Battlefield 3

The Fall of 2011 was one of the most over crowded seasons I've known in terms of new game releases. Big triple A titles were all set to be released into the competitive market for the Christmas period. Annual releases such as Halo Anniversary, Assassin Creed: Revelations, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Fifa 2012, all made their appearances along with other titles Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City and Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception.

With a season so packed with new releases customers would have to pick and choose certain games as to not become bankrupt.

Battlefield 3 made its debut 2 weeks before its main competition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a title so backed up by millions of fans, that it was going to be a struggle to knock it off the top spot, where it has been sat for the last 4 years with the previous games in the series.

Battlefield has always been about the multi player, massive maps and destructible environments create adaptive and ever changing tactical options as you pave your way though the game.

While Battlefield 3's campaign is short and unoriginal , it still makes for an interesting sit.

Battlefield 3 is set in 2014, on the Iraq - Iran border, you play as Sergeant Blackburn, went sent to investigate a possible improvised explosive device, the last known position was a market controlled by a hostile militia called the Peoples Liberation Resistance. Sargent Blackburn and his squad are sent to Tehran to apprehend a the leader Al-Bashir. While investigating an underground vault Blackburn and his team learn that the Peoples Liberation Resistance have acquired Russian nuclear devices and that two of the three devices are missing.

You briefly play as Sergeant Miller who is deployed in an M1 Abram to extract Blackburn's team. Miller assists in the extraction before becoming captured and executed by Solomon and Al-Bashir. Blackburn and his squad manage to capture Al-Bashir who reveals Soloman's plot to detonate the nukes in Paris and New York before his passing. Blackburn's team get a lead on an arms dealer called Kaffarov, who was working with Solomon. while pursuing Kaffarov, the Americans encounter the Russian forces who are also trying to apprehend Kaffarov, they become hostile towards the Americans and most of Blackburn's squad are killed in action during a vicious fire fight. While a team of Spetsnaz Special Forces assaults Kaffarov's villa. they successfully interrogates Kaffarov who reveals Solomon's plot to Blackburn. Blackburn's commanding officer arrives and to let the Spetsnaz Special Forces escape, shoots his Commanding Officer. Blackburn is captured and interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, he explains all of the previous operations to them. During Blackburn's capture, the Spetsnaz Special Forces attempt to stop the attack in Paris, but are unsuccessful resulting in the detonation and the deaths of 80.000 civilians.Since Solomon is an informant to the CIA, they do not believe Blackburn's story.Left with no option, Blackburn breaks out of captivity to stop the attack in New York, he manages to kill Solomon and recovers the nuclear device.

While there are some amazing set pieces in the game, you cant but think some of the missions have been designed to give the player outstanding in game moments, before throwing a storyline in to fuse them together. While this isn't technically a negative thing as the player gets to absorb some of the ground breaking spectacle designs of the game, it doesn't assist in the storyline and rather than become attached to Blackburn's team, you're just there for the ride.

The positives with this are that the levels are fun to play and the set pieces can really build some adrenaline within the player, if its driving across the open desert in a tank, or sitting in the cockpit of a F-16 fighter jet there is an epic scale fun to be had.

The reason for the great pieces is DICE's decision to is show its amazing Graphic engine, the Frostbite 2 engine and the updated in-game Destruction 3.0 creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-real-time radiosity using Geometric Enlighten technology.

Its DICE's first game with the new engine but future games will use this also.

Battlefield 3 is without a doubt the new benchmark in terms of graphics, there is nothing out there that can be compared to, with amazing lighting and textures design it has extremely little texture popping if none. With the assistance of EA's motion capture ANT technology characters seamlessly move free flowing without any pauses in the animation, this makes the characters act and look more realistic than anything (accept real human) creating real looking team mates and enemies.

The games audio as ever is mind blowing, to fighter Jets flying above you and the thud of Tanks, to the crack and wisp of every individual bullet that crosses your screen, it immerses you within the game as you start following the sound of footsteps from the enemy nearby.

While the voice acting lacks that of Hollywood stars, that doest mean it isn't good, voice acting is still great and the assistance of a Hollywood star wouldn't improve the game at all (unless it was James Earl Jones) an actor who is in the game and an actor I am a personal fan of is Glenn Morshower (Black Hawk down, 24, Transformers, X-men, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) he plays as one of the interrogation offices from Central Intelligence Agency his voice acting definitely suits the role.

As ever there is a downside to this game, but at the moment it is a negative that I find with all games currently. Not since the improvements from Metal Gear Solid to Metal Gear Solid 2: Son of Liberty have I found a massive improvement in the games Artificial intelligence.

The Games AI is satisfactory but doesn't attempt to challenge the player, the occasional knife attack at you life means quick time button sequences but in general the games AI will not challenge you. Playing at higher difficulties doesn't make them more of a challenging either, this for me is a minor issue and I was hoping Battlefield 3 would lead the way into new AI as it has done on every other level with Graphics and Audio.

Battlefield 3 is the game that has paved the way into the next generation of games. It has raised the standards of in game content and game lifespan. While the single player campaign maybe short it is fun and defiantly worth a play, when the Battlefield servers are down for maintenance.

Halo Reach

Halo Reach is Bungie's last Halo game before they leave Microsoft Game Studios, and head off to Activision, so its fair to say, this is bungie's final attempt at creating the greatest Halo game after many previous attempts over the last 10 years.

Halo Reach uses a complete new physics engine, rebuilt from scratch, this is clearly visible throughout the entire game, with amazing vista's to refined detail close up.

We'll start with the campaign, you play as Noble Six, a new recruit into the Noble Team, you join them just as the day starts when Noble teams orders are to investigate a disturbance, which soon leads to a discovery that an Alien race are sent on a mission to destroy the planet Reach.

You play the storyline in which Noble Teams hard efforts to repel the enemy invasion fail, and as hardcore fans on the Halo Universe know, reach is destroyed.

But what is interesting is following the storyline.

While Bungie have a reputation for making life difficult in understanding their storyline, the story is pretty basic in this one, so they do a good job of character building throughout the first half of the game, completing a couple missions with sol members of the team, and you start to feel connected to a couple of major characters, then the deaths come.

The first death is indeed a sad moment as you watch one of your team members sacrifice themselves thinking they've saved Reach, only to see to see thousand of enemy space ships appear.

From there the inevitable deaths of the other characters are someone quick and meaning-less almost feeling you have been robbed, this is a shame as they are some of the best characters you'll meet and they're just killed off almost simultaneously.

As you'll notice when playing Halo Reach is how serious this Halo addition is compared to Halo 3 or Halo ODST, this is reflected in Martin O'Donnels music.

The soundtrack throughout is one on passion and meaning, some of the tracks really drag you into the game and in-captivate you.

The game has some incredible sounds, from the sound of a plasma pistol to the bombshell of the MAC blasts, and with Dolby Digital DTS 5.1 HD surround sound the game really can make you living room feel as though its in a epic adventure.

With Voice acting from Hakeem Kae-Kazim (24, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At Worlds End, Lost) Aisha Tyler (24, Friends, Bedtime Stories) the characters really come alive, they are various accents, which is good as these are characters that are from various planets, the only problem is Kat's accent, sometimes you don't understand what shes saying.

This is the most complete Halo adventure available on sale, with competative multiplayer and great co-op there are various game modes avaiable.

With Halo 3, although it had great competitive multiplayer, the only co-opperative mode was the campaign, which after a few play through got very repetitive.

Halo 3 ODST had a great mode called Firefight but this wasn't available in matchmaking, so you could only play with friends or recently played with people, this really restricted that amount of Firefight that was used, as a result, this has been improved in Halo Reach, matchmaking firefight is a great addition, meeting 3 friends in a lobby and fighting waves of enemies is great, as you can see different players tactics.

Halo Reach keeps the great competitive multiplayer that Halo 2 and 3 had made perfect in the previous series, with basic deathmatches to fun game modes like Oddball, with various different maps both large scale and small, there are hours of fun to be had.

Not only are you given these great game modes, you've also got Forge this is a mode where you can create your own maps from scratch.

this give players unrestricted creativity to create new and innovative maps that can be complex and fun.

Halo Reach also has a experience system that is integrated into Mutiplayer, Campaign, Forge, Firefight and Co-op. every match or level you play you gain experience, which can be exchanged for difference armor, helmets, voices and perks, so you can completely customize your Spartan, which is viewed in all game modes.

Halo Reach really is the defined "Halo" experience, with hours of fun, a great story, an overall package that has brought back the Halo faith to its players, who had lost faith with the release of the disastrous Halo 3 ODST.

Halo Reach is a game that all Xbox 360 must play.

Graphics 10/10

Audio 10/10

Soundtrack 10/10

AI 8/10

Story 9/10

Total 94% (A*) Outstanding

http://www.bungie.net/

Is It Time for a change ?

Is it time for change?

I was sat down last night, playing one of the very terrible Xbox 360 exclusives of Fable 3, and i couldn't quite but notice, that the Xbox 360 is very soon going to be made redundant.

If you just think about it for one minute.

The Xbox 360 has no exclusive games anymore! Halo Reach, was one of the final exclusive games on the 360, Mass Effect 2 has now moved over to PS3 at the end of January, and Gears Of War 3, will be the final in the trilogy, even thought that will be coming out on the PS3 in the late future.

Therefore there is nothing going for the 360, accept Kinect, which to be honest, isn't a good look for the 360.

Fable 3 has been going down hill for some time now, and there is no word of another Splinter Cell Game, therefore the only thing holding the torch is Alan Wake.

Sure the Xbox 360 has got a better multiplayer system, but that doesn't matter if you don't have a variety of games.

All of the good multiplayer games Call Of Duty Black Opps, Assassins Creed 2 Brother Hood, Battlefield Bad Company 2, all of these games can also be found on the PS3.

Where as the PS3 has had some of the best games in recent years, God Of War 3, Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, and there are going to be even more in 2011, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, all of these exclusive to the PS3.

So where does this put the 360 is ask?

All of the game due to come out on the 360 are going to be available on PS3.

Some of the games i really want will be on the PS3 anyway, for the same price.

Test Drive 2, Homefront, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, Crysis 2, all available on the PS3, so i think it boils down to either, you want a good multiplayer service, or you want a variety of games to play.

If you have any theroys, please comment.

Many thanks