Review: Ratchet and Clank: Tools Of Destruction (PlayStation 3. Insomniac, Sony.)

The humble platform genre has been through a lot since the halcyon days of Sonic, Mario and their long standing rivalry. Now the spiny blue one and the portly, moustachioed plumber have buried the hatchet and platform games have evolved into the fully explorable, 3D visual feasts we've come to recognise on current-gen hardware. Ratchet and Clank have always served up such hearty feasts with fantastically realised cartoon sci-fi worlds packed to the gills with razor-sharp humour and equally well-honed gameplay. Possessing all the qualities of a Pixar movie (we're certain this comment has been bandied about a lot), the latest instalment of Ratchet and Clank is an HD treat, retaining everything that made its predecessors so emminently playable, Tools Of Destruction is brimming with ideas and imagination. R&C also happens to be one of the prettiest games on PS3 with lovely, high resolution textures fleshing out the bright, bold, outlandish characters and backdrops, successfully forming a solid and appealing set of environments.

Central to R&C's platforming premise is the array of novel and quirky firepower that you can wield and upgrade. Previous incarnations have always boasted a plethora of hefty weapons you can progressively upgrade and beef up as you use them during the course of the game. Later iterations introduced buying upgrades for bolts that still come spilling out of vanquished enemies and broken crates for you to hoover up. Tools Of Destruction offers the most complete and in-depth mechanic for uprading weapons yet. This introduces a degree of strategy as you are made to decide which weapons to lavish bolts and raritanium on upgrading with a view to what obstacles may await you further down the line. More than ever, this puts R&C's arsenal centre stage as you must carefully pick and choose your favourites or risk running around with an inventory of underdeveloped hardware leaving yourself potentially vulnerable when facing one of the many huge boss characters should you upgrade the wrong weapon for the job. Our firm favourites became indispensable in a clinch, consisting of the formidable Negotiator rocket launcher, Plasma stalkers, Mr. Zurkon and of course the Groovitron, which makes all on-screen enemies boogie uncontrollably. Thankfully, choosing to upgrade a useless weapon isn't completely detrimental to your progress. You can always die and continue to amass bolts and raritanium for upgrades. It's a system that allows you to be improving your weapons constantly so that the rewards and sense of progress is reinforced throughout the game's generous running time.

Ratchet and Clank: TOD is an absolute joy to play as ever, but will be instantly familiar to veterans of the previous titles on PS2. So, business as usual then for our Lombax hero and his robotic sidekick? Well, yes, but there's so much more to see and do in R&C's next-gen debut. On-rails outer space dogfighting makes a welcome comeback as do the intense arena battles, but familiarity here, rather tha breeding contempt, actually forms a part of R&C's lasting appeal. These are characters you'll want to spend time with even if you've never played any of the previous titles. The action and narrative is so well scripted and actually, genuinely funny that every moment is a pleasure.

In terms of longevity, Tools Of Destruction is a bit of a step back, shorn of the multiplayer modes that made Ratchet and Clank 3 such a comprehensive package on PS2. There's still a lot of single player action to work through bolstered by replay value in the form of a challenge mode that lets you replay the game with your array of deadly weaponry, stacking the odds firmly in your favour.

Tools Of Destruction is as good as it gets on PS3 at the moment. Visually stunning, effortlessly playable, R&C's latest adventure stands out as one of the most essential titles currently available for Sony's under-represented platform. When games for the PS3 are so scarce, it's important to celebrate the really good ones. This is one right here and therefore deserves your time. Simple.

A raritanium treat: 9/10

Review: Guitar Hero II (PS2, Xbox 360. Harmonix, Activision)

Singstar and EyeToy on PlayStation 2 brought about a living room revolution a few years ago by getting the whole family involved in gaming. It was a masterstroke that saw Sony and the PS2 dominate social gaming. That is until the Wii was born and now everyone's at it, prancing and warbling around their living rooms like the latest X Factor rejects. No social gamer worth their salt will have bypassed Guitar Hero, the genius strumming game from the fellas behind rhythm action titles Frequency and Amplitude. Guitar Hero is essentially nothing new. Konami did the Bemani guitar peripheral thing years ago with Guitar Freak, but Guitar Hero is undoubtedly better. Lifting the scrolling notes mechanic wholesale from Harmonix's aforementioned efforts, Guitar Hero maps the notes to coloured buttons on the guitar fretboard and then adds a strumming switch and whammy bar to the guitar's body. The idea is deceptively simple; hold the corresponding colour to the one displayed on-screen as it scrolls up from the bottom of the screen and strum in time to hit it. You can tweak the whammy bar to add pitch and distortion effects to long notes thus garnishing solos with a touch of personal flair. Easy right? Well, yes but not to begin with. When you first pick up Guitar Hero, unless you're an actual guitar player your fingers will trip and slide all over the place like Bambi trying to walk on ice. Give it a few minutes though and you'll be surprised at how quickly you can pick it up. On easy mode Guitar Hero II is accesible to anyone, using three of the five fret buttons, it's fun and mildly challenging. Medium difficulty adds an extra button and ups the ante, whereas hard and expert are ridiculously complicated utilising all five buttons and requiring real-world guitar skills or insane dedication to master. However, nothing beats nailing a tough solo that you've been practicing for ages, giving you the same satisfied feeling you might get from beating a tough end boss in any other game you'd care to think of. And therein lies the brilliance of Guitar Hero II, it's the only game that actually makes you feel like a rock star. There is of course the argument that you could use the time dedicated to playing Guitar Hero to actually learn how to play the real guitar and yes, sometimes that feeling does creep in from time to time. Yet, it quickly subsides as you realise you're having way too much fun shredding your plastic axe to the strains of Sweet Child O' Mine or Freebird. There's really nothing else like it.

GH II's track list is expemplary, offering a varety of rock classics old and new to get to grips with. Obviously, you'll have your favourites (Jessica, Monkey Wrench and John the Fisherman since you ask) which you'll play over and over again 'til your fingers bleed.

GH II is compulsive, challenging and above all fun. Invest in a pair of axes and you can play rhythm, bass or lead in co-op or face-off head to head in a battle of riffs. Harmonix have covered all bases with this sequel, improving vastly upon its predecessor. It stands out as an essential title for 360 or PS2 and has the added bonus of making you everyone's best friend. So, get the beers and nibbles in, fire up GH II and rock on! Go on, melt some faces!

Te-riff-ic: 9/10

Playing Guitar Hero II seriously whets your appetite for the forthcoming sequel with development duties handed over to Tony Hawk stalwarts Neversoft. With its added boss battles against legends like Guns N' Roses' Slash, GH III is an exciting prospect. Not as exciting as Rock Band though, Harmonix's new pet project with EA that allows you to sing, play guitar, bass and drums. Outstanding. Will there be room for both games under your telly in the coming months? We'd say yes. If you're loaded buy both. Us? We're going to have to choose...unless we sell a kidney.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3 (version played), Xbox 360, PC. Infinity Ward, Ubisoft)

Ever since Medal Of Honor exploded on to the gaming scene with its Saving Private Ryan (1998) style D-Day landing beach assault, World War II as subject matter has been exploited in countless shooters, Real Time Strategy games and more. Hell, even the grandaddy of the first person shooter Wolfenstein 3D was set during WWII, although we don't think Hitler in a mech-suit was entirely accurate from a historical standpoint. To say the subject is getting a bit stale as source material for a game is like saying Hitler was a bit of a mad git.

Thank God then for Call Of Duty 4, the first title in the series to ditch Nazi bashing in favour of something fresh and relevant, bringing the conflict into the modern day. The clue's in the title's suffix, it's all about Modern Warfare meaning a wealth of cutting edge contemporary weaponry at your fingertips.

You begin the game in the shiny boots of new SAS recruit Private 'Soap' Mc.Tavish under the tutelage of the outrageously moustachioed, gruff and instantly likeable Captain Price. The first task you undertake is dispatching wooden targets in a sparse training hangar. How fast you complete the tutorial determines your recommended skill level for the rest of the game and helps inform your decision when selecting your preffered difficulty level. Clever. After this brief training session you're plunged balls-deep into the action in the prologue level set aboard an enormous cargo ship in raging high seas. Your first mission? Find and secure a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere below deck. Easy. COD's opening stage is the perfect introduction to what the rest of the game has to offer. That is heavy, realistic gunplay supported by a squad with sharp AI who actually help rather than hinder your progress. Your team are so smart that you'll develop an affinity with them and you may even grow to care about them like we did. In having well-drawn and believable characters on your side, the moments where they're under threat are made even more poignant and tense. In fact there's high drama and awe-inspiring set-pieces throughout, which we won't spoil for you here, just know that each one is nerve-shredding and arse-puckeringly taut. Having to escape from a cargo ship that's being torn asunder and quickly filling with water is the first set-piece that has you on the edge of your seat. And that's in the first ten minutes. The action in COD 4 comes thick and fast, tightly scripted like the best Hollywood action movie imaginable, except you're the one in control, you're the star.

Call Of Duty 4 is probably the best shooter we've played this year and it succeeds in being such for a number of reasons. Key to the game's strength is it's guns that even without the rumble from the PS3's sixaxis still manage to somehow feel right. Shooting enemies is so incredibly authentic as they react to your bullets exactly as you'd expect them to, carking it in a well animated and completely believable fashion. Not since Black on PS2 have guns felt so meaty and lethal. When you pull the trigger things break. Masonry, bricks, walls-it's pretty much all destructible in some way and as such cover is no guarantee of safety, for you or your enemies. One such mission set in a TV studio is a perfect example of the kind of havoc you can wreak and the mess you can leave behind. In short it's just as you'd imagine war might be in real life, nowhere on the battlefield is safe and death will visit you quickly if you're not careful. Despite being brutally realistic, Call Of Duty 4 is real in the best possible way, enhancing the experience to levels of total delirious brilliance. You'll be punching the air and whooping 'boo-yah' like a jingoistic nutter (just make sure no-one's around when you are). You simply won't want the game to end which sadly it does after around 6-8 hours of wall-to-wall action and a dramatic pay-off that is quite possibly one of the best endings to a ever grace a videogame. All this and you get to play as good old British SAS soldiers for the majority of the game: a welcome departure from playing as America's Marine Corps or whatever. And the British accents actually sound pretty good for a change meaning you'll more than likely identify with the SAS team rather than the US Forces who consist of the predictable stereotypes we've come to know and love.

Call Of Duty 4 is unreservedly brilliant, boasting a storyline with characters you'll grow to love and weapons you'll love even more. Unfortunately, the experience suffers somewhat online as the game mostly involves killing and dying in quick succession without much scope to build any kind of momentum or longevity, but this is a minor gripe, which has probably more to do with our lack of online prowess rather than any inherent flaw. Also, it's a crying shame that the single-player campaign tops out at around eight hours if you're slow and methodical, less than this if you're a gung-ho Speedy Gonzalez. Thankfully, the on and offline multiplayer injects some longevity into the game and to be honest, COD 4's campaign is more than worthy of a second play-through.

So, the best Call Of Duty yet? That's affirmative soldier. Buy it now. That's an order.

Mission accomplished: 9/10

Review: Warhawk (PS3. Incognito, Sony)

It's not often that you get a pleasant, unexpected surprise in the form of a game. You can usually gauge fairly early on whether a game is going to turn out to be a complete turkey or not. Warhawk initially appeared to be such a game. A flight-sim set in the near future? Pass. No thanks. It's been done a million times before and flight-sims tend to be stuffy, lifeless fare based entirely upon the player's ability to keep a crosshair steady for a couple of seconds to achieve a lock-on. Yawn. As console gamers our attention spans are inherently short and as such flight games normally don't fulfil our fast paced gaming needs unless you're talking about Namco's Ace Combat series which generally errs on the side of being pretty good. So, what makes Warhawk so special? Well quite a lot as it turns out.

Pitting the Eucadian armies against the malevolent Chernovian, the game is a bit like Star Wars in its set-up. The Eucadians even look like the Rebel Alliance with their battle scarred craft and khaki fatigues. And as you'll have guessed by now, the Chernovians look typically Darth Vader-esque in black garb and samurai helmets. It's the perfect excuse for two factions to blow each other to kingdom come and requires no further plot, exposition or any other pointless details. Hell, there's not even the back-story blather that you'd expect to find in the manual, it's just good versus evil and that's it. What else do you need to know?

Warhawk isn't just any old flight-sim as our first snap judgment had us assume. It's actually an insanely tooled up playground of weapons, vehicles and gun emplacements all for your delectation. Will it be the heavily armoured tank or the nippy jeep today, sir? Everything is tailored towards creating multiplayer destruction and mayhem on a huge scale. Whether you're manning a gun turret, tank or you're running along on foot, everything feels perfectly balanced and weapon pick-ups are littered all over the place so you're never without a formidable arsenal at your disposal. Sometimes on foot you can get stranded in the middle of nowhere, say if you happen to flip your jeep en-route to a fray, meaning you have to hoof your way to the nearest vehicle or area of activity, which can sometimes grate. This happens rarely, so doesn't really matter. Still, a sprint button or handy pushbike that you can grab from your backpack would have been a helpful addition.

All of the usual game modes are present and correct, as you'd expect. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag being the obvious suspects. Best of all though is Zones in which you attempt to capture as much enemy territory as possible. There are also straightforward, no nonsense dogfights where you begin at the controls of a warhawk and stay there for the duration, shooting down as many enemies as possible within the time limit. This is Warhawk at its purest.

The most fun to be had playing the game is in piloting the titular warhawks. Effortlessly manoeuvrable, quick, nimble and deadly the warhawks are the real stars of the show. You can hover mere feet from the ground raining minigun flavoured death down upon unfortunate soldiers, jeeps and tanks although you leave yourself vulnerable to being shot down. You can spin through the sky gracefully dodging missiles, navigating your way through narrow gaps and canyons (although you'll need to turn pro flight controls on to get the most out of your hawk) shooting down foes with aplomb. Get the hang of Warhawk and you're in for a treat. Hours will pass in what seem like minutes as you play just. one. more. game! It's fiendishly addictive and will have you hooked on its great, big candy shop of weapons and destruction.

Warhawk is a game so flawlessly executed that it's a compulsory purchase for anyone with a PS3 hooked up to the PlayStation Network and a penchant for blowing things up. Be warned, Warhawk is online multiplayer only and will consume hours of your life without you realising it. Unashamedly undemanding and unreservedly brilliant, Warhawk is completely and utterly indispensable.

Fuel: 9/10

Movie Review: 30 Days Of Night (November, 2007)

Based on the cult graphic novel of the same name, 30 Days Of Night sees a small town in Alaska terrorised by a band of marauding vampires out on a feeding frenzy during the titular time frame. It's a fantastic set-up for a horror movie, ramping up the tension as the days roll by.

<-- Melissa was disgusted by Josh's big farts

Barrow, Alaska is a friendly little place inhabited by hard working locals and tourists: the perfect location to be pillaged and torn apart by bloodthirsty
monsters then. Especially since the town experiences a month of perpetual darkness, spurring most people to leave, so tear the town apart they do in what proves to be an explosive, edge-of-the-seat movie.
Beginning with a relatively slow-paced exposition, the film’s opening establishes the minutiae of everyday life for Barrow’s residents as a whole chunk of them flee before the arduous month of pitch black ensues. And it’s not long before the action gets going because when the fanged menaces arrive, all hell breaks loose. Quick and brutal, the action is bloody, yet largely off-camera, probably to keep its audience-friendly 15 certificate. Don’t let that certificate fool you though because 30 Days is still pretty graphic in parts. Efficient and butal 30 Days vamps quickly wreak havoc, nicely captured using a sweeping overhead crane shot, the chaos they bring is unexpected. David Slade's assured direction means 30 Days is beautifully shot, the Hard Candy director executing Hollywood horror duties impeccably. The landscape is relentlessly bleak and oppressive amplifying the atmosphere as well as the innate feeling of helplessness and pessimism.
Recalling the claustrophobia and desperation of John Carpenter’s The Thing, 30 Days has moments of genuine tension that owe a debt to the 1982 classic. On the whole the performances are good, Danny Huston oozing a snarling, shark-like menace as lead bad guy Marlow although his band of followers are annoyingly resilient, popping up again when you think they’ve been offed. We thought we saw one particular bald vamp die about three times. Perhaps this was wishful thinking as his agonising, high-pitched screeching slowly drove us potty.
Strong too is Josh Hartnett’s performance as the squinty sheriff, delivering his squintiest and best performance to date. His journey from clean-cut lawman to beardy, worn-down, dead-eyed vampire slayer is seamless and convincing.
At its core, 30 Days Of Night is a fantastic popcorn movie, entertaining and relentlessly intense for the most part, boasting some explosive set pieces and interesting – if lightweight – human drama. Just don’t go in expecting traditional vampires in the Bela Lugosi mould, you’ll just feel incredibly disappointed. Vampire purists are better off thinking of 30 Days as a monster movie rather than a vampire one.
An accomplished horror-cum-action fest that justifies its exceptional US box-office performance by delivering terse atmospherics and good, solid performances. And it doesn’t skimp on the claret either. Well worth a watch.
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