first game, so here’s hoping that the single-player experience can live up to that promise.

The only reservations I had with the build we played were regarding the slightly disappointing graphics – whose textures looked a tad on the low-res side – but this could have been down to the quality of the monitors, how close we were sitting to them, or just the fact that it’s still a work-in-progress.

Overall, though, my experience with Alien vs. Predator was a very positive one, leaving me more excited than ever about its release next February.  I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on the full game and see what Rebellion have created. The single-player campaigns are obviously going to be the meat of the game, but as a side dish, the multiplayer already serves up a generous portion of fun.

By Lewis Denby

In the endless sea of World War 2 shooters, The Saboteur stands out in glorious greyscale, blood and explosions peeking over the horizon.

Its world is one in which colour is key.  It’s at the heart of the art design: a striking, monochrome palate with vibrant crimson dotted around the environment.  And it’s tied to the gameplay itself, as well.  As unwitting resistance member Sean Devlin battles through each mission, he boosts morale in the respective section of Nazi-infested France.  As morale rises, the colour returns.

It’s a neat concept, and one that appears to work well.  The Saboteur’s use of colour isn’t just pretty, it also serves a pleasant functional capacity.  It’s all linked with the greater context of the game’s story, and contributes to some of the less overriding details as well.  Unsure if you can scale that wall?  Have a closer look; if you can, its footholds will glisten subtly, gently guiding you onwards towards your goal.

But The Saboteur – in its current build, at least – seems a little confused in this respect.  Its use of shimmering colour as a helpful lead is a welcome change from the in-your-face hand-holding that, for many, has plagued a great deal of current-generation releases.  But despite its occasional subtlety, The Saboteur is all too willing to fall into the same trap as its peers.  A big, yellow waypoint marker sits atop the screen, intrusive but managable.  But as you edge closer to your destination, another big blob of yellow hovers over it, layered on top of the game world.  It’s distracting, and unnecessarily patronising.

It’s the sort of thing that could well be optional in the final product.  But it’s still one of the many things that don’t feel quite right about The Saboteur, as it enters its final stages of development.

//I’ve been driving in my car
We had the chance to go hands-on with three separate missions in The Saboteur this week, each demonstrating a different aspect of the gameplay.

One saw us scaling a building, sneaking up on a few guards and planting a bomb in a fuel depot, before hopping into a car and hot-footing it to the country’s border.  Sean Devlin’s background is in motor racing, so the inclusion of driving sequences works well, and the handling seems perfectly reasonable, if nothing to get particularly giddy about.  Indeed, the whole sequence is a promising one, the open-plan driving impressively showcasing the scale of the game world.  And of course, there’s just something intrinsically, inexorably cool about ploughing through crowds of Nazis.  J.D. would approve.

The other two missions focused on sneaky stealth play and gun-toting action, and it’s here where The Saboteur starts to feel slightly clunky.  An automatic cover system, whereby the game will snap you into cover if you wander up close to it, is a very clever idea.  But in practice, it doesn’t work a hundred per cent of the time, occasionally dropping you behind a wall when you wanted to run past it, or seemingly flat-out refusing to crouch behind an object when you’re clearly being shot at from eight different directions.  You can override it with a manual button press, so it’s never hugely frustrating, but it’s something Pandemic could do to tighten up in the run-up to release.

There also seems to be an irritating conflict between the all-out action sequences and the encouragement of stealthy play.  Pandemic promise a “quiet in, loud out” approach to missions, but it seems more jumbled than that.  From the very start, Devlin soaks up a frankly ludicrous amount of bullets, while most enemies go down with a single shot.  It only serves to discourage careful, strategic sneakery, since ploughing through each level with a machinegun and an angry snarl seems to work just as well.  Or, at least, it would do if enemies didn’t occasionally start shooting at you from the most arbitrary of locations, with no visual indication in which direction they’re hiding.  It means that the cover system sometimes isn’t even all that useful – if a bad guy’s spotted you from behind, going prone behind a wall doesn’t do a right lot of good.

Elsewhere, a left-trigger-activated lock-on system works well, but manual aiming seems a little oversensitive.  And the weapons, though almost too powerful, feel flimsy and plasticky to fire.

//‘Allo ‘Allo
There’s a dialogue sequence that really sums up the shaky quality of The Saboteur.  Devlin, voiced semi-competently by Robin Atkin Downes of Uncharted/No More Heroes/Gears of War fame, is speaking with a German insider about his forthcoming mission.  Even in the game’s loud booth, with players chatting away and explosions ringing out from the speakers, it’s clear that your contact’s voice work is implausably bad.  All suspicions are confirmed when the words “Ja” and “Nein” creep into an otherwise English conversation.  It’s exemplary of The Saboteur’s currently inconsistent feel as a whole.

Most of these problems are ones that could, in theory, be tweaked before final release in December.  The cover mechanic is almost there, and a slight rebalancing of the stealth and action sections would go a long way to creating a more fluid experience.  At present, it’s a game that never quite seems to establish its own structural identity, even though its visual one shines through.

Good heavens, it’s a podcast!

And what a podcast it is!  Do excuse the slightly shaky and quiet sound – we had to find a way of recording a whole room full of people with just a little computer mic.  It’s all audible.  Stop complaining.

(Plus Phill recorded it too.  If it turns out his recording sounds better, we’ll replace it with that.)

And of course, the reason we had to do that is because we were, en masse, at the Eurogamer Expo this week.  A fabulous time was enjoyed by all, and at the end of yesterday, tired and ready for home, we gathered around to tell you about all the exciting new games we’ve been playing.

By ‘we’, we mean… well, who don’t we mean?  Because we definitely do mean Lewis Denby, Greg Giddens, J.D. Richardson, Graham Jones, non-Reso guest-star Michael Hirst and freelance extraordinaire Phill Cameron.  That’s a lot of podcasters.

On the agenda is talk of God of War 3, Mass Effect 2, Rogue Warrior, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Heavy Rain, The Saboteur, Split/Second and plenty more.  We’ve played them all.  And we even played Batman and Need For Speed: Shift with 3D goggles on!  Here’s what we think of everything.