The Club

Platform: 360, also PS3 & PC.
Verdict: I'll not be joining.
Rating: 3½/5
Those that predicted a Running Man style direction for sport after seeing the lycra clad trash The Gladiators, may still be crying in disappointment into their giant foam hands. Luckily for society, blood sports are generally frowned upon, even if they involve opera singers covered in lightbulbs. So, it's up to the underworld to organise such nefarious activities, perhaps in the shape of The Club.
No, this isn't Paul's dream dance game about a nightclub, it's an illegal group that organises death matches between skilled gunmen seeking riches, while the rich enjoy the show. As one of these gunmen you're tasked with surviving a tournament of different battles while racking up a huge score to become top of the table.
Bringing to mind 2000AD's revered Button Man series, The Club is a shallower gunfest with little story and lots of action. With a character select screen and an emphasis on speed runs and high scores, The Club draws from racers and beat-em-ups to add spice to the genre. Created by the team behind Project Gotham Racing this comes as little surprise.
At first the action may not quite click – relying on a string of closely timed kills to keep a bleeding combo meter going means the pace can take a little getting used. Once you grasp that this time the term 'run and gun' literally applies, everything changes for the better. Running full pelt through each environment while pulling off a quick succession of skilled shots certainly gets the adrenaline pumping, If only it had the controls to handle such frenetic action.
Strangely, the shooter made by a company famed for racers is let down by handling. Sluggish aiming, clunky controls and a reload that locks you into an animation is cause for much frustration. The disappointments don't end there either – with ties to beat-em-ups watered down to a single melee attack and the loud announcement of 'Fight!' at the start of each round, The Club feels like a watered down sum of its parts.
Feeling slightly clubbed to death by the glut of shooters on the 360, it's certainly refreshing to see someone try something new. Attempting to fuse aspects of shooters, racers and beat-em-ups into a new whole is admirable, if only the end result met that potential. The Club promised much and delivers some – disappointing, yet still worth a blast for the score hungry adrenalin junkies out there, and fans of pugel sticks maybe.

Eye of Judgement

Platform: PS3
Verdict: Eye candy
Rating: 3½/5
Those ignorant enough to that think gaming is still the preserve of the geek need look no further than the DS and Wii's success at Christmas - our once niche hobby is now becoming the mainstream replacement for DVD and music sales. Worry not fellow gamers, Eye of Judgement is a relic from the past, come to abuse new technologies while spitting on casual gaming with the +2 sneer of a basilisk's caustic saliva.
Essentially a card game in the vein of the all-consuming nerdfest Magic: The Gathering, Eye of Judgement uses the PS3's updated eye toy technology to create a mixed reality game where your cards come alive on the screen.
Split into a 3x3 grid, the playing board sits under the gaze of the eye (toy) while you take turns with your opponent to place a warrior card, cast spells and compete to be the first with five cards in play (or be last man standing). When you place a card on the board, the camera reads it and transforms it on-screen into an animated version.
With each move reliant on mana (which regenerates slowly every turn), cards can't just be placed down at any time – big nasty monsters cost a lot to use. Once down, a card is locked to its location and may only be rotated (to face a different adversary) and used once per turn when the mana allows it. Starting off slowly, each game eventually becomes a tense tussle for space on the board with the constant threat of a big hitter being played by your opponent.
Provided you're playing in good light the technology works well, with speedy computation and a charming mix of virtual and reality. The 3x3 board is a regrettably small area in terms of strategy but elemental based mechanics, spells and different attack ranges manage to keep things deep enough to be satisfying.
Online play is also included for those without geek minded mates but ultimately highlights how unnecessary the physical nature of the cards really is. Eye of Judgement is a fun idea, executed well but stands more as a tech demo than a necessary evolution of gaming.

Burnout Paradise

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3
Verdict: A brave new Burnout
Rating: 4½/5
Always one to champion gaming's ability to let you do things that in real life would see you hospitalised, incarcerated or dead, the Burnout series has featured highly on my list of greats. The high octane, crash fetishising gameplay is second to none (and thankfully nothing to do with J G Ballard), and puts chills into anyone I give a lift to after they've seen me play it (fear not, my aging Nissan Sunny doesn't have nitro).
After four iterations it's easy for a series to tire - just look at other yearly updated EA games like Need for Speed. Criterion were obviously aware of this and have worked to a bold new vision to reimagine Burnout while keeping it essentially the same. And what is this vision you ask? Paradise City.
Burnout Paradise drops you into a massive sandbox city where you can drive where you want (think GTA without the legwork or gun crime). No longer choosing between static tracks in a menu, you haphazardly determine the route yourself - from the traffic lights where you choose to initiate a race to the finishing line, the city lays naked to your improvised navigation.
Different car classes seek to replicate iterations in the series - from the speed based, burnout chaining of Burnout 2 to the aggressive, insanely fun takedowns of Burnout 4, there's something for every individual fan.
Graphics and mechanics are stunning as always, with spectacular emphasis on slow motion crash physics whenever something as trivial as a wall gets in the way.
The other feature Paradise wears proudly on its sleeve is online play. With a few presses of the D-Pad your friends can seamlessly drop into your game and meet up for impromptu races while Live Cam support spices things up with takedown snapshots of their mug, or worse.
With such progress comes disappointments though - the lack of quick restarts are divisive in their omission and the necessary reliance on improvised navigation means too much time can be spent with one eye on the mini-map instead of the road. Extended play soon sees you adapt though and in the face of how plain awesome the rest of the game is, they're minor grumbles. Much like the criticisms of my driving.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3 and PC.
Going head to head with shooters like Halo 3 would leave many games trembling in the dust but CoD4 merely shakes the mud from its boots and soldiers on, bringing it’s own brand of chaotic realism to the mix.
As the suffix suggests, CoD4 is set in the present day, with a close to the bone fictional story of terrorists and nuclear bombs.
Ditching the bolt action guns of WWII for state of the art weaponry, CoD4’s action is refined yet retains the chaos of previous iterations.
Undoubtably one of the best looking games around, the battlefields are awash with smoke and bloodied inevitability with the FPS action claustrophobic and tense.
The tale may be a relatively brief affair and the endlessly respawning enemies a blot on gameplay but the addictive, RPG laced online modes more than make up for it.
9/10

The Orange Box

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3 and PC.
Verdict: The future’s bright.
Rating: 5/5
Now that my belly is fat with cake and my thumbs blistering from the excessive list of quality pre-Christmas games, it’s time to kick back and catch up on those titles I missed. They’ll handily help fill the gaming drought in this most depressing of months too.
With plenty of great games for Santa to choose from, The Orange Box was the most conspicuous omission from last year’s reviews, especially as it should have been one of my top 5 games of 2007. Time to make amends then.
The Orange Box isn’t a collection of citrus flavoured chocolates or some ill advised Dragon’s Den ‘innovation’ but a rather fine compendium of Valve made games. Included in this bumper package is the seminal Half Life 2 (the game that defined physics based puzzling) and its two highly rated episodic sequels. As if that wasn’t enough you get Team Fortress 2 (a super stylised multiplayer game) and Portal (a mind melting, space bending FPS puzzler) thrown in too. Both of which are inspiringly innovative in their own right and juicy, brandy soaked cherries on the already sumptuous cake.
For such AAA generosity there must be a catch right? Wrong. Unless you have some guilty complex that makes you insist on paying full price for every game in the (orange) box. Instead, pay your £30 and be glad Gabe Newell has seen fit to deliver his quality slices of prime gaming beef at a discount price. Be very glad.
So, you might have guessed I like it. You’re wrong (again), I really like it. I want to hug it, buy it presents and take photobooth shots of us on our perfect day. If that was any day in particular it’d be the day I finished the regrettably short Portal - the most perfect slice of gaming pie there possibly ever has been. Innovative, perplexing, amusing and downright marvel at the infinite vastness of space, mind bendingly brilliant. All in the pursuit of cake too.

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (18)

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3, PC.
Verdict: More bark than bite.
Rating: 3½/5
The standard genus hero of videogaming’s short and accelerating history has been that of the unflinching beefcake of justice. You know the type - chiselled jaw, gruff voice and bullet proof skin with the ability to drop cliched catchphrases at the exact hour of cheese o’ clock. Admittedly some shooters have played the anti-hero card but they usually involve leather attire and nu-metal. Kane and Lynch’s over stated direction flys in the face of all that by introducing two ‘heros’ who are anything but.
Meet escaped convicts Kane and Lynch, one a mercenary heading for the chair for mass murder, the other a medicated psychopath prone to seeing pig faces. Freed by The 7, an elite mercenary group who want their stolen money back from Kane, Lynch is thrown in as his unpredictable watchdog and together they must fight to get the cash, save Kane’s family and avoid being killed by The 7, or most likely - each other.
Playing much like Io’s previous Freedom Fighters, Kane and Lynch mixes basic squad based mechanics with daring heists and the unpredictable nature of Kane who can flip at any moment and kill a room full of hostages at the whiff of bacon.
The story is initially executed with considerable flair as Kane and Lynch argue their way through the tourette filled missions, but regrettably becomes hum drum as quickly as their banter begins to tire.
Multiplayer avoids the me-too crowd with Fragile Alliance which pits you and online friends as a group of robbers after some cash. With loot separated evenly between the fellow criminals, it’s possible to turn on your friends at any point, kill them and take their stash. It’s admirable in it’s intentions but games can quickly turn into an unsatisfying scrap.
Unfortunately the high production values and obvious effort that has been poured into the single player script are dashed against the rocks of accolade by the element most essential to get right - gameplay. With clunky, counter-intuitive controls and a glitchy cover system, Kane and Lynch is reduced to mediocrity in one foul swipe. Perhaps Kane should have got the chair after all.

Virtua Fighter 5

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3.
Verdict: The king of fighters.
Rating: 4½/5
As the very first 3D beat-em-up, the original Virtua Fighter was a blocky mesh of simple polygons that held gamers entranced with it’s primary colours, innovative gameplay and promises of what the future held. Fast forward almost 15 years and the latest iteration of this refined and polished series arrives, surpassing 93’s teenage visions, promising unparalleled gameplay and future arthritis.
Originally released on the PS3 a year ago, the 360 version has been a long time coming but the wait has been well worth it - based on the Version C arcade revision, it surpasses the PS3’s version with important gameplay tweaks, improved graphics and the killer addition of online play.
Regarded by many as the best 3D fighter, Virtua Fighter’s combat system is held highly and with good reason.
From simple button mashing to ‘sit down with a manual and revise em’ combos, VF5 allows beginners an easy entry into its hardcore fold, while the experts dip their resin covered virtual fists into the broken glass of high level play and showboat their skills online.
Those unfortunate souls without Xbox Live (hurry up Paul) or friends can take solace in the play modes on offer - alongside the traditional Arcade mode lies the addictive and balanced Quest mode where you tour virtual arcades, enter tournaments and unlock clothing and items for your fighter as you rank up the leaderboards.
Different arcades represent differing levels of difficulty and unlike the Arcade mode’s steadying increase in difficulty (to rock hard) it’s easy for the beginner (or expert) to settle into a Quest mode arcade and fight a continual queue of like-skilled opponents.
Online play may be the jewel in the 360’s crown but it’s also where the game is weakest - restricting you to single matches against strangers with the inability to switch characters when playing with friends, VF5’s offering is frugal at best but thankfully lag free.
Alongside the deep and satisfying gameplay, gorgeous graphics and wide variety of martial artists and moves, any gripes quickly fade away in a flurry of fists.
I’m 3rd Dan, come fight me.

Sega Rally

Platform: Xbox 360, also PS3 and PC.
Verdict: Pure, filthy racing.
Rating: 4/5
As iconic to some as Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega Rally has always been regarded as one of Sega’s sweet spots - the hardware was cutting edge, the gameplay was sublime and the arcades still had some life left in them. Cut to today - the arcade is left for dead, Sega self imploded in the console race and the synonymous Sonic has fallen from gaming grace.
Thankfully, the latest Sega Rally is a shining beacon to past glories on current hardware. Like the Outrun remake of recent years, it shows that despite the arcade’s demise, Sega still know how to make pure arcade games that pack plenty of no-frills punch.
Stripped of the usual feature rich make-up of modern racers, Sega Rally is racing at it’s purist - pick a tournament, pick a car and off you go. Shaved of the weight deemed essential these days it’s a refreshing experience, further enhanced through its gameplay.
Initially, handling can feel exaggerated and twitchy, especially when coming straight from a session on the tighter PGR4. Once it clicks though you’ll be powerdrifting through troughs of mud at impossible angles and preposterous speeds with wide grinned glee. Online multiplayer proves a hilarious abuse of physics and gloriously rendered mud.
Travelling a variety of beautiful landscapes (safari, alpine, jungle etc), each adds its own particular nuance to driving as the differing terrains react uniquely under the wheels of the car. With deformable tracks where each wheel cuts grooves into the mud, each lap plays out differently while mud sticks to the car adding weight, removed all too briefly by pools of water before the next muddy bend.
It’s this added depth to the experience that sets Sega Rally apart from other racers. With a recent glut of exceptional racers like PGR4 and Colin McRae: DiRT, it finds it’s voice through this feature and its accessible arcade simplicity. That said, it’s this brevity of features and distinctly old school approach that could turn some against it.
Now all I need is to install it in an arcade cabinet and the cycle is complete.