I was introduced to Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers last week, discovering quickly that this was not the kind of Crystal Chronicles game I had expected. It is, you see, a single-player game, the first in a splinter line of Final Fantasy games made for Wii platforms and previously designed for four players.

The Crystal Bearers is different, set 1000 years after Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and putting the player in control of a single hero, a mercenary named Layle. The series’ dwarf race, the Lilty Tribe, have risen to power. The mechanical race, the Yuke, have seemingly been wiped out.

I was told by a Square-Enix representative that this game would feel like a “true Final Fantasy” for the Wii. It will have a deep storyline. But it also has real-time combat and was described to me as 75 per cent mini-games.

What I saw and played clarified things. I was shown Lilty running through a farm, getting pulled into a challenge to pluck all of the vegetables from a field before a clock ran out. A scarecrow was the opponent, shooting at Lilty to try to mess him up. So don’t think of “mini-games” in terms of a Mario Party, I realised. Think of them is mid-game challenges.

Next, I was shown some combat. Lilty ventured to a dusty desert area and enemies attacked. The game is played with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The control stick moves the character. The Remote’s pointer is used for telekinesis, to pick up objects and enemies, then toss them. The d-pad on the Remote is used to swivel the camera, the only element of the controls I found hard to handle in the few minutes I played the game.

I was told that conversations with non-player-characters will be less than typical for an FF game. Instead, the interactions the player tries to get are “reactions”. You get these from enemies by encountering them. For example, out in that desert area, Lilty fought some dog enemies. Once he had a Reaction associated with them, he could get them to stop fighting, run over and, uh, urinate on him. Other Reactions are equally comical, sending enemies into a daze because they’ve had their heads knocked off, for example. It’s all cartoony, done for laughs.

Also, somehow, some way, you can take a cow, hold it over Lilty’s head and shoot enemies with its udders.

I’m a sucker for the absurd in my games, so, as little as I saw of the Crystal Bearers, I was encouraged. It’s hard to see it as being a “true” Final Fantasy game, but only a longer play session that presents more of the story can verify that claim.

The game plays swiftly, action-first. It is colourful and has fun visuals, as you can see in these shots. Crystal Bearers may be off some people’s radar, but it will indeed be out this year in North America, the day after Christmas, for the Wii.

A total of five new titles appeared in the Zune Marketplace recently, each taking advantage of the HD version of Microsoft’s handheld’s increased 3D capability, touchscreen controls and accelerometer functions. Let’s take them for a spin, shall we?

Audiosurf Tilt
The Zune HD version of the exceptional Steam PC game, Audiosurf transforms the music on your Zune into a rollercoaster obstacle course, challenging you to gather points on the track by tilting your Zune back and forth, avoiding obstacles. It’s a rather simplified version of the original game, with no special modes. Just collect dots, and spend them on new track decorations. It does, however, come with a song visualiser that should be a bit hit with folks who hook their HD to the television set.

Checkers
Checkers is Chess for those who’d rather not think too much, and the game fares as well as you’d expect it to on the Zune HD. Multiple difficulty settings for playing against the AI should provide a challenge for anyone with a Zune HD who wants to play a board game. Touch screen controls handle nicely. I can’t really complain.

Lucky Lanes Bowling
A simple little bowling game with a lot of personality. Crazy characters bowl down even crazier lanes, tracing the path of the ball with your finger and then letting fly. You can unlock new characters and lanes as you play, or challenge friends in Wi-Fi mode. It’s small, cute and free. Works for me.

Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition
It’s no PGR4, but it gets the job done. The Zune HD version of Project Gotham Racing showcases the Ferrari, with 12 different models to choose from and 33 events to play through in career mode. The game runs quickly and smoothly, with the tilt function of the Zune HD used to steer and on-screen buttons for breaking and accelerating. Like PRG, the player earns Kudos for how well they drive, using them to unlock new cars along the way. Certainly a capable little racer, and the price (free) is hard to beat. If you’ve friends who own Zune HDs, you can even play multiplayer. Check out a bad video of it in action below.

Vans SK8: Pool Service
Tilt to move and touch to trick, Vans SK8: Pool Service is pretty much the same thing as the iPhone version. If skating around a pool is your idea of a good time, then this is for you. Otherwise, it’s a nice example of how the Zune HD can do just about anything the iPhone can do, only slightly smaller.

All in all this is a fine crop of titles that show, if anything, that the Zune HD has the ability to take on the iPhone from a gaming standpoint. What it doesn’t have is the popularity. Will it ever achieve the level of love the iPhone has received? Doubtful, but Microsoft is putting on a good show.

But is the game’s ultimate collector’s edition worth the extra $US90? And what about those goggles, why do they look so familiar?

Here’s what you get for the extra cash:
A fancy metal case to hold your copy of the game.
A game case-sized 34-page art book.
A code to download the original Call of Duty to your console.
A numbered plastic head-shaped stand for holding your night vision goggles.
A wearable pair of night vision goggles made by toy maker Jakks Pacific with Modern Warfare 2 branding.

That’s right, those night vision goggles are made by Jakks Pacific, the same company that produces the EyeClops Night Vision goggles sold at toy stores.

Originally released for $US90, you can now pick up a set of the EyeClops Night Vision Infrared Stealth Goggles for $US50 at Toys R Us.

The two sets of night vision goggles seem to be of the same quality, with both supporting both short-range and long-range vision modes. Both sets say you can view objects in the dark up to 15m away. The biggest difference is in how the two look.

The Eyeclops have a rounder, more bug-like appearance, making it look more like something from a sci-fi show than for military use.

The Modern Warfare 2 goggles have been redesigned to look like something closer to the real thing. They also have a switch that lets you flip between black-and-white and green views.

Despite the design change, the Eyeclops and Modern Warfare 2 night goggles feel pretty much the same when you’re wearing them. They both look about the same as well, though the redesign does slightly mess with your depth of view.

While the goggles work as advertised, I don’t see anyone using these to stalk people or animals or sneak around in the dark. They’re a toy. A fun toy, but still a toy.

The main draw for getting these should be the way they look on your desk. Mounted on the head, the goggles look pretty neat, though not real.

Perhaps it would have been better for Activision to go with non-functioning goggles that look authentic, rather than one that function on a toy level, but don’t really look that real.

A few weeks ago in New York I had the opportunity to try a map of Bad Company 2, the PC and console military first-person shooter from EA’s DICE studio. The sandy Chilean map, called Arica Harbour, is the one that will be available in the game’s PlayStation 3-exclusive multiplayer beta later this month.

A preview event gives a casual first-person shooter player like myself little opportunity to assess the quality of the map. I fought in the almost desert-like environment in buildings, on a bridge, all under a seemingly hot sun. I drove tanks, stormed across the bridge and knocked down walls. But I can’t say whether it’s balanced or whether it will prove as addictive to play as the best arenas in the genre.

I can say, however, that the feature list for this game and the sensory impression it leaves make clear what this game’s potential is. EA’s Medal of honour series might be missing in action, but with Bad Company they’ve got a game that can gun for Activision’s Call of Duty.

Screenshots and even the animated stills from yesterday’s beta announcement already show how good the game looks. Bad Company 2’s engine, an enhanced version of its predecessor’s, supports the chipping and collapsing destructibility of any building in the game. Rockets punch through walls, as they did in the first Bad Company. But now tanks can crumple support beams to level even the interior frame. And, more subtly, an engineer with a drill can poke a hole in a wall and then shoot through it.

Multiplayer combat in the game is class-based. Each class, be it soldier, medic, engineer or recon can be outfitted with several items and attributes. Before entering combat you might switch your soldier’s rifle but also alter his radar to add motion detection. Perks are unlockable, secured as the player earns experience points in each battle and levels up. Upgrades are scheduled and unlocked per class. As we reported last month, the limited edition of the game will provide gamers with six upgrades, including some that enhance the arms and armour of vehicles, immediately.

Players can also earn pins during battle, which serve as more granular Achievements or Trophies, rewarding, say, good shotgun performance. You gain these for bragging rights.

The essence of Battlefield is the openness of its combat zone. Players can fight on foot, in helicopters or on tanks. They can command any vehicle or post in the battlefield, opening the scene to a variety of tactical encounters. The map I played was set for a Rush challenge, which involved one team trying to secure several locations by reaching them and holding off any attackers. I had my moments, gunning some of the rival team down on the sidelines. But I’m the kind of guy who rolls in on a tank and then gets blasted by the RPG trooper hiding around the corner who somehow knew I’d be there.

Bad Company’s battlefield is an impressive site and one theoretically open to a wide variety of multiplayer strategy. The brand may not have the momentum of a Call of Duty yet, but the intent to compete is there. call of Duty is still the king. This one’s the hungry hopeful.

Just three months before the January 2010 release of BioWare’s second Mass Effect, there is an intriguing bit of, well, intrigue about what’s going to be happening in BioWare’s science fiction sequel to its hit Xbox 360 and PC role playing game Mass Effect. The more I’ve seen of Mass Effect 2 over three showings in June, September and then last month, the more mysterious its adventure seems.

The more I play it and talk to those involved in making it — including during a recent Xbox 360 demo of the game in New York of a new mission on the planet Omega — the more it appears that the flaws of the game’s acclaimed predecessor have been addressed as the game assumes its identity as a shooter-role-playing-game hybrid.

Scrubbed, at least in the demo missions, are graphical imperfections: Slowed framerate, texture pop-in and bland backgrounds. All remedied, it seems.

The mission I saw brought Commander Shepard to the planet Omega and a nightclub called Afterlife where flames flashed in the background of the club and graphical textures didn’t pop in a few seconds too late. Dancers and bartenders prowled a scene that bustled with more commotion than anything I’d seen in the first Mass Effect.

Graphical upgrades were desired and expected. Did you foresee that cut-scenes could benefit from some user involvement? After meeting some seedy folks at the bar, Shepard ran into an old friend from Mass Effect 1 — I’ll only spoil his identity in the last sentence of this article. A cutscene started, but not the idle type of an older game. During a climactic moment, the player’s of the trigger let off a rifle round, leaving fewer enemies to fight in the subsequent post-cutscene battle. This is similar to a moment during a cutscene in a level shown at E3 that let Shepard shove a man out a window, supposedly when prompted by a button cue.

Better graphics, interactive cut-scenes… how about an ammo upgrade?

This is the change I’m less sure all Mass Effect fans will like. As the Penny Arcade Expo demo of Mass Effect 2 led me and our readers to believe, the new game will arm the player with ammunition-based weapons that need to be manually reloaded.

Gone is the first game’s system of infinite-ammo weapons that overheat if used to much too quickly. Reader feedback to that possibility was mixed during PAX. The EA representative who showed me the Omega mission couldn’t tell me what the narrative justification was for abandoning the series’ no-reload-needed ballistics technology. He could tell me, however, was that the game’s developers felt that the old system for regulating player’s use of guns — an overheating mechanic that enforced slower shooting and mandatory cooldown — disrupted the flow of a good firefight. Players would run for cover and wait until their weapon was ready to fire again. Not anymore. Hopefully.

After some tense conversation in the bar, the meeting with the old Mass Effect character and a bad sip of a dangerous drink, Shepard got into a firefight. He had a Krogan names Grunt and the human character Jacob from the recent Mass Effect iPod Touch game, Mass Effect Galaxy, at his side. I played this part, trying the refined combat system.

BioWare is clearly trying to improve and deepen the Mass Effect shooting experience. Gunplay is still third-person and real-time. The action can still be paused as the player activates a wheel of optional powers and weapons, which can be wielded by Shepard and whichever two partner characters are with him. Added to that is the ability to arm special ammunition types the freeze enemies or blow them up.

The demo level being shown ended with a mech battle, but I didn’t get that far. I was off to play other games.

As combat heavy as the back part of the demo was, though, people curious about Mass Effect 2 shouldn’t worry that story is being neglected. It is more obscured in these demonstrations of the game, partially, I’d wager, because there are more surprises there worth holding back. Even the nature of Shepard himself (or herself, if you’ve played as a female) is in question. As close to release as this game is, a mystery remains as to even the nature of its lead character’s existence. Is he alive, dead, reborn? Why, in this demo, does another character not believe Shepard is Shepard and then snidely say, “That could be anyone wearing your face”?

This week’s release of Dragon Age was BioWare’s testament to not abandoning its classic role-playing game roots. Mass Effect 2 is the branch extending further away. These demos reveal the growth of a gameplay style that feels ever closer to a shooter, shaped, at least, by the player’s strategic decision-making and ability-management. There’s little hiding the active evolution of this gameplay style.

The gameplay may be more clear — and the graphics too — but it still also feels like Mass Effect 2 is hiding something: What are the dark secrets of its narrative? Why might someone else be wearing his face? And, hey, if they’re going to explain that, why won’t his weapons overheat?

Finally, as promised, here is your SPOILER ABOUT THE RETURNING CHARACTER…

It’s Garrus who is back.

I’m sure comic-book-author-turned-game-designer Joe Madureira is pretty sick of hearing that for the last eight years or so. But here’s hoping his game will make you forget all about war-torn worlds, burly swordsmen and huge gauntlets.

Oh, wait…

Darksiders, for those of you who don’t know, is about one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War. Turns out, there was a false Apocalypse and somebody set War up to take the blame. War’s bosses glue a creature called The Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamil) to his fist and kick him back down to Earth sans most of his powers to figure out what went wrong.

Gameplay follows War through a series of environments on the ruined Earth. The map itself is huge once you open it all up, necessitating both a warp function you unlock later in the game and a badass horse called Ruin that serves as your ride. You also have to do a lot of backtracking to areas as you learn new abilities that open up places you either couldn’t reach or see initially. Not only are you getting mystical powers like the ability to see into the Realm of Shadow with a button press, but also weapons and items that might remind you of a certain green-clad Nintendo icon.

It was about halfway through my tour of Darksiders with Hayden Dalton that the Zelda connection clicked. We’d just entered a room with several giant spiders and a puzzle element to it that was more complex than the usual go-here-kill-this kind I’m used to in action/adventure games. There was a grappling hook involved and something that looked like a spikier version of Link’s boomerang.

“The puzzles are akin to Zelda,” he explained after successfully dodging a huge spider dropping from the ceiling a la the Great Deku Tree dungeon in Ocarina of Time (only yuckier because Darksiders is big on blood and puss).

Dalton went on to say that Darksiders is about 40 per cent puzzles to 60 per cent combat/level exploration — and even the combat itself is something of a puzzle. In addition to planning for what weapon upgrades to buy (because you can’t afford everything in the game on the currency you earn in one playthrough), you’ve also got kill types to consider and a Wrath gauge to fill. Killing enemies in the old fashioned way nets you souls — which are the game’s form of currency. However, there are three different types of soul and only one of them can be used to buy weapon upgrades, while another fulls your Wrath gauge and the third restores your health.

The best way to go for soul-gathering is probably the special kill button. This happens when you beat an enemy within an inch of its life and then the B button icon pops up, prompting you to pull off a fancy special kill. You can ignore this button and just keep thrashing said enemy how you were thrashing it — but going for the special kill nets you more than one kind of soul currency. Also, that button prompt might give you the chance to ride on an enemy’s shoulders to trample other enemies for more souls. And once your Wrath gauge goes up all the way, you can activate your Chaos Form overdrive which makes War more super-awesome-kill-guy than he usually is for a short amount of time.

Having cleared the gross spider mini-boss, Dalton continued on our tour of Darksiders. We encountered a sexy angel (voiced by Moon Bloodgood) who was bitter about being left behind on the post-apocalypse planet to clean up after War’s mess; a flying griffin creature that we totally stole from said angel’s buddy; and the ominous Black Tower that looms in the background of most levels ’til War finally finds a way to reach it.

The Black Tower level Dalton demoed for me looked the most like a Zelda dungeon of anything else I’d seen that day — but it also reminded me of another game. Apparently, it takes something like two hours to complete and you get a nifty portal-making gun that turns the whole thing into a giant puzzle, like, well, Portal. The cool thing about Darksiders’ portal gun though is that you can shoot portals through portals to solve puzzles and you can change the velocity at which things pop out of the second portal hole once they go through the first. This means you can make crazy super-jumps to get enemies’ heads during fights from across the room where said enemies can’t even reach you.

All in all, I walked away from Darksiders with a pretty good feeling that I’d seen a tasteful pastiche of action/adventure games with a solid coat of Joe Mad’s storytelling — instead of a hollow rip-off of other action/adventure games that hides behind a comic book author’s big name. Also, Mark Hamil was there and that makes everything better.

A couple of fast facts for the road:
1) There won’t be a demo.
2) The basic game is 15-20 hours, but completionists will take something like 30 hours and still not be able to afford every single weapon upgrade in the game.
3) There are no quick time events.
4) War doesn’t level up, but his weapons, abilities and equipment do if you’re spending souls on them. So if ever the game seems too hard, grind a bit and buy some upgrades.

Darksiders ships on January 5. If it sells well enough to warrant a sequel, let’s all start begging Joe Mad to include random pages of Battle Chasers #10 on the loading screens in Darksiders 2. That would awesome.

Granted, Russia would probably be a whole lot less interesting to gamers if it were portrayed as an idyllic fantasy land with happy pink bunnies and stuff. So it’s a good thing that Metro 2033 sticks to the post-apocalyptic wasteland guns and kicks them up a notch.

Let’s back up a bit and convince you that this isn’t some fancy rip-off of Fallout 3. Metro 2033 is based on a book, first of all, written by Russian blogger-turned-novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky. In Glukhovsky’s bleak vision of the future, the known world has been visited by a nuclear holocaust that killed and irradiated everything on the surface of the planet. The only known survivors are those that happened to be in underground places when the whole thing went down (hence the name “Metro”). In Glukhovsky’s novel (which was originally published for free on the Internet), the story follows a boy named Artyom whose only vision of the world the way it used to be come from postcards he collects throughout the dystopian network of Metro societies.

The biggest difference that I can stress between Fallout 3 and Metro 2033 is the fact that Metro 2033 picks up only 20 years after the nuclear Holocaust. People haven’t quite adjusted to the changes in the environment and weird, upsetting things are still happening on a daily basis in the Metro colonies. Strange “anomalies” occur deep underground that cause hallucinations and some ominous force known as the Dark Ones keep making off with or mentally corrupting what’s left of humanity.

The story of the video game picks up at the point in the novel where Artyom leaves the safety of his Metro station, Exhibition, to go on a mission to Polis in order to stop the Dark Ones. Our first look at the game spans both a flashback to the early days of safety in Exhibition and a midpoint level where Artyom’s almost reached his goal while travelling across the ruined surface of Russia.

The first thing you notice about Metro 2033 is the minimal interface. To keep track of health, weapon ammo and whether or not the air in your immediate area is safe to breathe, you’ve got to pay total attention to Artyom’s first person view. You can see individual rounds of ammo in your cobbled-together gun and know that he’s in danger of dying if his vision begins to go red or he starts coughing and choking.

Slapping on the gas mask in contaminated areas affords you a little more in the way of a HUD (though you also have to put up with condensation on this inside of your mask). For one thing, you know your mask isn’t doing its job if cracks begin to appear in the faceplate or the glass shatters altogether. For another, you get a nifty watch that keeps track of how much air is left in the mask. But other than that, there’s very little in the way of “game-y” stuff we’re used to from other shooters – even your map is a physical thing that Artyom pulls out to look at in a first person view.

The minimalist HUD drives home how tough life in post-apocalyptic Russia is. Everything around you is broken or rotting, so scavenging for replacement supplies like spare gas masks is particularly stressful but completely necessary since there’s not much that humanity can make down in the Metro to survive on. For example, weapons made down in the Metro system are crappy and break easily, while the old school weapons from the surface world are so rare and awesome that their ammo serves as currency. So this puts the player in a constant tradeoff between having the best ammo in the game that will actually kill stuff in a few hits, or having enough “money” to upgrade the crappy guns you can buy underground.

The second major thing you notice about Metro 2033 (and the second major thing I can stress as completely different from Fallout 3) is how expressive all the non-playable characters’ faces are. In the early Exhibition level, Artyom encounters a whole host of dirty, disheartened Russians living underground in their little city from mothers with young children to feed to injured, bitter men who like to gamble. Faces are completely animated with no paralyzed chins or cheekbones or dead, vacant eyes that move right when you talk to them and bodies move in the ways you expect them to as NPCs open doors, talk to one another or climb aboard underground handcarts.

The only thing that you might not notice right away about Metro 2033 is the combat. This is either because you’re too used to first person shooters or because you’re not playing the PC version with its spiffy (and optional) NVIDIA 3D glasses. Indeed, when we first saw a shootout on the Xbox 360 version with some weird looking werewolf/rat things, we were sort of indifferent. But later, in an enclosed tunnel with 3D glasses on, those werewolf/rat things suddenly looked a whole lot more upsetting as they swarmed our handcart and made off with the limp bodies of other passengers.

Combat seemed even more visceral in 3D after entering a stealth section where we had to creep along with night vision goggles past enemy NPCs. An NPC would suddenly round a corner where we happened to be crouching and his 3D rifle butt suddenly seemed way too close to our actual face – never mind poor Artyom’s. This compounded the stress level we were already feeling from having a cracked gas mask and knowing we had to go down into a contaminated tunnel to get past the rest of the NPCs.

However, it might relieve some of you to know that you don’t have to stealth your way through Metro 2033. Apparently, there’s enough ammo and combat leeway in the game to support Artyom going through an area with guns blazing. That’s not the route our demo master went with, hence our sudden spike in stress when that NPC turned up too close for comfort. But it’s nice to know there’s a choice, there, since the linear game gives you very few others.

Metro 2033 is being developed by 4A Games which has among its number some developers from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games (which are also set in post-apocalyptic Russia) and will be out for the PC and Xbox 360 in 2010. A PlayStation 3 version isn’t planned largely because the developer doesn’t have much experience programming for it – so that could change with time if Metro 2033 the game is as much a cult hit as the novel turned out to be. Expect about 10 hours of solid gameplay and maybe look into getting yourself a PC rig that can support PhysX and NVIDIA DirectX 10 (maybe even DirectX 11, if NVIDIA feels like letting the developer go for it).

P.S. Yes, they’re working on an English translation of Metro 2033 the novel – it might even beat the game to US stores next year.

One thing to bear in mind is that the beginning of the game is different depending on which character you choose. Your character’s history plays an important part in the Origins of the game’s title, providing an assortment of starting areas based on the combination of race and background you’ve selected. So this is just one of six beginnings.

And with that, I pop the disc in my PS3 and press Start.

00:00 – Like any traditional RPG the first thing you see upon starting a new game, once the opening cinematic is out of the way, is the character creation screen. Taking your advice, I create Margaret, a female dwarven rogue. She has fetchingly braided auburn hair and child-bearing hips. I opt to spend my handful of attribute points upgrading her Dexterity and Cunning while learning the Stealth, Combat Training and Dual-Weapon skills.

00:04 – Margaret begins as the younger sister of a whore who works for a heavily-bearded chap called Beraht. He seems like a tool so I give him lip at every opportunity. Still, it looks like I have to play his game (read: run errands for him) for now. I need to meet some dude called Leske to deal with a certain matter.

00:06 – The conversation system is an odd one-sided experience. As you choose dialogue options your character is mute throughout, leaving all the talking to the NPCs with whom you are speaking. I shouldn’t be surprised by such a throwback to the style of Baldur’s Gate or even KOTOR, but it feels weird having seen how Bioware handled chit-chat in Mass Effect in a much more dynamic and involving way.

00:09 – Before I head outside to find Leske, I stop to chat with my mother in the next room. She’s drunk, which apparently is par for the course. I show her little respect and my sister has to intervene to calm the mounting row. Later, mum!

00:13 – Leske seems a little cocky for his own good, so I cut him down to size with a pointed remark about his “sceptre” being a little “soft”. The job Beraht has for us involves a smuggler who’s been cutting Beraht out of the loop. Leske joins my party and we head off.

00:16 – Wandering around the underground dwarven village, I get a few Fable II flashbacks. In part it’s the chunky architecture and lo-res textures, but mainly it’s the sluggish framerate. A few beggars are idling about, some lazing in doorways, others milling about wherever their pathfinding takes them. I stop to chat to the only beggar highlighted with a name rather than merely “Beggar” and ask him about this smuggler. He wants some coin, so I try to Intimidate him. I fail and move on.

00:20 – Leske and I leave the slums behind and venture into the more salubrious part of town. Here, the guards sneer at me and the generic commoners express their disgust for my kind. A man named Kasch propositions me: he sells teeth to nobles and, seeing as I still have all my own, he offers me some silver in exchange. From telling him where to stick it, I discover that being “casteless” means I’m not actually able to be employed in legitimate work and that I probably shouldn’t be flaunting the fact I work for someone like Beraht. Leske grovels profusely and persuades Kasch not to call the guards. I remember his name for later.

00:23 – There’s a few merchants in this part of town, but I have no money to buy anything. Feeling a little lost, I check my quest journal and realise Oskias, the smuggler, was last seen at Tapster’s Tavern. A quick look at my map shows I’d walked straight past the tavern a minute earlier. Inside the tavern there’s a bartender, several generic “Patrons” and a guy sitting at a table. That’s Oskias.

00:27 – Oskias seems like a bit of a loser. As soon as he realises we’re Beraht’s thugs, he starts whimpering about not wanting anyone to get hurt. I try some Persuasion and, when that doesn’t work, I try some good old-fashioned threats instead. Oskias clams up and inevitably we’re going to have to teach him a lesson.

00:30 – Combat! I’m controlling Margaret while Leske does his own thing. Hitting X instructs her to attack the current target, in this case Oskias. The other three face buttons access whichever skills or items you’ve hotkeyed. Tapping the square lets Margaret use her Dirty Fighting skill, hitting Oskias with a low blow that leaves him stunned for a few seconds. He goes down fairly quickly after that in what can only be described as a meat explosion, his body seemingly disintegrating in a cloud of blood and gibs. Hilariously, both Margaret and Leske are covered from head to toe in blood spatter, looking like Dexter after a particularly satisfying night. It really is quite ridiculous.

00:34 – On his recently obliterated corpse, Oskias was carrying a number of curious crystals, presumably the goods he was keeping from Beraht. I pocket them and leave the tavern as the “Patrons” focus on their drinks and not on the mashed-up merchant in the corner.

00:37 – Leske says we should head back to Beraht quickly, but I decide to try something first. I want to see if I can sell these crystals out in the market. Sadly I can’t. I guess they’re a quest item or something because they don’t even appear in my inventory when I go to sell. Bah!

00:39 – Turns out Beraht’s store is right next door to the tavern. When he asked what Oskias had on him, I lie, claiming he had but one crystal. He doesn’t believe me and his henchwoman finds the second crystal in a body search. Beraht says he’s got one more job for me and I’d better not screw this one up. There’s a tournament happening today at the Proving Grounds and Beraht has a lot of money riding on a certain warrior to win. I need to drug his opponent to provide just enough of an advantage.

00:42 – Turns out the Proving Grounds is right near Beraht’s store! (I know, I know, it’s just the tutorial area.) Inside I can hear some looped crowd cheers to indicate the combat arena must be nearby. Leske dares me to introduce myself to someone known as a Gray Warden, a regal looking chap in a white robe and sporting a well-groomed beard. He seems a bit aloof, but didn’t call the guards so I guess he’s nice enough. Seems the Gray Wardens are looking for recruits. I think I know where this is leading…

00:45 – Yep, there’s Beraht’s favourite warrior, Everd, passed out drunk in his chamber. Guess who’s signing up to take his place in the arena? I grab Everd’s axe and shield and don his distinctive suit of armour, telling Leske not to bother drugging his – now my – opponent. I want to win this fair and square. Well, except for a bit of Dirty Fighting, that is…

00:49 – A cut-scene kicks in showing me and an equally well-kitted out dwarf striding into a huge arena. Some beardy dude bellows something important and the fight begins. I hit X to attack and… er… watch Margaret beat the crap out of this guy. I win! I look like Dexter again!

00:53 – Oh, wait. That’s just the first round. Out comes a second challenger. Beardy dude does the honours again and the fight begins. I hit X to attack and… yep… watch Margaret beat the crap out of this guy too. I win again. Post-battle blood spatters are in the exact same spots. I vanquish a third challenger in the exact same fashion and am told by the beardy dude that I will now advance to the final.

00:57 – Oh! What’s this? A drunken dwarf has staggered out into the arena. It’s the real Everd. He’s calling me an imposter. The beardy dude asks me to show myself. I could choose to continue the fraud and demand they arrest Everd. Instead, I remove my helmet, relishing the opportunity to defy my lowly casteless status. Beardy dude is irate and calls the guards. The Gray Warden I met earlier looks on with interest and thoughtfully strokes his exquisitely manicured facial hair.

00:60 – I wake up sometime later in a prison cell with Leske. And my hour is up.

So, the big question is… Do I want to keep playing beyond the first hour?

Hmm. Bioware make games that are meant to be played over dozens – or in the case of Baldur’s Gate II, hundreds – of hours. Judging any RPG after the first hour, let alone a Bioware RPG, is foolhardy and perhaps even disingenuous. So yes, short answer: I will keep playing.

Longer answer: I’m just not feeling it. My comments around the dialogue system hinted at my disappointment; Mass Effect drew me into its world in far more engaging style, the dramatic presentation of its character interaction makes the stilted, one-sided conversations here seem prosaic and a step backwards.

Beyond that, the basics seem solid. Any reservations I may have held over playing a Bioware RPG with a PS3 controller are now dismissed. They’ve successfully streamlined the interface to accomodate the consoles; the most obvious commands are just one button press away. And similar to Mass Effect, you can dig deeper into a suite of tactical options via a radial menu that pauses the action. Also, it’s not the best-looking game you’ll ever see, but it does the job.

To a certain extent, my reluctance is personal preference. I’ve never been a fan of high fantasy. Even back in the early days of Bioware, I always preferred the quirkiness of Fallout and the strangeness of Planescape: Torment over the rather more straight-down-the-line Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. I’ll keep playing until I feel like I’ve gotten more of a taste for the story and quest design, but I’m not expecting to love it.

That stands for “F—k This Shit!”

One-hit kills (except for grenade splash damage). No continues.

The middle level of difficulty is called “Dame This Is Hard.” The easy level is called “Wussy”.

The early 2010 downloadable game Matt Hazard: Blood Bath And Beyond has that sense of humour. I played it yesterday and can confirm that it’s a game that was made to reproduce the frustrations (and joys) of old-school games while laughing at them.

Blood Bath and Beyond is an ode to Contra, an eight level downloadable title for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network developed by the same Vicious Cycle team that produced Eat Lead, the 2009 third-person comedy shooter that parodied a generation of video games. Eat Lead was in 3D. The new game, a throwback, is a side-scrolling shooter.

Both games put players in control of Matt Hazard, a self-aware video game character who has seen his star fade as he was (fictionally) made to star in increasingly lame games. He was a badass action star reduced to kart racing, of all things.

In Blood Bath and Beyond, Hazard is sent back into games he (again, fictionally) starred in in the early 90s as he hunts down Neutronov, the villain who has stolen Matt’s 8-bit self. A second player can join as Dexter Dare, Matt’s ’90s sidekick.

Contra fans would recognise the gameplay. The left stick moves the character across a scrolling battlefield full of angry enemies. One button makes the player’s character jump. One button fires his gun. Holding a shoulder button locks Matt or Dexter in place so they can easily fire from all angles. A pull of one of the triggers allows Matt or Dexter to shoot into the background. Weapon upgrades fall from the sky, providing temporary access to machine guns, rocket launchers, flame-throwers and guns that shoot a tall spray of bullets.

The levels are ripped from a fictional version of Hazards’ ’90s games, though you might need to be told that. While they play like a ’90s Contra, they have the more polished look of a modern game and sometimes riff on products from a few decades. For example, 2007’s BioShock gets a send-up in this level called Hate Boat:

There’s also a level that has players fighting Mounties and Moose Tanks. Anyone know what that’s a reference to?

I watched a Vicious Cycle developer play through a pirate level based on a fake game called Chest of the Pirate Queen. Pirate skeletons ran in from the sides of the screen. Some parts of the level, on a boat, swayed with the motion of the sea. Then I tried a more cutesy level with demented Pokemon-style trainers spawning colourful monsters I needed to eliminate. Another reporter and I shot our way up several floors of a big house that was full of fighters, snakes and these Pokemon-like creatures. The level felt like it was ripped, amusingly, from what I believe was the 80s Kung-Fu game I long ago played on my friend’s Nintendo Entertainment System. Surprisingly, though, it ended with a boss battle against a large mechanical rhino who had a long health bar. The fight against him was as pattern-based and tough as a lot of old-school gaming fights, the kind of thing that will make one gamer laugh, one gamer relish the throwback challenge and another run away.

Publisher D3 of America has no price to announce yet for the new Matt Hazard, but the creators promise about two to three hours of first-time play through on lesser difficulty levels, with support for local co-op, online leaderboards, and of course, that hard difficulty mode.

Want to laugh at how people used to play games? Then this one’s for you.

I had a chance recently to check out an early build of the game and came away impressed with its tight controls and impressive graphics.

The build I played gave me about three-and-a-half minutes of time to shoot down enemy planes in a dogfight scenario. I’m told the full game takes place during the same timeline as the Playstation Portable’s Ace Combat X, with the player taking on the role of a Falco Squadron pilot for the Federal Republic of Aurelia.

The game plays and even looks quite a bit like iPhone arcade air combat favourite, F.A.S.T., but it sounds like this game will have much more in the way of story and single-player campaign.

My time with the game did assure me that Ace Combat Xi will have tight tilt and touch controls that result in solid aeroplane movement. Players control the plane’s movement with tilt controls, which felt very responsive in my hands. There are two settings for the controls, allowing you to add the need to worry about pitch and yaw, or just think about turning and up and down.

You can also toggle between a chase camera and a HUD view during gameplay. On screen buttons let you launch missiles, fire a gun, switch targets and hit your throttle or brake.

The throttle button boosts speed temporarily, but instead of dropping immediately, your plane drops in speed slowly, meaning that you wont have to play with your finger always on the throttle.

The planes I took on seemed relatively good at dodging mean without turning the experience into endless tail chasing, which was nice.

I also noticed that you can stall in the game, which adds a touch more realism.

The biggest question I have about the game (besides price and date) is what sort of multiplayer it will have.