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CAMPAIGN My initial reactions were of disapointment as the inroduction parts of the game played out. One of the first things that attracted me to Fall of Man was the wonderful narration. It played out over the loading screens ontop of pictures of the game world. The actresses voice added a whole layer of depth to the game that arguably made more than just yet another shooter. It was this narration that engaged me into the game and kept me playing it. This time round the narration is replaced with admittedly beautiful looking..... but rather dull cut scenes. Perhaps it will just take some time to get used to, but already i do feel more detatched from the world than i did the first time around. All this disapointment was quickly blasted away though when the game opens with you facing off against an almighty alien machine.... i mean MASSIVE. Maybe three times bigger than the Scarab walkers in Halo3... and this is just the tutorial level. One of the other perks of Fallout.... something that kept it fresh... was the great weapons. Insomniac are the guys that produced Ratchet and Clank so as you can imagine... interesting weapons are their thing. Right off the bat they introduce you to their brand new revolver. Primary fire acts as you would expect.... but if you tap secondary fire it detonates any bullets that have been fired in an explosion. Great fun to use. You of course have your trusty bullseye too. This is the Chimera (alien race) primary weapon. Its essentially a plasma rifle. Its fun comes from the secondary fire though. This shoots a homing beacon which subsequent shots will then follow. So you can tag an enemy... nip back around a corner and watch as your bullets curve around the corner to finish him off. Visually the game is stunning too. Miles apart from the first game which was very basic even for its time. This time around they really have cranked a hell of alot out of the PS3 and tt all runs at a gorgeous 30fps. There were a few odd moments though. On my first attempt my AI buddy who was showing me the ropes just refused to move on after i hit a checkpoint. I had to reload and start that bit again. Another time i just kept dying for no apparent reason. Turns out i was supposed to NOT move from where i was told to stand. Yet another time i ditched a rocket launcher only to find out i actually needed it to finish off the boss... no other weapon would do... so i had to back track and pick it up again....... sensible level design would have placed a spare one nearby just incase people didn't want to follow the rails so closely. Worryingly all this happened in the first level of the game!! I have yet to play any further so i'll let you know if things shape up, but as far as gameplay goes i am really enjoying this so far. COMPETATIVE MULTIPLAYER This is where the game is supposed to shine.... and i was honestly not dissapointed. Infact i would go so far as to say that i actually prefer playing this over gears2 at the moment. First off is the scale of the thing. The very first game i joined boasted 45 players on a decent sized map. It was a team deathmatch and not as carnage filled as you would expect. The maps are scalable. What this means is that if more players join (it can support up to 60!!!!!) then more parts of the map will open up to adapt and vice versa. Both teams fought mainly with ranged weapons accross the map. I went all John Rambo with a few guys using some mid range weapons and mopped up some of the enemy from within their base. Another game i played was a kind of capture the flag game where you have to steal enemy energy cores and bring them back to your own. The flow of this was great and i was surprised to see the amount of team play involved. I am so used to people legging it oiff and going for the glory, but immediately a whole bunch of people stayed back and held down rock soild defence in the base while i joined another squad that was pushing into the enemies base to grab the cores. The multiplayer is broken down into squads... so even though you are in a game of thirty a side, you are in a squad of no more than five. Each squad is then given its own objectives throughout the game... so there can be a deathmatch raging on among some other squads... but your squads objective may be to go capture certain points..... at least this is how i THINK It works at the moment. I have also played a few deathmatch all vs all games which were fun but frantic. For multiplayer you basically pick a weapon loadout... pick a beserk and then spawn. There are quite a few weapons to choose from and all of them have unique features... my personal favourite for base defense or attack is the AUGER. When you use the iron sights let you see AND FIRE through walls. The walls SLOW the plasma down BUT increase its power. The beserks are like little perks that can only be activated once you have gained enough exp. They do stuff like show enemies on radar, give your team increased health for a bit, give you more powerful bullets for a bit and so on. The nice thing about this is that you can only use them ONCE your exp meter is full. You earn exp by completing objectives and also naturally by helping your team... so assists are almost as valuable as a kill. I think on the whole this encourages team play. The most notable thing was that with all these online players not ONCE did i experience any lag whatsoever. They have done a top job at pulling this all together and making it work so smoothly and it makes you wonder what the heck happened at EPIC for them to have so much trouble with TEN players online and terrible matchmaking and lag problems. CO-OP MODE This is probably my favourite part of the game. It is where i spent most of my time with the BETA. It plays like a cross between team fortress2 and a WOW raid. The idea is that you and up to seven other people can play as soldiers fighting a battle that runs along side the main story! You can pick to spawn from three classes: A soldier - minigun, shield - more health. Spec Ops - Scoped rifle, plasma rifle, ammo supplies Medic - Ray gun that damages enemies which then gives you charge to heal team mates + machine gun Its built so that you all need to work as a team and support each other. EXP is rewarded for successfully fulfilling the main part of your roll.... so if you are spec ops... while you do get EXP for killing bad guys... you will get MUCH more for keeping your team stocked up with ammo. You are espeically useful to the solder. Their shield runs out after a while and needs to be kept stocked by the spec ops. Medics can revive people much faster than other classes, and also gain EXP from healing.... but they have to shoot the enemy to charge up their healing ray. Sounds a bit naff but in context.... when there are eight of you in a dynamic mission its pretty intense and relentless. The missions and baddies scale according to how many players there are and according to what rank they all are and finally by how well you are doing at completing other objectives in the current game. This means that no matter who you play with it will always be a challenge to push through to the end. You all really need to work together especially when taking down some of the MASSIVE bosses that are in there. I have played with quite a few people...... all the time randoms met via the matchmaking and generally everyone seems to play pretty well. Most people do support each other. You get the odd typical guy taking it all a bit too seriously and telling people off for not playing their roll properly but you can mute them easily enough lol. After you find your feet and find a preferred roll, its greatly rewarding playing it out and ranking up accordingly. I managed to go through an entire level (which take around and hour!!!) without actually playing an aggressive roll. Instead i focused on keeping the team well stocked with ammo and at the end of the game i was the one with the most EXP from it :-) Anyway... to sum up: This is a GREAT value for money package when you look at what you have. I read somewhere that to complete everything in the game would take you about 450 hours!!! I rekon i'll be playing mostly co-op with a bit of multiplayer thrown in. Again..... not a reason to buy a PS3, but if you were on the verge and you like your shooters and your online play then this is a pretty damned good game to tie you over till Killzone2 next year. xxx

Monday 27th of June - Sunday 3rd of July 2011 1 - (3) Call of Duty: Black Ops (360) - 27 hours 2 - (RE) Battlefield Bad Company 2 (360) - 26 hours 3 - (NE) HALF-MINUTE HERO : Super Mega Neo Climax (XBLA) - 25 hours 4 - (NE) State of Emergency (PS2) - 8 hours 5 - (10) Super Street Fighter IV (360) - 7 hours 6 - (RE) Defense Grid : The Awakening (XBLA) - 7 hours 7 - (2) Yakuza 2 (PS2) - 7 hours 8 - (NE) The Sims 3 (360) - 5 hours 9 - (NE) Battlefield 1943 (XBLA) - 4 hours 10 - (4) OpenTTD (PC) - 3 hours Little early but at least I remembered! Dante shows everyone else up by actually bothering to manually add and makes the chart infinitely more interesting. Also, I must get round to trying that Half-Minute Hero now. Plus, I thought I'd put enough time on Shadows of the Damned to get it in, alas Raptr only says I played for 2 hours which doesn't seem quite right. Finally, I'm amazed that's the first time Battlefield 1943 has been in, I did a proper search (I have all the previous charts in one notepad file) and everything - no previous 1943.